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The office will be closed Thursday November 6th and Friday November 7th for all services.
Oct 29. 2014
Why Dieting Doesn't Work
Hi ,
 By now we have all heard that dieting doesn't work. The phrase goes in one ear and out the other. At the same time we see amazing photos of our favorite media stars in periodicals at the checkout stand at the grocery store proclaiming how they lost 20 pounds in only two weeks with the amazing new pomegranate and sardine diet. Every magazine at the checkout counter either tells us about a new diet or how to make an overly decadent calorie filled dessert.
So what does it mean when they say dieting does not work? Diets obviously cause weight loss for some people - or do they? It all comes down to what you mean by the word "work". Can a diet cause you to lose 10-20-30 pounds? Yes! Does that weight stay off? No!
I was reading a scholarly article last week on why, after so many years of researching weight loss, no progress has been made. The gist of the article is that dieting is stressful and therefore not sustainable. While there are lots of methods to achieve short-term weight loss, none of them produce sustained weight loss. People always bounce right back up in weight, plus a few pounds, within a year of loosing their weight from dieting.
The article went on to suggest that maybe weight loss is a foolish goal. The real goal should be health at any weight. While I agree that health is the most important focus, the authors are, in my opinion, missing the reason weight gain is associated with poor health. It is because the lifestyle choices that caused the weight gain, most of the time, are the same choices that produce poor health. We need to look deeper at the fundamental consciousness processes that produce weight gain.
Many years ago a study was done on a population of obese patients in comparison to normal weight patients. Both were given a bowl of vanilla ice cream spiked with quinine, which made the ice cream extremely bitter. They measured how much ice cream each group ate. The normal weight folks tasted one bite and spit it out - that was it for them. The obese group would make a nasty face while eating the ice cream initially, but would continue eating. Essentially the obese group stopped tasting the bitter flavor in a few moments, while the normal group rejected the bitter ice cream.
Numerous other studies found multiple ways in which obese people fundamentally don't feel or recognize feedback cues from their bodies. They stop tasting what they are eating after just a few bites. They don't know where their body is in space. They don't feel internal body cues that tell them when they are full. They simply don't pay attention to their bodies.
The second factor the studies discovered is that obese people tend to confuse emotional stress with hunger. They eat to relieve stress. Slim people feel their stress and deal with it in different ways. Many often actually lose their appetite when they are stressed. This is a healthy response because stress will shut down your digestion and any food you eat will basically turn to poison in your gut.
So two key critical differences between being naturally thin and being obese are the ability to feel when you are hungry and when you are full, and the ability to distinguish between emotional hunger and physical hunger. Obese people can't do either effectively.
I believe this is a key, if not the actual underlying cause, of much of the obesity in America today. Our culture both pushes us and rewards us for disassociating from our bodily sensations like natural hunger. We are taught to eat by the clock, not when we are hungry. We are taught what to eat rather than listen to the wisdom of our body telling us what we need and when. And we are taught to be good consumers of all the high profit convenient fake foods that screw up our metabolism with too much sugar and rancid oils.
The body's healthy needs and wants have been distorted by the onslaught of powerful addictive food chemicals. Due to the preponderance of addictive foods, our conscious mind can no longer feel what it needs, any more than a heroin junky can feel what he or she needs in the way of good food. I propose that we reverse this pattern of ill health by relearning to listen to the wisdom of our body. To do this we need a helping hand.
We use such a helping hand in the office all day long. That helping hand is called muscle testing. We can test what foods work for you moment to moment and what foods do not work. We test vitamins and herbs. We test feelings. We access the innate wisdom of the body and open the depths of the subconscious mind. But what you need is the ability to muscle test yourself at any time. You need an external objective read on what your body is trying to tell you. We have lost touch with our conscious access to our inner wisdom. We need to reestablish that connection in a way that we can trust until we can feel that flow of information directly once again.
Muscle testing, as I use it in the office, is more art than science, as I am busy catching small changes in the speed of muscle engagement and muscle fiber recruitment. As those of you who are patients know, when I challenge a joint or reflex point, the change in your ability to hold the muscle strong is dramatic. I do at least a thousand muscle tests each day so I am fairly skilled at it. But there is also a gross loss of maximum muscle strength that is also present that can easily be measured. Using a grip strength tester your hand strength normally might be 60 pounds. If I challenge an inflamed joint then test your grip strength it might drop to only 40 pounds. You will see the same drop in strength if you state a lie, such as my name is Jack, when it really is Sally.
Would you like to be able to muscle test at home? I have discovered a home muscle testing product that will allow you to do your own testing any time, any place. With this tool you will be able to ask yourself "Am I physically hungry now?" or "Am I emotionally hungry now?" or even simply "Am I hungry now?". You can immediately see the truth in your body when you ask those questions. This gives you a way to know for certain whether your body wants to eat, or is only stressed and looking for a food drug to use to escape from the uncomfortable feelings. This is the helping hand we need to reestablish communication with our bodies.
Yes I hear a couple of you ask "So what am I supposed to do with the uncomfortable feelings?" I will discuss this in later newsletters. There are techniques for releasing the feelings sometimes without effort. Other times you have to make conscious growth changes.
The device is called a True Tester and only costs $30. You simply place the device between your thumb and either index or second finger and squeeze it together as hard as you can. It has a marker ring on the scale that you set to the top of the scale when you start. Make a true statement and squeeze. The ring will be pushed down to the high point for you on the scale of 1 to 11. Now make a false statement and see how far the tube is able to slide down. I find that false statements are at least 2 - 3 points weaker than true statements. Now you can ask your body the questions about hunger. You can also test what supplements you need that day and check to see if you have a negative reaction to any particular food. It is especially useful to take the tester with you to the health food store to test what supplements to buy.
A couple fine points when testing. Always be looking down while you are testing. This will give the most accurate results. When you are looking up and to the side, you are accessing your imagination, so you may be accessing made up information. You can only test what is a reality in  your body and what your subconscious beliefs are. You are testing you, not the outer world reality. So this tool does not work to test big world stuff like stock market picks or horse race winners. Never the less, your subconscious contains a lot of information you are not aware of that you can access.
I believe this technology gives us a whole new way to address food related issues in our lives. For weight loss, the number one reason we get overweight is because of emotional, unconscious eating. This tool brings consciousness back into the equation so we can make different choices. Different choices produce different results. We can test and know right now if a food is good for us, and if it is even wanted by our body now. We can test how much our body wants of each good food. Every couple bites we can ask "Am I full now?" So often we have no clue when our body has had enough.
Yes, you can test yourself at home just like we do in the office - with the True Tester.
Enjoy,
David
Ultrasound Physical Therapy
Now available in the office
Tuesday afternoons and Fridays
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