If you develop facilitator skills, you’ll be better able to help people help themselves.

People are hurting.  They are dissatisfied.  Often they are enduring pain or suffering.  If you help them feel better about their lives, you’ll feel better about your life.

Furthermore, you’ll find yourself with more friends.  To have more and better friends, be a better friend.  The best way to be a better friend is to use facilitator skills.

Suppose that you and I are what Aristotle called “complete” friends.  If we aren’t best friends, let’s at least assume that we are genuine friends, that we are not merely using each other, that we are not merely trying to take from each other.

What should we be doing together?

My work in the friendship is to support, encourage, and challenge you to live better.  My focus is on helping you help yourself.  Your work is to support, encourage, and challenge me to live better.  Your focus is on helping me help myself.

The friends in a genuine friendship mentor each other.

Let’s suppose, for example, that you are a smoker who wants to free yourself from that addiction.  I would not only encourage you to quit, I would support you through your process of quitting.  If I used skillful means, that might be a real blessing to you; it might just make the difference between your success and failure at quitting smoking.

Facilitator skills are skillful means of mentoring.

Mentoring someone successfully requires committing yourself to promoting whatever is best for that other person.  It requires being a psychological security blanket during that person’s period of growth.  As Eben Pagan puts it in his helpful “Become Mr. Right” training, it requires “holding space” for that person.

Here are some beginning facilitator skills that, if practiced, often work really well.

Think of beginning facilitator skills as a two-step process: (1) develop empathy and (2) lead the other person, who is your friend or potential friend, into tomorrow.  Find out about your friend’s situation and then help your friend to accept it and to discover a way forward.  (Note well that this is not the same as telling your friend what to do about it!)

First, ask about your friend’s situation and listen well to the answer.  (See also the post “Listening Well” in the moral well-being category of this blog.)  Since your friend is probably stuck on it, you may have to ask repeatedly.

Furthermore, don’t just ask about the specific frustration; ask also about how your friend feels about it.  Uncover not only the dissatisfaction but also the negative emotion that results from it.

Before proceeding, it’s very important for you to relate to your friend’s negative emotion.  It’s easy:  just remember a situation in which you felt the same way and talk about it.  If you make yourself emotionally relatable in this way, your friend will feel a stronger bond (connection, identification) with you.  Your friend will feel better understood and less lonely.

It makes no difference whether or not you think the emotion is justified.  Do not be judgmental.  Do not argue.  It’s the awareness and acceptance of the emotion that’s critical for draining it of its power.

Second, after you have understood your friend’s situation and related emotionally to how your friend feels about it, it’s time to shift the focus from the present to the future.  This will help your friend detach from the emotion and move forward.

The transitional question here is:  “What did you learn from this?”  Enable your friend to focus on the lesson learned.

It’s important to ensure that the answer includes improved self-understanding:  “What did you learn from this about yourself?”  How we think about ourselves is not only important with respect to how we feel about ourselves but also with respect to how we behave.

Once there’s a specific answer that makes sense, focus on the benefit of the lesson learned.  “How will this help you in the future?”  This transforms the lesson into a tool to be used to live better.  It derives a potentially valuable benefit from an emotionally negative situation.  It transforms an obstacle into an opportunity for enjoying an improved life.

In this way, even beginning facilitator skills can be very useful in friendships.  If you get better at holding space, you’ll help others as well as yourself.

Listening well is listening with your heart — not just with your ears.

What gift is more precious than the gift of a listening heart?

We are able to give it whenever we want.

How?  Simply remember to practice listening well.  That means listening without distraction.  Just ask and listen.

Doing anything without distraction is not easy.  Without training, our minds are out of control.  The best way to control them is to master any effective breathing practice (such as, for example, zazen meditation).  Nothing is better at helping us to focus and let go of distracting thoughts.

Like everything we do, listening occurs in the present moment.  Listening well is impossible when we are remembering the past, imagining the future, or focused on what is elsewhere. Listening well requires being fully present right here, right now.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but most of us are walking around with a lot of hurt, heartache, and resentment.  We are not incessantly joyful; instead, we are almost incessantly dissatisfied.  We miss much of our lives because we are lost in our thoughts.  Developing empathy for the predicament that others are in makes us predisposed to listen well.

Listening well to another begins with adopting an other-directed attitude.  Being sensitive to the concerns and problems of others requires suspending our egocentric concerns.  The more we are focused on gaining or grasping what we want, the less well we listen.

