Matthew Gates 9m 2,193 #rewindthefuture
The views of this article are the perspective of the author and may not be reflective of Confessions of the Professions.
If You Could Rewind Your Future to the Past, what would you change?
Author Note: This article is not meant to fat-shame or pick on anyone’s weight. It is an article about the awareness of the health of our future and what we are eating, as well as the conscious awareness of the ongoing weight problems and correlation with fast food. Any advice given is from my own experience and does not replace a second opinion from a doctor.
If you watched the video above, that is a “normal person” living a “normal life”, eating “normal food”, born into a “normal world” where fast food and unhealthy food has been shoved into his face throughout his life, from his own mother to the school system, to his own choices.
The fast food addiction was formed in infancy and did not even give him a chance to learn the difference between real food and fast food. Thus, as a baby, he was already beginning to gain weight faster than the average healthy baby, and his eating habits and weight gain continued into adulthood. His addiction to fast food and unhealthy food was prevalent throughout his life, and just at 5 foot 9 and 32 years old, he weighs 300 pounds, and has suffered a heart attack. His life is flashing before his eyes.
I have heard jokes before and I have even joked myself about eating a sandwich loaded with bacon, cheese, and even french fries on top of it. And the joke goes, “When I am on my death bed, I won’t look back on this moment and wish I had not eaten this sandwich.” And yeah, it is totally a sandwich:
A sandwich to remember on your deathbed
Food is one of the most wonderful things about being alive and being human. We are the only creatures on this Earth who add herbs, spices, sugar, and salt to our food and experience the joys of flavor. It could be argued that animals enjoy food too, but they eat upon instincts, and they do not think to themselves, “This would taste a lot better with some more salt.” This particular thought, along with what kind of other ingredients can be added for flavor are strictly unique to human beings.
We eat a lot of food in our lifetime, sometimes developing routines in which we eat certain foods on certain days, cooking for ourselves, our families, and other times we enjoy the luxury of going out to a restaurant and having someone else cook for us, as we eat the food that we selected, and that the chef prepared and cooked for us. Many people hardly give what we eat a second thought, until they are overweight or obese, and even then, those second thoughts remain thoughts and no action is taken, with the acceptance that being overweight and obese is a normal part of growing up and a normal part of life. Let us pretend for a moment that if you could go back to your childhood, rewinding the future, and making more health conscious choices about food, in order to be skinnier and healthier than you are today – if you knew then what you know now – would you change your past eating habits and rewind the future in order to achieve the weight loss goals you are after?
There is always good news and bad news with every situation. I’ll give you the good news first since there is always hope for you, for me, and for all of us.
The good news: You always have the choice at anytime in your life to change your eating habits. Your body will always burn fat and you can always speed up your metabolism. Yes, while it is probably scientifically true that your body’s metabolism slows down 1% every year after 30, you can actually reset your metabolism and how your body burns fat by simply changing what you eat. For example, if you were to switch from a medium to high carbohydrate diet to a high-fat, medium-protein, and low-carbohydrate diet, along with taking a few stimulants such as green tea, apple cider vinegar, and a few other combinations, and exercise just a half hour to an hour a day, you could actually start to burn fat and melt the pounds away in a few months time, no matter what age you are.
You might be thinking you have tried everything and that my advice is complete nonsense, but there’s a good chance you have tried everything your way, and the truth is that your way is not working. There is no sugarcoating the issue: If you are sneaking snacks or eating wrong, you are probably overeating, eating the wrong foods, and gaining weight. Then you cry to yourself, blame it on your genes, and wonder why you are not losing weight. If you look at the skull of a human being 2,000 or 3,000 years ago and compare it to a skull today, you will find that the skull size is relatively the same, meaning that your ancestors and you had the same genes. You have a few extra different genes because genetic traits got passed on to you making you who you are and allowing you to survive even longer than our ancestors, compliments as well to the advancement of modern medicine, technology, and sanitary conditions.
The truth is that most of us listen to what the USDA, FDA, and the government has been telling us, and they can’t be wrong? Can they? After all, if it weren’t for their advice, ⅔ of the American population would not be classified as overweight or obese and struggling with health issues. This is normal though, because how can the government tell you what to eat when the very corporations who control the government, by means of lobbying and transferring lots of money into the bank accounts of those who run the government are the ones who are keeping government officials quiet in order to sell their food-like products that continue to make you and the population fatter?
Go ahead, listen to that advice, and believe that there is nothing wrong with them, but rather, it’s just you. How has it been working for you so far up to this point in your life? It is not the government who should tell you what to eat or what you can’t eat. It is you who should decide what you should be eating and what you should not be eating.
