TRIM BODY TODAY

How sitting addiction and technologies like sunscreen, tap

water, and toothpaste are making you fat—and what you can do about

it today.

William H. Wall

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Published by Trim Body Research™a division of Trim Body, LLC.

ISBN-13: 978-0692375969

ISBN-10: 0692375961

© 2015 by William H. Wall. All rights reserved.

Although the author and publisher have made every effort to ensure that the information in this book was correct at press time, the author and publisher do not assume and hereby disclaim any liability to any party for any loss, damage, or disruption caused by errors or omissions, whether such errors or omissions result from negligence, accident, or any other cause.

This book is not intended as a substitute for the medical advice of physicians. The reader should regularly consult a physician in matters relating to his/her health and particularly with respect to any symptoms that may require diagnosis or medical attention.

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Chapter 1

The Trim Body PhilosophyMy inward thought was that I will always be fat, I will always be in pain, I will never be healthy. I was born this way and I will die this way. -The Author

If you have just about given up on the idea that you can achieve a healthy body weight, then this book is for you. No longer should you believe that the change you desire is impossible, as I have uncovered a mountain of evidence that a trim and healthy body is both normal and attainable.

You may not realize it, but technology is making us fat. Our minds, bodies, and emotions may be out of balance as the result of embracing a modern sedentary lifestyle. If you sit a lot, drink regular tap water, and wear sunscreen, you are at risk of being overweight or worried about why you cannot lose weight. Try as we might to stay thin, the technologies that facilitate and protect our modern lifestyle may be contributing to key nutritional deficiencies that sabotage our exercise and diet plans. That is why we enjoy short-term weight loss only to revert back to our original overweight and possibly depressed state.

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Chances are that you have a lot of cravings for carbs and tend to snack, especially before going to sleep. You may also have food intolerances that you did not have as a kid, resulting in heartburn and acid reflux. You may not desire to eat green, leafy, or other vegetables. Natural foods like raw nuts and raw vegetables may cause your throat to itch. You may not be able to enjoy spicy foods like tomatoes and peppers because they come back to torment you when you try to sleep. Lastly, you may overindulge in high-caloric fast foods, born in a technological process, that never quite satisfy your appetite.

The good news is that you need not entirely give up any foods to start benefiting from the alternative technological solutions found in this book. Starting today, you can begin to understand that the chemicals we put into our bodies and other technological factors that were intended to protect us from harm sometimes have the unintended consequence of depleting nutrients key to protecting us from getting fat. This naturally leads to a diseased state of mind and body.

With the Trim Body approach, I’ll show you how to reverse the harmful effects of technology and how to jump-start your metabolism while you realize with amazement that your appetites have changed and the pounds have begun to drop off naturally. Best of all, you will not have to try to change much in your physical daily routine except to get your body moving more.

The information in this book is designed to help you learn and change the way you think about nutrition and exercise in order to stay healthy while losing weight in a methodical, easy, and comprehensive way. I recommend that readers try

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not to skip around in the book too much, as it is a fast read and makes the most sense when read in order, chapter by chapter. I believe you will enjoy every turn of the page and be forever changed, as I have been. Get trim. Get healthy. Start today. Enjoy the journey.

Something Good Happens Today

Every action we take and every word we speak occurs today and then is gone forever. In a sense, tomorrow never comes and yesterday never happened. The choices we make today define our reality. Today we have opportunity to plant the seeds that will come to fruition in the future. Having a trim and healthy body is like that. Procrastination tells us we can plant tomorrow, and deception reminds us that we planted yesterday. To reap a harvest of health, we all need to make intentional choices and to take action today. To think that we are not in control of our bodies creates a negative cycle that can lead to premature aging and even death. It’s the wrong mental response to a modern sedentary lifestyle. We are conditioned to think that we are diseased and need an unaffordable scientific solution, when all we really need is good nutrition, regular activity, and the knowledge of how easy it is to journey toward a trim and healthy body. Our DNA is not as defective as our thinking is.

Trim people are mindful of nutrition, active, physically strong, mentally tough, and whole. These attributes are summed up in the Trim Body philosophy as understanding the game, nourishing your body, moving with intention, strengthening your core, and rejuvenating your mind. It is not important to memorize this list of attributes; by the

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time you finish this book, you’ll have gained a solid understanding of the importance of each from practical application.

Understand the Game

When you don’t know what you don’t know, it shows, and you can’t grow.1

The truth of this declaration is embodied in the reality that people who know what you do not know can recognize it right away, and they will have the upper hand. It is one thing to learn about something and another thing to understand what you have learned and apply it in life. Michael A. Joseph, an international gaming specialist, drove this point home to me and a group of professional table games dealers at a training seminar in 2013. It was amazing to learn how easily card game players who know how to cheat can defeat the sensibilities of dealers who are unaware that the cheating is going on. It shows when you don’t know. The newfound knowledge dealers gained in the training having raised their awareness, they now had opportunity to change how they perceive and interact with the game.

