Why We Struggle To Get Healthy

Many of us struggle with making healthier choices even when we know they can benefit us greatly. Understanding what’s sabotaging our efforts is a critical step for learning how to navigate around them successfully. Afterall, we simply cannot change what we do not acknowledge.

“Nutrition and health are closely related,” reports Health.gov in their Introduction to the USDA’s 2015-2020 Dietary Guidelines.

This is likely not news to anyone.

Yet, over and over again, we continue to make poor

food choices that are not helpful to our health.

What is going on?

Living in a world full of pop culture, pseudo-science, and clever marketeers trying to sell us the latest and greatest health products with narratives that best match their own financial goals, creates a seemingly never-ending stream of confusing, misleading, and contradictory health and wellness information.

Consequently, it is easy to buy into the wrong messaging and do all the wrong things – things that may not necessarily benefit our health, and perhaps can even destroy it.

And, because our pace is fast and hectic, we’ve turned into grab-and-go societies. Our norm has become to eat what is fast and convenient.

Unfortunately, what is fast and convenient are our cheap, highly industrialized and manufactured processed foods, our fast foods, and our refined foods.

These foods are high in calories and low in nutrition.

They contain excess fat, sugar, and salt, and many include additives and preservatives. They are not helpful to our health, causing all sorts of harmful effects, including inflammation.

Yet, they are our go-to choices.

They have not only grown our waistlines, they have also hijacked our hormones and our brains.

Whether we realize it or not, they’ve become our addictions.

And, if all this wasn’t bad enough, spending more and more time with our electronics means we have become less and less active. Our lifestyle is not matching up with the way our bodies were designed to work.

And, we are sick because of it.

In fact, Health.gov, in the same Introduction to the USDA’s 2015-2020 Dietary Guidelines, continues on to say:

“Our poor quality eating, our poor quality eating patterns, and our lack of physical activity have a cumulative and detrimental effect on our health.”

The Result?

A WORLDWIDE AND
GROWING OBESITY
CRISIS

In the United States alone, “More than two-thirds of adults, and nearly one-third of young people, are overweight or obese. Incidences of being overweight or obese have been increasing over the last 25 years, and they keep rising.” [1]

“Fifty percent (50%) of us will be classified as obese by 2030.” [2]

Globally, just about “30% of the world’s population, roughly 2 billion people, is classified as being overweight or obese.” [3]
“Being overweight or obese leads to chronic illnesses.” [4]

Why Should We Care?

We should care because chronic illnesses like:

– Cardiovascular disease

– Coronary heart disease

– Hypertension

– Pre-diabetes

– Type 2 diabetes

– Type 3 diabetes (Alzheimer’s Disease)

– Breast cancer

– Colorectal cancer

*** Autoimmune disease ***

– Strokes

– Abnormal blood lipids

– Bone disease

have already reached high rates,

and they are continuing to rise.

*** Zeroing in and examining autoimmune

disease closer, we now know:

“Obesity leads to a breakdown of the body’s protective

self-tolerance, leading to an optimal environment for

an autoimmune disease to occur in the first place,

and

It can then generate a pro-inflammatory environment

that worsens the disease’s progression,

and

It can also hinder its treatment.” (source)

And, when we add all the incidences of

chronic illnesses together:

More than 50% of us are unhealthy [5]

This Means Either You or a Loved One

is Currently Dealing with

Some Sort of Health Issue

Moreover, knowing what we now know about the Covid-19 virus – people who have underlying health conditions, or who are overweight or obese, are at higher risk from the disease, and are more likely to suffer negative outcomes – it is more important than ever for us to make our health a priority.

And, not just someday,

but right now.

But, We are Stuck In A Sick Care System

Currently, our health care system is

more of a sick care system.

Instead of focusing on helping us stay healthy, our health care system is set up to wait until we become ill before it kicks into action.

I have experienced this personally, more than once actually, but here’s just one example:

Vitamin D deficiency is a hallmark symptom of many autoimmune diseases, including mine. And, since it plays such an important role in everyone’s health and not just those with autoimmune disease, it makes perfect sense to monitor levels so they can be corrected early-on if a problem is found.

Yet, my insurance refused to cover vitamin D testing while going through my diagnosis, and even after it was official.

To pay $380.00 out-of-pocket every time my doctor needed to check my levels was simply not an option for me. There’ s really no telling how my inability to access this testing affected the course of my disease. I do wonder sometimes that maybe if I was able to correct my levels earlier, perhaps I could have been able to thwart some suffering.

Now, some say this sick care model is intentional and is by design because there’s no profit to be made when people are healthy. Whether or not the system goes unchanged due to profiteers is, of course, debatable. But, there is money to be made. Collectively, we spend roughly 2.7 trillion unsustainable dollars a year on healthcare [6].

And, according to the 2015 Netflix documentary PlantPure Nation:

“70% of Americans take at least one drug per day;

over 50% of us take 2 drugs per day;

and 20% take 5 or more medications per day.”

