Healthy Living in Connecticut Blog

I wanted to revisit the topic of salt. Scott wrote about salt a few months ago and I wanted to respond in detail why I think salt is not good for you when you have too much of it.

I think the amount of sodium corresponds to how much processed food you're eating. I think most people would agree you should cut down on processed food. Too much of it causes obesity, increased cancer risk, diabetes, etc. So if you're not having processed foods, it would be difficult to go over the recommended amount of salt intake anyway.

You know how the saying goes when addicted drug users say they have a "monkey on my back".  What do people addicted to junk food say?

"I have a marketing monster on my back?"

Don't be so hard on yourself if you fail with your dieting efforts.  You were setup to fail before you even started. Saying this is NOT a free ticket to raid the closest pizza joint.  But no matter where you come from or what walk of life you have chosen the fact is we live in a nation that drives us toward perceived success in all things but health.  Our society is built to fail when it comes to living healthy.

That is why more times than not, diets fail. This is the overview of a multi-part blog post to help you see the big picture as to why it is all too easy to give up on living healthy. The goal is to bring about awareness of the influences on your daily lives where desensitization prevents us from succeeding at living a healthy lifestyle.

Back in April of 2012, I was in my first Wellness Challenge at the YMCA in Torrington. I had already started to lose weight... I was 299 pounds at the start of the challenge, which was actually down from 345 pounds in November of 2011. After losing 45 pounds, my weight loss had slowed down. I decided to try the Wellness Challenge and figured it might kick start the weight loss again, as I still had a long way to go in order to get to a healthy weight.

The kickoff meeting at the first challenge changed my lifestyle completely. After that, I followed the guidelines that I learned and still follow many of the guidelines. As they say, it's about a lifestyle change more than it is about a temporary reduction in weight.