There’s an important irony here.  We think that we will enjoy experiences more if we are focused on gaining what we want from them.  Life doesn’t work that way.  The more we are focused on gaining what we want from experiences, the less we enjoy them.

Encounters (interpersonal relationships) are important.  As a result, we often try to control them so that we gain what we want from them.  Since other people don’t want us to manage them, this tactic usually works quite poorly.

The better way is to be open to whatever happens.  This means letting go of trying to use encounters for personal gain.  Instead of being egocentric, it’s better to focus on the other person.  [See the post "Arguing Essay" in the moral well-being category.]  Doing this is giving the gift of a listening heart.

How does it make you feel when someone listens attentively and nonjudgmentally to what you have to say?  How does it make you feel when someone shares life with you that way?

Avoid making things worse.  There are two chief ways we do that when listening.  The first is talking too much.  Focusing on asking good questions and talking no more than half as much as the other prevent that.  The second is giving unsolicited advice.  Don’t.  Unless asked to help, resist the temptation to try to fix others’ lives.

Don’t take my word for it.  If you don’t already realize it, please test this for yourself.

Once you realize how well it works, just keep practicing it.

Though it’s not easy, listening well is as simple as it is valuable.

This arguing essay answers the question “Is it useful or not?”

The thesis that it is useful is based on the fact that intellectual progress occurs only when ideas clash.

In philosophy, the give and take of intellectual combat is the dialectic that originated with oral disputes in ancient Greece.  In science, new ideas are always challenged, and the ones that don’t survive testing are junked.  In a courtroom, the attorney for the prosecution presents interpretations that are challenged by the attorney for the defense, and the judge or jury decides which argument is closer to the truth.

The point is not that the clashing of ideas always yields truth.  It doesn’t.  The point is that it’s a common method for attempting to discover truth.  So arguing is often thought to be useful in certain contexts.  No arguing essay should ignore this.

Nevertheless, especially in encounters (relationships), clashing ideas does not have to be understood as arguing.  There’s a better way.  Never argue; instead, discuss.

Why?

Any arguing essay ought to consider the subject matter of arguments, namely, opinions.

Opinions (judgments, beliefs) are perspectives.  Lacking omniscience, all human perspectives are partial.  None of us has an impartial, objective understanding of reality.

Furthermore, our opinions are always temporal.  We are able to change our minds.  Even if we don’t, whether it’s for a long time or a short time, opinions that we hold are always held at a certain time.  In that sense, they are temporary.

Also, they are relative to the person who holds them.  Since reality is in incessant flux, we are always in the process of updating our understanding.  Understanding is additive.  Over time, opinions change because our understanding changes as circumstances change.

Problems proliferate when we become attached to our opinions.  This is the central point of this arguing essay.  Since the world is always changing, the more attached to our favorite static opinions we are, the more likely it is that those opinions will be false.

Fanatics are people who are most attached to their own opinions, and fanatics are fools.  Having the courage of your convictions is having the courage of a fool.

By way of contrast, genuine philosophers, lovers of wisdom, regularly practice challenging their own opinions.  Having the courage to challenge your own convictions is having the courage of a philosopher.

Suppose that you and I disagree about some issue.  Contrast two attitudes.

First, I am attached to the idea that I am right and you are wrong.  I assume that I’m smarter than you or that my evidence is better than your evidence.  The more fanatical I am, the more I am predisposed to begin arguing with you.  Why?  I’m egocentric.  Like all conflicts, arguments come from egocentricity.

Furthermore, if I challenge you, what are you likely to do?  Because you’ll feel threatened, you’ll just stubbornly dig in and resist my attack.  When was the last time someone argued you out of an important opinion?

Second, I am not attached to the idea that I am right and you are wrong.  I am a philosopher rather than a fanatic.  I assume only that our perspectives are different.  I calmly tell you that my perspective differs from yours and suggest that there is probably some truth behind each of our perspectives.  Why don’t we discuss it to try to find common ground that we can both accept?

Instead of perceiving this as a challenge, you should perceive it as an opportunity to develop our encounter.  There’s no threat or conflict.  Instead, we are both on the side of seeking the truth about the issue.  Instead of provoking you to feel threatened, I’m enabling you to feel respected.

The conclusion of this arguing essay is that it’s better to prefer discussing to arguing.

In concrete situations, this isn’t always easy to do.  Nevertheless, it’s why it is better to let go of arguing in favor of discussing.