What About Our Doctors?

Despite the undeniable connection between poor diet and many diseases, most medical schools teach less than 25 hours of nutrition [7].

Your doctor is not likely to know how to

help you from a nutritional standpoint.

And, not only that, but it can also be difficult to find medical personnel specializing in autoimmune disease because our modern medicine is organized on the basis of anatomy of disease, or what part of the body disease occurs.

Autoimmune patients get treated by the medical specialty that covers the particular body part(s) involved in their disease. So, for example, the joint pain and stiffness of rheumatoid arthritis would be treated by a rheumatologist and a gastroenterologist would treat gut symptoms of an autoimmune disease like inflammatory bowel disease.

What this means for us autoimmune patients is, there is no specialty that focuses on autoimmune disease.

Furthermore, and making treatment of autoimmune diseases even more complicated is that they don’t always occur in a neat and precise way. Crossover from one body part or system to another happens all the time.

What About the Dietary Guidelines
We are Encouraged To Follow?

The Dietary Guidelines

we are encouraged to follow may

not even be trustworthy for healthy

people, let alone for those

of us with autoimmune disorders.

Many, including Nina Teicholz, the Executive Director of The Nutrition Coalition and international best selling author of The Big Fat Surprise, says these recommendations are not based on scientifically sound data, and thus, advocate that saturated fats need not be avoided (you can read more about that here and here).

On the flip side, there are nutrition researchers like T. Colin Campbell, PhD, and author of The China Study, who espouse the health dangers of diets high in saturated fats and animal protein, and thus, advocate for plant-based diets.

With these opposing positions, it’s easy

to see why we remain confused.

You can read Harvard’s current viewpoint on saturated fats for healthy people here.

You can read about how fat can play a role in autoimmune disease here.

So, with much uncertainty swirling about, to get some clarity, you decide to see a dietician.

The problem with doing that is similar to that of trying to find a doctor who is an autoimmune specialist. There simply aren’t many dieticians who specialize in autoimmune disease.

The best they can do is suggest autoimmune patients follow the same recommendations as everyone else, which might not even come close to being what we need because of conditions like inflammation, gluten sensitivity, or vitamin deficiencies that tend to exist in autoimmune patients.

And, none of this is likely to change anytime soon as basic autoimmune research funding is below 3% of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) total budget, despite the rising prevalence of autoimmune disease [8].

We are pretty much left on

our own to figure it out

for ourselves.

the weight loss obstacle

If you need to, losing weight is one of the

very best things you can do for your health.

In fact, studies show that even modest

losses can reap health benefits.

But the problem with diets is:

They simply do not work long-term

A new international study found:

“The benefits of dieting, namely lost weight and improvements in cardiovascular disease risk factors (particularly lowered blood pressure),

largely disappear after a year.”

A sim ilar 2018 study found:

“More than half of the lost weight was regained within

2 years, and by 5 years, more than 80 percent

of lost weight was regained.”

But, we keep trying.

An estimated 49% of Americans go on a diet each year.

We make 4 to 5 weight loss attempts per year,

and we spend 72 billion doing so.

Yet, The National Weight Control Registry reports:

“Only about 1% of overweight or obese people

actually succeed at losing weight

and keeping it off long-term.”

And if you’re carrying excess weight while also being one

of the 700 million with an autoimmune disease,

you’ve likely got some other obstacles.

High, chronic, and systemic inflammation, leaky gut, being on weight-promoting medications, and experiencing the inability to participate in any meaningful activity due to high fatigue and pain levels, can keep you from succeeding.

But, not when you’ve got a

plan in place that works regardless

of these obstacles.

It really is best to get the weight off because it makes autoimmune disease worse:

Obesity can lead to a breakdown of the body’s

protective self-tolerance, leading to an optimal

environment for an autoimmune disease

to occur in the first place, and then,

it can generate a pro-inflammatory

environment that worsens

the disease’s progression,

and it can also hinder its

treatment (source).

Knowing how extra weight can affect those of us autoimmune disease, it makes perfect sense to be striving to reach, and then maintain, a healthy weight.

Clearly We've Gotten This So Very Wrong

With already high obesity and autoimmune disease rates that continue to climb,
With 50% of us being classified as unhealthy,
With confusing, misleading, and contradictory information swirling about,
With our modern lifestyles being hectic yet largely sedentary,
With our food environments being filled with foods that are making us sick and fat,
With our institutions working from a model of illness,
With 49% of us failing at our weight loss attempts 4 to 5 times per year,
With 99% of us failing to keep our lost weight off long-term…

Isn’t it time for a solution that is

completely different from

what we’ve been doing?

Isn’t it time for a solution that actually works?

Yes, yes it is!

If you’re tired of banging your head against the wall,

and want to finally get the results that you

desire but have always eluded you,

Enroll in my weight loss program today.

It’s a proven, evidence-based weight loss coaching program that teaches you how to be successful

despite the obstacles that are blocking you.

You can enroll here.