Huffington Magazine Issue 41 | Page 31

Voices cise a day to your life without any change in calorie intake! Bottom Line: The key point here is that all calories are not the same. Swap out sugar and starch for good fats such as nuts, avocados, olive oil, and grass-fed animal products or wild fish. Be a “qualitarian.” Focus on quality, on real food, and the rest takes care of itself. Exercise Your Way to Weight Loss The food industry and diet industry push exercise. Even Michelle Obama’s childhood obesity initiative focuses on exercise in its name, Let’s Move. But it should be really called Let’s Eat Real Food. Here’s why. Sugar-sweetened drinks make up about 15 percent of our calorie intake every day. But you have to walk 4.5 miles to burn off one 20-ounce soda, which contains 15 teaspoons of sugar. You have to run four miles a day for one week to burn off one supersize meal. If you have one supersize meal everyday you would have to run a marathon every day! Drinking 32 ounces of Gatorade after a workout is a dumb idea, unless you run around like Kobe Bryant on the basketball MARK HYMAN HUFFINGTON 03.24.13 court for 48 minutes. There are better ways to replenish your energy and electrolytes than colored sugar water with a few minerals sprinkled in. Bottom Line: Exercise is critical to long-term health and weight loss, but you can’t exercise your way out of a bad diet. Thankfully, science is shedding Drinking 32 ounces of Gatorade after a workout is a dumb idea, unless you run around like Kobe Bryant on the basketball court for 48 minutes.” light on the ideas that keep us fat and sick. Unfortunately, scientists don’t have billion-dollar marketing budgets. But we as a community of thinking people wanting real information can speak out, can spread the word and turn the tide of obesity and chronic disease together. Mark Hyman, M.D. is a practicing physician and founder of The UltraWellness Center.