Being over weight and obese are not only common in American life, they're an epidemic. In the past fifty years inventors and engineers have made leaps and bounds in discovering new ways to produce and preserve foods to the extent that Restaurants can be supplied with pre-processed foods that only need to be dipped in hot oil and be served immediately. The fast foods America is consuming on a daily basis prove to be more fattening and less healthy than living on donuts (which by the way, is not healthy). I will now address the nutrition of what most consider average food. First I will share a couple rules that most people have heard rumor of, but choose to ignore.

• The average diet should program should have a 1,500 caloric intake per day ( too vague to live by on it own )
• Each food item consumed should have no more than 25% of its calories from fat as defined in the line under the calories on the nutritional info chart on the product itself.
• Avoid all trans fats and keep saturated fats to a minimum unless polyunsaturated or monounsaturated

A Burger King® Double Whopper® with cheese has 990 calories, with 580 of those calories coming from fat, 4.5 total grams of fat and 1.5 of those grams coming from trans fats. The large order of French fries carries 500 calories, with 250 of those calories coming from fat, 28 total grams of fat, with 6 of those grams coming from trans fat. Should you choose to drink water with this meal and skip dessert, you end up with 1490 calories, 830 of those calories coming from fat ( 56% ) not to mention the 32.5 grams of fat with 7.5 grams of trans fats in there.

Benefit of the doubt, lets go to McDonalds® A Big N' Tasty® with cheese has 510 calories with 250 of those calories coming from fat. A large order of fries has 570 calories with 270 of those calories coming from fat and the total fat on this meal without a dessert is 58 grams packing 9.5 grams of trans fats. With those 1080 calories you get 520 of them from fat ( 48% )

Just in case there is anything left of your fast food desires I thought I would throw in a little bit of America's top fast food. Pizza Hut® One slice if you can only eat one slice of their latest Double Deep® pizza Meat Lover's® variety has 580 calories and 330 are from fat with a total of 36 grams of fat and also packs in 1.5 grams of trans fat per slice.

Remember that the three restaurants listed above have worked hard to get their nutritional statistics where they are today and have as all other fast food restaurants have, been under great scrutiny and have adjusted their ingredients and additives accordingly. When you go to a sit down restaurant serving similar foods, it doesn't magically become healthy because a waiter or waitress delivered it. If they're French fries they're probably deep fried unless they specify baked which takes up a lot of kitchen resources. Assess the things you plan on eating on any menu.

Keep in mind that trans fats are in everything that contains hydrogenated oils and your body has a limited ability of digesting them ( that's optimistic ) and they are worse for you than saturated fats which are found in animal products and also raise cholesterol. While Polyunsaturated and Monounsaturated fats which are found in plant and fish products have been found to lower LDL and HDL cholesterol, once you batter and deep fry that healthy little fish he becomes an unhealthy fish wrapped in a blanked of saturated fat with the potential of having trans fats as well.

A NEW LIFESTYLE

Eating by today's standards and dining on most recently seen commercials will inevitably take a toll in one way or another, if not today, tomorrow, if not by causing obesity; by causing poor health or worse, heart attack. It is not sad or frightening when you think about how easy it is to avoid. Adapting better eating and lifestyle habits is a must. I have found a way of eating that is no huge secret and is not out of reach for anybody, it's as simple as walking around in the produce section for five minutes once every couple weeks and picking up supplies.

I was told as a kid in junior high that if a person was stranded in the desert with nothing but a head of cabbage or two that he could survive with that alone and need no water or other nutrients. Not willing to try it, I never verified it. Even if it was a bad rumor, the lifestyle program I am going to explain does not hinge upon it. Vegetables are full of water, vitamins, fiber and other nutrients. In the not too distant past I decided that I was too far over weight and my declining health could not be explained by many different doctors, so I took it upon myself to get back to basics and clean out my system from all the modern foods and fattening things I was pumping into it. So I was off to the grocery store... I picked up every vegetable that I liked and some I didn't even recognize for the sake of having a wide enough variety to be sure not to get bored with the brainstorm at hand. Once I got home, I took out two large salad bowls and begun chopping vegetables into them, first the Cabbage, then Asparagus, Zucchini, Bell Pepper, Green Beans, Cucumber, Radishes, Celery, Green Onions, Parsnips, Daikon root and Yellow Squash. Once everything was chopped I then put the empty bowl over the bowl full of chopped vegetables and shook well resulting in a salad as pictured below. ( Note: I do not use Iceberg lettuce and other forms of Lettuce due their wilting way before the rest of the vegetables )

For the next few weeks I ate a small salad in the morning, drank plenty of water during the day and had a salad in the evening. Since I cut out fatty foods, most carbohydrates, sodas, and alcohol, I was losing weight at an impressive five to seven pounds per week. Medically speaking, I was able to stop taking the medicine i had been taking for years to keep stomach acids under control ( Prevacid® ) after four days of starting the diet, I don't know how I knew I could, it was just a hunch I guess. After checking in with doctors, they had me start taking Vitamin D and Calcium to maintain healthy bones. Other than that, I got a clean bill of health.

Nearly three months had passed and I lost 37 pounds. Along the way I started to crave protein and treats so I found imitation crab and Lobster meat in the store, it has no fat very little calories and is delicious at the bottom of the salads. Equally interesting and tasty at the top of the salads I began putting dried Peas, dried onions and dried Carrots among other dried vegetables, the only trouble there was finding the brand of vegetables I had discovered that do not add any chemicals and are not coated in sugar or deep fried. Now that I have established the weight I want to be, I throw in a piece of fruit here and there, eat less than I used to, and instead of not eating during the day and having a dinner that was way too large, I eat better, feel better and feel better about myself. I am very content with the new found me.

Credit where credit is due, all imitation crab and Lobster are not created equal. The brand I find the most tasteful is Trans-Ocean® and can be found in your local Wal-Mart® and most grocery stores. As for the dried veggies, they are made by Just Tomatoes® and I sell them at reasonable prices on the HEALTHY TREATS page of this website to make it easy for people who adopt this lifestyle to obtain that may live in a rural area or who want to save money compared to the local health food store.

Last but certainly not least, Exercise. Though it is not required in this program, it definitely helps immensely. 30 minutes of good cardio vascular exercise burns 3-700 calories at a time and the more your body burns up the calories it takes in, the less there are left over to be turned into fat. My exercise of choice is an elliptical and with the help of an Ipod, I run for 30 minutes with a 5 minute cool down pace afterwards and average 400 calories burnt each time. On days that I exercise, I have more energy, more productivity and am much more alert than I am on days that I don't get a chance to exercise. So whether you're running around the block, running up and down the stairs, walking at a brisk pace, walking / running on a treadmill, or just doing calisthenics around the house. Be sure to exercise four to five days a week