Is The Cost of Eating Healthy Foods a Legitimate Excuse?

One of the common excuses I hear from people who say they want to lose weight but can’t because of “blah-blah-blah” is because of the cost of eating healthy.

Commonly, this is stated by people who buy their Starbucks every morning,  and eat out breakfast, lunch and dinner at fast food joints.  There is no way that these people are spending less than I spend on an average day to eat 5 very nutritious meals a day.  My average daily expenditure is well under $10 dollars for all my meals total. 

Even on a cheap, fast food diet – it would be very difficult to eat 3 meals, let alone 5 meals for under $15.00.  The truth is that eating healthy, especially if you prepare your meals at home and take them with you, is very inexpensive.  My wife and I figured it out;  when we began to eat healthy we were saving $200-400 dollars a month by not eating fast food or low end eating out- we still have occasional date nights at nice restaurants.

 The reality is that the cost of eating healthy is just an untrue excuse. Similarly, all excuses like cost of food, no time, bad influences or no-support are just that, excuses. 

Excuses and blame are cut from the same mold.  Neither one can exist if you are to be successful losing weight.  Excuses and blame create a prison within the mind of the person using them.  By pointing your finger at things outside of yourself as to why you just can’t lose weight, you are robbing yourself of power you possess.  This power - your personal power is the very key to personal freedom and permanent weight loss. 

Even when you lose weight on a diet and then gain the weight back; if you blame that diet for your lost result, then you are positioning yourself in your prison as a victim. In my past, I lost and gained weight back on seven different diets, so I know how easy it is to play the blame game.
So how did I begin the process of changing my result? I took responsibility!

Permanent weight loss will never be achieved until you take responsibility for your life and your health.

The second you start to tell yourself that you and you alone are responsible for your health and the weight your presently have, you will get your power back.  By taking responsibility for your present state of health, you place the responsibility for action likewise upon yourself and will start actively finding a way to move boldly towards your goal! 

When you blame, make excuses or justify – you accomplish the other, weakening your position and shutting down appropriate action!

Taking responsibility for your health and your results are one of the keys to permanent change and successful weight loss!

Here is something that you should begin to say to yourself with emotion everyday!

“ I am responsible for my health, I am responsible for my feelings, I am responsible for my weight loss results!” 

Try repeating that 5-10 times each day and see if your life doesn’t change dramatically!

What You Must Know before You Switch to Veganism - as seen on Oprah!

I watched the Oprah Show some time back.  The guest was the wife of a personal friend of Oprahs’ who was preaching the benefits of a vegan lifestyle.  I say preaching because vegans certainly do take a hard lined, almost evangelical stance to their diet.  I knew that I needed to comment because people commonly don’t question or judge the message; they only judge the messenger.

When Oprah endorses anything, it carries some serious weight; the fact that the guest was a thin “Barbie” blonde would only add fuel to the fire.  People would inaccurately think that if they eat like her then they will look like her, people would think that this is the next dietary breakthrough.  

This guest says that she chose this lifestyle because she feels that it is healthier for her body and that it is a personal choice, she feels that it is inhumane to kill and eat animals.  

They had a representative of the meat industry there to show that the production of animal based protein is being carried out in it’s most humane way.  This representative was from Cargill one of the biggest manufacturers of meat and hamburgers in the United States.   All other meat manufacturers declined to be on the show, obvious to the fact that it would be bad for business and that they would be racked over the coals.

The video inside Cargill’s plant, showed livestock being fed high amounts of slop made up of corn, protein, fillers and anti-biotics to fatten them up..while they stand fairly stationary on a pile of dirt and manure.  It appeared not very healthy and certainly not very appetizing.  Whether you think that it is humane or not will be a personal choice for you. 

This is a good reason to try to buy your meat from organic grass-fed livestock from small farms.  

The question is really, is eating a vegan lifestyle a healthier choice.

The guest recommended that we should eat a diet of cereal and whole grains, legumes, vegetables, fruits and getting the majority of your protein from soy based products.  That’s right all protein sources were soy protein sources…things like; tofu, soy sausages, soy hamburgers, soy yogurt, soy everything.   That brings me to my 3 points.

1. A recent study looked at the effects of eating soy products on the fertility in men.  Here is what they found.  Eating just ½ a serving of soy products in a day decreases a man’s sperm count up to 50%!  That’s only eating ½ serving.  This gal wants you to eat much more than that.  If any of your children are boys or if you are a man and are planning on having kids, or if you are planning on having kids with your husband – stay away from the soy! 

2. Another recent review study looked back at 18 previous studies to look at the connection between soy products, increased estrogen and breast cancer.  13 were conclusive that dietary soy products increase estrogen and the risk of developing breast cancer.  5 tried to prove that eating soy products actually prevented breast cancer.  3 of those failed to prove their hypothesis and the other 2 showed that Asian woman who began eating high amounts of soy product in their adolescents did seem to prevent incidence of breast cancer.  But this was seen only in Asian women.  The overwhelming majority of research proves that high intake of soy products is not healthy.  Ladies, it is important to realize that anything that increases your estrogen can make you estrogen dominant.  This can mess up your progesterone levels, it can affect your mood, energy, sex drive, cycle and even heart rhythm.  

Side Note:  I have met many women whose health and cycle were in a bad way due to a vegan lifestyle.  The second we took them off of the soy products and back onto animal based protein, their cycle became regular and their health returned.

3. Animal based sources of protein are our very best or only source for a huge number of vital nutrients; including creatine, carnitine, B-vitamines especially B12, Zinc.  Animal proteins are our only source of extremely important amino-acids including Taurine, and our only source for Omega-2 fish oils of which DHA and EPA are crucial to our health.

Side note: This was a pro-vegan diet show…why was Cargill there…just to be abused.  The representative stayed positive and took a stance that we are doing our job the best and most humane way possible.  But, still I couldn’t help but scratch my head…why did this company not do what all the other meat companies that were contacted had done and just be unavailable.  To bring a camera into a slaughter house/meat packing company was asking to lose business.  But, my skepticism was rewarded…Cargill is also the biggest manufacturer of soy products in our nation.   They are also notorious for putting more fillers and junk into their products than almost all the other companies.

So, there you have it just a few things to consider before you jump into the vegan lifestyle.  Remember we have evolved eating meat over the last 2.4 million years…it is what our physiology responds best too and when mixed with vegetables, fruits, nuts, seeds, a small amount of tubors and whole grains represents our ideal diet.  Not some fake, created meat like substitute that messes up our bodies and robs us of our health.

About:  Michael Mountain is a transformational author on health, weight loss & personal growth and is featured on Amazon.com. He is the author of the Ultimate Fat Loss Solution Diet which is available presently free of charge at http://www.michael-mountain.com/.   He is also the author of Mindset for Weight Loss transformational program - a revolutionary step-by-step program designed to provide the “inner-strength strategies” to take any diet and make it effective for permanent weight loss.  This program allowed him to end his own personal 20 year struggle with weight and poor health!