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We're never shown that part of it because it's boring. It's a lot more exciting to show super-fit bodies and people winning remarkable victories. Unfortunately, this creates a great distortion in the minds of the American people, who dissociate the results from the effort. They see images of all these fantastic results but they never see the images of the effort. They never see the failure, the sweat or the determination that it takes to achieve those results.

I can tell you that any person who has achieved a degree of physical fitness beyond their 20s or 30s is doing it by choice. There are no accidents when it comes to physical fitness and personal health; there are only outcomes. When people embark on a journey to achieve a specific outcome, it takes a considerable amount of effort to get to that destination. Even then, most people don't consider it a destination -- it's not a stopping point. It's really just a way of life. That's the way fit people think. They don't think, "Oh, I'm just trying to lose five pounds or ten pounds to go to the next social occasion." They think: "This is the way I live. I always choose to eat healthy foods. I always choose to avoid fried foods, red meat or dairy products. I always choose to exercise on a regular basis because that's my lifestyle." That's who they are. It's not an effort to achieve one limited result. Instead, it is acting out their inner identity. It is authentic behavior, and the results are consistent.

What does all this mean in a practical sense? What does it mean for you, a person who potentially wants to improve your health results? There are two primary lessons here. One lesson is that it really does take effort in order to achieve a desired result, and it is a mistake to look at other people and assume they did not have to expend effort to get there. People who have achieved phenomenal levels of physical fitness or human health, or who have proven themselves in sports or the Olympics, have all invested time, effort and usually a fair amount of money into achieving those results.

The second lesson is to realize that these changes start from the inside and work their way out, not the other way around. A person who leads a healthy lifestyle starts that process on the inside. They change who they are first, and then they begin to act on who they are. For example, they may change their belief system and decide that they can heal themselves, that they can be fit, that they can engage in regular exercise or that they don't necessarily need to eat pizza and donuts all the time. They can make these choices on the inside, and then they begin acting them out, because our behavior always follows who we think we are. Once that behavior is acted out over time, the changes begin to unfold on the outside. Their excessive body weight begins to drop off, their eyes brighten, their skin is rejuvenated and begins to look remarkably younger, their symptoms of disease -- including chronic pain, high blood pressure, stress and depression -- all begin to fade away.

The big mistake that most Westerners and Americans make is they have this process backwards. They attempt to change themselves from the outside without working on who they are on the inside. The most extreme example of this is cosmetic surgery. Cosmetic surgery is an effort to reshape the external body while being unconscious under a surgeon's scalpel. This is extreme denial and extreme dissociation from the person who needs to make a change. Of course, cosmetic surgery may make an external change, however, it never changes the person on the inside. As a result, it never changes the behavior, the belief systems or the lifestyle habits of a person.

Not surprisingly, people who undergo cosmetic surgery instead of addressing their core beliefs and behavior almost always experience worsening health following the surgery. They end up with results that are far worse than what they started with. When certain fat cells are surgically removed from the abdominal region through liposuction, for example, the fat has to be stored somewhere, and so it goes to places where other fat cells still remain. This is why a lot of women who undergo cosmetic surgery end up with these enormous fat deposits on their knees and under their arms, because they continue to eat in a way that forces the body to store fat. Yet, they have surgically removed the usual fat cell locations where the body would normally choose to store such fats. This is what happens when you attempt to change your body from the outside rather than the inside. You end up looking like a freak.

The cosmetics industry offers the illusion of results without effort

In fact, most so-called "beauty" products cover up the pores and don't allow the skin to breathe. Many of the ingredients are actually toxic to the skin and body, which means they're going to worsen external appearance over time. What's the result of that? It creates a greater need for cosmetics. This is how the cosmetics industry traps people in a cycle of dependence on their products.

I know many people with really great skin, and these people don't use any cosmetics whatsoever -- no lotions, no creams, no perfumes, no makeup, and so on. Instead, they follow very healthy diets and lifestyles. They engage in regular physical exercise, eat organic foods or raw foods, and avoid all processed foods, dairy products and meats. In fact, they don't buy anything in a box. They basically buy fresh produce. A lot of these people are juicers. That means they drink fresh, raw juice every day, and they often have their own juicers in their kitchen. If you want great skin, start juicing for health.

To summarize so far, we talked about the dissociation of results from effort. We covered two basic lessons on what that means for people in Western cultures, and how we tend to go off track by making the mistake of thinking we can change who we are with lotions or skin creams or cosmetic surgeries. This is one of the great seductions of the drugs and cosmetics industries, and I cover this in more detail in my book, "Spam Filters For Your Brain," which you'll find at TruthPublishing.com. It explains ten different seductions that these industries use to manipulate people into buying worthless products.