Furthermore, it’s a concrete way of being less egotistical.  Sages are successful philosophers, in other words, those who actually live well (as opposed to those who are still seeking to live well). This isn’t just a way of being more persuasive, it’s the way of sages.

Becoming comfortable with uncertainty is an effective means of improving encounters (interpersonal relationships).

Encounters challenge everyone.  Have you ever met anyone who had little or no difficulty with respect to friendships, love affairs, inter-familial relationships, work relationships, and so on?  I haven’t.  Encounters can be extremely valuable, but we purchase that importance only by willing to endure the troubles they generate.

Is there a general strategy that is very useful with respect to improving encounters?

Yes, namely, becoming comfortable with uncertainty.

Since intellectual progress occurs only when ideas clash, it’s a good procedure to engage in the give and take of comparing and contrasting evidence in an effort to improve understanding.  In philosophy, this process is engaging in the dialectic.

However, with respect to encounters, it’s important to discuss rather than to argue.  Never argue.

Why not?

If you and I were to argue about some issue, we’d each be taking the position that “I am right; there’s better evidence for my position than for yours and I’m smart enough to realize that and you aren’t.”

Please notice that the claim that “I am right” is an egocentric claim.  To argue is to practice egocentricity To be attached to your own ideas is to be predisposed to argue, to be ready for intellectual conflict and combat.  If someone challenges your ego, you are only likely to dig in and defend yourself.  While some people enjoy arguing, if you are interested in improving your encounters it’s wise never to argue.

Becoming more comfortable with uncertainty undermines the tendency to be argumentative.  It’s also more honest.

Realty is in incessant flux.  Therefore our individual perspectives are not only partial but temporary.  Attaching to our own opinions is the foolishness of fanaticism.

Wisdom with respect to our own opinions comes from always being ready to challenge them, which is the courage of a philosopher.  The wiser you are, the more comfortable with uncertainty about your own opinions you are.  This justifies permanently abandoning the attitude that “I get it and you don’t.”

Instead of taking it personally and arguing when someone disagrees with you, think (and be willing to say), “What we have here is a difference in perspective.  There’s probably some truth in each of our perspectives.  Let’s discuss this and determine if there isn’t a synthesis.  Help me understand how you see it by explaining your perspective to me.”

Are you inclined to argue with someone who respects you and wants to understand you?  Aren’t you instead inclined to be agreeable and to determine whether or not there is common ground?  Even if there is no common ground, friendship requires mutual respect.  Friends are able to disagree while still liking each other.

It’s not easy to become more comfortable with uncertainty.  It is, though, much more intellectual honest than merely being fanatically attached to your own views.  Furthermore, being more comfortable with uncertainty is an excellent way to improve your encounters.   I’ve learned this the hard way!

The happiness formula is not well understood.  Since we all would like to be happy, if we understood how to become happy, presumably a lot more of us would do it.

The truth is that it is difficult for human beings to be happy.

If we distinguish physical pain from suffering, all sentient beings experience at least occasional episodes of pain.  Suffering, though, is uncommon among nonhuman animals.

By way of contrast, suffering is nearly universal in humans.  Suicide is the deliberate taking of one’s own life.  No nonhuman animals commit suicide, and suicide occurs in all human societies.

Since happy people do not commit suicide, the happiness formula is not well understood.  This is hardly controversial.  Recognition of the ubiquity of human suffering goes back at least as far as The Buddha’s First Noble Truth, which was formulated about 2400 years ago.

So it seems that there must be something tricky about becoming happy, some feature that makes it difficult.

Since humans have all the abilities that nonhuman animals have, that feature is not something nature hasn’t given us.  Instead, it’s a feature that comes from an ability that we have that animals lack, namely, written language.

As David Abram and others have argued, the Greek alphabet was developed from the Semitic aleph-beth in about the eighth century B.C.E.  Soon only other humans and their technologies were speaking to us.  The mountains, wolves, clouds, and lakes fell silent.  We began to live most of our lives in our thoughts cut off from their larger-than-human context.

Since separation is the cause of suffering, this divide is the major cause of human suffering.

Our written language enables us to use the principles of instrumental reason and rational discourse to solve problems with respect to objects outside our thoughts.  This works so spectacularly well that we have come to dominate all nonhuman animals.

Does it matter much?  Are you as happy as your dog?

Few of us are.  How many people do you know who are genuinely happy?  What has gone wrong?

We have become bound by language.  We fail to understand how to live happily because we fail to free ourselves from literacy.

