Are you confident that you have been making the correct health and fitness choices for your employee’s health program, your own health, and the health and fitness options within your family?
Ask yourself one question, “Does the business suit that you wore right after college graduation fit today?” Look around the office and see what you think your employees would reply to that question. What about your spouse’s fitness? Are your children under-fit or overweight?
What We Don’t Know
In the 1982, we learned from author Bruce Feirstein that “Real Men Don’t Eat Quiche1.” The Wiki review of that book states that “The book’s humor derives from the fears and confusion of contemporary middle class men about how they ought to behave, after a decade of feminist critique on traditional male roles and beliefs.” We may have “come a long way baby,” regarding male and female roles, but we have failed regarding men’s and women’s health and fitness choices. Feirstein positioned Alan Alda as an example of a male who related well to modern females. January 28, 2012, Alan Alda turned 76 and he still shows no signs of obesity. Was there a second message relating to health and fitness choices in Feirstein’s book that the general male population missed?
Where’s Your Waist?
The majority of successful, middle-aged or older, businesspeople are not laughing about the serious problem of health and fitness choices made over the last three decades. During those 30 years, we have had the attitude that since Baby Boomers appeared to be 40 when we turned 50 we are doing fine. The time of truth has arrived. January 2010, the Center for Disease Control published these facts: 34% of all American adults are clinically obese – 100+ or more pounds overweight. Anyone who is that much corpulent is neither healthy nor fit.
Professional people want scientific evidence. For forty years Dr. John McDougall has been explaining that food is not the enemy; we must eat to survive. We should always feel satisfied within twenty minutes of finishing a meal. He is clear that the problem is the food we chose to eat2. In 2006, “The China Study” was published. The book claims to have 75 grant-years of research and about 750 scientific references. The Campbell authors informed us that environmental influences cause most disease – including obesity. Those regulators are affluence: eating what we can afford to eat, not what we should be eating3.
What’s A Real Man (or Woman) To Do?
Dr. McDougall says the solution is very easy. Follow his planet-based diet for twelve days and evaluate how you feel, look, and how well you sleep. If a traditional high carbohydrate and low-fat plant-based diet make you feel more energetic, less lethargic, and you sleep better, continue that diet. If not, then go back to the high-fat low-carbohydrate diet you are sharing with your co-workers, and continue to store fat. You might also want to put your legal affairs in order. Your diet choices will shorten your life.
Dr. T. Colin Campbell shares the same opinions, but he takes it a step further. Campbell show evidence of the link between the food choices you make and the medical problems you are encountering or will face eventually. These problems include heart disease, cancer, diabetes, and a host of other diseases that have been labeled as normal age-related issues. However, a host of authorities does not agree.2,3,4,&5. What they have to say, is not new information.
“Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food.” ~ Hippocrates
You Have Health & Fitness Choices
Your health & fitness choices difference today is that you have scientific proof that what you eat will either heal, sustain, or harm you. Unfortunately, as Campbell points out, most information has been misrepresented to protect a host of strong food corporations who want to keep their stock prices rising as fast as the rate of heart disease, diabetes, and cancer in the USA. They have been very successful at veiling the truth.
The truth is that you can have health and fitness as an option to disease. You can stay slim while feeling full. You can prevent or reverse heart disease, diabetes, cancer, and a multitude of other ills. The solution will save you 40% to 60% of what you are spending now on food and vastly more on medical care.
Your option is to spend about 5% of your time paying attention to your health or waiting until you, and your family have to spend 100% of the time helping you to get well.
Conclusions
Choosing a high carbohydrate and low-fat plant-based diet might take some adaptations if you served donuts at the last in-house conference. If you offered your employees raw vegetables instead, then you have started down the right health and fitness choices path already. Eat brightly-colored vegetables, grains (brown rice, corn, barley), and ignore all fats and oils to look and feel years younger. Take the RealAge test (www.realage.com) using an honest hand. My body thinks I am 7.9 years younger than my actual age. What are your results?
References
1. Feirstein, Bruce, 1982. “Real Men Don’t Eat Quiche,” Pocket-books, USA.
2. McDougall, John, 1994. “The McDougall Maximum Weight Loss Program,” Dutton, USA.
3. Campbell, T. Colin & Thomas Campbell, 2006. The China Study. Benbella, Dallas, Texas.
4. Ornish, Dean, 1996. “Dr. Dean Ornish’s Program for Reversing Heart Disease” Random House, USA.
5. Esselstyn, Caldwell B., 2007. “Prevent and Reverse Heart Disease,” Penguin Group, NY. |
