Weight Loss: The Tripod Rule

A tripod is a very stable foundation, ask any photographer. Now when it comes to weight loss this concept becomes very important, as explained later, when the focus moves away from just losing weight to normalizing your metabolism and then eventually normalizing your weight. People struggle to lose weight by eating less or exercising more, by drinking herbals or taking medicine or even hormone injections, and lastly even surgery. The focus is placing concern on the weight and not the body as a whole; the focus is on the temporary activity for quick results and not long-term sustainability… bad form!

They say that insanity is repeating the same thing expecting a different result; so let’s stop the insanity about the roller coaster weight loss and vow to think better, find better solutions and expect a better result. So permit me to engage you in a different conversation on the topic of weight loss and shift it to a healthy metabolism instead. Not everything we do to lose weight has a positive impact on the metabolism and the weight we do lose is only weight to be regained; sadly we all know this to be true and the reality of facing chronic diseases remains unresolved.

To avoid the majority of chronic diseases the key is to keep up a strong metabolism and the three legs (the tripod) to a stable foundation for a strong metabolism are:

1. Proper food combining and avoiding excesses in food and drink.
2. A broad-based complete multi-vitamin and mineral, anti-oxidant complex
3. Regular fitness activities; a mix of aerobic activities and muscle resistance exercises

This tripod rule strengthens your metabolism and, if the nutritional modifications focus mainly on better eating, the weight will lower naturally. The following steps will guide you into this three-legged approach:

1. Nutritional changes are to cut your overall calorie intake by 1,000 calories without compromising healthy foods by primarily replacing high glycemic foods with lower glycemic foods (see referenced chart) thus avoiding high calorie foods that contain sugar, sweet drinks, starchy foods and animal fats.
2. Start taking a daily broad spectrum multi-vitamin / multi-mineral with anti-oxidants; something better than the One a Day or Centrum types, more like NuSkin’s Pharmanex supplements or USANA. You may want to add CoQ10 to supplement the anti-oxidant content if you live in an urban area.
3. Perform some daily physical activities for 20 to 30 minutes 6 out of 7 days per week. Keep it fun and interesting, do things with others as well.

Much more will be written in a dietary blog to come later but this short list is a very good start, IF YOU ACT ON IT. So remember the tripod of good nutrition, enough exercising and proper micronutrients supplementation, because trying to succeed at normalizing your weight by focusing on only one or two of the legs will unfortunately undermine both your short and long game.

Food for thought,
docMIKE