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20.1.10

The "Bear" Essentials - Eating Less Processed Food

If a bear can eat it.. so can you!

(Note references are cited at the bottom:)
It is much too often that a new diet fad comes out. It never seems to fail that we will hear about another new "surefire" method of loosing weight. Every year someone is bound to make the claim to weight loss success after having uncovered some new missing "secret" that nobody has ever encountered before, despite mankind's rather long excursion upon this Earth.

I, myself, especially love how these diet fads seem to flip-flop with each other every so often. One year someone will declare that the absolute root of all evil incarnate in the world takes the form of bacon and eggs. Then, strangely enough, the next diet will reverse this notion and point the proverbial "pitchforks" at carbs and their ilk, all the while proudly hoisting those very same bacon and eggs as the "real" way to lose weight.
Rather fun little circus when you think about.
Eat eggs, don't eat eggs. Eat meat, don't eat meat and become a vegetarian...
So what is the real truth to the dieting craziness that has apparently eluded us all these years?

For example... Fat is absolutely to blame for all dieting problems in this world, right? After all eating too much fat and meat and not getting enough greens is sure to kill you right?
That is unless you're talking to the Inuits who are associated with the Inuit Paradox because they eat nothing but blubber and meat, and do not even see a vegetable.
Also, I am sure you have been told not to eat butter because butter is another root incarnate of all dieting evils and causes cholesterol, so therefore the smart person will eat margarine instead.
Well, even that is a misconception! According to Nutrition Week (See: Nutrition Week 3/22/91 21:12 ), margarine eaters have twice the rate of heart disease as butter eaters.
Yes just shocking I know.
So again we come to the question, what REALLY is the secret to dieting success? What do the Inuits, the Maasai of Africa, and the Okinawans of Japan( who are especially famed for their longevity) know that fad-dieters do not seem to grasp?
Well for one, these above cultures eat and live like bears do. No... really.
Bears are great omnivores and really should be the dieter's mascot. Like humans, they are scattered around much of the Earth and will eat almost anything they can get a hold of. Meat, fish, eggs, honey, berries, anything. They eat what is naturally available to them, and they certainly put in more excercise in obtaining their food, just as the above mentioned cultures do.
The Inuits have to hunt for their food, and when they do get their meat, it is from a fresh, natural source that lived naturally and ate a natural diet as opposed to grains and chemicals
The Maasai tribe of Africa subside off high amounts of animal fat as well, but they accompany this by plenty of walking.
Yet the Okinawans are at the opposite end of this spectrum in eating a mostly plant based diet, but also accompanying this with plenty of excercise (See:
The pattern is easy for me to see everytime, that these people are eating simply, living simply, excercising simply, and they are not gorging on over processed foods. To me, it seems very evident that the real evil of all diets is eating too much over-processed food and not excercising on top of it because the above mentioned people eat food groups of all kinds and still manage to stay healthy despite it.
My advice to you is of course to excercise, always. Even if that means something as little as walking.
As for the diet fads... any and all food groups (This includes fat!) have something to offer you, as long as things are kept simple and natural (no hydrogenated this or pre-processed that).
I propose this simple rule of thumb that can apply even if you're taking on say... 50 diets in 50 weeks...
If a if a bear can get of hold of it in nature (and without raiding a camp), that is to say it hasn't been processed, than it should be more than healthy enough for you.
Good luck with the dieting craziness!
References:

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