Six Steps to Health

The 6 steps in the Take-Out Diet

You are overweight. I’m sorry to be blunt, but it’s probably true: most adults living in Western countries are overweight. 65% or more in most western countries.  Close to 30% are obese.

Half of you are taking at least one prescription medication. Half of seniors are taking at least three. You may not be on anything, but you know someone who is.

Does that sound normal? I mean, are perpetual chronic illness and obesity the normal state of existence for us? Is our wiring so inherently faulty that we can’t keep ourselves alive without pills and doctors?

No. It doesn’t need to be like this, and this book is to help you understand, from sound science evidence that it does not need to be like this. It is not to sell you another supplement, or any of the other things that most diet or health books want to do. It is about doing less. That may seem incongruous; that doing less for our health may actually improve our health!

I’ve concluded from the hundreds of science papers read, there are really less than 6 things to achieve 80% of our health potential. (Using the 80/20 rule – 20% of what you do will give you 80% of the benefits. The other 80% effort will only give you 20% of the benefits. I.e. Poor marginal return on your time and dollars.)  We can do something about lots of other things, but do we have the time and inclination? I don’t. You could have dozens of rules, fuss about all sorts of things, which impact us very little. Whether is complex fad diets; additives, avoidances, exercise, ancient crafts revisited: most probably constitute less than 20% of our health potential. Further, much of this has limited or poor science basis, but form most of the billion dollar diet and alternative medicine industry. Will most people stop spending money on the products from this industry? Unlikely. But you can. That’s the basis for this book. Let us start on the things that will make a surprising difference.

1. Take-out fructose from your diet.
2. Take-out simple carbohydrates. Have more complex carbohydrates, fat and protein.
3. Take-out food for 2 days per week. (5:2 Diet) for a period of time if you want to loose weight fast.
4. Take-out a calorie counter for a short period. Become aware of the food you eat.
5. Take-out seed oils from your diet.
6. Take-out sitting down for more than 30 minutes at a time. Try to get some form of exercise.

These 6 areas are the “low hanging fruit” for living longer. Some of them seem like very simple strategies, and yet are not simple or easy for some to do. This is not about weight. Weight is a symptom of poor health. Reducing weight will probably not help you live to a “ripe” old age or to your potential, be it three score years and ten, or 120.  If you must insist on more strategies, then you can persevere with the 80% of effort to get the last 20% – but why?

It is not too late or too early to do these 6 steps. Like giving up smoking, you still get most of the benefits even if you have chronic illness. The body is remarkably good at restoration and healing.

The 80% for the 20%

These other things you can do not appear to do you any harm and some may be not required if you do the 6 steps, and some may be good for your health. But they will take effort and money away from the “low hanging fruit”. So stop doing stuff on the “edges” and just play the main game.

Do the six, forget the rest!

1. Stop buying and eating vitamins and supplements – spend this wasted money to buy real food.
2. Do have relationships with others. Health and well-being is associated with being better. Having a partner extends life. Loneliness reduces life expectancy.
3. Do reduce contaminants in your life. E.g. don’t smoke tobacco or take drugs. Stopping these reduces your risk of ill-health.
4. You cannot change your genes, but knowing if you have genes that pre-dispose you to life expectancy reduction, can lead to preventative strategies.
5. Don’t bother to grow and eat organic food, unless you already do these 6 steps.
6. Don’t worry about low GI, High GI issue. Just reduce your total carbohydrates.
7. Don’t worry about blood type eaters
8. Don’t bother to “Liver Cleanse”, “Detox” or any other well designed scheme to lighten your wallet.
9. Don’t bother to “juice”. Recycle your juicer.
10. Don’t exercise like the “Biggest Losers”
11. Don’t diet with any of the quick fix programs designed to lighten your wallet.
12. Be warned that day in day out calorie restrictive diets such as Jenny Craig, Weight Watchers are ineffective long term. They most likely lead to weight gain when you stop following them. Results can be achieved considerably faster and cheaper with the 6 take-out steps. However you may want to follow other diets for a short period of time, but only if you are in a mental state where you want some support structure around an initial weigh loss program. It is hard by yourself. But most cannot do them long term, and generally diets are a good way to develop long term food eating disorders, apart from the weight gain!
13. Don’t listen to your friend. Or the taxi driver. Or the health gurus. You are more likely to get mis-information than real information.
14. Don’t listen to the conservative medical industry – they are generally un-educated about latest scientific research and most  still support the dogma or “eat less, move more” mindset which had proven to be ineffective.
15. Don’t listen and support the big food and big pharma. They want your dollars. At any cost. They are very good at it.