Do you hate exercise? Sometimes, I do too. Most of the time I am one of those people who makes the excuse that I “do not have time” for exercise. Obviously, there is no real excuse and if you really want to exercise more you will but when it comes down to it exercising without changing your diet is really not going to get you any results, and changing your diet to just anything is really not a simple enough solution. If you really want to lose weight you have to also really want to be healthy.

I am going to tell you in easy terms how to do this by eating alone but I will also give you a small hint as to where to go with your exercise habits as well at the very end of this article. But let’s begin! I hope you’re taking notes.

First things first: take your vitamins every day. If you are like most people, your daily diet consists of modern foods that have been robbed of their naturally high nutritional intake. Your very first task to compensate for this could easily be to take a daily multivitamin and some nutritional supplements. I take a normal Centrum which you can get from virtually any grocery store.

• B-Vitamins unite! The B Vitamins are so ridiculously important to you and your activities throughout your waking day that I would even argue that even going a week without them is devastating in ways you probably cannot imagine and unfortunately are not even visible. One study even found that people had highly reduced brain volume after not getting a good intake of Vitamin B12 (Vogiatzoglou et al. “Vitamin B12 status and rate of brain volume loss in community-dwelling elderly.” Neurology. 2008. 71:826-832). I would highly recommend taking Vitamin B1 (Riboflavin), B6, and B12 supplements every day.

• There are good fats and bad fats for you. Omega-3’s are good, omega-6’s are bad. Pick up a Fish Oil supplement to get your daily intake of Omega-3 fatty acids.

• CoQ10 is another good one which will aid visual function.(Blasi MA, Bovina C, Carella G, et al. Does coenzyme Q10 play a role in opposing oxidative stress in patients with age-related macular degeneration? Opthalmologica. 2001 Jan-Feb;215(1):51-4).

Some simple rules that if you follow them, you will be just fine… Eating healthy is not actually as complicated as the media makes it sound. I will prove it to you if you want to try my approach. Essentially, all you have to do is…

• Do not eat anything that has anything but natural sugars (this means no sugar from anything but normal fruit). We have an obscene amount of sugar flooding our diets from modern food companies and the way that food is delivered. This means not drinking sodas. Ever. It also means no pies, cakes, cupcakes, whip cream, or when drinking your coffee sweetening it with sugar. If you absolutely MUST add sugar, I’d recommend trying out adding natural, real sugar (like “Sugar in the RAW”) and brown sugar. But really? You get enough natural sugars from everything you eat, especially fruits like oranges and apples. Oh, but on top of that – if you are to eat bread, eat less than one serving. Bread, or anything made from flour, is essentially sugar. Yes, sandwiches are bad for you.

• Eat a high protein diet. Your body can manufacture certain kinds of fats that it can burn off and various other things it might need but it has no real way to produce protein. Protein is in stuff like steak, chicken, turkey, ham and any kind of meat. Remember what I said about vitamin B12 – just a side note – you can only get your B vitamin intake naturally by eating red meat. The best source of protein anywhere? Eggs, eat LOTS of eggs!

• Fat does not make you fat. Do not worry about fat, but NEVER eat trans fat. Trans fat is sort of like eating plastic: it never fully breaks down, it’s artificial, and it kills you. On the other hand, normal fat, even saturated fat, you do not even have to worry about if you follow the other rules presented here! That means you can eat those giant, juicy, delicious pieces of meat and stuff that vegetarians hate so much and you will never have to regret it! And for vegetarians, see my last bullet point here.

• Drink lots of water. More than any other fluid that you could drink, drink more water than anything else. For stuff that is caffeinated, drink purely black tea or black coffee – do not add sugar. Water is essential. In fact, the majority of every single one of our bodies is composed of water anyway so always keep plenty of drinking water around.

• Do not count calories. If you’re eating the right foods – calories simply do not matter. When I first cut out all of the excess sugar from my own diet and began eating an enormous amount of eggs, meat, cheese, and vegetables I had a ravenous hunger I had not experienced in a long time. Interestingly, it was probably because I had dramatically dropped my blood sugar in a short amount of time and I ate more than ever. Even as I did, I got thinner and skinnier. Calories do not make the difference – the right food does.

• Forget about including corn as a “vegetable.” In fact, corn is actually more like a grain. It just is not that good for you and it sort of could be equated to the evil of eating sugar. High fructose corn syrup, which is in virtually every soda (again, do NOT drink sodas EVER), is in a variety of products and it is going to make you fatter and more unhealthy.