From the time of ancient Indian sages to Steven C. Hayes and the ACT therapists of today, some thinkers have been urging us to become happier by learning how to keep literacy in its place.  What works to solve problems outside our thoughts fails to work for our private experiences.

Suicide seems a natural response.  Not understanding how to escape from guilt, worthlessness, blame, grief, and other aversive private experiences, people give up their lives rather than to continue suffering.  Because they don’t understand the happiness formula, they find that the only way out.

With respect to public objects, our happiness increases with our ability to control them.  However, with respect to private objects, attempts to control them backfire.  The happiness formula requires giving up the attempt to control private objects!

For example, suppose that you don’t want to continue to experience the grief you feel over the death of a loved one.  How can you avoid it?  What can you do?  The more you fight it, the more you’ll experience it.  The happiness formula requires accepting it.  To use the happiness formula, become one with the grief.  That’s the only way to freedom from it.

This is why mystics and others have always recommended mastering certain breathing or spiritual practices.  If you want to master the happiness formula, master one of those practices.

There is a surprising amount of interest in discovering the best exercise to lose belly fat.  It’s probably not what you think.

Abdominal fat is a sign of insulin resistance.  Insulin is the primary fat storage hormone that spikes when someone eats too many carbohydrates [carbs].  How many carbs are too many?  The specific answer depends upon the individual; the general answer is “however many grams cause an insulin spike.”

The best exercise to lose belly fat is an exercise in discretion.  Permit me to explain.

People who have difficulty with emotional overeating, binge eating, compulsive overeating, and similar disorders usually suffer from carbohydrate addiction.

Whether they are simple or comples, when digested all carbs become sugar. The only real difference is that your body digests simple carbs more quickly than it does complex carbs.

Given a choice, your body will run on sugar rather than fat (and on fat rather than protein).  If you eat even slightly more sugar than you burn, your body will store it as fat.

Spot reduction is impossible.  The best exercise to lose belly fat is the same as the best exercise to lose fat.  Which exercise is that?  It’s the dietary exercise of eating a low carbohydrate diet.

Wouldn’t such an exercise to lose belly fat undermine your health?  Not at all.  The minimum daily requirement for carb consumption is zero.  Excellent health is possible even if you eat no carbs at all!

Still, because of the phytochemicals and fiber they provide, it’s a good idea to eat several servings of low-carb vegetables and berries daily.   Restricting your daily carb consumption to 25 grams or fewer is the best exercise to lose belly fat.

If you do that even for just a week or two, you may astound yourself at how rapidly your belly fat disappears.  Just doing that may drop your weight 20 lbs. in a month.  When your belly is trim again, go ahead and double or even triple your daily carb consumption.

That’s how to break a carb addiction.  Here’s a critical tip:  until your body composition is what you desire, make no exceptions.

The best exercise to lose belly fat is really an exercise to break a carb addiction.  If you smoked cigarettes and were trying to break a nicotine addiction, would you be wise to permit yourself a cigarette each day or each week?  Of course not.  That would merely prolong your addiction.

It’s the same with carbs:  keep your concumption to 25 grams or less daily with no exceptions.  If you permit exceptions, you’ll just prolong your addiction.  It’s actually easier to make no exceptions than it is to permit yourself carb treats occasionally!

Restricting carbs may be difficult to do for 2 or 3 days.  As your body transitions from burning sugar to burning fat, you may have cravings, headaches, and similar discomforts.

However, if you just stick it out, they will soon diminish and permanently disappear.

Right now, you may not be able to conceive going a day without products made from grains (such as wheat, rice, and corn including breads, pasta, breakfast cereals, and all those manufactured foods made with high fructose corn syrup), potatoes, fruits and fruit juices, and so on.  Well, I simply encourage you to go on a low carb diet for a few days and watch what happens.  Your cravings will magically begin to vanish!

If you don’t eat carbs, what should you eat?  In addition to low-carb veges and berries, eat fats and proteins from natural sources such as grass fed ungulates (like cattle, bison, and beefalo), wild caught fish, game animals, and so on.  You may be astonished at how much your mood improves.

This discretionary exercise to remove belly fat is best combined with drinking plenty of clean water (at least 2 or 3 quarts daily) and regular walking (such as two miles in 30 minutes 6 times weekly).

