I had an epiphany this morning.  The difficulty that people (including me, by the way) have with weight control is, that they try various methods to "control" their diet.  Well, you are fighting a hard-wired, millenia old genetic blueprint that is programmed for survival.  Your body wants energy, and it wants to store it for later when there is plenty available.  You have to give it what it needs, so you stop craving stupid things like ice cream, chips, etc. Your body recognizes these as sources of quick energy.  When you want something like this, you have to "re-learn" how to satisfy your body's request.  When there is an energy source available, if the body feels the need, it will DIRECT you to obtain that energy.  If you keep your body fueled up on good, long lasting food, particularly protein, you will see a much reduced desire for the crap that you have been eating.  Snacking on carrots is a waste of time.  They provide virtually no energy.  Neither do celery, broccoli, etc.  All of those are great sources of vitamins, etc., and you should include them in your diet, but when your body wants FOOD, go for the protein.

I talked to a woman today who had financial problems. She was complaining that if her relatives didn't give her help, she wouldn't have food to eat. She was AT LEAST 150 pounds overweight, and could barely breathe because of it. She was getting plenty of calories from somewhere. Sounds mean, right? I know. It sounded mean to me when I wrote it, too. It just illustrates the problems with our society, though. The absolute poorest in this country still have such an easy physical lifestyle that the fat just keeps packing on. Ironically, the food that seems to be the easiest to get cheaply in large quantities is loaded with carbohydrates. That is exactly the WRONG thing that someone needs nutritionally.

In short, don't let yourself fall into this woman's trap. Earn your food every day, and pick foods to which your ancestors had access. Your body will love you for it, and will, almost immediately, begin to regulate itself back to normal proportions. Send it the message that the hunt for food is on, and the feasting is over.

When it comes to weight management, mind-set is everything. The feeling of hunger is something most of us never really experience. Those few individuals who have become stranded, without access to nourishment for an extended period of time can tell us what it is really like. Those pangs at 11:30 am when your breakfast begins to wear off are just an early warning signal to Ogg. Time to start looking for food. If you ignore them for a while, they subside. If you begin to feel a drop in energy, or weak or shaky, then your body is telling you that it is necessary for you to find something to eat, or it will go into energy preservation mode. Hunger pangs are not a bad thing. If you keep stuffing the furnace with fuel, you never even get a chance for your body to tell you that it's finished digesting the last load. Give it a little time to burn off breakfast before you stoke the burner with lunch.

These sensations are something you can learn to look forward to, even enjoy to some extent, as your body puts you in touch with your ancestry. Looking for food isn't a challenge to us anymore, so we need to simulate it. If you can, wait an hour after the first pangs of hunger hit. Take a walk, do something a little bit physical, so Ogg can earn his lunch. If you run to the vending machine and eat a package of cookies the first time you get a twinge of hunger, your body will shrug it's figurative shoulders and happily digest the quick sugar that you have just ingested. A few minutes later, the old hunger will be back, though, along with a "sugar crash" as your insulin levels shoot up to deal with the unexpected sugar equivalent of a dozen bananas or more.

Substitute something close to what old Ogg would have had access to. Fruit, nuts, vegetables and meat.

So our mantra of the day: "WWOD" What would Ogg do?"

I have a friend who tries every fad diet that they can find. Books, Internet, you name it. They all end up in failure and cost money. Today that friend is on the third day of the "detox" phase that is supposed to rid your body of all of its toxins in order for you to lose weight. You have to drink this stuff that's some kind of mixture of algae and berries, and, I think, cabbage. This friend is thrilled today because of a 3lb. weight loss in 3 days! YaaaaYYYYY!!!! Well, ...............duh! You drink nothing but cabbage juice and algae for 3 days and, yeah, you're bound to lose some weight. The problem is that a crap diet like that is not sustainable, nor healthy. This friend did not want to hear that the weight loss was just an initial drop from eating nothing and drinking cabbage juice. Drinking just that stuff=less caloric intake=initial weight loss. So much for the book that cost, I don't know, 20-30-50 bucks!

Multiply this times the number of overweight people in our society, and you see the potential for abuse. Everybody, including my friend, is looking for the "magic bullet" that will be the end all cure all for FAT. It won't! It is just a reaction from our bodies from too much food intake. We store it for future need. The trouble is, the future need never arrives in our advanced society, so everybody just keeps getting fatter! Eat less, move around more. Lose weight and you don't have to drink cabbage juice and algae! Ogg no like cabbage juice!

It occurred to me this morning that our bodies will react well if we simply don't use modern "labor-saving devices" when we don't need to. If you live 10 miles from work, you probably need transportation. If your office is on the 10th floor, though, you don't need to take the elevator. Take the stairs, and do it regularly. Once will do you no good. 10 times and you will start to feel good. Take any opportunity to burn up some of those calories. Little amounts burned add up, just as do little amounts consumed.