The King and Queen of Good Health (OT)

Sometimes spiritual practitioners forget they are spiritual beings
residing in a physical body living in a physical world and must do work
in both spiritual and physical areas to live a balanced and healthy
life. This especially goes for those addicted to computers - good
reminder to exercise more than our fingers typing! Here is an old post
I wrote; "The King and Queen of Good Health" Maybe of use to some of
you.



The King and Queen of Good Health ~ Written for an Overeaters Anonymous
group



In the old days obesity was not as glaring of a problem as it seems to
be developing nowadays. Sure there have always been fat people and
gluttons, but in recent years our sedentary, stressful and unnatural
lives have added to the fat problem. We live unnatural lives with what
we eat. a lot of our foods are manufactured in a factory as opposed to
farm fresh. The meat is loaded with antibiotics, growth hormones, PCB's
and mercury in the fish and tons more of c.rap in our foods. Ten years
ago the USA made it legal to use sludge as fertilizer. Sludge is the
solid waste that comes from the sewage plants. Now, human waste is one
thing but what about all the Drano, phosphates and other junk people
throw down the drain...it all ends up in our food supply. Now the mad
scientists have started to recombine and mix the genetics and created
another food health hazard of genetically modified foods.

Our ancestors also did more manual labor than just sitting at a
computer for hours on end or watching TV with the mandatory bags of
snacks to accompany us. Jack La Lane said that the king and queen of
good health is exercise and eating natural and healthy foods. In
addition, the king and queen must sit on a thrown of low stress living
for their reign to last any length. The foods we eat are also too
addictive and stimulate our sensation addiction unnaturally to a point
of being addictive just like drugs. Also loads of salt. Salt is a great
corrosive and starts eating away at our joints as well as cause us
other health harms such as high blood pressure. One can of soup has
almost the total daily allowance of sodium. My kid was on a normal hi
sodium diet and has high blood pressure and he was only 14 at the time
but was eating 5000 to 6000 mg of sodium a day when we were made clear
about this. Many foods I cannot have especially the factory foods
loaded with chemicals. They irritate my body and irritate my brain. I
had to accept I could not have them in my life as well as a healthy and
trim body.

For those that do not know how calories work, when you eat 3500
unburned or unneeded calories, whether in a day or over a week, it puts
on a pound of fat. (3200 calories is the same as 4 sticks or one pound
of butter.) It doesn't matter whether it is a few hundred unburned
calories a day or a thousand it all patiently adds up to fat as a
result of not accepting and living within pur caloric budget that
nature has allowed us. For my lifestyle this caloric number is about
1800 to 1900 calories a day. It took some time to figure this number
out, but thorough trial and error I now have it, although metabolisms
change with age. This is why a lot of the fat people of today were thin
people of yesteryear. The good diet of today becomes the bad diet of
tomorrow once our metabolism changes and to maintain our weight loss we
have to have clarity about this figure on a life long basis.

If you are in a big city you can get a RM test to find out your caloric
resting metabolism rate, but where I live in the rural area it is only
by trail and error. When I first started to study about calories and
nutrition I figured I should be able to eat 2800 calories a day with my
lifestyle - Wrong! This 2800 calorie diet still had me 60 pounds
overweight, so in the end our bodies will tell us what our real caloric
needs are we wont tell it. Knowing this caloric balance point is very
important to you for it shows the exact point you start going from
eating thin to eating fat. Now, really there is not exact point we can
pin down each day, since we burn different calories each day depending
on what we do and temperature extremes and the like, but it is a close
enough point for us to measure with. Also, knowing what to eat and the
calories does little good if you are living life wrong and are
spiritually sick. We need 12 step work on the spiritual end of recovery
as well as the mechanical tools of exercise, eating smart and eating
right.

It is good to see a nutritionist if you have no concept about what is
healthy to eat or not. My diet is based on the food pyramid and is well
balanced and diverse as my food allergies allow it to be. (Have trouble
digesting some proteins and fats) I also record my food and calories
and weigh and measure some, although I am not as rigid with weights and
measures as I am with calories. I picked up this recording technique
from my Debtors Anonymous program and have been recording my money
since 1987 and food and calories since 1998. I count the money in my
wallet and I have to count the food calories that go into my mouth
otherwise I have no natural ability to know how much to eat for
maintaining a trim, healthy body. My brain and my mouth and my stomach
are not good judges for this task.

