Axiom Number One - Nourish your body.

Probably the most important and least understood axiom of successful weight loss is that you have to nourish your body. The main reason why most people are overweight is that they are malnourished. In our modern grocery stores are all kinds of processed and packaged foods. The nutritional value of any food substance is inversely proportional to the amount of processing. The more a food is processed, the less nutrition is present.

Trace minerals and elements

Food grown by today's commercial methods are not grown in healthy soil. The soil is essentially dead and there is no life (nitrogen)sources in that soil. The nitrogen is added to the soil as liquid fertilizer along with a lot of not so good for your health -pesticides. This approach to farming may produce some great harvests, by weight, but not by nutrition standards. A lot of what the human body needs is lost in this type of food production.

Incomplete foods

When you eat a lot of heavily processed food grown in dead soil you do not get all the nutrients that the human body needs. You end up hungry all the time so you eat more of the same foods. In addition to being incomplete foods, they more often than not have added sweeteners and sometimes even added chemicals like aspartame (Nutrasweet). The body has to do something with all the added incomplete calories so it turns them into fat.

Nutritional density

When you eat whole foods that have been grown in soil that has not been depleted by the commercial farming process, you are getting all the nutrients that you need. You finish a meal and feel satisfied. Often when you finish a really whole and complete meal you end up feeling like you don't need to eat for a week or so. On the other hand, when you eat incomplete foods, you are usually hungry as soon as your stomach empties, about thirty minutes.

Why organic is cheaper

While good organic produce may cost more than the non-organic variety, it is still cheaper to eat organic. This is because the organic foods actually satisfy you and will turn off your hunger. The non-organic foods do not turn off your hunger and usually you end up eating a lot more of them, and seem to be always hungry. This is not to mention all the pesticides that are included in the non-organic foods. Chemotherapy is not cheap these days.

The wrong kind of weight loss

Promises of lost pounds in weeks are rampant. The problem with all of these is that the biochemistry of the human takes time to put weight on -and to take it off. You may drop a few pounds on some low "carbohydrate diet" but you are only losing water and lean muscle mass, exactly what you don't want to lose. While the scale may be important, your health and nutrition are much more important. A diet consisting of whole organic fruits, vegetables and complex carbohydrates with no added sweeteners will nourish your body while you lose weight without hunger.

Summary

The mainstay of any successful diet program has to be feeding the human body what it needs. In order to accomplish that today, you have to eat organic whole foods, preferably one good meal a day. This will go a long way to slow down your appetite and make it easier to resist all those tempting nutritionally bereft hollow calories out there.

The MericleDiet ... Is your clear and easy path to whole food organic meals on short notice. To visit the MericleDiet follow the link below:

http://www.DrMericle.com

Please stay tuned for the next installment in this series -Control Your Hunger.

Thanks for your time.

Copyright ? John Mericle 2005 All Rights Reserved

DrMericle.com is devoted to achieving optimal health and peak performance through diet and lifestyle change. Dr. Mericle brings together a unique blend of formal training in organic chemistry and biochemistry, medical education, 29 marathons, 3 Hawaii Ironman competitions and a lot of practical real life experience.