How to create a lean body and a happy mind

The Buddha laid out the noble eight-fold path that promised an end to suffering and changed the world in the process.  There is also a simple but little practiced
method to achieve a lean body and vibrant health.  This is the three-fold path of right relaxation, right diet and right exercise.  This path recognizes that we are integrated beings even if we don't acknowledge this reality.  Metabolism or the way we assimilate foods, burn calories and build muscle is affected by everything we think, eat or do.  This is why most diets fail and Arnold wannabes can't reach their body building goals.  It is also a major reason there is obesity, degenerative bone disease, heart disease, depression and cancer running rampant in society today.  Our bodies genetically are not able to handle our fast lifestyle--fast work, fast food, and fast exercise.  Yes even our methods of exercise can produce chronic injuries and unbalance our endocrine system leading to ill health and
unhappiness.  Following the three fold path (The Buddha had something with the path metaphor.)  of right relaxation, right diet and right exercise will lead to improved health, weight loss, better fitness and a happier life.  So what do these three paths entail?

1. Right Relaxation

Truth :  You are what you think.  What you think stresses you out and makes you fat and unhappy.  We may train hard, but our stress levels cause changes to our physiology that undermine our ability to get a lean body and may harm our health.  In addition, our reaction to external events may lead us to make poor diet and lifestyle choices that also affects our ability to develop a lean physique.  Psychologists have found that our thinking style can increase our stress load. Learning a less stressful way of thinking, even though the causes of stress may still be there, canreduce our stress. Learning to decrease stress can also have positive effects on our metabolism helping us shed those unwanted pounds and improve our overall health.

We have a tendency to believe that stress is caused solely by external situations and people.  For example, if he/she hadn't behaved in that way, I wouldn't have been stressed. But, by maintaining such views, we lose an important way of being able to reduce our own stress; we may not always be able to influence the behavior and attitude of others, but we do have influence over ourselves and how we respond to challenging situations.   When we become more mindful of how we react to life's situations we become skillful at avoiding the fight or flight response to situations that may be perceived as threatening if only to our ego. 

It is important to realize that the brain cannot distinguish between a real or potential threat. It can only respond to both, by triggering the fight/flight response (a remnant of our evolutionary past).   When the fight/flight response is triggered over 1400 different physiological and biochemical changes occur in the body.  The two main hormones released by the body in this process are epinephrine and cortisol.  Next stored reserves of fats and sugars are converted and released into our blood stream to supply extra energy to fight or run away.  In order to pump the extra blood, oxygen, fats and sugars to the muscles to supply energy, our blood pressure and heart rate increase.  If stress is chronic then these changes can be a roadblock to a lean, healthy body.

Chronic stress can contribute to several harmful physiological events. When body tissues are exposed to high levels of cortisol for extended periods of time, some cellular alterations may occur. High levels of cortisol cause fat stores and excess circulating fat to be relocated and deposited deep in the abdomen, which can develop into obesity. In addition, hypertension (high blood pressure), hyperlipidemia (elevated lipids), and hyperglycemia (elevated glucose) have been linked to elevated cortisol levels.   As outlined by Dr. R.C. Andrews and colleagues in their research paper Abnormal cortisol metabolism and tissue sensitivity to cortisol in patients with glucose intolerance published in The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology.

There are a number of stress management techniques we can use to help us prevent the impact of stressors in our lives.  Some are meditation,  T'ai Chi, Yoga, massage, and reducing negative thinking.  Meditation has a very powerful impact on the body and
stress.  Over time a meditators can reduce their stress hormones and improve their behavior.  One of the most studied forms of meditation is Transcendental Meditation.  Robert Schneider and colleagues studied 201 African Americans with CVD at the Medical College of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, WI and Institute for Natural Medicine and Prevention, Maharishi Vedic City, IA.  They demonstrated that stress reduction with the Transcendental Meditation program was associated with 43% reduction in risk for all cause mortality, myocardial infarction and stroke in a high-risk sample of African Americans.  Whatever means you choose learning to deal with life's events is the first step in getting a lean body.  Then you can focus on your diet.

