7 Massive Misconceptions

For as long as we can remember we have had the metaphorical carrot of “lose weight and then you’ll be happy” dangled in front of our noses, with the idea that our frumpy figure woes are all that stand in between us and our dream body infused dream life.

We’ve been led to believe that if only we could force ourselves to be “good”, abstain from our favourite foods and drinks and chain ourselves to a treadmill would we finally discover that deep sense of personal satisfaction we have been so obsessively striving for.

Our Grandmothers were told by Raquel Welch “You can’t afford to be skinny and friendless” and Jane Fonda taught about the horrors of cellulite that formed a love-hate affair with spandex. We’ve been shown how to survive temptation and exercise ourselves into oblivion by Michelle Bridges and The Biggest Loser, and our daughters have been taught about “Bikini Bridges” and “Thigh Gaps” by their Reality Tv Instagram idols.

And yet with more than 63% of Australians still overweight, and a whopping one million dollars a day spent on weight loss products that are either unsafe or ineffective, one thing we know for sure – Australians are completely confused about what it takes to live a healthy balanced life. Tragically, it seems the harder we try, the worse the problem gets.

Here are 7 massive misconceptions about what it takes to achieve a healthy happy medium and how to escape the diet industry prison we’ve been ensnared in since the 1950’s.

1. You have to fight your body with will power 

Our Grandmothers didn’t have the array of products touted as food to tantalize their senses and wreak havoc with their toxicity levels and hormones as we have today. Sensible food habits have been clouded by marketing messages that tell us that man-made products are better for us than the food that nature provided. In order to sell us products we don’t need, we’ve been taught to mistrust our body and the signals it gives us. We’ve been sold pills that make us feel full when we’re not, powdered milk shakes that are apparently nutrition in “nature’s purest form” and machines that claim to banish our love handles into a fitness models washboard abs in “Just 3 minutes a day”.

However, the reality is that there are millions of tiny processes going on in our body every second of every day – and none of them require any conscious thought from us. We’ve been told we simply need more will power to exercise more and eat less – but by doing so we override our body’s evolutionary genius with misguided, expensive and ineffective force.

You don’t need to use will power to recover from the flu, or heal yourself from a cut finger. Once you bring yourself back down to the basics, eating food that fell from a tree, grew from the ground or once had a mother, and move in a way that makes your body feel inspired and uplifted, you have started to detox yourself from the “No Pain No Gain” mentality that actually pushes your dream body further away, instead of closer to you.

2. Losing weight is simply about calories in and calories out

Energy in and energy out is the catch cry behind all traditional weight loss methods but as any frustrated dieter will experience, there seems to be more to the equation when the weight they lose doesn’t stay off. There are two main reasons behind this:

Firstly – anyone can rip fat from their bodies, using the “exercise more and eat less” methodology, however if it is done in a way that activates our bodies “fail safe mechanism” it’s like an internal fat switch that tells our bodies to hoard fat, crave fatty food and make us conserve fat as much as possible.

Secondly – all calories are not equal, depending on whether food is from protein, fat or carbohydrates, different foods regardless of the amount will elicit a fat hoarding, metabolising slowing response from our body.

Calories let us understand on an intellectual level what your body requires, without taking into account the spiritual and psychological factors affecting how our body stores fat and why. Excess weight serves as an evolutionary survival measure that protected us in times of famine, and throughout harsh winters, as well as making us look bigger and more threatening to would-be predators.

Using a simple calorie equation for weight loss is more like pseudo science, it’s like trying to look at the back of your maths book for the answer but failing the test because you didn’t understand the process behind the problem solving. It’s only when you can tap into our body’s innate wisdom by eating foods that our ancestral cave-woman body understands that we can unlock our natural fat burning furnace.

3.  Exercise needs to be in the form of punishment

Anything that activates our “lack of” mentality rather than an “abundance” mentality, is enough stress for our body’s cave-woman brain to interpret a long term chronic threat like a famine approaching and to switch on our hormonal fat switch that makes our body lock down on it’s fat stores, rather than allowing them to be freely metabolised. The key point to understand here is that our hunter gatherer ancestors only needed to intensely “exercise” in order to complete certain tasks, perform some low intensity incidental activity and then rest for the majority of the day.

Exercise that is prolonged past one hour, will start producing our cortisol levels – and actually creates more fat storing damage than if we sat on the couch eating potato chips. That’s why instinctively we lend ourselves to physical activity we enjoy – it creates the abundance mentality, so that our body can interpret our immediate environment as a safe place to burn up our saved energy stores.

4. You can't love food AND be slim 

As soon as you start restricting your calories, your body recognises the shortage of food as a famine and goes into “survival mode”. Dieting is like trying to stretch a thick rubber band out of shape, the more force you use – the harder it will snap back into it’s original position.

When you eat low calorie foods, in high volume quantities your body will allow your excess abnormal fat stores to be burnt, as it creates the “abundance” mentality that makes it safe for our body to be lean, strong and athletic.

Plenty of lean proteins, and fibrous vegetables nourish our bodies, as well as trigger our bodies internal satiety factor – so no matter how much chicken and steamed vegetables, fish and salad, steak and chargrilled vegetables you eat – your body tells you when you’ve had enough and it’s impossible for you to become obese. Fruits and nuts are two healthy food groups that you can’t go to crazy town on however – because our hunter gatherer ancestors didn’t have these foods available to us all year round, nor the patience to spend hours cracking nuts.

You CAN love food, eat healthy food in large amounts AND be slim, strong and athletic. It’s only when you start eating high sugar processed foods that the low nourishment levels trigger our bodies to want more and more foods as we crave the essential vitamins and minerals we really need.

5. “I'm just a big girl” and other “It’s not my fault” genetic excuses

We are almost genetically identical to our hunter-gatherer ancestors who lived 120,000 years ago. We are at a long line of natural selection and it is our genetic default to be lean, strong and athletic. We were built to run, jump, hunt and forage, however with the industrial revolution and the information age over the last 100 years, our bodies have not been able to adapt to the change in our lifestyles, leaving us overfed, sedentary, sick and under-nourished.

6. You have to deprive yourself of chocolate & wine and have no fun if you want to lose weight. 

When you eat foods in a form that your body’s cave-woman brain can understand, your body’s internal “I’m full” thermostat lets you know when you’ve had enough. Dark chocolate with 70% cacao or more and certain types of alcohol are actually touted as being healthy or non-inflammatory by some health experts. Everyone’s body is different, eat 80% in alignment with your body’s needs, and allow 20 % as “reminder meals” – meals that remind you why you ‘re not meant to eat them every day when they make you feel sick ! To be strong, lean and healthy – doesn’t require you to be starving, miserable and weak !

7. You need to buy a pill, power or whizz bang gizmo 

In reality 80% of your healthy physical transformation comes from the food you eat – in the form that nature intended it. 10% of the equation comes from your incidental activity, that can be as low intensity as walking with some steep inclines, or jogging intervals. The final 10% of the “dream body” equation comes from high intensity exercise, such as resistance training, or sport – however this is the part that requires the most amount of effort. The final 10% of intense exercise however is not essential in order to live in a healthy vitality filled body – your nutrition is the cornerstone of your lean, athletic body.

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For more information on how you can get off the Diet-Misery-Go-Round forever (without giving up chocolate or wine ) head to www.bionicafit.com and claim your free 7 part video training series “The 7 Deadly Diet Sins – The Critical Dieting Mistakes You Don’t Even Know You’re Making & How To Avoid Them”