July 14, 2016 • mccsokinawa.com
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T
rying to lose weight or start a diet is difficult nowadays. There’s a lot working against you. First, our lives revolve around cheap, highly accessible food that tastes really good. On top of that, many of us live lives that do not require very much activity. Our bodies have simply not evolved to catch up to this way of life—our homeostatic system (a system that partly functions to maintain our weight) is thrown off by something as simple as a trip to the candy machine. To top it all off, and possibly the worst part of all this, is the ineffective and often senseless diet advice we all get: juice cleanses, detoxing, metabolism-boosting meals, belly fat torching veggies.
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Diets today are modeled as short-term solutions—excluding one food group in favor of another or “miracle” ways of dropping 10 pounds. But diets require long term adherence, so the idea of completely excluding certain foods, or sticking only to “diet” or “healthy” foods, is not very sustainable. In fact, the entire idea of “good” and “bad” food is not sustainable. The healthiest and most sustainable form of dieting isn’t even a diet at all—it’s being flexible and mindful about your food choices and sources, instead of looking at nutrients in terms of good and bad. If you want a cookie now and then, have a cookie, just not all the cookies. There is no such
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“There is no such thing as bad food or good food, just bad diets.” thing as bad food or good food, just bad diets. Read on for more sustainable tips on healthy living in this issue and visit mccsokinawa.com/healthpromotion to see what they offer to help you make better choices for your health.
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