Of course, it’s best not to change your diet and exercise patterns without the blessing of your personal physician — assuming that advice is based on a recent, thorough physical examination and your physician understands how our bodies evolved.  If it weren’t a chief cause of the rampant diseases of civilization such as heart disease, diabetes, and obesity, the idea that humans should be getting most of their calories from carbs would ludicrous; instead, get most of your calories from natural fats and, secondarily, from proteins just like our ancestors did.

If you exercise to lose belly fat in this way, I’d appreciate your comments below.  They may encourage others to become healthier.

The way to stop sugar cravings is to break your addiction to carbohydrates.

When digested, all carbohydrates become sugar.  Consuming carbohydrates can spike your blood sugar levels, which overstimulates insulin release.  Insulin is the chief fat-storing hormone.

We live in an age when obesity, type II diabetes, heart disease, and the other diseases of civilization are epidemic.  We’ve been taught to consume carbohydrates instead of fats, which has had the result that we and our children are fatter than ever!

Without realizing it, many of us have become addicted to carbohydrates.

All carbohydrate consumption is unnecessary.  The minimum daily requirement for carbs is zero!

Our bodies respond to sugar with inflammation.  Chronic carbohydrate consumption can create chronic, subclinical inflammation, which speeds up aging and precipitates age-related diseases.

Want to slow your rate of aging?  Cut carb consumption.

As soon as we realize we are addicted and try to break the addiction, we begin to suffer withdrawal symptoms such as headaches and cravings.  What should we do?

The best way to stop sugar cravings is to eliminate or dramatically limit carbohydrate consumption, which means 25 grams or less daily.  This is less than one-tenth of what most Americans consume.

(It’s best to get those carbs from low-carb [preferably organic] vegetables.)

The good news is that the cravings will dramatically diminish in 72 hours or less as your body switches from burning sugar to burning fat.   If you are skeptical about that, why not find out for yourself?

As soon as your sugar cravings stop or dramatically diminish, you may be astounded to find yourself liberated from desires for candy, chocolate, pastries, bread, and pasta.  Hey, freedom feels good, doesn’t it?  It feels better than the taste of any food.  This may be the most important benefit of learning how to stop sugar cravings.

You may fear that, in order to succeed, you’ll have to spend lots of extra time monitoring portion sizes and weighing all your food.  Not!  It’s relatively easy to monitor grams of carbs, and, in just a few days, you won’t even have to look up foods in a food counts book.

Furthermore, when you free yourself, you’ll again begin to enjoy eating fats!  As long as your carb consumption is low, you should get most of your calories from fats.  Proteins should be your second largest source of calories.

If you also do some simple cardio exercise (such as brisk walking) and meditation (I suggest zazen), when you stop sugar cravings you are not only going to reduce the causes of inflammation, but also you are quite likely to lose body fat, which itself will diminish your chances of suffering from the epidemic diseases of civilization.

I offer specific guidance for how to eat well and to exercise well in other posts on this blog as well as at other sites such as http://www.lasting-weight-loss.com/ .

Why not stop sugar cravings?  If you’ll make no exceptions, which would prolong the quitting process [think of a smoker trying to quit who has a cigarette!], you will soon feel better, look better, and quickly begin to be healthier.

So, stop sugar cravings and live better.

Enjoy eating but tired of being too heavy?  There are plenty of delicious foods that boost metabolism.

If you ramp up your metabolic rate by eating the kinds of foods listed here (and avoiding those not listed here), your percentage of body fat will begin to decline noticeably in less than a week.

The word ‘metabolism’ refers to all those chemical processes in your body that produce energy.  So increasing your metabolism will increase how energetic you feel – and that can be a huge psychological boost.  Furthermore, if you persist in eating foods that boost metabolism and avoid those that don’t, your body composition will improve, which will improve your appearance.  How will you feel about that?

Why not, almost exclusively, eat foods that boost metabolism and allow your body to be as healthy as it can be?

If given a choice, your body will use sugar before it uses other nutrients.  If you are too heavy, it’s very likely because you have been fueling your body with sugar — and sugar that isn’t used has been deposited as fat.

How can you burn those fat deposits?  The basic idea is simple:  reduce your sugar consumption so that your body will burn fat instead of sugar.

What does this mean?  When digested, all carbohydrates become sugar.  If you significantly reduce your consumption of carbohydrates and replace them with the foods that boost metabolism listed here, your body will switch from burning sugars to burning fats, which is exactly what you want.

In grams, what’s the minimum daily requirement for carbohydrates?  Zero.  In grams, what’s the minimum daily requirement for fiber?  Zero.  In other words, you can be perfectly healthy without consuming any carbohydrates or fiber.

