Why Is It Harder Now Than It Was In The 70s To Maintain A Healthy Weight?

I have posted this before but if you haven’t seen it, it might be time to read. IT may explain a few things.

According to an article I read about our ancestors, there are several factors contributing to the growing girth of our society. Even if we ate less and exercised more than our same aged counterparts in 1970, we would still have a harder time maintaining a healthy weight.

• Stress – even if stress causes you to lose your appetite temporarily, in the long run the cortisol it causes your body to produce will increase belly fat. We are often in a constant state of fight or flight and our bodies never get a break from the stress.
• Environment – there are ingredients in products we use every day that are estrogenic, meaning they imitate estrogen in our bodies, causing weight gain. Ingredients such as BPA, PCBs, triclosan, pesticides, fire retardants, just to name a few, affect how our bodies function.
• Food – the quality of our food supply is not the same as it was fifty years ago. We have additives and preservatives that our bodies don’t know how to process. The soil is depleted of nutrients and there are many food items that have been genetically modified (GMOs). When multiple generations of mice have been fed GMO food, they end up morbidly obese along with having multiple other health problems.
• Drugs – the rampant use of prescription pharmaceuticals, especially antidepressants, has the unpleasant side effect of weight gain
• Microbiome – the bacteria in our gut is designed to help eliminate toxins from our body and neutralize the effects of bad bacteria and yeast. However, the Standard American Diet does not promote good gut health and in fact, often has ingredients that actually kill off the good bacteria (think antibiotics in factory farmed meat).

There are ways to mitigate the impact of modern life on your waistline.

• Eat real food – stay away from food that comes in a box, bag or can. If it wasn’t alive, don’t eat it. And if it contains any artificial ingredients, don’t eat it.
• Eat organic – minimize exposure to chemical pesticides that disrupt your body’s ability to do its job
• Read labels – if your personal care products have any of the hormone disrupting chemicals listed above, don’t use them
• Manage stress – take breaks, get adequate sleep, meditate, laugh, exercise, to minimize blood sugar fluctuations
• Avoid overusing prescription drugs – only take antibiotics when other alternatives are not possible. Antibiotics kill off good bacteria as well as bad and can lead to an overgrowth of candida (yeast) in the body
• Eat food that supports a healthy gut – fermented foods, foods with active probiotics, garlic, onions and asparagus, all promote a healthy microbiome

While our modern life makes it more difficult to maintain a healthy weight, it isn’t impossible. Just make sure you eat the way nature intended. Eat plants, not food that was made in a plant.