The most common cause of obesity and being overweight is the intake of unhealthy, unnaturally concentrated, and artificially flavored foods. Obesity can also be caused by an unhealthy diet or a lack of movement, sleep, or natural foods or by the consumption of foods not suitable for your constitution. Other causes include taking certain medicines, dependence on industrially prepared foods, high levels of stress, genetic predispositions, or any combination of the above factors.
Achieving a sleek figure doesn‘t require counting calories, running marathons, or living on unnatural diets.
Instead of a race for slimness, it is much more reasonable to focus on one’s overall health through proper diet and lifestyle. A long term healthy diet means a healthy body and healthy weight. Unnatural dieting, on the other hand, leads only to alternating restrictive diets with overeating.
One’s Own Regime
The most important rule for healthy food for everyone is to make a menu for the intake of natural foods and fresh dishes made from them. The best foods are natural, local, and organic. The most important thing to remove from one’s menu (or at least restrict to a minimum) is unhealthy, unnaturally concentrated and artificially flavored, industrially prepared foods.
In case natural foods don‘t lead to an optimal weight, try determining your type of constitution through the aid of Ayurveda or traditional Chinese medicine and improving your diet on the basis of recommendations suitable for your type. It is also possible that some who are unsuccessful at reducing their weight are consuming healthy foods that are not the most suitable for their body. For example, the intake of large amounts of raw salads for those with weak, cold, or moist constitution types.
Addiction to Certain Foods
While obesity these days is commonly associated with a variety of possible causes, the question remains whether we are overlooking another basic factor in being overweight addiction.
The intake of some foods can lead to a reaction in the brain similar to that of drug use. For example, a study by Dr. Nicole Avena, an addiction scientist, suggests that sugar is eight times more addictive than cocaine.
There are foods which we can become addicted to. What is more, the influence of foods on the brain (or on our state of mind) is relatively unexplored territory compared to the effects of food on our physical selves, which has been the subject of scientific research for decades.
According to the international classification of diseases, addiction is a group of behavioral, cognitive, and physiological phenomena that develop after repeated use of substances and typically include the following effects:
- Strong desire to use substances
(craving) - Difficulty in controlling the use of substances (whether it is a question of starting or stopping using substances, or the amount of the substance ingested)
- Proof of tolerance the necessity to increase the dose in order to achieve the same effects as before
- Gradual neglecting of interests in favor of the use of substances
- Repeated use despite clear evidence of damaging effects
Experiments on animals have unambiguously shown that sugar consumption satisfies all five characteristics. Above average intake of sugar does not only increase intoxication from it, but it also increases the desire for more. Sugar (just like cocaine, for example) has an influence on the brain reward center of the brain, where many biochemical mediators, „More please!“.
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