7 Ways to Keep the Stuff that Causes Obesity and Diabetes Out of Your Body

By Jonathan Bailor, author and co-founder of SlimIsSimple.org, for DietsInReview.com

Over the past few decades we've been trying harder and harder to be healthy and fit. The result: we got heavy and sick. What's going on here?



If a doctor prescribes us a medication and it makes us worse, we would stop taking it and fire our doctor. If an architect builds us a house and it crumbles, we would fire them, too, and we certainly would not blame ourselves for our housing issues. Why not apply the same logic to health and fitness? Seems reasonable. But what else is there other than the old calorie-counting approach we've all been taught?

There is an alternative. We can do what every human being up until a few decades ago did: Eat actual food and stay active. No complex calorie counting. No confusing workout routines. No pills, powders or potions.

It may be helpful to think about this alternative approach like this: want to avoid lung cancer? No need to worry about breathing, just don't smoke. Keep the stuff that causes lung cancer out of your body. Similarly, want to avoid obesity and diabetes? No need to worry about eating, just don't eat "foods" that didn't exist prior to the obesity and diabetes epidemics. Keep the stuff that causes obesity and diabetes out of your body.

We've gotten worse while trying harder because we're essentially trying to avoid lung cancer while continuing to smoke. We've been instructed to eat foods that cause obesity and diabetes. Avoiding those diseases is difficult and complex when we are told to eat the foods that cause them. We've been given bad information, but we can certainly take the power back and make slim simple again.

To get started, try these seven tips:

1. Remember that nobody knew what a calorie was, let alone counted them, when the rates of overweight were 20 times lower than they are today. Counting calories cannot be required to stay slim.

2. Avoid any person or program that makes health and fitness seem complex. There's a good chance they are more interested in making money than in helping you.

3. Vitamins and minerals are essential, and there are essential fatty acids and essential amino acids. There are not essential sugars or essential starches. There are 57 sugars that are destroying our health. Don't make the majority of your diet unnecessary sugars and starches.

4. If a food doesn't spoil, it will likely spoil your health. Make sure most of what you eat comes out of your refrigerator or freezer.

5. Replace your fear of fat with a fear of anything processed. Note: processed = not found directly in nature.

6. If our grandmothers didn't eat it, we shouldn't either. She, and all of our other ancestors, stayed slim and healthy without really trying. We can too.

Check this out: If Your Kids Shouldn't Eat It, Neither Should You

7. Exercise "cancels out" eating processed foods like exercise "cancels out" smoking-it doesn't. Processed foods, like cigarettes, do damage to our bodies that has nothing to do with calories and therefore cannot be undone by burning more of them.

If counting calories and exercising obsessively is working and enjoyable for you, please keep it up. However, if you are interested in simplifying slim, enjoy our organization's School House Rocks-inspired animated nutrition education video series.

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By Jonathan Bailor, co-founder of Slim is Simple.org, a new organization working to end the obesity, diabetes and heart disease epidemics by educating Americans about the simple modern science of nutrition. Slim is Simple.org messages are based on the extensive research Bailor detailed in his acclaimed book The Smarter Science of Slim.