2.  Right Diet

Truth:  You are what you eat.  If you want to be lean eat real food in a way that enhances your metabolism.   Many of us dedicate ourselves to a good training program.  At the end of the day we are in better shape, but are unsatisfied when we look in the mirror.  Just as you wouldn't put low-grade fuel in your new $50,000 sports car, putting anything less than premium food in your body is likely to keep it from performing to the best of its ability.  Food not only influences your body in the physical sense but is also known to directly influence emotions and feelings.  As you have seen, foods that effect emotions can change the natural balance of hormones.  They can induce bliss or anger, contentment or restlessness.  This can increase stress on the body releasing counterproductive hormones that will add not take away fat. 

Many people think they are on a good diet, but a myriad of almost inescapable processed foods that fill grocery stores encourage the retention of fat.  Processed food places excess stress on the body. They make it hard to burn off that last (and most important) layer of flab.  Our life source is the energy of the sun.  The foods that are closest to this source of energy are plants since they process it first.   Animals eat the plants for energy and other animals and people eat those animals getting second hand energy.  So eat a diet of plant based foods as close to their natural state as possible.   The best rule of thumb is if you can pick it from a tree or plant eat it.  If it has a label avoid it.   Inaddition, avoid processed grains and simple carbohydrates which play havoc with
your energy and cholesterol levels.  Finally, eat proteins that will give you high quality fats such as salmon, walnuts and almonds.  This will provide your body the high quality fuel it needs to function and grow lean.  It won't provide empty calories and
potentially harmful chemicals that slow your metabolism and throw your system out of balance.

3. Right Exercise

Truth:  You are what you do.  Exercise in a way that enhances your metabolism to burn more fat with less stress on the body.  Fat-loss is much more complex than calories in, calories out.  Scientific research shows us that the way we train and the way we rest from our training affects the way our bodies utilize energy and grow muscle when we are not exercising.  Furthermore, when we over train in an attempt to get a better body faster we set ourselves up for injury and change our body's metabolism in a way that will make it cling to fat.  If this isn't enough bad news we may also end up in a downward emotional spiral due to the hormonal effects on the emotional center of the brain.

Although any form of activity is good, an exercise that helps the body to use fat as fuel and continue to do so post exercise is the best.  EPOC (excess post-exercise oxygen consumption) refers to the elevated state of oxygen consumption after exercise in an effort to bring the body back to its pre-exercise state.  Generally, exercises that use the whole body and requires some form of coordinated muscle recruitment do this.  Yoga, aerobic circuit training and calisthenics are examples of this.  Also, any form of exercise that builds or preserves muscle mass will increase your basal metabolic rate (the amount of calories you burn just to stay alive). Kim Innes an assistant professor at the Center for the Study of Complementary and Alternative Therapies at the University of Virginia Health Systems gathered convincing evidence that yoga could increase insulin sensitivity and lower cholesterol by as much as 19 and 25 percent, respectively.   She also saw a connection between yoga and weight loss. In 13 studies of body composition and yoga, the practice reduced body weight by as much as 13.6 percent. In 2005, Innes published her findings in the Journal of the American Board of Family Medicine.

When exercising use a heart rate monitor and try to keep your heart rate below 180 minus your age.  According to Dr. Phil Maffetone, one of the most sought after endurance coaches in the world, this will prevent you from over training and teach your body to burn a higher percentage of fat for fuel versus carbohydrates.   In the end, being mindful of what is happening with your body as you exercise while staying relaxed will allow you to perform at a higher performance level while burning fat for fuel.  In addition, you will be turning off the fight or flight freeing up the energy for better uses and reducing the natural self-braking that occurs when you tense up.

Where ever you are in your life cycle and whatever your goals are your can gain a fit, lean and healthy body along with a happy mind by following three simple paths: Right relaxation, right diet and right exercise.