The most important piece of information I got out of watching The Weight of the Nation which was focused more on the consequences of weight gain than how to lose weight is the effect of watching TV on weight gain. Why would watching TV cause people to gain so much weight? The Weight of the Nation focused on children, and called the advertisements for soda and cereal predatory. Food companies understand how brand loyalty works. The younger you get them the more hooked they get. The more you eat junk food the more food you eat and the cycle is hard to break.
The other reason watching TV causes weight gain is that the commercials border on being hypnotic. The continual parade of fast food and junk food commercials which now position Coke as happiness, or happy meals, or other subtle messages that link food with feeling good are having the effect of re-wiring the brain to think like that.
The other obvious reason watching TV causes weight gain is the couch potato syndrome. People tend to eat mindlessly while watching TV and the time spent watching TV takes away from other things you might do that cause you to be more active.
I think the writing is clearly on the wall. The first step you should take to lose weight may have to do with your TV habits. The second obvious step is to stop drinking sugar with which most drinks are loaded. The most remarkable statistic presented on The Weight of the Nation is how the obesity curve sky rocketed beginning in the 1980’s. This is also when food companies started putting high fructose corn syrup in everything. It is also saturated fat, hormones in milk the list goes on. The next step you can take is to stop eating foods that have ingredients on the label you do not recognize. It’s simple. Eat real food…preferably grown locally. This is of course the genius of my program The Nirvana Diet™.
Let me know what you think are some of the keys steps to take to lose weight.
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