Herbal Health

Pick any of the combinations, and eat as much as you want. Once you have made your decision, that is it. No “just one bite.” That doesn’t belong. Eat until you are really full, until you have had enough. Not included in your choices are string beans and salad. You can have them 364 days of the year. Why bother on Thanksgiving? If you decide on an Open Miscombination or Open Human, follow through with care and discipline.
Eat your Open Human the way Laurie did. “Thanksgiving on a diet meant being able to eat whatever I wanted, from Mom’s apple pie to Aunt Elana’s staffing. For once in my life, I was able to really taste what I was eating. I think I probably could have told you the spices each contained. Eating just a little bit of everything felt so much better. After dinner was over, I felt so good because, even though I had eaten until I was full, I knew that I hadn’t blown it. And getting on the scale this morning and seeing that I hadn’t gained any weight made yesterday even better.”
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Wealth? Some people get their sense of self from the money they have. Others may look at them and assume they have got to be intelligent and deserving people to be wealthy. But it’s not necessarily so. For example, there are many families with old wealth and no one living today has worked for any of that money. Their bank accounts are not a reflection of their drive or integrity—they’re a reflection of the efforts of those who
came before them.
Popularity? The popular person gets his or her sense of self from being charismatic and charming. But that doesn’t mean such people are entitled to good self-esteem. Think of all the charismatic salespeople who have charmed people out of their life savings. Charm and charisma may come in handy, but they aren’t the basis for self-worth. Think of the charismatic politicians who have no integrity.
Others’ fear? I know a lot of people who get their sense of self from the fear they generate in others. They call it respect, but there’s often an element of fear there. It’s not just organized groups like the Mafia that I’m referring to but many of today’s military generals, CEOs and politicians. And almost everyone remembers the neighborhood bully who pushed the smaller kids around when they were growing up. Instilling fear in others isn’t something to be proud of—and using it as a basis for self-esteem is more damaging to you than to those who are afraid.
Winning? We consider winners to be people who are successful and have a good sense of self. But being a winner is not essential to anything. There are a lot of winners who are bad people. We’ve all heard of those winners in sports who are ungracious with their fans, abusive to their families, or megalomaniacs who think they deserve the world on a silver platter.
Winning doesn’t mean much if you don’t treat those around you with honor and respect—it’s a fleeting accomplishment that doesn’t count for much in the larger picture.
What have you done that was meaningful, and what do you hope to do in the future? These things make more sense as ways of defining who you are. Think back to something you’ve done that has affected who you are today. Also, ask yourself: What was the best year of my life? What was the worst? How did I react to the wonderful times and to the negative experiences, and how did all of this mold me?
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I don’t want to ruin the free-flowing momentum of your life, or pin you down to restrictions of time and place, but people who don’t eat regular meals at regular times usually end up gaining weight. Even if you are one of those who believes in six mini-meals a day, all six should be at a specific time and a specific number of hours apart. If you eat all day long, you will get fat. Honest.
For men who work from nine to five, or thereabouts, the structuring of meals is relatively easy—breakfast must be eaten before they leave for the office, lunch is sometime between twelve and two, and dinner is after they get home from work. So far so good. Men under pressure begin by skipping meals and end up eating all day: They have lunch sent up by a fast-food restaurant that delivers at 3:00 p.m. (“I had a bear of a day, honey! I didn’t even get to grab a bite of lunch until after three!”) Then they go home to dinner three hours later, having performed no exercise—save leaving the office and climbing into the car—for the entire day. Breakfast should be four to five hours before lunch, dinner should be at least five hours later. The only excuses I’ll accept are from those crossing time zones on an airplane.
Men who work night shifts, who stay up twenty-four hours at a clip, or who work indoors where you can’t tell day from night have a more difficult time. They must be forced to eat at regular intervals and to ignore the availability of nosh foods.
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Many people who try unsuccessfully to lose weight think they are unable to do so because of a lack of willpower. However, the problem actually may be unacknowledged negative emotions about themselves and their bodies that hinder their motivation and prevent them from sticking with a weight-loss program. Hypnosis is a highly effective, simple method of uncovering these emotions and helping people change the behavior patterns that cause them to remain overweight. Hypnotherapy works by tapping into the subconscious mind and instilling positive, productive thoughts, which can help to quiet anxieties, boost energy levels, and overcome eating addictions.
Hypnosis works best when the person can visit a hypnotherapist twice a week so that the positive suggestions can be regularly reconfirmed until they are a part of the person’s subconscious thought processes. Hypnosis aims to alter the mind’s—and thus the body’s—automatic responses to situations, therefore enabling the person to change negative behavior permanently. Often the sessions will be recorded so the individual can take home a tape to listen to at night or in the early morning.
Anxiety and loneliness, two problems commonly associated with chronic overeating, can be helped greatly through hypnosis. In other instances, people overeat to suppress a fear stemming from a childhood trauma, a subconscious “method of protection” that can cause obesity. Another common situation is when controlling food intake by overeating becomes a way of making up for a lack of control in other areas of life. Hypnosis can be used to change these destructive thought-behavior links and to implement more positive ones. For instance, through hypnotherapy a patient can learn to have control over his or her food intake by making eating choices rather then by overconsumption.
During hypnosis, a patient is in a very peaceful state called the theta altered state, or a trance. This is induced, in most cases, by listening to a subliminal tape while relaxing. It is in this state that changes can be suggested and implemented. Sessions generally last for thirty-five to forty-five minutes and are much like meditation, only more directed. Suggestions are intended to stay with the patient throughout the day. If the process is successful, it will result in a permanent reversal of the negative and unproductive thought patterns that keep the person from living a healthy life.
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One of the problems in designing physical activity for the overfat is the negative connotations of the term ‘exercise’. This is probably to do with the association of exercise with high intensity activity. A greater emphasis on low-moderate level activity, and a shift from the notion of exercise as ‘extra-curricular’ to lifestyle changes in activity patterns suggests that a term such as physical activity might be more appropriate. There are two forms of this that are relevant:

