HOW TO GET LEAN N’ MEAN, PART II: Leave Dieting Behind to Achieve Your Best Body and Health EVER!
Introduction – On the General Importance of Adopting a Lifestyle of Good Eating
Greetings, American Partisans! Sorry once again for the lag in posts. I’d love to write more often, but June was very busy. But I’m back with more good information and tips on how to get lean n’ mean! For this second installment in the How to Get Lean n’ Mean series, we’re going to get into quite a bit more important theory to support Partisan efforts at getting their eating together and leaning out. After having read Parts I and II of this How to Get Lean n’ Mean series, the Partisan reader will be mentally prepared to grasp and utilize the specific details of optimizing his metabolism, as well as be able to make better food choices for best health and fitness results; posts on specific methods will follow. Once you understand and then harness the power of good eating, it’s quite amazing how many benefits you gain in the physical fitness, health, and tactical readiness realms!
For the most part, I will assume that Partisans who are still following along with my series so far have understood and embraced the need for being lean and for getting their eating habits together to achieve maximum health, fitness, and tactical readiness. That’s a great starting point! So, what’s next? The next thing that has to happen for Partisans going through this physical fitness evolution is to understand the difference between going on a “diet” to lose weight, and adopting a “lifestyle” of healthy eating habits in order to get fit and lean FOR LIFE; understanding the difference between a “diet” and a “lifestyle” of good eating habits will greatly help the American Partisan save time, money, and effort in improving their state of health and fitness. Now, not all habits define a lifestyle, but the way we eat is just such a fixed and vital part of each day of our lives, that it goes well beyond mere habit. For example, a person may have a habit of looking frequently at their watch. But this habit doesn’t necessitate orienting a whole day’s schedule around it; it takes around 1/2 a second, and you just do it and then continue on with your business. The American Heritage Dictionary Online defines a habit as “a recurrent, often unconscious pattern of behavior that is acquired through frequent repetition.” Note the “often unconscious” aspect of a habit – many habits don’t take much (or any) consideration; you just do them, oftentimes mindlessly.
On the other hand, a habit can also be very deliberate, making it a rather different creature than a mindless, almost reflexive type of habit (like looking at your watch). For example, you may have a deliberate habit of kissing your spouse whenever you leave the house. Going even further with the notion of a deliberate habit, a “lifestyle” is another type of a deliberate habit or set of habits. The American Heritage Dictionary Online” defines lifestyle as “a way of life or living of a person or group”. Even though the dictionary doesn’t specify it, one of the implicit features of a lifestyle is that it is a type of habit (or group of habits) that is observed consciously and purposefully (i.e., deliberately). For example, a practice of going to church every Sunday is indeed a habit, but unlike the mindless habit of looking at one’s watch often or even deliberately kissing one’s spouse on the way out the door, the habit of going to church takes a good deal of planning and some accommodation or even sacrifice in order to be realized. Going to church every Sunday requires you not just to clear pretty much your entire Sunday morning for the church service, but also requires that you take into account the time it takes to assemble your family and get them ready to go (which means waking up early enough to squeeze breakfast in and get everyone appropriately freshened and dressed up); the time it takes to commute to church (church may be a significant distance away, and is also a round-trip); and the time spent in the actual church service and post-service fellowship. And after church, it often takes some transition time to get on with the rest of your day. Because of all these requirements needed to make good on a Sunday church habit (and there are probably yet more considerations that I didn’t cover), we can justly say that going to church on Sundays is a proper lifestyle. You could be doing lots of different things on a Sunday morning, especially if it’s a day off, but you nevertheless take the time and make the sacrifice to have a family visit to church in your life each Sunday. Many find the sacrifice and lifestyle to be too burdensome and don’t even bother, but you do; attending to your (and your family’s) relationship with the Almighty is a major priority, and so you make it happen! Any sacrifice and inconvenience in this noble way of life is of little relevance to the faithful.
The main takeaway here is that the American Partisan’s approach to GOOD eating needs to resemble the religious Christian’s lifestyle-based (e.g., “way of life”) approach to going to church; “good eating” is a non-negotiable priority that requires time, attention, consideration, work, and at least some level of discipline on an ongoing basis… as a way of life. But, just like the vast spiritual rewards offered for your efforts by the church-attending lifestyle, so too are the rewards of the “good eating” lifestyle worth sacrificing for – BIGTIME!
And now, exactly what is the “Good Eating” Lifestyle? For the purposes of this post, let’s specifically define the “Good Eating” Lifestyle as a sustainable habit of carefully selec