I am a male, 5 ft 11 inches and can eat 1800 calories a day on average
to stay at my goal weight. Although on Sundays I can have up to 2500
calories and still maintain my goal weight of 155 pounds. When I was in
my 20's or so I could eat 2800 calories every day, but that was then.
Metabolisms change as we age...it is a fact of life. I can spend this
1800 calories each day any way I like. Food is jus like money. I can
spend my monthly income on drugs and hookers and be homeless or I can
spend it in balanced, healthy way and live a good life. I can eat all
junk or all healthy or a mixture each day, it is all up to me. If I eat
1800 calories of junk each day I also get the added bonus of
depression, stomach aches, poor sleep and deteriorating health for my
efforts. To get you started with an idea of what you need for success.
A general rule for middle age people is to take 10% of your daily
calories you eat and this 10% figure will give you the weight you will
be living sedentary life with no exercise. In other word, if I wanted
to weigh 150 pounds and hated to move or exercise I would probably need
to eat about 1500 calories a day. I am right in line with this estimate
as I exercise quite a bit and eat 1800-1900 per day on average. Some of
us are above this estimate and some are below, but it is something to
get you started.

Yes, many overeaters foundational problem with fat stems from this
refusal to live within their caloric means. It is no different from the
clutterer that refuses to live within their comfortable space means or
the debtor that refuses to live within their comfortable income means.
We all have limits and a refusal to live within these healthy limits is
defiance on are part. Step 2 mentions that "defiance" is an outstanding
characteristic of the addict and overeaters do not have a corner on the
market when it comes to defiance as it shows up throughout the various
addictions. Overeaters can eat all the food they like but they must
also pay the price with fat if the food they eat is outside of their
caloric budget.

After all, in life we must all answer to natural law. It is just a
trade off, if you get thin you can't eat all the old favorite foods in
mass quantity anymore but now you are rewarded with a new thin and
healthy body, whereas the ones till fat get to enjoy all the food they
want but must carry around the fat and sickness with them as the price
they pay. Some of us go to extreme measures with laxatives or vomiting
or whatever, but as I said, natures law must be paid eventually and
these extreme measure all have prices to pay also. One thing is for
sure, those fat ones that complain they are fat from "slow metabolisms"
still have a caloric balance point as they cannot get fat from just
breathing air and any of us fail toe at will die sooner or later from
starvation. Sure they may have slightly slower metabolism, but they
still have caloric budget and their fatness is not from the slow
metabolism it is from a refusal to know and live within their caloric
budget. And this can come from 2 areas - design or desire. Some fat
people are fat from ignorance of how and what toe at and live. Others
are fat from binge eating and knowing how to eat or what to eat has
nothing to do with it. This is why OA has tools for both areas of
recovery spiritual as well as mechanical.

While eating healthy and right is half the battle, exercise is also a
must to maintain strong healthy bodies over our lifetime. The nice
dividend from exercise is when we pout on a pound of muscle we burn an
extra 50 calories of fat each day for free. The sad part about this
scheme is muscle is very hard to put on for many people. I have been
weight training for many years and only put on a few pounds of muscle
if that. but, I digest proteins poorly so cannot eat much meat or other
high proteins such as soy or milk products. If you are blessed with
adding muscle easily with exercise I encourage you to do so for the
muscle will help burn the fat off as long as you do not increase your
eating to go beyond your caloric balance point.

Besides fat, anger and depression can be helped with exercise. Adrenal
steroids (cortisol) secreted when a person is under stress reach the
brain and over time can affect the structure of the brain. When stress
hormones, intended for a life or death fight or flight situation,
remain switched for an extended period, they can slow the growth of
nerve fibers in the areas of the brain responsible for emotions and
other brain functions. We also produce cortisol from any other
stressors the body perceives, whether it is physical stress, such as a
sickness, injury, surgery, or temperature extremes as well as
psychological stress that we and the world put on us.

