Live Your Healthy Lifestyle The SANE Way

Imagine waking up each day knowing it’s going to be the best day of your life. You feel energized and happy. Your healthy lifestyle wasn’t hard to achieve like all those “experts” told you it would be. You didn’t have to starve yourself or perform crazy exercises or eat food-like products delivered to your door.

Does this sound too good to be true? We assure you this is not a fantasy. This is the reality for hundreds of thousands of people who went SANE, including this writer. The SANE way to a healthy lifestyle is unlike anything you’ve experienced. You may not even be familiar with many of the principles of SANE living. But all of them are based on the hard science of how the body actually works to regulate body fat, not harmful fairy tales of how eating less and exercising more is the answer to your weight loss and health challenges.

This calorie-deficit theory of weight loss is one of the few things “experts” seem to agree on. They argue about everything else. Eat this. Don’t eat that! Exercise this way. Don’t exercise that way! All this conflicting advice is enough to drive you inSANE! These “experts” make having a healthy lifestyle look difficult to achieve, adding unnecessary stress to people who are just trying to find a way to lose weight and keep it off. This stress has the exact opposite effect — it causes weight gain.

There is a SANEr way to achieve a healthy lifestyle. The SANE way is a positive, scientifically proven approach to permanent weight loss and health that truly helps you become the healthiest, happiest, most energized version of YOU! A healthy lifestyle is not difficult to obtain, not at all — when you do it the SANE way.

Why achieving a healthy lifestyle is important

Article Contents

Doctors on TV talk shows often discuss healthy lifestyle matters, with an emphasis on weight loss or weight control. That’s because being overweight or obese has become a worldwide epidemic.

An estimated 30% of the world’s population — more than 2 billion people — is overweight or obese. This is an issue because obesity is the underlying cause of many of the world’s most deadly diseases, including type 2 diabetes, heart disease, and stroke.

But being obese does more than increase your risk for these diseases. It also makes you feel awful, tired, and sick. It often exposes you to prejudice, ridicule, and discrimination. These things hurt your self-esteem and cause shame, which leads to more weight gain and a higher risk of disease. You deserve better than that. You deserve a SANE healthy lifestyle.

What is a healthy lifestyle?

A healthy lifestyle is composed of the actions one takes to achieve optimum health. This refers not just to physical health but also to mental, emotional, and spiritual health.

Physical: This refers to any actions you take to support or improve the health of your body. Here are the main actions you’d want to take for your body:

Nutritious diet
Physical fitness
Restorative sleep
Stress management

Emotional/Spiritual: This refers to any actions you take to strengthen your emotional and spiritual center. Here are some of the actions you might take to support or improve the health of your emotions and spirit:

Foster self-confidence
Focus on having positive, self-affirming thoughts
Practice self-supporting attitudes
Practice compassion towards yourself and others
Live in the now

Taking each of these categories, we’ll show you the SANE way to have a healthy lifestyle.

How to have a healthy lifestyle: the physical aspect

If you’ve had trouble losing weight, you know how frustrating dieting can be. You followed all the latest diets to the letter. You obeyed the calorie-deficit theory of weight loss — consuming fewer calories than you burn per day/week, nearly starving to death in the process — and it didn’t work. If you’re like many dieters, you tried it over and over again, and it STILL didn’t work.

Oh, you lost weight, sometimes a lot of weight. But it always found you again. It didn’t matter what diet you tried or how much your starved yourself; you never achieved long-term weight loss. What did you do wrong?

NOTHING.

That’s right. You did nothing wrong.

You did not fail those diets; they failed you. All the struggles you’ve had losing weight are because you’ve been given incorrect information. It is not because you were lazy or lacked willpower, or ate too much food.

Probably the biggest piece of incorrect information you’ve been given is you need to eat less and exercise more to lose weight, also known as the calorie-deficit theory of weight loss.

Why the calorie-deficit theory of weight loss never leads to a healthy lifestyle

Since the 1960s, the calorie-deficit theory has been the guiding principle of weight loss, and it has brought grief to so many people. It treats the metabolism like a scale, calories in = calories out. You’re probably well aware of this principle and how it’s supposed to work. If you consume fewer calories than you burn per week, it creates a calorie deficit that promotes weight loss.

The “experts” even have it down to a science. They tell you the number of pounds you will lose if you follow their math. There’s only one problem. The math never works. You usually lose weight quickly in the beginning, and then it slows down to almost nothing. During this time, you don’t feel well. You’re a little weak, irritable, and definitely hungry. And you’re not seeing impressive results from all your agony. So, you give up and head for the nearest ice cream stand.

The calorie-deficit theory never leads to long-term weight loss precisely because it treats the metabolism like a scale. The metabolism is actually like a thermostat, regulating your calorie input and output around your setpoint weight. A calorie deficit is necessary for weight loss to occur, but it’s not your job to count calories. If you need to lose weight, your body makes sure you have a calorie deficit by adjusting the calorie burn of several metabolic processes. Starving yourself to lose weight is not part of the equation.

The setpoint weight wins.

Your body is an amazing machine. Your brain, digestive system, and hormones work together to help stabilize your weight. By communicating through various feedback loops, they synchronize activities that automatically maintain body fat at a specific level, which is your setpoint weight.

This system is designed to keep you at a healthy weight. If the system is damaged, hormones become dysregulated, and they cannot send and receive correct messages. The body doesn’t know how much fat you need, but it gives you more fat to be on the safe side. Your setpoint weight becomes elevated.

There are many things that can elevate setpoint weight — over-consumption of processed foods and sugars, prolonged exercise, sleep deprivation, stress — and starvation dieting won’t lower it.

