Lose fat; prevent cancer; & improve your mood….

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Focus on Your Health:

In it we post health commentary & reviews of books, eBooks, & other things that improve or protect your health or which enable you to live longer, to be more prosperous, & to be more effective.

We do posts on staying healthy; preventing disease; aging more slowly; weight loss; exercise; nutrition; & news in medicine.

Today's post: Thursday, 2-22-2007

Lose fat; prevent cancer; & improve your mood….

It’s gradually becoming common knowledge that refined grains & high fructose corn syrup & large amounts of sugar in a person’s regular diet tend to cause obesity (excess bodyfat) & type II diabetes the longer people eat like that & the older they get.

And, that’s even more likely if people who eat that stuff also do sedentary work, watch TV for recreation, & never get regular exercise.

And, in my last 3 posts, I mention research that shows that losing even a small amount of excess fat – or, just doing regular exercise -- each cut your risks of getting all cancers.

It turns out that eating refined grains & high fructose corn syrup & large amounts of sugar, as many people in the United States & elsewhere still do, also directly tends to increase the risk of cancer & cause it to grow faster if present.

That one I did not know myself until just the last few days.

Also, there is strong evidence that many people, particularly women, often have uncontrollable & excessive mood swings because of the roller coaster that way of eating puts your body’s blood sugar through.

It’s also known that if you eat grain foods, only eating whole grains & virtually never eating refined grains results in much better health results than people experience who only eat refined grains.

This is no surprise. Whole grains have many more nutrients & dramatically more fiber than refined grains.

And, I’d heard of health experts who recommend eating a so-called “caveman diet” that only contains lean protein foods; & vegetables, mostly green non-starchy ones; & some fruit; nuts & seeds; & some beans.

Their point, which I strongly suspected is accurate, is that until about 10,000 years ago, that’s what our hunter-gather ancestors ate for the several million years before that.

So, it’s what our bodies are designed by our evolution to eat.

Just in the last week, I’ve found strong evidence that following this way of eating may have considerably stronger health benefits than I had previously imagined.

And, it may virtually guarantee losing any excess fat & keeping it off.

I met a health oriented man a few months ago. And, he had mentioned adopting the “caveman diet” as the way he ate.

What I didn’t know until this past week is how he did it or what incredibly positive results it had given him,

Since he was already eating all the health OK things from that diet when he began it, all he did was eliminate ALL grains, even whole grains.

I was amazed & stunned by the results he got -- that I just recently learned about.

He lost fifty pounds of fat with no other changes or feeling hungry & did it in just the first few months after he stopped eating grains.

Since I’ve been eating a big serving of whole grains for breakfast each day & worried that it might be causing the extra twenty pounds of tummy fat I haven’t yet lost, I had been considering eating differently to check.

His experience has convinced me to gradually drop whole grain foods to once or twice a week or less as I clearly will be less fat & be healthier once I do so.

And, I’ve recently learned eating even whole grains triggers even worse health problems than excess bodyfat for a surprisingly large part of the population.

The book with some of the background on why eating no or far less grains—even whole grains—is better for you & that I also saw just in the last few days is:

Going Against the Grain: How Reducing and Avoiding Grains Can Revitalize Your Health by Melissa Diane Smith

It’s a quality paperback & currently available on Amazon.com. And, it has extraordinarily good reviews there.

In my own case, I seem to be one of the people who can eat SOME grains.

But eating a large serving of whole grains seven days a week clearly has made my tummy fatter than I’d like. And, it may be the main initial cause of the acid reflux disease I developed.

So my plan is to set up a large list of health OK & enjoyable foods I can eat instead & eliminate all grains for two or three or even four or more weeks to see if feel better or start losing fat.

And, then I’ll eat a smaller serving of whole grains once or twice a week to see if I continue to lose fat or not.

The old message was that whole grains are a LOT better for your health than refined grains.

And that’s DEFINITELY still true.

But, it’s beginning to look like eating no grains at all or just a very small amount of whole grains may be even better for your health -- & a LOT better for losing fat & keeping it off.