Actually Following Good Advice

Thought to ponder: “I give myself very good advice, but very seldom I follow it.” — Alice in Wonderland

I have a strong tendency toward the Alice mentality… obviously, not one of my better qualities. This was one of the first things that needed to change in regard to health in our house. After all, the race you’re guaranteed to lose is the one you don’t start… right? So I focused on my goal and decided to learn WHY I had to do what the “experts” were telling me to do. If I have a good, physiological reason to change my eating habits and exercise (ugh!) then I may be more inclined to follow through.

So I began to read… and it was all the stuff I already knew.

Over and over again… eat low fat, low carb and exercise. ((…crickets…)) Well, if it was that simple, why are 66% of Americans either overweight or obese? Why are other industrialized countries not suffering to this extent? Why do people lose weight and then gain it back? Why don’t people strive to be healthy? (sigh) I decided not to worry about everybody else and simply concentrate on getting my own house in order.

Great Book

Since I already knew all the basics, I decided to go a different route and read Jillian Michaels‘ Master Your Metabolism. As you can see in the About Me link… that’s what did it. I highly recommend this book. I warn that it can be a bit dry with the biochemistry explanations but Jillian’s a hoot and she writes like she speaks!

It was amazing to me how easily our metabolisms can be knocked off kilter and if our metabolisms were off, then we weren’t burning fuel efficiently thus making it harder to lose weight! (The lazy part of me began to panic at this point.) If I’m going to do all this work, I better be getting the biggest bang for my buck not swimming upstream like the salmon I’d been eating.

I felt so strongly about the information I was gathering that I felt I had to share it with my best buds. Through email, we started a “support group” of sorts whether we had weight to lose or not. The purpose was to improve health and master our metabolisms! I’m happy to report that most of us are participating in some form or fashion and the results are positive! These emails are what prompted me to start a blog — a place of reference for all the stuff we’re learning.

Bottom line: What good advice should YOU be following?