Can Margaritas Be a Part of Your Wellness Program?

It's a funny thing being a fitness coach as many people have misconceptions about my lifestyle. They think I must be some sort of "fitness nazi" who lives an austere life devoid of any hedonistic pleasures. Chocolate? Heavens no! Butter? No way! Alcohol? God forbid! The presumption is that I eat only "healthy" food and spend 5 hours a day exercising (10 on Sundays). Its assumed I would never contaminate my body with "evil substances" such as fat, alcohol and sugar.

However, nothing could be further from the truth. I'm fond of chocolate (preferrably dark with hazelnuts); like my beer; love my steak (with ALL the fat); use butter liberally and eat full-fat yogurt & cheese. If the truth be known, I've also developed quite a reputation for my blended lime margaritas. Ask the guests who attended our summer barbeques and I'm sure they'll vouch for my margs!

Yet I've maintained a consistent bodyweight of about 180 - 185 lbs. at 12-14% bodyfat for years and never get sick. The only time I've been hospitalized in my adult life was last year for an emergency appendectomy. You could say that I live the French paradox.

How is this possible? Genetics does play a role but that can only account for about 30% of the results. Environment and personal decisions play just as an important role because they help determine how your genes express themselves. I'll digress a little to help explain my point.

North Americans are notorious for looking at other cultures' diets and trying to find a secret ingredient that is the key to health, youth & vitality. We've looked at the Okinawa diet, the Mediterranean diet, and the French diet trying to find that magic bullet that will allow us to have perfect health.

Recently a 2-year study looked at three diets and their effect on weight and health. The participants were divided into three groups and followed one of three diets - a conventional "healthy" low-fat diet, a Mediterranean type diet and a low-carb diet. The results showed that all three groups lost weight and experienced other health benefits as well. The low-carb group lost the most weight (10.3 lbs), followed by the Mediterranean group (10 lbs.) and low-fat group (6.5 lbs). The low-carb group also had the best improvement in choletsterol levels while the Mediterranean group had the greatest improvement in the blood sugar levels.

Dr. Iris Shai, the lead researcher concluded that "there is not one diet that is ideal for everyone", which isn't surprising to me as over the years I've seen different people respond well to all types of diets.

Western science is very narrow-minded in its approach. It generally tries to break everything down into parts to understand how things work. This approach can be helpful but it can also be a hinderance. When dealing with living organisms and systems, the relationships between various parts and how those parts work together are just as important as how those parts work individually. An eagle-eye perspective is needed to tie together the data collected by a microscopic view.

Bear with me as I'm about to tie all this together.

By looking at only the diet of these other cultures we're missing out on many other factors which have a great impact on health. There are three major similarities between the cultures of the three diets I mentioned above (the Okinawa (Japanese), the Mediterranean and the French) that can help explain the health of their people:

(1) the sense of community found in these cultures
(2) a slower pace of life and less stress than the typical North American lifestyle
(3) an emphasis of real (high quality) food versus processed (poor quality) food

The lower stress levels of the French goes a long way to explaining the apparent paradox of their diet which can include many rich foods such as cheese and butter. The point I'm making is its not simply what foods these people eat that's important but the quality of the food itself and the environment they eat in are equally important.

Getting back to my situation, yes I enjoy chocolate, beer, red meat, cheese and margaritas. But I don't use these foods as a way of dealing with stress which is what many people do with things like alcohol and chocolate. I use exercise, meditation and other techniques to handle the stresses of modern life and allow myself to enjoy these "bad" substances when relaxing and having fun with friends.

And keep in mind what the researchers from the three-diet study concluded; there is no one diet that is right for everyone. So experiment for yourself and enjoy an occassional margarita!

C.

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