Fit For Life: It’s All in Your Head…

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Saturday, April 18, 2015

Matt Espeut, GoLocalWorcester Health +Lifestyle Contributor

Physically, we are one of the most inferior species alive. Our skin is easily penetrable, we can’t adapt to our surroundings when seasons change, our throats and heads are exposed to danger, and we can’t really protect ourselves without some sort of weaponry. Think about living in the wild - fighting a lion, or wild boar with your bare hands, or wrestling a gorilla - see what I mean? Our survival as a species has been due to the evolution of our brains – our intelligence.  Adaptation hasn’t happened in the way it usually does for most species. We don't grow thicker fur in the winter, nor do we shed in the summer. We don’t hibernate for an entire season, though with these winters lately, it seems like a good idea.  We survive because we are able to create ways to survive in our element. We’re outsmarting the elements. We build shelters, often using up valuable natural resources to do so.  At one time, and still today, we depend on the use of toxic elements to provide heat. We clothe ourselves with a lot of synthetic clothing, made with toxic dyes, to keep us warm.  You don’t seem animals putting on sweaters and gloves, or hiding in heated shelters to escape the cold, but we need to. We can't fly south, either – at least under our own natural abilities.  So instead, we figured out how to fly using giant flying machines that also use mass amounts of toxic fuel, and leave toxic emissions in our atmosphere, all in our quest to escape colder climates. 

Adaptation & Extinction

Once again, our intelligence and abilities have created ways for us to survive as a species. So why are we sicker, heavier, less athletic, and overall becoming less healthy as a species? Our intelligence levels seem to be diminishing over time, because we do know better, yet we continue to find ways to push ourselves into extinction. Let me elaborate. 

A few years ago, the state of California put a bill out for vote that would require food companies to list the fact that GMOs were present in their products. That got shot down. Instead, food companies that do not use GMOs have to label their products GMO free, so we can avoid the unhealthy ingredients in our food supply.  While I’m not a scientist, I spend a lot of time looking at the types of food we eat – and I don’t look at the front of the package – I look at the back.  I read ingredients.  And I look for food source information.  GMOs, in my opinion, are polluting our food supply chain.  And what’s more, is once the origins of our food – the seed – get modified, there is literally no going back.  If we, as a species, have evolved our brains to know how to survive, then we should know that we don’t want to eat food modified or made in a lab with artificial, or genetically modified ingredients in them. Again, I ask, if we are so smart, why didn’t this bill pass? Why aren’t we aggressively going after a natural food supply chain?  Instead, we are allowing food manufacturers to continue to put additives and chemicals in our food supply, and manipulate the industry.  We allow them to manipulate our minds and our buying behaviors, too.

Remember the proposed ban in New York City on the Big Gulp soda?  The big guns – the food companies – came out and convinced us that somehow our rights were being violated, and the ban never happened. We are facing close to a 35% obesity rate in this country, and soda and sugary foods are the main reason why. We’ve focused so much on fat – saturated, trans, mono, and good/bad fats – that we have overlooked the supreme violator in our diets – sugar.  

How smart are you?

But we are the most intelligent species, right?  We’re watching our food supply be contaminated either by natural substances such as sugar or by pesticides and even genetically altering the makeup of the origins of our foods.  We’re not listening to the great minds we spend so much educating. We’re not listening to what is even greater – our instinct. Eating natural foods is safer. Avoiding medication when you can do things, naturally, to be well, is better. The concept of taking a pill to lower our cholesterol, or meds to maintain our sugar levels and fight diabetes, is one that has become mainstream – and we know that the majority of our greatest diseases are lifestyle controllable. Preventable. Yet, we don’t listen to our great minds enough.  We avoid listening to our instinctual voices.  We are caught up in the easy fix to our problems. And, in trying to make life easier, we have made it harder and more troubling to our planet and future generations. 

I don’t know what is happening, or why. We as humans are an inferior species on many levels, but our intelligence has allowed us to survive, and thrive. Are we going backwards?  Cloning fish, manufacturing food, eating stuff we know will make us sick. We take pills that disclose the harmful side effects, literally shouting them at us over the pretty television commercials of people sitting in bathtubs looking at sunsets. We’re doing irreparable harm to our soils, and oceans. Companies are in a war fighting advocates that try to keep us safe and healthy. With the internet, and all the information out there, ignorance is no longer an excuse. In the end, it is an individual decision each of us must make for ourselves and our family.  Laws and regulations will only do so much.  So I ask you, if you are so smart, why aren’t you healthy?  And what are you going to do about it – today?

Matt Espeut, GoLocal's Health & Lifestyle Contributor has been a personal trainer and health & fitnesss consultant for over 25 years. He is the owner of Fitness Profiles, a one on one, and small group personal training company, as well as Providence Fit Body Boot Camp, located at 1284 North Main St., on the Providence/Pawtucket line. You can reach Matt at (401) 453-3200; on Facebook at "Matt Espeut", and on Twitter at @MattEspeut. "We’re all in this life together – let’s make it a healthy one!"

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