The foundation of the Trim Body philosophy is like that. Together we continue to learn, understand, and apply that knowledge with intentional pursuit of better health. Information is not enough. Learning is not enough. We have to understand what and why we are learning and then do something about it, or we are only cheating ourselves. We need to change the way we think about our lives in much the same way that the card dealers were encouraged to change the way they thought about card games. Just as a card dealer

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might go to work every day for years and yet not have a critical piece of knowledge that can help him or her understand the dynamics of cheating, so we can go through life without understanding the game of losing weight and living abundantly.

Nourish Your Body

Nourishment is the process of putting healthy fuel into your body. There is much disagreement among experts about what constitutes a nourishing diet. This book is not a diet book per se but a guide to spreading understanding of good nutrition. In an effort to discover healthy alternatives we’ll explore some of the unintended consequences of our lifestyle and diet choices. To do so we build our nutrition on the understanding we acquire from research, experience, common sense, and experimentation. Although human beings are biologically omnivores, some people choose a vegetarian lifestyle and others do not. As we’ll see, less important to nourishment than the kind of food we eat is the nutritional level at which we fuel our body’s cells.

The Trim Body philosophy is to identify the factors that contribute to overweight and obese conditions that may be beyond the control of the average person, who may be doing his or her best to eat the right things. For example, just how does a modern lifestyle sabotage good eating habits? Why is it that people who strive to lose weight sometimes cannot? The answers to some of these questions will surprise you. As a result, you may discover solutions that help you to reach your ideal weight without making major changes to your diet. The Trim Body approach to nourishment goes beyond consideration of what we eat to exploring

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the reasons why technology may be sabotaging our best efforts to lose weight and what can be done about it. For some, the solution may be as simple as supplementation.

I have a story to illustrate this concept. In 2012 I was suffering for several months from what I thought was rosacea, a disease that makes your face turn red and scaly. It was embarrassing. The doctor had prescribed some creams and they seemed to help a little, but I figured I was just turning into a prematurely red-faced old man. One day Carmen, a colleague at work, looked at me and said, “ I think you’re dehydrated.”

“That’s ridiculous” I replied. “I drink a lot of water every day.”

Undeterred she scurried off and returned with a sports drink and said, “You look like my daughter when she’s playing basketball. I believe your body needs electrolytes.”

I gulped down the sports drink and could feel my face getting cooler within only a minute or so. With consumption of further electrolytes in the following days, I found my condition resolved completely. How ironic that, after months of struggling with this red-face thing, the problem was forever resolved after five minutes! I didn’t know what I didn’t know, and was suffering as a result. A supplement of electrolytes was what my body needed. Although electrolytes are not food, they were the necessary fuel that began to restore my health that day. Carmen knew something I did not know. Her experience and knowledge base helped me to nourish my body when I applied the recommended solution.

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Move with Intention

Until recent decades, it was a lot of work driving a car. In the 1960s and ‘70s, power steering and power brakes were relatively new inventions, and they were available only at added cost when purchasing a vehicle. Without power steering you had to wrestle with the steering wheel to turn a corner, and it would spin wildly back into position as you exited the curve. A person did not leave a hand inside the circle of the wheel while it spun into position, as the force could injure your arm. To stop the car, you had to push on the brakes with all your might.

Before automatic transmission, all cars had a manual clutch, and you had to push it in with your left foot to shift gears while shifting the manual gearshift lever with your right hand. Unlike today’s clutches and shifters, these were not very forgiving. To start the car, you had to engage the clutch with your left foot and at the same time push on the brake pedal with your right foot, so that the car did not roll. This technique was especially important at a stop sign or red light, where you had to push in the clutch to disengage the gears so the car would stop. It was tricky to push the gas pedal, all the while holding in the clutch and pushing down on the brake pedal, to keep the motor revving so the car would not stall out.

These were not the power clutches and brakes that we have today. If you barely let off the brake, the car would roll and you would have to stomp on the brake really hard to stop. If you were stopped on a hill, when it was time to start forward, you had to hold the brake and the clutch down perfectly and

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time your acceleration so you would not roll back and crash into the car behind you. And if you wanted to roll down your window, you had to rotate a crank in the door. But if the glass slipped off its track in the door, you had to hold the glass and push it upward while you turned the window crank. In short, you had to exercise to use a car!

Today we live in the age of fast cars and fast food. We drive to work and sit down at the computer. There was a time when at home we had to get up out of our chair and manually change channels on the television. Now it seems as if we’ve been born into a lifestyle where one does not have to exercise at all if one doesn’t want to. Most of us don’t realize just how sedentary we’ve become. Many don’t even know what sedentary means or how bad a sedentary lifestyle is for your health.

