Obesity is out of control. 71 percent of North Americans are overweight, 40 percent are considered obese.
What’s worse – the trend is not getting better despite everyone trying to diet.
The sad part is that the awareness and knowledge to put you on a life long path to wellness has existed for many years. The truth is out there, it is just hard to find!
The 1 minute primer
The goal of this site is to provide insight into how and why we get fat. This is not a simple topic. It is easy to become overwhelmed by the sheer volume of information. Worse, much of the published information is supported by biased research. The volume of information and the bias research exacerbates the lack of consensus among health professionals as to the real reasons why we get fat.
AnAverageJoes believes there are five interrelated keys to unlock long term weight loss and to put you on the path to wellness. All five keys are required, or the lost weight will return and often more weight gain will result. From experience, few health professionals understand what are the five keys, let alone how they interrelate. The 5 keys are hormones, GI tract, inflammation, intermittent fasting and the impact of starvation on your basal metabolic rate.
What’s unique about this site is how the wellness information is correlated to draw conclusions very different from those found in the mainstream health media. The information is from ”open source” medical research and is focused on removing implements to wellness, not exotic and often expensive diet and vitamin supplements. Understanding how the 5 keys impacts your wellness is guaranteed to be life changing. Life changing can mean different things to different people. For some it might be improved physical mobility. For many it will be a reduction of the normal aches and pains that we have been told to accept as we age. Most will appreciate just feeling better. The first step in the quest for life changing wellness is making a choice.
Believe it or not you have choices when it comes to your health and wellness but time is limited. Once acute systematic inflammation occurs wait too long and no modern drug will significantly improve your quality of life. Health once lost knows no social boundaries, health care for the rich and the poor may vastly differ however, the end result is always the same. Until that day happens to the best of your abilities you want to keep every health option open and maintain the necessary health to support your lifestyle. Ask yourself, would you rather be your own health advocate or let some faceless bureaucrat make all your health decisions for you?
AnAverageJoes encourages everyone to explore this site to find their own health truths. You will discover some truths are easier to follow than others. Once you start to see results what you thought was hard will become easy and the impossible doable. Finding what works for you is the true path to wellness. As the German philosopher Schopenhauer said, “All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.
If you want to skip the “why and how” we get fat and start right away on the action plan, follow this link. [Wellness action plan]
why should I care?
- The information on this site will change your life.
- Awareness and understanding of why and how we get fat.
- Understand why all diets fail and what you have to do to make them work.
- Lose up to twenty pounds a month with one hour a day of light exercise.
- Reduce chronic systemic inflammation.
- Feel and look twenty years younger. Caveat – only works if you are over 40.
- Have more energy.
- Improve your memory.
- Improve your quality of life.
- Do the things you gave up because you felt old.
- If you are being treated for a chronic disease, improve the odds for a positive outcome.
- Reduce the number and quantity of your current medications.
- No expensive foods, supplements or exercise equipment to buy.
- No annoying emails, membership or registration required.
- Sounds too good to be true, there has to be an angle. Afraid not…the burden of proof is in the results.
- What you need to succeed…an open mind and the willingness to try.
Commonly heard health excuses
Not happy with my health but there is nothing that I can do.
- Believe it or not you have the power to make changes.
Can’t turn back time. It’s a fact of life that your health will worsen with age.
- Maybe…what would you say if you could feel twenty years younger? Remove what is making you ill and the body has a near miraculous ability to heal itself.
I did what my health professional told me.
- Bad advice caused your health issues. If you expect the same advice to now fix you…that’s Einstein’s definition of insanity.
I trust my health professionals…and you should.
- However, there are many sources of truth. More importantly, seek out the truth that works for you.
So much to learn.
- Yep, the quest for wellness can be a steep learning curve. However, applying the basic principles is doable for everyone.
I don’t need to change my health habits.
- Don’t wait for a health crisis to cause permanent damage.
Motivation is hard because dieting is hard.
- There is no getting around this, it takes effort.
Goal
Use existing health knowledge in new ways to improve wellness. In simple terms: “Feel young but die at an old age.”
What you eat, when you eat, and what you eat…ate are critical components to meeting the goal.
If you want to skip how and why we become fat and jump right into your wellness quest click [here].
Now to navigate this website
- For each page that has more than 3 topics there is a “pull down” table of contents in the left hand corner and a [Top] or arrow button at the bottom of the topic to jump to the beginning of a page.
- The main menu is duplicated on the bottom of each page.
- Five Keys and Wellness-Action Plan have both a master page and numerous sub-pages. Hover over the menu topic to see the sub pages and click on the menu topic to navigate to the main page.
- Internal links which navigate to another AnAverageJoes page will look like this [five keys]
- External links will look like this [Link to… ] and will open in a new window.
The diet controversy
The focus of this site is to provide in a clear and concise format, information on how and why we get fat. This awareness and understanding will aid you on your quest to become your own health advocate. Never forget diet and losing weight are controversial topics. For years, weight loss has been ruled by the “eat less,” “exercise more,” “fat is bad” school of thought. In AnAverageJoes opinion, we could have not been more wrong.
