New Year Resolution Suggestions

If you've not yet decided on your New Year Resolution, here are some suggestions that will benefit the health of your body, the efficiency of your brain and the happiness of your spirit:

1) Give up dieting. It is a major cause of ill-health and depression. Dieting to try to lose excess weight is ineffective, unnecessary and harmful. Calorie counting and advice about increasing exercise and reducing fat intake to reduce obesity are ineffective, counter-productive and often damaging. - See the article in the British Medical Journal of November 2003 http://www.bmj.com/content/327/7423/1085.full for actual research on what happens when this advice is followed! - Over 800 obese adults were put on energy deficit diets, given diet sheets and plenty of instruction and help from trained staff, and apparently, visited fortnightly for a year, at the end of which they had GAINED weight! This mirrors the real experience of obese people, viz. - dieting makes you fat.

It is commonly accepted now, except by the 'experts', that less than 5% of dieters actually lose weight, and most gain weight as a result of dieting. - Even the ones who manage to lose weight do not usually improve their health. - See http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2005/jun/27/sciencenews.research for a report in The Guardian of Monday, June 27th 2005. It is about a huge research study of nearly 3000 people over a period of 18 years. The study found that overweight people who diet to reach a healthier weight are more likely to die young than those who remain fat. It also found that dieting causes physiological damage that in the long term can outweigh the benefits of the weight loss.

2) Seriously cut down on salt and salty food.

3) Avoid prescription drugs, especially antidepressants, steroids and painkillers, unless they really are necessary and you have checked out their side-effects. The adverse effects of pharmaceutical drugs are often far more damaging than the problem for which they have been prescribed.

I wish you better health, success and happiness in this New Year of 2012!