The Biggest Loser has captured a nation. Watching the contestants fight the battle of the bulge while also fighting against their own minds and habits is a great spectator sport!

Each night the audience watches and listens as the contestants grunt and push and pull, desperate to lose kilos. And then there’s the public weigh-in, where a nation watches with bated breath as each contestant climbs onto the scale and assesses their self-worth (and health) by a number.

Generally there are average losses between 3-6kg for those who have put in a 'hard' effort that week. But sometimes there’s a surprise, and it comes in the most unusual places. Sometimes it’s the contestant with a heart problem or an injury that’s restricted their exercise routine who drops the biggest amount of weight. And this can be as much as 10kg in one week!

This poses the question – are all the drills and exercises that the personal trainers make each contestant do really working? Or is it the diet that is more important? The Biggest Loser focuses on the exercise part of their program, with very little said about the diet. The audience knows only that the contestants are on a small amount of food, with no access to forbidden foods, but the contestants seem to get very little education on how to eat properly once they’re in the real world.

If true, this is a shame because it means that the contestants probably won’t keep up their weight loss over the long term. Food is more powerful than any prescription medication or weight loss pill. It has the power to heal the body from almost any ailment.

The Biggest Loser perhaps needs to teach the contestants, and the nation, about food and the right choices. The contestants are overweight for the simplest of reasons – they have eaten the wrong foods, the wrong types of foods, and in the wrong combinations.

If you want to change, what will really make the difference in your life? What’s the one thing you can do that will help you along the path to becoming the person you really want to be physically, mentally and socially?

A great question to ask yourself in every moment, every time you make a decision about the food you eat, the exercise you do, the thoughts you have, and even the people you hang out with is:

“What’s the difference that will make the difference?”

What are the small things you need to do in your life consistently to create the outcome you desire?

Reverting back to The Biggest Loser, there was once an episode that followed the competition between the teams when one team lost their personal trainer, but could eat only cabbage, and the other kept their trainer, but ate canned and processed food.

The contestants were absolutely floored by the fact that the team who all ate junk (canned and processed foods), lost very little weight despite the continuation of their exercise routine. In comparison, the team that couldn’t work out but only had cabbage to eat lost an impressive amount of weight. Their tears and confusion were justified, but the show seemed to gloss over the fact that they were so surprised only because they’d been given the wrong information about the importance of diet versus the importance of exercise. After all, it doesn’t make great television to have the contestants sitting around eating salads all day.

Exercise is important because your body needs to move. Sitting all day is bad for your health, the human body is designed to walk, lift, push, jump, play and stretch.

Exercise has other benefits as well. Walking, stretching and natural movements are very healing and can boost your mood and sense of wellbeing. And once you’ve regained your health, your body will probably start to tell you it wants to do more and more. But at the beginning, particularly if you’ve been sedentary for a long time, you might be completely out of touch with the physical needs of your body. That’s why you need to start slowly - go for a gentle walk a few times a week for half an hour and learn to reconnect with what your body really wants.

Starting with exercise will help a lot, but you still need to focus on your food habits and making good food decisions. Look at your food choices now and ask yourself, “What’s the difference that makes the difference?”

Top tips (make a graphic)

• Health is built on making the best decisions day in and day out.
• Extreme exercise depletes the body of minerals and nutrients, making it harder for the body to heal.
• Real food is the key to health and vitality.

Action Steps

Schedule and commit to going for 4 x 30 minute walks over the next week. Make a note of the date, day, time and length of the walk.

In the health tracker section, you can record your daily movement. This helps to keep you accountable.

Habits Define Your Life

John Dryden famously said, "We first make our habits, and then our habits make us."

Confucius said, "Men's natures are alike; it is their habits that separate them."

And Aristotle noticed that, "We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then, is not an act, but a habit."

Food is the body’s medicine – physically, mentally and emotionally. What many people don’t realise is that WHEN (what time) food is eaten can be as important as WHAT is eaten. There are certain foods that produce brain chemicals which increase brain activity, and other foods that produce brain chemicals to induce calm and relaxation.

It’s no coincidence that as lifestyle disorders such as obesity increase, so too does depression. There are many people suffering from depression these days, more than ever before, and they don’t know why. There are many theories about the causes of depression including stress, and cultural expectations, however another cause could be the lack of real food in Western diets and subsequent deficiencies.

Chemicals and drugs affect our brain chemistry and so too does food. So if people aren’t eating real food with all the nutrients they need, it makes sense that they feel bad emotionally as well.

Research into how ‘technology foods’ (ie. processed foods) affect brain activity and mood is debatable and ongoing. However, the correlation between the incline of depression with the introduction of technology foods suggests that there is a link.

