Tips on How to Look and Feel Better Before Football Starts

By Alison Porche, Traditional Naturopathic Doctor

CENTRAL — Football season is just five weeks away!  Won’t it be great to put on our game clothes and gather for another great season at Wildcat Stadium or Central Private?

Maybe you’ll be going to Tiger Stadium and experience the thrill of LSU football!

Or maybe you’ll be hosting game-day parties and activities for the family!

But what if you’ve gained too much weight and don’t feel you look your best?  What if you don’t have the energy to go to the stadium or entertain friends?

Are poor choices about food and the lack of exercise beginning to adversely affect your life?

Well, there are some things you can do right now to make yourself look better and feel better before the kickoff of the first game of the season.

Of course, the more serious your weight gain has been and the more toxic your body has become, the longer it will take to get healthy.

But, if you start now, you can see improvements right away.

Statistics released by the U.S. government last week show that 66 percent of the people in Louisiana are obese or overweight.  So, if that’s you, you’re not alone in your struggles.

First of all, it is important to realize that most of us are dehydrated, toxic, and suffer from food addictions.  Depression also often plays a major role in poor diet and lack of exercise.  We have to tackle all these problems headon.

Remember, if you’re overweight, you’re probably malnourished.  Eating the wrong things generally depletes the body of nutrients. “Gut dysbiosis” is the imbalance of the colonies of microorganisms (bacteria, yeast, viruses, parasites, etc.) within your body.  This leads to poor assimilation of nutrients.  Gut dysbiosis can be caused by stress, eating too much sugar, over use of antibiotics or other medication, and from not consuming enough fruits and vegetables.

Okay, here are some suggestions that will work, I promise:

1. Start your day off with a glass of water. This will begin the process of hydration and help with proper waste elimination.

Throughout the day, keep a bottle of water or glass of water at hand all the time.  During your waking hours, drink at least three to four glasses of water a day.

Whenever you feel hungry, reach for your glass of water.  Drink the entire glass or a small bottle of water.  Then, if you’re still hungry, go ahead and eat.  You won’t be nearly as hungry and you won’t eat nearly as much.

Do you drink soft drinks and diet colas?  Tell the truth: Are you addicted to them?  No problem.  Have as many as you want, but promise me this: Before you reach for a soft drink or a diet cola, grab your water and drink an entire glass.  Then, if you still want your soft drink or diet cola, go ahead and drink it!

Chances are, the water will satisfy your thirst.  You will feel calmer and have less stress.  For every soft drink or diet cola you miss, your body will begin to heal itself.

Do you need a diet cola to help you lose weight?  Come on now, do you really believe that?  We don’t need colas at all.  What we need is water.

If you drink them, soft drinks and diet colas are adding pounds to your weight.  In fact, diet colas are worse than sugar drinks.

The San Antonio Longitudinal Study of Aging followed 474 participants for 10 years.  It showed that people who drank two or more diet colas a day had their waist lines increase six times more than people who didn’t drink diet colas.

The truth is, diet colas do absolutely nothing to help us lose weight, but they are highly addictive and they bathe our systems with harmful chemicals such as aspartame, the artificial sweetener used as a sugar substitute in some foods and beverages.

Dark colored diet colas destroy calcium in our bodies. So they are especially bad.

If you follow this advice on drinking water, your skin tone should improve and look better, you should sleep better, you should feel less stress, and your elimination should be regular.  You will begin to lose weight and feel better.

2. Chew your food well. See, this is easy! LOL!  Chew 15 to 20 times per bite.  This will greatly aid in digestion, and it will make you eat slower.  That’s important, because  your body will begin to tell you it’s full sooner, and that will help you feel satisfied sooner.

Limit yourself to what is on your plate, and when you feel full, stop eating.  Leave things on your plate.  That’s fine.

3. Breathe deeply. Exhale completely several times.  Get the stale air out of your lungs.  Then breathe deeply.  This helps reduce stress.  We tend to breathe short, shallow breaths and that builds stress.

4. Eat hormone-free meat. Okay, so this is getting a little harder now.

But here’s why this is so important: The hormones that are injected into cattle and poultry are used to make them gain weight very quickly.  That’s why chickens in the store are much larger than chickens raised at home.  Some of the hormones stay in the meat and get into your body.  That makes you add weight too.  Not good.  So try to buy hormone-free meat!

5. Consume more fruits and vegetables. There’s really no reason ever to be hungry.  Fresh fruits and vegetables are good for you and can improve your health, especially organically-grown food.  When you’re hungry for a late-night snack, grab an apple, an orange, or dark grapes.  Stay away from anything “manufactured” by man.  Processed foods are generally devoid of nutrients and filled with preservatives.

Preservatives are necessary for these products to have a long shelf life in the store, but they are bad for you!

Junk food and most fast food are just that — junk.  They harm your body, make you feel bad, and shorten your life.

Sugar is okay occasionally but not on any regular or frequent basis.  It is a major cause of a great many health problems.

6. Exercise at least 30 minutes three or four times a week. If you are completely out of shape, start with simple things and work up to where you should be.  If you’re moving, you’re still alive.  Get up, get moving, and gradually increase your activity.

7. Have a positive attitude. Forget about losing weight.  Take the pressure off yourself.  Instead, focus on becoming healthy.

Follow this advice, and I promise you will be able to walk into Wildcat Stadium looking better and feeling better this season.  Old friends will say, “You sure look good!  What have you been doing to yourself?”

Just tell them, “Oh, just living right!”  Then LOL!

Good luck!