• When all else fails eat a low carb diet with low sugar and high protein. When it comes down to it the three main rules I am mainly trying to get across are:

• • Eat low carb.
  • Eat low sugar.
  • Eat high protein.

Think Atkin’s diet (cutting out carbs) where you eliminate bread, chips, crackers, and other items with high carb content because it is essentially the same as sugar. In regard to the more obvious things with actual sugar: getting rid of anything with sugar like sodas, syrup, cake, pie, ice cream, brownies, and so on. I know, I know, sugar is delicious but so is fat! Remember that there is nothing really that wrong with fat provided you are consuming a low carb, low sugar, high protein diet. It has been scientifically proven (and from my own experience) that your body will burn high amounts of fat if you consume a diet that follows these rules.

• And finally: do not be a vegetarian. Human beings, or homo sapiens, are omnivores. They need meat. Stop acting like we did not evolve and grow into existence on anything other than an omnivorous diet. We didn’t. Science shows it, the academic scholars agree, vegetarianism does not work as a sustainable diet. You are better off eating things like eggs and steak mixed in with vegetables, fruit, and just a tiny little tad of grains and sugars (again, less than 1 serving a day for the grains and sugars).

But hey, I should also make a brief side note: I even break my own rules from time to time. Every once and a while, I admit that I will eat ice cream, order pizza, and eat a piece of key lime pie. Fortunately, it hurts me less if I stick to these other rules.

Here is an example of what I typically might consume in a day following my rules.

MEAL 1 OF DAY:

• 2 Fried Eggs, Over Medium
• Orange Juice
• Supplements: Centrum Multivitamin
  • Chromium picolinate 200mcg
  • CoQ10 200mg
  • Fish Oil 1000mg
  • Vitamin C 500mg
• 4 Strips of Bacon

“BRUNCH”:

• Water
• Apple or Orange

MEAL 2, LUNCH:

• 12 Thin Slices of Ham
• Cheddar Cheese
• Cup of Milk
• 1 Can of Green Beans

MEAL 3:

• ½ of a Turkey Leg or 1 Chicken Breast or Steak (Medium)
• 1 Can of Sliced Carrots
• Water

Hopefully this will give you a good start. Looking at the layout of my typical meals and food throughout the day you might be a bit awe struck by realizing how much food you may be consuming that resembles nothing of this! In fact, in this example I might actually try throwing in a couple more eggs. Some people prefer eating eggs completely uncooked by themselves: not me. I like to cook all my food for the most part!

Follow a diet similar to this one and I promise you will see some results, both in your health and in your weight. But what do we do for exercise with this kind of a diet? A hint I will give you is that you should NOT be doing cardio. I repeat: do NOT do cardio! Instead, you want to do short burst, high intensity workouts which burn off whatever carbohydrate energy you may have in your system and then stop – this will program your body to burn whatever fat you have. Doing cardio while consuming a high carb diet is only going to make you miserable and probably will not get you good results.

I look forward to hearing the experiences of bloggers and other readers who may actually try this sort of approach!

Uh oh, I said it. Some of you may have heard about this guy, Steve Pavlina, because of his successful blogging ventures but more importantly because he is the author of a book which hit Barnes & Noble shelves a while back known as Personal Development for Smart People: The Conscious Pursuit of Personal Growth. Now, do not misinterpret my respect and love for Steve – I think in many different areas the guy is an absolute genius. He has over a million readers and there is a reason he does: he provides a huge amount of value to readers all over the world who find benefit by reading his articles.

This particular blog entry, however, is about how Steve Pavlina is wrong about a number of different things.

Raw food and vegetarianism – One of the primary topics that Steve talks about in his blog is vegetarianism, which he had seemed particularly proud of when he first started writing about it, and raw food. He claims that not only has he felt better and been more healthy but that if you consume the same diet as he does you will feel better and be more healthy too! Not so, folks. And there is a few different reasons why.

• Vegetarianism and its benefits, or especially veganism, have been grossly over-exaggerated. In fact, according to some, vegetarian diets will actually harm you because you are not getting essential vitamins.
  • Raw food is also a bad idea, no matter what the raw food community is trying to tell you. Steve has also said that people from the raw food community “seem nicer” than that of other communities. He may not mean bad by saying such a thing but to me that is a bit pompous.

The problem, which Steve has hinted at, is actually in the foundations of how modern food is prepared and processed. A much more credible sort of work on the problems with modern meat processing might be the documentary Food, Inc. or a very delightful read I had the opportunity to experience during a vacation of mine: Twinkie, Deconstructed. I would also highly recommend the work on Al Sears MD.

