Discover the Body God Designed

According to a study done by the Washington Post, it takes one year to be successful with keeping the weight off. We have unrealistic standards about weight. It seems that only two percent of people lose weight permanently and there are a few secrets that make them successful:

They're not counting anything, not counting calories... anything – weight loss is a by product of getting happy.
They're not on a diet.
They're not obsessed with food.
They make exercise fun again – most of them walk – make exercise easy, don't lift weights or do any complicated routines...
They choose to believe the truth about themselves – don't buy into unrealistic body images.
Nutrition is not hard for them, they know what was healthy.
They learn to like themselves.
They learn to deal with anger, fear, and guilt (those are all things that dieting can bring to a person).
They learned not to compare themselves to others.
THE BODY GOD DESIGNED

Gregory Jantz says the body image that most people have of themselves is distorted. People have enlarged visions of themselves in their minds.

"We need honest appraisals of ourselves. Also, we need to learn what it means to take care of the temple God gave us, because we don't seem to be taking proper care of ourselves anymore. Many times, we need to see a reward for us to change things. When it comes to taking care of our bodies, it would be good to make things fun again and make it easier on ourselves. We need to renew our minds about our bodies."

THREE DECEPTIVE P's

Sometimes things that look good for you aren't necessarily good. There are three deceptive P's regarding foods (or fragmented food): packaging, processing, and portioning.

Here is an example of deceptive packaging using the sale of pork rinds. On the package, the positives of the product would be highlighted and the negatives would be downplayed (or maybe not even listed.) Packaging is more about image than information and the vehicle to sell a product. The package of pork rinds may show it being a healthier snack than potato chips because they're higher in protein. Fried pork rinds do have more protein than potato chips, but they have just as much fat and more sodium than potato chips. Packaging tries to make food look good so the consumer may follow the misconception that it is good. Most of the time, consumers don't even see the food inside the packaging, so they buy food for the wrong reason...because of the way it's packaged.

Processing can also be very deceptive. Before, food processing was simple and was done so food would last longer. Now, the goal is still to keep food longer, but now the ways that the food industry keeps food from spoiling isn't always the healthiest way. For example, a bag of cookies can now last in your pantry for six months, but the hydrogenated oil to keep it is not good for you.

Food processing has also allowed us to get whatever kind of food we want without having to cook it ourselves, and now we've merged food with convenience. We now have convenience food/junk food where we can eat whatever we want, and we seem to want snack and junk food that have no real nutritional value. All of this processed food is high in calories, sugar, fat, and sodium. The ingredients to make the processed food usually go through a process as well, which means you're not getting any nutrition and the "food" doesn't cost much for the manufacturers to make. They're profiting at your expense.

Portioning is deceptive. When you go to restaurants, they oversize portions. Also, "small portion" labeling sometimes doesn't give the consumer an accurate gauge of how much he/she is taking in. We the consumers have been misinformed or ignorant of proper portion size that we are accustomed to eating too much. A salad plate sized cookie is actually four servings. If you finish the cookie, you could be getting as much as 400 calories!