In our pursuit of beauty we can inadvertantly give our bodies confusing messages. We live in a society where youth and beauty are most cherished and saught after. We end up doing things to our body and our mind that can have the opposite affect. Is it a concidence that we relish the youth and beauty in magazines, tv, hollywood and cinema enough to starve, run, purge and go under the knife for that ever elusive perfection while our society gets fatter and fatter. This unnatural state of deprivation and stress has turned on our fat programs. Deprivation of any kind, food, money, love sends the same stress signals to your brain that famine and cold sent to our brain thousands of years ago when our bodies stored fat in order to survive. Same chemical same effect. Stress & deprivation in any form = fat. If we are to become healthier and lean as a society, for us, for our children and for our future we have to get back to the original connection between our mind and body. There is a way to turn on the lean program. It's the same program that thousands of years ago kept people safe when they were being pursued by preditors and 1 single ounce of fat could cost them their lives.

To turn off the fat program:
1) Get out of deprivation mode. Stop dieting. Start consuming whole and healthy foods that provide the nutrition that is lacking in much of the manufactured and prepacked food today. Live Food - fruit, vegetable.
2) Don't deprive and reduce, just add really nutrient rich foods, take supplements, each good proteins not over cooked which makes the protein useless to your body.
3) Get rid of all mental chatter that suggests you can't achieve a lean healthy body. You can't get there if you don't believe it.
4) Address any reasons you may carry extra weight. Excess weight is a buffer to keep you safe. Fat = unattractive there for I'm save from abuse. You cannot turn off the fat program if you fear the result of being lean and attractive. Find help to let the protection go.
5) Get rid of unnecessary toxins, sweetners, go organic, free range.
6) Visualize and mediate that you are lean and healthy and safe. every day. The power of the mind is crucial to the process. If you think you are destined to be fat; you are! Conjur up a visual of how you look and feel and how people will interact with you and how great you look. Meditation is one of the most effect methods of reducing stress. Stress = fat.

Then turn on your lean program:
1) As you add nutrient rich and live foods, make sure you are getting lots of high quality protein, omega 3 (lots), vitamins E & D, and add some probiotics to reintroduce good bacteria to your digestive system that we don't get enough of.
2) Over time if you are getting all the nutrients you need and not nutritionally starving you will naturally start to gravitate towards the nutrient rich and live foods.
3) Excercise differently. interval training with intervals of high intensity then recoup and repeat for 20 to 30 minutes. This simulates running bursts of being pursued by a preditor. Look at olymic athletes. The sprinters are lean and muscular and fast.
4) Continue to visualize and mediate that you are lean and healthy and safe. every day do that your subconcious believes it to be true.
5) It's impossible to elimiate stress completely so when you do experience it, turn it into stress associated with being pursued by a preditor. visualize it.

Start loving your body as it is today. It protected you from the stress it percieved. It did it's job. Sit quietly and thank you body for being so protective and tell it you don't need the fat anymore and that you are safe now.

Have an incredible journey towards the healthy lean body and soul that you deserve.

__________________
Leslie Eisener, Wellness Goddess

This is so true!

Lots of good stuff here!

What it all boils down to is taking really good care of oneself (loving yourself with your actions) equals beauty.