Your body vigorously defends this setpoint weight. If you try to lose weight by slashing calories, your body thinks you’re starving. It triggers hormones that make you cold, hungry, weak, and irritable. It tells your body to hold onto fat, so most of your weight loss comes from water and muscle, and it slows your metabolism. You’ll never win by trying to fight your body’s self-preservation mechanism. The setpoint weight always wins, and as you’ve seen, you always gain the weight back.

Lowering setpoint weight: the only way to win

The only way you can win is to work with the body instead of against it. You do this by eating foods that are nutritious, filling, and difficult to be stored as body fat. When you eat these SANE foods, you subconsciously eat fewer calories, creating a calorie deficit. But since you’re providing ample nutrition to your cells, and you’re satisfied and feel great, your body gladly burns its fat stores and lowers your setpoint weight.

SANE foods are scientifically proven to fill you up fast, keep you full longer, and reduce or eliminate cravings for starchy carbs. Plus, they trigger the release of fat-burning hormones. You’ll be so full of SANE foods you won’t have room for the bad stuff. No willpower or deprivation is necessary. It’s an effortless, enjoyable way to achieve long-term weight loss.

SANE Diet food groups

Here are the 4 SANE food groups:

Non-starchy vegetables: 10+ servings per day. Fill half of your plate with non-starchy veggies at each meal, or blend them into nutritious green smoothies.
Nutrient-dense proteins: 3-5 servings per day, 30-50 grams per meal.
Whole-food fats: 3-6 servings per day.
Low-fructose fruits: 0-3 servings per day.

Try to consume the first three together at every meal, as they work together to heal your hormones and lower your setpoint weight.

Physical fitness (planned exercise)

As if starving yourself to lose weight weren’t bad enough, experts also expect you to exercise for at least 30 minutes at a time a few days per week. This is just another variation of the calorie-deficit theory of weight loss, and it is just as counterproductive. In fact, research shows prolonged exercise elevates cortisol levels, which can raise your setpoint weight.

Traditional exercise isn’t effective at burning fat, either. Traditional exercise suppresses the production of the T3 thyroid hormone, which helps your body burn more when faced with excess calories. A shortage of this hormone will slow your metabolism, causing you to store more body fat.

Though planned exercise is great if you’re training to run a marathon, it is not good for lowering your setpoint weight. The only thing that will work for that is eccentric exercise.

Eccentric exercise

Eccentric exercises focus on the lower part of the movement. For instance, if you’re performing a squat, the squatting movement is the eccentric part of the exercise. Standing back up is the concentric part. By slowly performing the eccentric part of the movement, you’ll activate all your muscle fibers and blast fat.

Research shows eccentric exercise helps clear hormonal clogs, reduce insulin resistance, and raise levels of fat-burning hormones. Because you’re activating all your muscle fibers, you also have to do them only 10-20 minutes per week. You cannot do eccentric exercises more than that because your muscles need time to heal. Compare this to all the time wasted at the gym or at home doing traditional exercises that do not burn fat or lower setpoint weight, and the exercise choice is clear.

Restorative sleep/stress management

Getting enough quality sleep and managing your stress levels are also important in lowering your setpoint weight and living a healthy lifestyle.

Studies show cortisol levels to be elevated for both those who don’t get enough quality sleep and those who suffer from chronic stress. Cortisol raises setpoint weight, and it also promotes the accumulation of belly fat.

The Cure?

For sleep

Try to get 7-8 hours of uninterrupted sleep per night. If you have trouble falling or staying asleep, try some of these quick tips:

Turn off the TV, computer, and smartphone an hour before bedtime. The light from the screen reduces your levels of melatonin, which keeps you wide awake.
Darken the room as much as possible. Any light entering the room also decreases melatonin levels.
Do not drink any caffeinated beverages or liquids a few hours before bed. Both will cause you to get up many times during the night to go to the bathroom, and caffeinated drinks keep you too wired for bed.

For stress

Make an effort to de-stress every day. Here are a few suggestions that will help you relax.

Take up meditation.
Try yoga or tai chi.
Watch a sitcom marathon on TV. Studies show laughter triggers a release of feel-good endorphins, which reduces stress hormones.
Take a 10-minute walk.
Practice deep breathing exercises. Taking slow, deep breaths stimulates the parasympathetic nervous system, which de-stresses you.

Emotional/spiritual

The emotional and spiritual aspects of your life are also important for lowering your setpoint weight and living a healthy lifestyle. Here are some tips to help you foster a healthy spiritual and emotional life.

Focus on making progress, not perfection. Remember that one small step toward SANEity is important and leads to other changes. They all positively affect your setpoint weight.

Go easy on yourself. If you eat something inSANE, don’t condemn yourself or let yourself feel that you’ve ruined everything. Instead, accept it as a single incident, neither good nor bad. Or, analyze without judgment what made you reach for that candy bar. Was it sadness? Anger? Boredom? Once you’ve figured out the cause of your temporary inSANEity, decide how you’ll handle the situation next time. This is a constructive, self-affirming way to handle it. Shame and guilt never help you do better.

Live in the NOW. The past is gone, and the future is not yet here. Today is the only day you have. Make the most of it.

Start a gratitude journal. Keep a daily log of everything you’re grateful for, including yourself, your body, and your appearance.

Next step: Achieve your healthy lifestyle with SANE

Ready to finally break free from the yo-yo dieting rollercoaster by balancing your hormones and lowering your body’s setpoint weight?

Want to know the exact foods and serving sizes that are scientifically proven by over 1,300 peer-reviewed research studies to boost metabolism, burn fat, and enjoy virtually effortless weight loss like a naturally thin person?

Download the free SANE metabolism boosting food list, cheat sheet, and “Eat More, Burn More” weight loss program by clicking here .