The best way to sabotage your health results is to obsess over them

It doesn't mean the change won't happen, and it can be accelerated in many ways, but they will take time, because the body takes time to adapt. Instead of watching the clock, so to speak, what truly healthy people do is engage in a healthy lifestyle and then they forget about the results. They allow health to unfold in a natural way, as it will automatically reflect the lifestyle decisions (food, supplements and exercise, primarily).

If I'm consuming a diet rich in fruits and vegetables and nuts, without any food toxins whatsoever, and if I'm getting regular exercise, sunshine, and lots of water and fresh air, and I'm living in a low-stress environment without any toxic chemicals in my house, then I don't need to think about the health goals. They will unfold naturally and automatically. I don't need to think about how quickly my blood pressure will drop, or how quickly I can lower my LDL cholesterol, or whether I can lose 10 pounds of excess body fat in a month. The effect that I will get in terms of health will be naturally unfolding according to the inputs, and the inputs, of course, are the diet, lack of stress, physical exercise and closeness with nature, which includes sunshine, fresh air and fresh water.

The inputs really determine the result. Now, you can fret about the result all the time, if you so desire, but it will only boost your stress levels and it won't accelerate your results at all. The results are going to be determined by your actions and the laws of nature that govern the way your body uses nutrition in order to maintain its health.

If you stop worrying about the outcome and just start living this new lifestyle, then changes will happen faster than you can imagine. That's because all healthy diets that you pursue, as well as any new exercise or meditation programs, should actually be pursued as a new way of life for you, not simply something you're doing for one month or doing to achieve a specific weight loss goal.

For example, maybe you want to fit into size 6 pants for your next family reunion. Well, that's great, and you can probably restrict your calories enough to get into size 6 pants, but what happens after the family reunion? Well, then you go back to your old way of eating and you're faced with the same problem with the next social engagement. You can avoid this cycle of panic by making the lifestyle changes permanent, so you don't even have to worry about the next family reunion or social occasion, and you are always fit and healthy because you consistently choose to eat in a way that supports that outcome.

Cause and effect, not luck, determines your results

Even a birth defect has a root cause, which is almost always traced back to the nutritional deficiency or chemical exposure of the expectant mother. But in your own life, no matter what genes you were born with, you have the ability to radically alter your health outcome by understanding that achieving results requires effort, and by understanding that you are the only person who can put these two together. If you choose certain inputs, then you will get certain outputs.

In other words, if you have influences of a certain nature -- dietary, exercise, and so on -- then you will get the resulting health consequences automatically. I often describe this by saying there is a recipe for health. There also is a recipe for disease, and I even wrote a couple of satire articles on how to give yourself cancer or diabetes by following the health "recipe" of most Americans. It may seem like an odd thing to write about, but the point is to show that if you wanted to give yourself diabetes, there are certain steps you can take. Almost everyone in this country is following those steps right now, as if they were intending to give themselves diabetes.

There's a recipe for creating every disease, and if you follow that recipe then you shouldn't be surprised to be someday diagnosed with that disease. Likewise, there is a recipe for avoiding all diseases. There is a recipe for enhancing lifelong health and maximizing your experience as a human being. There is a recipe for living well past 100 years of age and for enjoying life with a clear mind during each of those 100-plus years.

That recipe is essentially everything that I'm talking about here in my articles, books and reports. It is a straightforward recipe that any person can pursue, no matter how diseased they are, no matter how overweight they are, no matter where they came from, what genes they have or how they were treated as children. Every person has the ability to learn something new and begin changing their input to achieve different results.

So, I invite you to continue along that path. I know that the vast majority of readers of this information are already on that path. Remember, you don't have to do everything at once. You just have to make small, incremental improvements in your life, and move in the direction of improved health.

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About the author: Mike Adams is a holistic nutritionist with a passion for teaching people how to improve their health He is a prolific writer and has published thousands of articles, interviews, reports and consumer guides, reaching millions of readers with information that is saving lives and improving personal health around the world. Adams is an independent journalist with strong ethics who does not get paid to write articles about any product or company. In 2007, Adams launched EcoLEDs, a maker of energy efficient LED lights that greatly reduce CO2 emissions. He's also the CEO of a highly successful email newsletter software company that develops software used to send permission email campaigns to subscribers. Adams volunteers his time to serve as the executive director of the Consumer Wellness Center, a 501(c)3 non-profit organization, and practices nature photography, Capoeira, Pilates and organic gardening. He's also author of numerous health books published by Truth Publishing and is the creator of several consumer-oriented grassroots campaigns, including the Spam. Don't Buy It! campaign, and the free downloadable Honest Food Guide. He also created the free reference sites HerbReference.com and HealingFoodReference.com. Adams believes in free speech, free access to nutritional supplements and the ending of corporate control over medicines, genes and seeds.

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