To get a handle on what foods we should consume we should really examine the diet of our native ancestors and how the most healthy of them survived. The best hunters ate plentiful portions of meats, vegetables, fruits, and while yes – some of it was raw – they also enjoyed cooked meals over an open fire. A lot of advocates of raw food diets like to preach that raw food somehow is what we need because of nutritional value when in reality: the real culprit is food processing, sugar, preservatives, chemical additives, high fructose corn syrup and an excess of corn products, and other simple problems that have only emerged in their worst form during the past century.

Sorry, Steve, but the fact of the matter is that the majority of people who consume a raw food diet not only will not stick with it – they will not think it tastes very good either. On the other hand, if you let me have my grass fed beef with green beans and my daily multivitamin I will be very happy.

In fact, his entire attitude is pompous by his site’s motto: “Personal Development for Smart People.” Who the heck does he think he is? So if you are not smart, then apparently you will not be reading his site. To his credit, he often responds to this anecdote with a good deal of humor, wit, and charm. He has a big problem with his overall ending response, though, when he claims that anyone who “doesn’t get it” or disagrees with it is somehow not among the ‘smart people’ he is writing for. Steve, the doctoral degrees and some of the biggest experts in the field would say that a lot of what you are writing about is complete rubbish. One reason he could write a lot about things that are so sensational, of course, is that it probably generates a good buzz and brings in a substantial number of readers. Still, Steve: the doctoral degrees know a thing or two as well.

The guy’s an ex-Scientologist for crying out loud… In fact, that could be a bit of an understatement.

• If you dive deep enough into Steve Pavlina’s history, you find out he is an ex-Scientologist. Not only does he not regret the decision, he also claims that it was a beneficial time of his life. The amount of stuff that is just absolutely nutty and crazy with Scientology and the horror stories of the cult-way in which it has taken advantage of its members is enough to get me to steer clear from reading even a single word of L. Ron Hubbard’s Dianetics.
• The fact that Steve supports this and then goes so far as to say he actually buys into his now ex-wife’s psychic abilities says enough about his intellectual integrity to me.

Of course, the ironic part is that even while Pavlina completely ignores rational thought processes he still manages to give some extremely sound advice that people not only listen to but many actually find tremendous benefit from. I think guys like Pavlina and other big industry gurus who are pushing the Law of Attraction, however, are giving people unrealistic hopes and dreams.

If you know me personally, you know that I have absolutely no issues what so ever with the idea of thinking BIG! I do it all the time myself and I also follow my ideas with an intense drive and motivation that few other people I know have – the problem lies in how he is telling people to get there. This trend of “think about it and it will happen” type of mentality needs to end and Steve Pavlina has done little to actually help end its existence. Instead of turning to scientific thought processes people are turning to more abstract, almost pop-culture like philosophies preached by guys like Pavlina. Even in his book, he is not giving rational strategies for practical things that can aid you in the real world but is instead telling you abstract concepts that you must somehow figure out HOW to apply.

All the while he is leaving some sense of vague uncertainty in the readers’ mind but manages to present it in a way that is appealing enough that it keeps you reading entry after entry. Some time ago, I actually stopped reading Pavlina’s entries because they all grew to sort of repeat themselves about the same general concepts. He has also, as much as he has tried to avoid it, hit the problem of trying to make his website one that appeals to multiple different markets while still dropping everything he writes about under the category of “personal development.” Sometimes, the stuff he is writing about is arguably nothing to really do with personal development itself at all. Perhaps he only wants the term to be broadly defined.

On the other hand, there are a lot of people that would argue that Steve Pavlina “invented” personal development in the same sense that people liked to say that Al Gore “invented the internet.” Obviously, I disagree with even this sort of a metaphor.

A good friend of mine, Bill Perry, who I have often worked with on various different research projects, wrote a review of Steve Pavlina’s book here. Steve, if you’re reading this, I admit that I will soon purchase a copy of your book and read it the book in its entirety – it seems the stuff that you are putting out onto store shelves is a bit more valid and well constructed than certain things you have touched on in your blog. Congratulations on your success.

As for others, I highly recommend you at least read some of the best, popular articles that Steve has written. If you are just now diving into a journey of personal change I think he is a wonderful guy to start with. But for those who are serious about wanting to push past their long term sticking points and to come out on top in a way they have never done before, we need someone a bit more scientific in their approach.