Nevertheless, the fiber and phytonutrients available in low-carb vegetables are valuable, which is why it’s a good idea to consume a small amount of several (preferably organic) low-carb vegetables daily.  If you consume less than 30 grams of carbs daily, you’ll be consuming about one-tenth of the amount of carbs consumed daily by most Americans — and, also, you’ll soon stop being as fat as they are.  In this sense, low carb vegetables are foods that boost metabolism.  Avoid all other carbohydrates.

It is not dietary fats but carbs that are the chief source of body fat for most people.  Ingested carbs are converted to blood sugar and then, if not burned, converted to fat cells with the aid of insulin, which is the main fat-building hormone.  What’s the basic element of most carbs?  Glucose!

(Dietary fats are not converted to blood sugar.  Dietary proteins can be converted to blood sugar, but the process is slow and inefficient.)

One reason proteins are important foods that boost metabolism is because your body has to work about twice as hard to process proteins than it does to process either fats or carbs.  So, by eating more proteins, you’ll take advantage of their powerful “thermic effect.”

Furthermore, natural foods high in proteins, which are the chief foods that boost metabolism, will make you feel more satiated than either fats or carbs, and that feeling will last longer, too.

Sadly, many popular foods should be avoided.  Eliminate fruits (including tomatoes) and fruit juices, dairy products (except butter, cream, hard cheese and some yogurts), candies, desserts, grains (such as wheat, corn, and rice) and grain products (such as pasta, bread, crackers, pastries, breakfast cereals, and snack foods).

If you are too fat, there are even more benefits to eating these foods that boost metabolism:  if you eat a sufficient quantity every 3 or 4 waking hours, you’ll automatically minimize food cravings.  Also, you will improve the glucose and insulin levels in your blood.  Your blood pressure will decrease.  Your “good” HDL cholesterol will increase and your “bad” LDL cholesterol is decrease (so the important cholerterol ratio will improve).  Your blood lipids (fats), such as triglycerides, will decrease.

From a genetic point of view, your body is very similar to the bodies of your ancestors 20,000 years ago.  The foods that boost metabolism are natural foods, ones that our species evolved eating.

The closer your diet is to the diet of your ancestors, the more healthy you are likely to be.

So, specifically, what are the foods that boost metabolism?

Flesh foods (including bone marrow) from game animals.  [This was the staple of our ancestors.]

Wild-caught fish and seafood.  (To help avoid fish that we humans have contaminated with heavy metals, it’s best today to eat large fish such as tuna sparingly.  Some of the fish with the best fats are wild-caught salmon such as sockeye, herring, mackerel, clams, halibut, Chilean sea bass, and anchovies.)

Muscle meat and organ meat from range-fed ungulates like cattle, beefalo, and bison that eat grass.  (Avoid flesh foods from ungulates that have, unnaturally, been fed corn, given antibiotics, and raised in feedlots.)

Organic chicken eggs.  (You may want to restrict yolk consumption to one daily.)

Organic poultry that has not been raised in cages.

The protein foods that boost metabolism from these five groups also have plenty of good fats.  The ideal ratio of omega 6 to omega 3 fats in your diet should be between 2 or 3 to 1, perhaps even 1 to 1. Unfortunately, some natural foods, such most nuts and seeds (except walnuts), have an unacceptably high ratio.

The best oils are flaxseed and coconut.  Walnut oil is acceptable.  If you use olive oil, blend it with one of the best oils.

Some engineered foods such as protein powders are acceptable as foods that boost metabolism if they are low carb and have a good potassium/sodium ratio (at least 3 mg potassium for every 1 mg sodium).  There are some other man-made products that are acceptable such as some some soy products, unsweetened soy milk, sugar-free Jell-O gelatin, coffee, tea, seltzer, mineral water, club soda, diet soda, chewing gum, very low-carb desserts, and one (for women) or two (for men) alcoholic drinks daily.

Peanuts and other legumes are not foods that boost metabolism.  Avoid them.

If you supplement foods that boost metabolism with regular strength training twice weekly, intense interval training twice weekly, and mild cardio such as brisk walking six times weekly, you may be able to transform your body significantly in 90 days or less.  Why not?

What else are you doing that is more important for your health?

It’s difficult to live well or wisely if you suffer from ill health.  It’s impossible to live well if you are dead.

