The Waist Management System - by Dr Peter Windross
You are a survival machine. The DNA in your cells has survived for millions of years. It has been copied billions of times. Your ancestors all survived long enough to have offspring. These offspring then survived to grow up and repeat the process. You are the latest in a long line of successful survivors who had children. Who also survived successfully.You are designed to survive. You are designed to replicate. By this I mean that your body and everything in it is designed to fulfil these functions. Every thought you have and every biological urge you feel are designed to drive you towards putting yourself in optimal situations for reproducing and the survival of your genes.
If your ancestors weren't as good at surviving as their neighbours they would have been the more likely to die out. If they weren't as good at mating and having offspring as their neighbours they would then have been less likely to pass on their genes and nature would unapologetically have weeded them out.
We are all here because our distant relatives were fantastic at surviving infancy, childhood, adolescence, seeking out a mate, having sex and then ensuring that the baby went on to survive infancy, childhood and so on. That's it. There are no other traits which will do better in the world that we all came from. There are no features of your body which don't serve a function towards surviving and passing on your genes. It is not enough to simply replicate. Your offspring need to survive to become fertile and produce successful offspring of their own.
The genes we carry in each of our cells are virtually the same as when we lived on the African plains. We are identical in our bodies and minds to nomadic tribes. It is only forty thousand years ago since we were like this. This is a blink of an eye in evolutionary terms, which means our genes have not had enough time to change in the last 40,000 years. We are not very well adjusted for life in the twenty-first century.
Your genes come from a time when we lived in very hot conditions with limited food and water. We would mainly gather our food. Nuts, berries, fruit and roots. We occasionally managed to kill a large animal like an antelope but small birds and rodents would have been more common fare. In the last forty thousand years we have domesticated animals and learned to farm. We no longer rely on our small group to survive and now have food in abundance. We now cook our food so that twelve hours a day doesn’t need to be spent chewing just to get enough nutrients to survive. This has freed up a lot of time. Machines have made a lot of other things easier. We each live today in greater luxury than Kings and Queens of only a few hundred years ago.
We are still ruled by the emotions and desires that powered us for life on the African plains. We eat whenever we can and our bodies rapidly lay down any excess in fat stores because the next meal might be days or even weeks away. We are driven to fit in with the group for its survival benefits. We are driven to gain social status where we can and to seek out and find the best possible mates to pass on our genes. This is what makes us tick.
Understanding this can help us regain control of our waists once more.
What is the Waist Management System?
▪ Accept that your body has biology which will make you fat unless you concentrate hard and make a bit of an effort.
▪ Learn what hunger is and what it isn’t.
▪ Make better food choices each and every day.
▪ Use your body the best way that you can. Keep yourself fit and active.
▪ Sleep well. Rest and recuperation are part of a healthy life.
▪ Recognise snacking for what it is - unnecessary calories and best avoided.
▪ Keep busy and focused working towards SMART goals.
▪ Keep a journal of progress, calories in and exercise done, along with daily thoughts.
▪ Change lifelong habits around food. This is very achievable, worth doing and takes about two months.
▪ Changes feel strange at first like new shoes, but become automatic and comfortable with time.
Buy the book, learn how it makes sense and fits together, complete the daily journal and start living the dream.
Dr Peter Windross lives and works in the South of the UK near the New Forest. A General Practitioner for over ten years, he has a special interest in weight management. He reads more about running in his spare time than is good for him. He is often told that he should get out more, though he obviously thinks that means on the trails.
He's not a very good runner. What he lacks in style, grace and speed he tries to make up for in terrible jokes and enthusiasm. He enjoys trail running and racing. Anything from 5k to multi-day ultra-marathons.
He enjoys writing books about how to do stuff a little better. He is no expert and has made more mistakes than most. He is thus well qualified on really how not to do things 'this way'.
I had the pleasure of spending some time on the trails with Peter during the 2014 Race to the Stones and I can confirm that he is a gentleman and a scholar.
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