If someone lost 50 to 100 pounds with proven evidence and photos and gave you advice on what to eat, would you listen to that person or would you tell them that they are wrong and the USDA, FDA, and government are correct? Where there is money involved, there is always corruption, and the food industry is a billion dollar business for all parties involved.
So what are the choices you have to make in your eating habits? First of all, I can’t tell you what to do or how to eat. You must make that decision for yourself. If you want to get healthy and lose weight, you are going to have to give up some foods you love and you are going to have figure out ways to develop a more active lifestyle. You don’t have to give up the foods you love completely, but your consumption of them is going to have to drop to about once a month, if that. When it comes to fast food, you will have to eliminate it completely from your diet. The longer you go without it, the less likely you will actually miss it, especially if you find healthier alternatives.
If you choose to continue what you are doing and accept that you are overweight or obese, than no one can tell you different. But just know: You can lose weight if you have the discipline, want, and desire to lose weight. For most people, it is simply not there, and feeding into a desire and pleasure that lasts no longer than a few minutes is better. Of course, with that habit comes weight gain, unhealthy eating habits, and a lifetime of being overweight or obese. The choice is yours.
Eat yourself to death or make a change.
Now…
The bad news: As I stated above — The choice is yours.
With this choice requires a lot of dedication and commitment; a passion and a desire to want to change, to lose weight, to become healthier. There will be many struggles along your path and lots of temptation that comes with it too. The minute you give into your temptation is the minute you must start right back at the beginning. Of course, there are some cheat days that can happen across the span of your weight loss journey, but one day leads to two leads to three leads to an entire week, and that will set you back, forcing you to relearn your discipline once again.
In a world where it has become normal to go through the drive-thru in less than 5 minutes for more than a thousand or two thousand calories, it is not an easy journey. If you must begin your journey, it is an all or nothing journey: You must give up fast food completely and all junk food. You must read labels and avoid products that contain “corn syrup”, “high fructose”, lots of sugar, and high sodium. Those are the enemies of your body. You may even have to count calories in order to get your eating habits under control. Yes, 3500 calories is equal to 1 pound. If you really count your calories, and drop down to about 1200 to 1500 calories per day, you will have no issues losing weight, about 20 or 30 pounds in 3 months. High protein and high fat diets will remove your cravings. Consider a Ketogenic diet or routinely making Ketosis a part of your lifestyle, which will help you burn excess fat very and lose weight quickly.
Keep your diet high in “good” fats, moderate protein, and low carbohydrates. A low-fat diet seems worse for you than a high-fat diet, considering the fact that low-fat products have added sugar-alternatives and other products that are not good for your body. You probably already know how to lose weight, but you just do not want to lose it, the motivation is not there, or you have too much outside influence deterring and preventing you from eating healthy foods.
If you are content or happy with having “a few extra pounds”, “being overweight”, or considered “obese”, than continue living your lifestyle and eat whatever you want. Otherwise, if you want to make the change, just decide one day you are going to make a change, do it, and stick to it. This requires removing all those bad and unhealthy foods from your home and replacing the cabinets with healthy snacks and alternatives.
Out of sight and out of mind. If it is not present, you will not eat it, so clear your home of all the bad stuff and replace it with all the good stuff. If you are alone, it will be much easier for you, but if you have family, you may want to convince them to get on the same path as you and use each other for encouragement and as a support group.
There are many people who make the decision, stick to it, and lose the weight. If they can do it, why can’t you? What is your excuse? You should not have any excuses. Were you fat or overweight your entire life? Did your parents not educate you on food and eating habits? Were you skinny when you were younger and now all of a sudden, the weight gain came out of no where and you are overweight and fat? These are nothing but excuses and the possibility and ability to lose weight is very possible no matter how long you have been overweight, no matter how much you weigh, and no matter how out of shape you are! NO EXCUSES!
This is the miracle diet that will work for your body: high-fat, moderate-protein, low-carbohydrate (except green vegetables – eat as many of those as you want). There are stimulants you can take to help you out, such as a multivitamin or a green tea herbal supplement, but any pill that guarantees you weight loss overnight or within a week or two is probably not a real pill. Please be very cautious about supplements. Save your money and buy real food – complex carbohydrates found in vegetables and if you want real sugar, stick to fruit.
Good luck ‘Rewinding The Future’. It takes work, dedication, commitment, and passion, but the past the past, and the future is now yours. Take what you know now and apply it to what you will know in your future. Look back in the future, and you will not have to think, “If I knew then what I know now,” but instead, you will think, “I know more now than what I knew then, and I am glad I knew what I knew then in order to know what I know now.”
(