One of the most staggering connections is that of modern-day wheat and increased reports of depression. It’s widely known that a component of gluten called gluteomorphin is derived from gliadin - one of the main proteins found in gluten grains (wheat, barley and rye). It’s also widely known that the constant consumption of these foods (with not much variety), especially wheat, can damage the lining of the intestinal tract, causing malabsorption of vital vitamins and minerals. This sets the stage for the activation of food derived opiates such as gluteomorphin. This compound can be very sedative and addictive. That’s why tiredness and drowsiness will generally result after eating wheat-based foods, followed by the need to eat again.

When you stop eating wheat, you may feel at first as though you’re going through withdrawal. You may even have cravings for wheat or wheat products and start to think they’ll make you feel better. But this is not the solution - it’s just a Band-Aid.

Think about this: the human brain is an amazing pharmacy and produces chemicals (like drugs and medications) in order for the body and the brain to function so that you can think, process, react, laugh, love, understand, learn and grow. Just like a drug manufacturing plant, the brain needs the right ingredients to produce the right chemicals. If the wrong ingredients are added then the brain chemicals produced will create hazards and chaos, causing difficulty in the general functioning of the body and brain processes. However, unlike a drug manufacturing plant, the chemicals the body and brain make are perfect and have no side effects as long as the right ingredients are available. Namely, as long as the right foods are consumed.

For thousands of years humans have eaten foods from nature - meat, fruit, vegetables, nuts, salt, herbs, grains, eggs, real dairy and seeds. But in the last 30 years, science has deemed itself more intelligent than nature and produced foods that are supposed to be better. And these foods are filled with additives and artificial ingredients such as aspartame (artificial sweetener), margarine, modified milk, colourings, hydrogenated vegetable oils, modified wheat, genetically modified foods and more. The only conclusion is that science is creating not food, but food-like products that are destroying people’s physical and emotional wellbeing.

Different additives and chemicals have devastating effects on the human brain. Aspartame negatively impacts the brain and eating patterns, margarine changes cell membrane permeability, modified milks can have an effect on blood wall integrity, and a component of wheat has a morphine-like effect on the brain. It is so important to ingest the right ingredients to make the right brain chemicals for a healthy brain and emotional systems.

Even without all this evidence, it would still be prudent to stay away from technology foods and see what happens when you eat only natural foods just because of the health benefits. Firstly, you will start feeling physically better. Secondly, if you’re carrying extra weight it will start to drop. And thirdly, the food will give your brain the right chemicals to work efficiently and give you the tools you need to feel positive. So, with all these factors working together, even your ‘blue moods’ should start to shift with these changes.

Lastly, the other important factor in regulating your moods lies with your sleeping habits. If you’re not getting quality sleep you will feel horrible. And if you do have trouble sleeping, you should make yourself aware of what you’re eating at what time because this can have a big impact on your ability to fall asleep.

Ideally you want to eat dinner early, at around 5 or 6pm, and make sure your meal is filled with vegetables and some protein. But if you’re eating extremely late for some reason, it’s important to eat only carbohydrates instead of protein. So instead of meat, eat rice and vegetables or one of the many vegetarian options available. Carbohydrates increase the brain chemical serotonin, which calms you down and prepares the brain and body to go to sleep.

And another thing, if you overeat at night, the result is much the same as eating protein late, but with a slightly different mechanism. When you overeat, your body takes blood away from the limbs and brain to help digest all the excess food before it putrefies in your stomach. This results in you feeling sluggish, both physically and mentally.

To feel good and think well, consider what you eat at night, because a good night's sleep will help you to heal both mentally and physically. Remember that you’ll sleep more during winter, so you need to allow for that as well. Sunset and sunrise dictates your sleep cycle, and your biochemistry will obey by increasing melatonin, the sleeping, healing hormone, at the right time. As with all your other changes, learn to listen to your body and trust it when it comes to how much sleep you need.

Be mindful of how much sleep you’re getting and make your bed time earlier if you’re constantly tired. This can make a big difference to your health and life in a short period of time. At least 2 to 3 hours of sleep before midnight is far better than 2 to 3 hours of sleep after 6am.

FEELING GOOD IS SIMPLE - EAT WELL DAILY AND SLEEP WELL NIGHTLY!

Top tips

• Get to bed early – at least 2 to 3 hours before midnight.
• Eat your last meal no later than 7pm.
• If you eat late leave the protein on the plate!

Action Step

Head to https://www.youtube.com/user/cyndiomeara to watch a great interview about the link between food, moods and the mind!

How You feel Today

After each step in this program, make sure you evaluate how you’re feeling and write down any general observations about the program or your condition. That way you can look back when you’re further along in the program and clearly see how far you’ve come.

Go to your Health Tracker and click on the How I feel Chart and fill it out