Are you seeking the path to wellness? Do you feel that you are not exactly healthy? Do you feel that you can’t do it because it’s too complicated, that you don’t know how to cook so you won’t be able to prepare clean food, you think it’s too expensive, you think that healthy food tastes terrible, you worry that you won’t be able to eat what you want, you travel too much and eat out a lot so you feel can’t control what you eat, you think it’s hard to get some of the ingredients, you feel you will have to deny yourself the foods you really want, you eat your emotions, you are addicted to certain foods (sugar, alcohol, refined foods), you believe you don’t have the right genetics to be lean, are seeking a path to wellness and you feel that you are doing everything “right” and yet, aren’t seeing results.
If any of this resonates with you, you are not alone.
The vast majority of people are unhappy with their health. Since most of the population is in a health crisis, it is difficult to make a list of who these people are. We should let the statistics speak for themselves. Statistics show that one in five young people are obese in North America and that nearly two-thirds of the population is overweight and/or obese. For context, this number is ten times higher than those classified as obese forty years ago. Sobering statistics show the following: (ref. The World Health Organization)
- In 2016, more than 1.9 billion adults aged 18 years and older were overweight. Of these over 650 million adults were obese.
- In 2016, 39% of adults aged 18 years and over (39% of men and 40% of women) were overweight.
- Overall, about 13% of the world’s adult population (11% of men and 15% of women) were obese in 2016.
- The worldwide prevalence of obesity nearly tripled between 1975 and 2016.
The condition of overweight is accelerating worldwide. This is partly because you live in an obesogenic society – meaning you live in a world that makes it easy to access unhealthy, weight gaining foods, while physical activity has been removed from most schools. This means that only one-third of you are at a lean, healthy body weight.
It is not difficult to find evidence of this. One does not need a science journal to point it out. Observe what you see in your daily life as you go about your business. The school bus driver is overweight. When you visit the hospital, a place where wellness ought to prevail, many of the health care providers are among the most overweight. No one is exempt from this plague. At the moment, 70% of the North American population is overweight or obese. Overweight and obesity are defined as “abnormal or excessive fat accumulation that may impair health.” Overweight is a BMI (body mass index) greater than or equal to 25 while obesity is a BMI greater than or equal to 30.
The condition of carrying excess weight brings with it: illness, including heart disease, stroke, high blood pressure, diabetes, certain cancers, gallbladder disease, gallstones, gout, respiratory problems, including sleep apnea, arthritis, inflammation, to say nothing of depression or worse. Simply put, obesity means you have an increased risk of developing the disease. The cancer rate will be one in two by 2020.
Consider also that many young people are looking for ways to numb their MIND. Some people use substances, including drugs and alcohol, to numb themselves. In this century food also, has become one of these numbing substances. Many people, unable and unwilling to handle their emotions, consume food, particularly sugars and refined carbohydrates, as a way to tune out. More and more, with ready accessibility to cheap carbohydrates and refined sugars, people fill their voids in life this way. Consuming excess sugar readily becomes an addiction – alcoholism is just another form of sugar addiction. It is not a stretch to suggest that sugary foods are addictive in the same way that alcohol is addictive.
In THINK Yourself® CLEAN, Tosca Reno and I address the above in details and give you a path towards living a CLEAN lifestyle. You can find it here.