• ‘Planned’ physical activity, such as walking, swimming or some other form of aerobic activity carried out regularly, often as a part of recreation.

• ‘Incidental’ physical activity, such as walking up stairs instead of using an elevator, walking instead of driving, or even not using effort-saving devices such as cordless telephones or remote controls for television sets.

Planned physical activity is necessary to compensate for the decrease in daily energy use resulting from changes in work and daily living conditions in most modem societies. Weight-bearing activities such as walking are likely to be the most effective because of the greater energy use. However, in the first instance non-weight-bearing activities such as swimming, which are thought to be generally less effective in fat loss, may be more able to be carried out and therefore less de-motivational.

Incidental activity is designed to counter reductions in spontaneous physical activity that occur in technically advanced societies. It is this which may be of most importance, and may initially even be the only exercise prescription for obese, in contrast to overfat individuals, because of the discomforting and de-motivational aspects of more vigorous forms of activity. As body mass decreases and planned physical activity becomes more comfortable, different forms of planned activities can be introduced.

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Exact reasons for the increases in fatness in the community are not as clear as they might seem to the layperson. Research has Hailed to provide conclusive evidence on any single factor and the evidence on a range of different factors , is often equivocal. For example, there is little to suggest that total energy consumption is the main culprit. Although obese people generally do consume more calories than lean people, there is still a wide variation between people. Also, active people are known to be big eaters but aren’t necessarily fat. Athletes are the extreme example of this, but of course they are also highly active. As far as we can tell, people in most industrialised countries now consume around the same or less total energy intake as their grandparents, yet their grandparents didn’t seem to have the same battle with the bulge. While there are significant problems assessing total energy intake, all indications are that this has not increased sufficiently to account for the increases in obesity now being seen.

Change in the type of food that’s being eaten would seem to be the next obvious factor—fatty foods and fast foods in particular. Indeed, a correlation between fat consumption and obesity in some countries, like France, where the records have been available for years, would tend to support this. Since the turn of the century the percentage of fat in the diet has undoubtedly increased, but most of the increase has been in the last few decades. In countries like Australia, the UK and the US, the overall consumption of fat may have stabilised or even decreased. Sugar consumption doesn’t seem to be related, as countries with high sugar consumption (e.g. Cuba) have low average body fat levels. Those with a high sugar consumption within countries are also amongst the leanest in a community, possibly because sugar and fat are generally inversely correlated. Large increases in soft drink and fruit juice consumption have occurred in recent years, however the connection between this and the increase in obesity is speculative only. Increases in alcohol are a further possibility, but consumption of this has generally been going down in those countries where obesity is increasing and consumption levels in populations often correlates inversely with obesity levels. In fact there’s now little evidence to support the notion that alcohol per se is fattening.

Smoking rates are declining in most advanced countries, and it is known that the average smoker gains around 3kg over a 12-month period after quitting. Might this be a reason for increases in fatness at a community level? Several studies have shown that it may be a small contributor, but the increases in weight have been amongst smokers, ex-smokers and non-smokers, suggesting that it’s not just quitters who have been the gainers.

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