After an exhaustive multi-million dollar health study, the government concluded that people would live longer if they did not die sooner.
The key to a long and healthy life is diet, no doubt about it.
How you eat influences your health, as well as your figure.
I am not going to espouse this diet or that diet, or show you how you can fit into the dress or suit you wore at your senior prom, or explain how to lose those pounds and keep them off.
The hundreds of diet books and articles can do that.
Besides, I cannot possibly anticipate all the individual tastes, habits and lifestyles of those reading this article.
What I will do is blast those myths that say the more years you put on, the more pounds you put on; and show you how a combination of good eating (as much as you want), nutritional supplementation and easy exercise will keep you tone, trim and most importantly, healthy.
Now matter how skinny you are, of you are not healthy, you won't look good.
My goal here is to give you the tools and information so you can be proud of who you are and what you see in the mirror every day.
Eight loss really is a misnomer.
Your goal is not to lose weight, but to gain muscle and lose fat.
To this end, I direct this article.
Whether they are the love handles diplomatically described by the husbands of overweight wives or the beer bellies on barflies, the amount of fat on the body can be traced to the amount of fat engorging the liver and encircling the heart, threatening to choke them off.
First let's begin with a lesson on fat.
The best way to beat an adversary is to understand its weaknesses and its strengths.
There are good fats and bad fats.
The good fats remove excess glucose, cholesterol and triglycerides from the bloodstream until needed.
They go by a variety of names and can be confusing.
You hear a lot about PUFAs, or polyunsaturated fatty acids.
PUFAs are a genetic term for all the essential fatty acids (EFAs).
They say essential because they cannot be made by the body and must be eaten in the diet.
They are required for growth, development and maintenance of cell membranes, including those of the central nervous system.
A deficiency of EFAs has been linked to heart disease, skin problems, mental problems and even multiple sclerosis.
In a nutshell, they are oils.
The best food sources of EFAs are the oils from nuts and seeds.
In any diet, care should be taken to include recipes rich in olive oil, flaxseed oil, walnut oil and wheat germ oil, among others.
EFAS are important in fat metabolism.
Without them, fat could not be converted into glucose.
Without them, the body stores the fat it should be converting to glucose.
Without glucose, you become diabetic.
In an article in the Journal of Nutritional Medicine stresses the importance of gamma linolenic acid for fat assimilation and to boost the immune system.
Studies have shown that aggressive GLA supplementation in genetically obese people will result in gradual but substantial weight loss for about half of th test subjects-without dieting! The best source of gamma linolenic acid is borage oil, which can be purchased in capsule form in health food stores.