How can AnAverageJoes make such a claim? Simple, empirical evidence shows that in the last fifty years more than 71+ percent of the western population is now considered overweight or obese. This trend is now occurring in China and India. Places that in the past had more problems with starvation than obesity. These are by far the best factual examples that prove beyond any reasonable doubt the traditional approaches to dieting and what constitutes healthy food are seriously wrong. What changed? The answer is contained in two words, sugars in highly processed foods causing elevated insulin levels and lectins causing inflammation.
It is not much of a mystery that sugar and hidden sugars will cause weight gain, but lectins being a cause of weight gain is controversial. Lectins are proteins found in many vegetables which we have always assumed are good for us. Here’s the problem…many lectins and GMO foods are treated by your body as “mild poisons.” These mild poisons cause inflammation. Any time inflammation occurs the body will conserve energy in the form of fat. The trouble with low level inflammation in healthy people is the condition can persist for years before significant medical problems arise. The trip wire that alerts us to the existence of the condition are those individuals who have compromised immune systems who by the very nature of their disease are more sensitive to foods and environmental toxins. Bottom line, if your suffer from either an over production of insulin or systemic inflammation then controlling your weight is problematic. Dr Eric Berg on his popular youtube channel likes to quote, “Don’t lose weight to become healthy, become healthy to lose weight.”
AnAverageJoes thinks he is on to something.
To quote Albert Einstein, “We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”
Cui Bono "Who benefits"
It’s a fact that the diet concept of “eat less, move more” will fail long term 99% of the time. Not a great track record. Who benefits? Everyone involved in the diet industry.
Have you ever noticed that everyone selling a diet or lifestyle book has some other, “snake oil” product to hawk? The diet industry is $70B per year in North America alone. Do you really think that the industry really wants you to succeed? Or perhaps, the vendor wants you to come back time-and-time again to purchase additional expensive products and services. Once hooked on dieting, you must come back because the weight lost always returns and usually brings friends. The material on this site will help you break the yo-yo diet cycle. Better yet, it is free! A wise man once said, “you get what you pay for.” Can’t argue that point. So AnAverageJoes advice is to use the information provided to determine your own health truths.
Challenge
So much health information is available, much of it contradictory. The truth is out there but it is damn hard to find. If you do find a truth, then who’s truth did you find?
Point of view is important as there is a ton of bias in the health industry, both for and against how to achieve wellness. A single definition for what is wellness in today’s modern society is made even more difficult due to social media. Social media provides the means for everyone to express an opinion no matter what their background. Finding unbiased health information is tough due to the sheer volume of available sources. Another challenge is that health research takes on the bias of the funding source. Depending on who funds the research everything you eat is both bad and good for you.
Don’t believe there is bias in health research. AnAverageJoes is old enough to remember when smoking was recommended by the AMA as part of a healthy lifestyle to lose weight and reduce stress in the 50s and 60s. The truth is out there, it is just damn hard to find.
AnAverageJoes 7 Principles in the quest for wellness
1. Wellness is a journey not a destination.
2. The definition of success will change as we age.
3. “Natural forces within us are the true healers of disease.” (This is not an original concept, a dude by the name of Hippocrates came up with it.)
4. You don’t have to know all the in/outs or medical reasons why something works, only that it does. More importantly, does it work for you?
5. There are many paths to wellness. Always remain flexibility to new ideas and information.
6. One can talk about wellness or one can think about wellness or we can apply some fuzzy logic and do something! (Fuzzy logic is a perfect fit for the varied complexities of wellness as it is designed to handle the concept of partial truths. Partial truths will always happen in the quest for wellness due to differences in body types, environmental conditions and human behaviors.)
7. You are your own best health advocate.
Seeing is believing
To validate the [five keys] to weight loss AnAverageJoes has either experimented on myself, family, friends or people that AnAverageJoes knows. This approach is both good and bad.
The upside, nothing in AnAverageJoes quest for health is very expensive nor exotic. The downside, there are many other possible remedies and foods that could benefit your health that AnAverageJoes didn’t get an opportunity to examine. That’s where the idea of AnAverageJoes came from. While the opinions offered aren’t fancy nor costly they will work for nearly everyone.
The [five keys] will not only help you lose weight, they are beneficial to your health no matter what the medical issue. How is that possible?
While everyone is unique, we are not that unique. The ancient Greek physician Hippocrates believed good health started with removing impediments that prevent the body from healing itself. So AnAverageJoes focus is more about taking harmful things out of your diet and environment than putting things in.
There is one caveat, forget to put oil in your car engine and when it seizes no matter how many times you change the oil afterwards the motor is still shot. The same applies to your body, destroy your organs you will need new ones. The moral of the story – start your quest for better health before catastrophic failure occurs.
At AnAverageJoes the focus is on healthy outcomes. The exact science of how and why the food, exercise, supplement or protocol works is left to others to argue. There is no intent to provide independent “hard science” proof which at best is controversial and at worse gets me in trouble for offering medical advice without a license. For the “hard science” AnAverageJoes depends on trusted medical sources. The sources will always be made available. You can [research] the same material that AnAverageJoes uses and draw your own conclusions.