Webster’s dictionary defines sedentary as “doing or involving a lot of sitting: not doing or involving much physical activity.”2 Nilofer Merchant, speaking at a TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) conference in 2013, shocked the crowd by saying, “What you’re doing right now, this very moment, is killing you . . . sitting is so incredibly prevalent, we don’t even question it. Sitting has become the smoking of our generation.”3

Merchant’s declaration may be a good definition for the unintended consequences of a sedentary lifestyle. Many people are literally addicted to sitting. The solution to reverse the effects of a sedentary lifestyle is to start moving your body with intention.

Strengthen Your Core

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I went bowling with the grand kids and when it was my turn to roll, my brain told my body to bowl but I just didn't have the strength to do it. When I released the ball it just plopped out of my hand and banged down hard on the wooden floor. Then the ball slowly rolled down the lane barely knocking over a couple of pins in slow motion. I stood there in unbelief and sulked back to my chair. My six-year-old grandson looked at me with a sad face that said grandpa is a loser. The little kids could launch the balls faster than I could. It was a humbling experience that revealed how weak I had become.

Your weakness is a reversible condition that requires strength training. Your goal may be to handle an eight-pound bowling ball, or perhaps to master a low-weight, low-impact dumbbell routine. Like moving, strengthening is a core factor in boosting metabolism. Strengthening naturally occurs as you move your body more. Thus, your strength is dependent on the intensity of your physical activity.

The beautiful part about the Trim Body approach to strengthening your body is that you can start small. The beginning level of strength necessary to achieve a trim and healthy body is relatively low. If no significant health issues impede your ability to continue strengthening your body, you will naturally get stronger as you focus, say, fifteen to twenty minutes, two or three times a week, on strength training. You can do so with resistance bands, body movement exercises, and low-weight dumbbells without spending much money or effort. Although simply moving contributes to your strength, focused moving with resistance helps you develop muscle that in turn speeds up your

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metabolism. This is why strengthening the core expedites a trim and healthy body.

Rejuvenate Your Mind

My boss likes to take a walk in the afternoon, and he once commented that he feels rejuvenated after the walk. There is scientific evidence that walking delivers uplifting feelings and can promote physical and inner healing.4 Walking is often prescribed following spinal stenosis surgeries. The physical therapy prescribed after my spine surgeries included walking, ice packs, and small movement exercises. Getting enough sleep allowed me to balance the increased physical activity, and the process of healing was personally rejuvenating.

It is interesting that physical exertion can feel rejuvenating and rest can also feel rejuvenating. On the extreme-science side, biologists are attempting to extend life through biotechnological rejuvenation technologies with the belief that people have the potential to live for a thousand years.5

Rejuvenation in the context of a trim and healthy body is the reward that comes from nourishing your body, moving with intention, strengthening your core, and rejuvenating your mind. If you have lived a sedentary lifestyle for a long time, you may not currently be experiencing the type of rejuvenation that comes from a more active lifestyle, but that is about to change. People sometimes want to overdo the process by thinking that doing more or taking more is better, but it is the little things that add up over the course of a week that help you shed fat. Another form of rejuvenation is on the emotional level and may

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include the way you feel after you nourish your body. I can still remember how good it felt when my face started cooling down after replenishing my electrolytes. It was truly rejuvenating.

Today Is the Day

Remember that the common characteristics of people with trim and healthy bodies is that they are mindful of nutrition, active, physically strong, mentally tough, and whole. The glue that binds this philosophical and practical way of thinking together is a sense of urgency we call today. Today is the day we are mindful of nutrition. Today is the day we get more active. Today is the day we strengthen our bodies. Today is the day we stay mentally tough. Today is the best day ever to be whole and healthy. The changes you make today are easy and inexpensive. You can start today by making simple modifications to your daily routine. But first, in the following chapters, I’ll outline how confused some of us are about body weight and how it really relates to nutrition.

NotesChapter 1The Trim Body Philosophy

1. Michael Joseph, “Michael Joseph Casino Training,” Lecture, Casino Dealer Training from Twin Arrows Navajo Casino Resort, Flagstaff, Arizona, 2013.

2. Merriam-Webster’s, “sedentary,” http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/sedentary, accessed June 8, 2014.

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3. Chris O’Brien, “TED 2013: Nilofer Merchant Says Sitting Is the New Smoking,” Los Angeles Times, http://articles.latimes.com/2013/feb/26/business/la-fi-tn-ted-2013-nilofer-merchant-says-sitting-is-the-new-smoking-20130226, accessed June 8, 2014.

4. “Healing Walks for Hard Times: Quiet Your Mind, Strengthen Your Body, and Get Your Life Back,” 2011, Lilipoh 16, no. 64 (2011): 74, Alt HealthWatch, EBSCOhost, accessed June 23, 2014.

5. Elizabeth Williams, “Ending Aging: The Rejuvenation Biotechnologies That Could Reverse Human Aging in Our Lifetime,” Library Journal 132, no. 13 (2007): 109, Business Source Complete, EBSCOhost, accessed June 23, 2014.

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