Health Rants: The Beginning

This summer, Vogue has been all about health, and one of the articles I read really got me thinking. It was examining the idea that exercise may not be the best diet for some people if you really want to lose weight. In a nutshell, the author, a mid-aged woman, described her dieting practices, noting that although she exercises 5x/wk, she has actually remained the same size for the past 10yrs. Now, she said, if the goal of all of this exercise was to lose weight, then why has she persisted for so long in a pattern that hasn't seemed to prove beneficial? 

This is a subject that I have personally been exploring for the past few years, and I have come to a conclusion that I seem to think is just inevitable: most people just don't understand portion control. In America, we have learned that bigger is better, big house, big car, big mac... you get the picture. However, as time is progressing, the real estate market is crashing, the cars' pollution has made the environment unstable, and our general public has reached an obesity issue of epidemic proportions. So where does it end?

I have no idea what can be done about the American economy, I didn't even remotely study anything pertaining to that in school. And hopefully, with the upcoming election, the US will be able to elect the only candidate that seems interested in working positively with the rest of the world to solve the crisis of global warming. However, that still leaves the problem of obesity. Now-- I know just as well as anyone how easy it is to think that what appears on your plate when you order an "entree" at applebees is what you should be ingesting as a meal, but the reality is that your body just can't handle that many calories in a day! Lets say you order their asiago chicken; right there, you have eaten 800 calories, and that doesn't even count your drink, an appetizer, or anything that may come on the side. If you're careful, order the chicken with a diet soda, only eat half of your mashed potatoes, and none of the garlic toast, you might get lucky and leave the restaurant only 1,000 cal heavier. But let's say you're a normal, healthy sized person, and you weren't planning to work out that day: that only leaves you with 500 cal to spare for the rest of the day without you having to worry about gaining weight. Now, does that sound anything like what the teacher was droning on about during all those long hours back in your high school health class? Probably not. 

Back to the Vogue article; it turned out that the author had merely fallen a victim of what so many of us are prone to do, and had assumed that it was just fine to have that second cookie-- I mean, she was working it all off anyway, right? There are some great programs popping up out there to help people understand what a healthy diet entails; Weight Watchers, LA weight loss, but their problem lies right there in their title. These businesses are about helping people lose weight they wouldn't have gained to begin with if proper food education had been readily available. This has become one of my favorite websites over the past year, because it compiles useful information in a user-friendly fashion, perfect for the health-obsessed like me. You ever want to know exactly how many calories were in a peach? Or how many you were actually burning off with those walks on the beach? It'll tell you! It's fantastic. 

Anyway, this article is the beginning of many. I plan to put up delicious recipes as I find them, and eventually workout tips as well.