Each of us has produces a different amount of these chemicals and has a
different sensitivity to them and this might be the missing link as to
a part of the question as to why some of us are more addictive than
others with how we each produce and react to these stress chemicals
differently. Exercise helps remove these stress chemicals from our
bodies as well as produce other chemicals that give us a sense of well
being - endorphins. Yes, we have our own drug pusher within each of us.
You see, 12 steps or not, we all have to answer to natural law. Within
the boundaries of natural law is where stress chemicals come from
within us and as addicts I believe we are super sensitized to these
chemicals and we seek relief though our various addictions. So, as
addicts we should be in tune with suing any tools available to us for
recovery purposes whether it is the spiritual tools of the 12 steps or
the mechanical tools of eating right and exercise.

Some of eat out of boredom and not having anything else to do.
Developing a list of positive time fillers was a big help to my
compulsive spending recovery as well as my overeating. As Thoreau wrote
in Walden , "The devil finds work for idle hands." Before heading in
this new direction, most of my time was occupied by what to
compulsively buy next, overeating rich foods and getting fat and when I
wanted a break from that I had a picnic basket of other addictive areas
to get drugged up with. A lot of my new activities are sport or
movement related as they also serve the purposes of helping with my
overeating disease and have the added benefit of improved health and
don't produce clutter like some hobbies do. In addition they help with
depression, balance and brain functioning. Activities to occupy
yourself that don't revolve around spending or your other addictive
areas only go so far in recovery though. You also have to be careful to
take time to relax and not escape life through activity. 12 Step work,
reducing stress, repairing the wreckage of the past and living a
balanced life all contribute to heading in the right recovery
direction.

Partial List of Positive Time Filling Activities:

Hiking, Mountain Bike, Climbing Gym, Basketball, Rollerblading, Jet
Ski, Racquetball, Swim, Sun Bath, Fishing, Canoeing, Weight Training,
Target Shooting, Camping, Jogging, Motorcycle, Snowshoe, Ski, Yoga,
Massage, Meditation, Free Lectures and Movies at a Local University,
Snow Tubing, Napping or Relaxing in a Hammock, Healthy Picnics,
Library, Spiritual studies, Trail Running, Free Musical Events and
Concerts, Church Services, Scenic Seasonal Car Trips, etc.

Many possibilities to do exercise even if you are too busy to live
right. What a statement we are too busy to actually live life the right
way... I guess we are waiting for the next life to give it a try. If
you life to watch TV at night start doing Yoga, weight training or free
exercise in front of the TV instead of sitting and eating. You can also
sit on the couch and extend you leg and hold it out then alternate and
keep alternating. I keep some hand grips near the couch and use them.
At church stand on your tip toes and hold it this strengthens the calf
muscles or stand on one leg alternately. When drying you hair after
shower do some stomach sucks and push your chest up to the ceiling
after you blow out the air and suck in the gut and hold it. When
waiting in the return line at a store you can balance on one foot it
strengthen your legs and improves balance. Take the stairs instead of
the elevator. Strap on some ankle weight throughout the day for added
resistance. When you walk take some small dumbbells with you, keep then
under the cars eat for easy access. When you are driving you can do
isometric exercises with he steering wheel. If you do not know what
these are look up isometrics and study it for your self. Make exercise
your foremost goal and find you won ways to strengthen your body, then
you will have ti instead of just reading about it. When you wit ion the
car for the kids shut off the radio and meditate to relax you brain and
disperse the tress chemicals.

Most of these exercise I've mentioned are not what I base my own
exercise program on, I look at them as bonus exercise that helps bring
me that much closer to my health goal in life. For a real exercise
program join a gym and get serious about it doing weight training -
aerobics and yoga or stretching for flexibility. Keep it balanced. No
one really like to exercise. I much rather develop muscles by eating
cheesecake or shopping at the mall, but nature did not make this a
reality, so I do what works. Jack La Lane said he developed a liking
for things that are good for him and that is what I try to do. Remember
you do not have to do things perfect, but you have to do them better
than before if you want to change your life.





V (Male)


For free access to my earlier posts on voluntary simplicity, compulsive
spending, debting, compulsive overeating and clutter write:
vfr44@xxxxxxxx Any opinion expressed here is that of my own and is not
the opinion, recommendation or belief of any group or organization.

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