[As always, this blog is educational.  How you use the information provided here is up to you.  In particular, it would be foolish to change your dietary or exercise habits without the blessing of your health care professional.  For example, diabetics should not eat more frequently than every 4 waking hours.]

Do you ever wonder, “What are the best exercises to lose weight quickly?”

If you are like me, there are times when a quick reduction in body fat would be very helpful.  Those are the times you’d really like to know how to lose weight quickly.

For example, when you are losing weight at a sustainable rate of 1 or 2 pounds weekly and hit a sticking point, you realize that you must blast through that plateau if you are to continue making progress.  Perhaps there’s a special occasion, such as a reunion or a wedding, coming up and you just want to look better.

If you are healthy, relatively fit, and have your physician’s blessing, I present in this post a program involving the best exercises to lose weight quickly that might work excellently for you.

If your percentage of body fat is under 10% if you are male or under 15% if you are female, the exercises to lose weight quickly presented here will still work, but you won’t see the dramatic, rapid decreases that fatter people will see.

So, what are the best exercises to lose weight quickly?

Of course, nobody knows the future.  Making the usual assumption that future correlations will be sufficiently similar to past correlations, for the simple reason that it works, I take my answer from what bodybuilders preparing for a contest actually do.  (For more about this, see Larry Pepe’s The Precontest Bible.)

All things considered, walking is the best exercise.  So it’s not surprising that walking is the best of the best exercises to lose weight quickly.  The chief idea here is simply to do more walking.

If you are willing to do that, to do some brief interval training, and to follow a low carbohydrate diet, it should be realistic for you to lose a significant amount of weight in just several weeks.

This program presupposes that you are already actually walking at least 2 miles in just under 30 minutes six times weekly.  If you are not, first work up slowly to doing that before you implement this three-step program.

First, double your walking.  Walk those 2 miles briskly in the morning and again in the evening.  When you are doing that with no difficulties (such as shin splints), go on to the next step.

Second, double your walking again.  Walk 4 miles briskly in the morning and again in the evening.  When you are doing that with no difficulties, go on to the next step.

Third, add a brief session of interval training in the middle of the day.  That’s it!

On my weight loss site (http://www.lasting-weight-loss.com), I provide detailed, step-by-step instructions on how to initiate and sustain an effective walking program and on how to do GXP interval training.  If you don’t already understand exactly what to do, teach yourself.  You must use a heart rate monitor for interval training.

From the standpoint of our prehistoric ancestors, that’s not a lot of exercise.  From our standpoint, though, it is.

Question:  if you eat as much as you like while using these exercises to lose weight quickly, are you going to lose weight quickly?  Of course not.

It’s not only important to eat well, it’s important to get sufficient rest and recovery.  I explain exactly how to do that on my weight loss site.  You should, for example, be eating at least 5 meals daily, consuming plenty of water, and getting plenty of sleep.

Here’s the most important requirement for maximizing the benefits you will obtain from this program of exercises to lose weight quickly:  consume no more than 25 grams of carbohydrates daily.

Don’t worry:  there is no minimum daily requirement for carbohydrates!  Having a few servings of (preferably organic) low carbohydrate vegetables daily is a good idea, but, for being healthy, you don’t need to consume any carbohydrates at all.

Unless you are already following a low carbohydrate diet, this may be the most difficult part of maximizing the benefits you get from exercises to lose weight quickly.  However, if you make no exceptions, most of the difficulty will be over in just 48 or 72 hours.  Why?

It takes that long for your body to shift from burning sugar to burning fat.  All carbohydrates, when digested, become sugar.  Therefore, when we eat lots of carbs, we are fueling ourselves with sugar.

That’s not desirable.  What we want is to fuel ourselves with fat, particularly stored body fat.  That’s the only way to improve your body composition.  Therefore, it’s necessary to limit carbohydrate consumption to enable your body to burn fat.

Unless you are diabetic or your physician advises it however, you do not have to stay on a low carbohydrate diet forever.  In fact, you don’t have to stay on this program of exercises to lose weight quickly forever.  What should you do when you reach the percentage of body fat that you desire?

Simply back off this program.  Make a change and observe the results.  If you are not compromising the results of your hard work from this program of exercises to lose weight quickly, make an additional change.  Here’s the sequence:

With respect to carbs, double daily consumption.  Then triple daily consumption.

With respect to exercises to lose weight quickly, eliminate one daily walk.  Eliminate four weekly interval training sessions and replace two of them with strength training sessions (to build muscle mass).  Reduce your remaining daily walk from 60 to 30 minutes.  Always ensure that you are getting one day weekly with no formal exercise.

