THE BOY WHO CRIED WOLF... AND KILLED A GENERATION OF PEOPLE

First off, I am down to less than a month until my first ever 5K on my Rebirthday!!!  Can I get a YEEHAW!!  I am completing 5K on a fairly regular basis and walk a couple of miles on the days I don't do the 3.1.  The only reason I'm not at least walking 3.1 miles every day is because my area has been under an "extreme heat advisory" lately.  Since the Glow Run is held after dark, I try to do my walk/jog at dusk but lately I have been  having to wait until around 10 at night or else it is still in the 90s!  Come race day, if it is in the 90s after dark, I'll be able to do it, I just probably won't be able to run as much as I'd like.  But even if I walk the whole thing and it takes me an hour, I will finish it.  And I call this my "first" 5K because I have no doubt whatever that there will be more to come.  I have my eye on a couple in September and October.

Now on to what is on my mind today.  I just had to make a quick run to the nearest store for a couple of spices I was out of.  I needed them for the soup I just put into the crock pot (navy beans, purple potatos, tomatos and squash).  As I was checking out, I noticed the Woman's World Magazine.  It's a weekly that I used to read all the time.  I bought one for the first time in a long time last week because I suspected the diet touted no the cover might have something to do with juicing or smoothies.  It said "CURE FOOD ADDICTION; END JUNK-FOOD CRAVINGS!  LOSE 24lbs YOUR FIRST WEEK!"  If you aren't familiar with this magazine, it has screaming headlines like that for a different diet every week.  Dr. Oz is featured on a fairly regular basis.  Here's a few recent covers to give you an idea:

 

 
 

You get the idea.  Just about every diet plan out there has been featured at least once in this magazine.  They don't try to "take sides" or decide which is best but today, it just struck me, no wonder people are so skeptical when they hear people like me talking about what I've done!!  We are  bombarded every day with a different "miracle cure" for diabetes and obesity and thyroid problems and blood pressure!  And they are all contradictory!  "Fat is the bad guy; avoid fat!"  NO!  Fat is a healthy part of your diet; avoid sugar!"  NO NO NO! "Moderation is the key!"  And after all the extreme sounding, contradictory, complicated varieties thrown at us, boy does moderation just start to sound like common sense!?  But then we try moderation.  We try to just use portion control and take baby steps and just reduce our calories and increase our exercise and we fail and fail again.  Some of us fail BIG!

So some of us (I'm talking about me here) give up.  We begin to really believe that we are just meant to be fat and miserable all our lives.  When we see it happening to our kids too, it's harder for us to accept that maybe they are meant to be fat and miserable but what else are we to do?  We are hardened into skepticism or downright cynicism because of all the loud claims thrown at us every day.  We are beaten down into hopelessness by all the headlines about how little chance we have statistically of really getting the weight off and keeping it off.  Why bother?

The headline today said something about curing diabetes by drinking red wine on the new "Mediterranean Atkins" diet.  I cringed because I have a pretty good idea of what any version of Atkins is going to do to a diabetic over time and it isn't pretty.  But the thing about Atkins was that he got you some pretty impressive initial results and it just felt like he was thinking outside the box.  Actually, IMHO the first ones in a long while to think outside the box and start really looking at how human beings were meant to thrive were the Paleo people.  I admire them for that and I honestly think they are on the right track.  Haven't reached the station yet but on the right tracke;o)  I've written before about that so I won't go there again but I really do think they at least are headed in the right direction getting off of the processed, packaged food train and looking at lifestyle instead of just a temporary diet change to reach a specific goal.

It really is a big problem in this culture that we are so hardened to claims that dietary changes can have miraculous results.  The "diet industry" has created a boy who cried wolf.  We don't believe in any dietary changes because so many false claims have been thrown around.  And that's a shame.  Because dietary change really is the miracle we've all been looking for.  I really hate to think that others will have to get as desperate and near to losing their battle altogether as I did before they take that one last shot at a miracle cure.  And it just breaks my heart to think of all the people who will never grab hold of this life line and take their life back.

As for me, I am thankful every single day for the every day joys of living a normal life, free of pain and disease.  I will continue to share my story whenever I get the chance because word of mouth, one person at a time is really our only hope for the time being.  Eventually enough people will know someone personally who has experienced this kind of healing that enough doctors will get enough pressure to explain this etc etc.  And eventually, the well-being of the population will become more of a priority than keeping Big Pharma... big.

Juice on ya'll.  We got this.  One person at a time if necessary.