Diseases of the brain are rampant in America today, and evidence suggests that a popular class of pharmaceutical drugs may be largely to blame. They’re known as statins, and the science behind how they function in the body reveals that these powerful drugs gradually degrade the brain by depriving it of cholesterol, leading to memory problems, dementia and other similar conditions.

In his book Lipitor: Thief of Memory, Dr. Duanne Graveline, M.D., wrote about his horrific experience with statins, and how they caused him to suffer two transient global amnesia events as well as chronic neuropathy. The former astronaut and aerospace medical research scientist explains how these traumatic events were the direct result of statins altering his brain.

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1. Questions

Many folk fail to ask themselves why they want to lose fat. By not asking detailed enough questions, you fall victim to only giving yourself vague reasons and vague goals. If you don’t know exactly where the goal is you will find it almost impossible to score.

2. Quantity

Make sure you absolutely know how much you should be eating for your activity level, and body size. (Height and frame type). Eating too little can be as self-defeating as eating too much.

The other quantities you absolutely must know are the size and weight you want to be when you reach your target. Notice that was size and weight. The most important of these is actually the size you want to be, as your weight can be influenced by the type of exercise you do to help achieve your goal.

3. Quality

You really are what you eat. People who eat junk and processed food on a consistent basis really do have lower health levels than those who take full responsibility for what they put into their bodies.

Just have a look at the long list of preservative and taste enhancers that you find on the ingredients list of commercially produced food.

The only way you can almost guarantee not to be slowly poisoned by them is to prepare your food from quality, fresh and preferably organically sourced ingredients. Which for the most part need not cost any more if you do you shopping wisely.

4. Quitting

In a word… Don’t

Churchill’s admonition to never, never, never give up was spot on particularly for those in the battle against the bulge.

That seemingly weeks going by with no movement in the scales does not mean your overall condition is not improving either. And remeber – using weight to measure how much you have lost is not the best way to see how you are doing anyway

You eat less than your skinny friend but still put on weight – can that be true?

It is true that our metabolism – the rate at which we process the food we eat – varies from person to person.

What is not clear is why two people can appear to eat virtually the same amount of food, which causes one to be thin and the other to pile on the pounds.

We uncover some home truths…

Many of us have friends who seemingly can eat anything they want and never put on weight. Whereas there are some of us who can just look at a slice of cake and we can feel our waistline getting bigger by the second. Whilst metabolism may have some effect, the answer is not as simple as we may think.

The Test

In this test, two friends – Cindy and Michelle – were the volunteers. They both have very different shaped bodies. Cindy was very slim while Michelle was nearly 15kg over her desired weight.

They both thought that the amount that you ate was really down to your metabolic rate.

Over the course of ten days, both Cindy and Michelle were watched closely and also asked to record how much food they ate in their food diaries.

However, it wasn’t left entirely to chance, or the honesty of the two ladies! At the beginning of the test they were each given half a litre of doubly labelled water. This is water in which both the hydrogen and the oxygen have been partly replaced with an uncommon isotope of these elements, in this case a non-radioactive form of deuterium and oxygen 18.

By doing this, it was possible to see exactly how many calories each of the girls were consuming, as well as the energy they were using just by moving around, by examining a urine sample each day.

It won’t be too much of a surprise that by the end of the week, the urine samples didn’t match the food diaries! The urine samples showed that although they did much the same amount of activity, Cindy actually ate 50% less each day than Michelle did.

Here is a simple but stark fact, and it may fly in the face of a lot of things that you understand, the fact is that the larger you are, the higher amount of energy your body will use, even at rest.

This means that your metabolic rate is higher as well. If you think about it, this is obvious, because even though you are at complete rest, larger people need more energy to pump the blood around the body and keep moving. You could use the analogy of a big car, having a big engine, so it uses more fuel to move itself around. In the same way, a bigger person uses more energy to move themselves around.

So the next time you’re tempted to blame your metabolism for your weight, remember, here’s the simple stark truth.

Some people eat less.

The other thing that should be pointed out is that whilst our two friends thought they both ate about the same, remember, Cindy ate 50% less than Michelle, and no-one was more surprised about that than her!

Now it is possible to make your metabolism work faster. One of the simplest ways of doing that is by exercising to the point where you start to be out of breath.

Once your body gets the message that it needs to ‘up’ the energy level – it will continue to do so even when the exercise has stopped.

That means you’ll be using up more calories even when you’re sleeping.

Daily Choices Matter

Studies have shown that each day we make as many as 200 food choices.

Those choices are influenced by many things, even the people we are eating with. While the individually choices may be quite small When you add them together their actual contribution to our health and well being can make a huge difference.

You’ll probably notice that many of our members questions are about small things. They seem to hone in on the details. Yet quite often people say – “Surely, if I just take care of the big things then I don’t really need to worry about the small things?”

Which on the dace of it seems fine. But when you analyse anything, the big things are made up of lots of small things. Meaning that If you take care of the detail in your diet, then each of those things that you take care of will add up and make the big things far more effective.

Here’s a just some of those small things that you might like to consider:

Check the Ingredients

Firstly, when you go to the supermarket or your local shop to stock up, look down the ingredients list to make sure you avoid eating foods that have got artificial sweeteners, MSG and a whole range of additives and colorants. These are the things that many manufacturers have to put into their food in order to put back the flavour and vitamin content that their processing has processed out.

Secondly, try as much as possible to use organically sourced and grown produce.

By sticking to organic (from a reputable producer), you know that you are not going to be eating and digesting pesticides, phosphates, all kinds of hormones and all the other things that commercial food producers use in order to overcome the problems that their fast-food production line cause.

It’s making those healthy choices, the small ones, that all add up to a much healthier lifestyle.

And it’s not just what you eat!

It’s Not Just What You Eat

A small choice you can make every day is just to take the elevator to get up two floors, or take the stairs. Taking two flights of stairs briskly will do far more for your heart than taking the elevator, that’s for sure.

Doing that five or six times a day, is just like jogging to the top of a ten-storey building!

It’s those type of small changes that I’m talking about, those small changes can make a really big difference.

The reason for making those choices is clear.

In Europe, the U.S.. Australia and in fact most of what would be considered the western world, its poor lifestyle choices that (e.g. what we choose to eat, to exercise, etc) account for the leading causes of death. Things like cancer, heart disease, diabetes and the rest.

In fact, the WHO (World Health Organization), in one it’s previous World Cancer Report, have said that the rates of cancer would increase by 50 percent over the next 15 years. Statistics like that are cause for concern.

However, all is not doom and gloom as WHO also suggests that at least a third of the cases could be prevented by folk making better lifestyle choices.

No Need to Make Huge Sacrifices

Some folk think that in order to make these changes they have to make a lot of sacrifices. But in reality, this is just not so.

If you think about it, it won’t cost you much at all to take the stairs (often times it’s quicker than taking the lift). In fact just 20 or so minutes of exercise a day can make the difference .

And to eat organic may cost you a little more each month, but these are all a small price to pay in exchange for a long, healthy, active and sickness free life.