So, in two or three months, you may be doing six 30 minute walks weekly, 2 interval training sessions weekly, and 2 strength-training sessions weekly.  That is a program that you may sustain until your dotage while enjoying a greatly reduced percentage of body fat.

If you have any comments or questions on this program of exercises to lose weight quickly, please use the comment section below.  Just do it — and you should amaze yourself and others with your quick transformation!

Understanding the abstract notion of the general adaptation syndrome stages can prove surprisingly helpful when making concrete decisions in daily life.

Suppose, for example, that you unexpectedly inherit $1000 and that, since you have started and stuck to a new exercise program for 90 days, you want to reward yourself by spending the money on something that will make you feel happier.  How should you spend it?

Since you’ve never had one and have heard good reports about them, you’ve been toying with the idea of buying a new flat-screen television.  On the other hand, you have not been out of town for six months and are tempted by a real change of pace like a hiking and camping vacation in the mountains.  Which alternative would best increase how happy you feel?

What is your answer?  What’s the chief argument in favor of your answer?  Please answer these two questions for yourself before reading the rest of this post.

[Did you actually do it?  No cheating!]

Permit me to answer another question first and then to use its answer to give you my answer.  What are the general adaptation syndrome stages?

There are five general adaptation syndrome stages.  I’ll chose an actual example from my own life — my time as a cigarette smoker.

The first of the general adaptation syndrome stages is the initial response.  I remember my first cigarette:  it tasted terrible, made me cough, and gave me a headache!

The second of the general adaptation syndrome stages is adaptation.  For psychological reasons, I persisted smoking cigarettes and my body quickly adapted to protect itself from the chemicals contained in the noxious smoke.

The third of the general adaptation syndrome stages is exhaustion. After a few years, I decided that I didn’t like the effects of being a smoker.  It undermined my stamina and diminished my ability to smell and to taste.  It made my breath and clothes stink.  It was expensive.  Worst of all, I had lost my freedom not to smoke.

The fourth of the general adaptation syndrome stages is recovery.  I quit smoking.  Fortunately, I wasn’t as addicted as some of my buddies.  It was difficult to quit, but it wasn’t that difficult for me.  The advantages of being a nonsmoker quickly outweighed the advantages of continuing to smoke.

The fifth of the general adaptation syndrome stages is hypersensitivity, which is really a return to the first stage.  For me, it was a learning experience that taught me to trust my bodily responses more.  Today, I cannot imagine becoming addicted to something that initially tastes terrible, makes me cough, and gives me a headache!

The television or the vacation?

Well, use the notion of those general adaptation syndrome stages to imagine beyond your initial experiences with either the television or the vacation.  What will happen afterwards?

Nobody today has any knowledge of future consequences.  All we can do is to imagine that future connections will sufficiently resemble past connections.

Let’s assume that your initial experiences with both the television and the vacation will be quite enjoyable.  What will happen next?

After, say, a hundred days of watching it, will your enjoyment of watching your new television be as intense as it was the first day or two you had it?  Of course not.  You’ll have adapted to it.  It’ll just be your television.  (This phenomenon is sometimes called “the hedonic treadmill.”)

As for the vacation, even if your enjoyment of it never stimulates you to again hike and camp in the mountains, you’ll continue to remember it as having been a unique, enjoyable experience for as long as your memory lasts.  In a sense, it will become part of yourself; you’ll identify yourself, in part, as one who successfully spent time in the mountains.

In this way it’s useful idea to keep the general adaptation syndrome stages in mind as you make daily decisions.  Let’s consider two more examples.

Should you eat strawberry shortcake for dessert?

Think about how quickly you adapt:  isn’t the first bite of an apple always the best bite?  Instead of having, say, a huge strawberry shortcake, why not have just one or two strawberries?  After all, the fifth strawberry won’t taste as good as the first, right?

Should you keep using the same strength training protocol for years on end?

Though a surprising number of trainees do, of course not!  Change it every couple of months.  Why?  Since your body will adapt to any new one in a few weeks, keep challenging it by deliberately changing what you are doing every two or three months.  Use different exercises or a different sequence of exercises or a different set & rep scheme.

So that’s how understanding this abstract notion can enable us to make better decisions every day.

[Incidentally, the idea of happiness is one of the five big ideas I discuss in 5 Ways to Diminish Failure Almost Instantly.]