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Now,
let me be clear right off the bat…if you
think I'm going to make a joke here about how
your Freddie Mac and Cheese ends up on your Fannie
Mae, you're wrong…I would never do such a
thing.
What I AM going
to do is draw some parallels about how the financial
mess the United States is in can actually help
you understand how dieting affects your body,
and in turn, can help you get better results in
your fat-loss efforts and, of course, make you
millions of dollars richer in the process.
I'm going to drift
around in between finance and nutrition here -
I know, they're two almost identical subjects
but, try to bear with me.
And keep in mind
when you read this, I'm no financial expert. If
something isn't 100% right, the SEC isn't interested
in small fish like me so I wouldn't bother mentioning
this article to them...
1 - The Boom Years
Your body is designed
to store fat. Its how we've survived as a species
over the millennia. When famine hit, it was always
the individuals who could best store and use fat
who survived. Evolution wasn't concerned about
the potential for muffin-top when it loaded our
bodies with easy-to-fill fat cells.
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So when times
were good (like in the U.S. housing market
a few years back), those fat cells were
getting filled up like crazy! Everybody
was seeing their house values (i.e. waistlines)
expand.
Now, greed
operates not only in the financial markets
but at the buffet table as well. The less
regulation there is, i.e. portion and food
quality control, the more things start to
get unbalanced and the more potential there
is for gluttony.
Some people
were buying houses they really couldn't
afford which is a parallel to some people
eating the crappy food (i.e. pretty much
anything that comes directly to you through
a window). It compromises your health in
the long run.
Heck, you
can think of eating at McDonald's sorta
like getting an adjustable rate loan…you're
fine for the first little while but suddenly
BAM. Your rate adjusts and it's time to
bust out the fat pants.
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But hey, while you're
still in those first few years of your Adjustable
Rate Mortgage, life is good. You may not look
like you're gaining a lot of fat (it's all settling
into those spaces between your internal organs)
or setting up your financial markets for a crash
until the moment of truth hits.
Then the balloon
payment comes due, your mortgage doubles and you
start blowing out the seams on your fat pants.
The internal workings
of your system have been so corrupted by deregulation
(and coagulation) that your markets can barely
function. Your blood pressure is going up faster
than a CEO's retirement bonus because your body
is carrying too much debt around your waistline.
2 - The Crash
So it's time to
diet. And you want to lose that fat FAST. So you
immediately drop your calories to near starvation
level. Of course, in the stock market, a strict
diet looks a lot like a crash. Your body views
it the same way.
Panic sets in. Just
as brokers start selling off stock, your body
starts getting rid of things it doesn't want to
carry around.
And, of course,
the greater the panic, the stupider the brokers
(and your body) get. When you crash diet, your
body tends to burn MUSCLE more than fat. Just
like a broker selling off the good stocks that
can help him recover from a crash.
It's
the FAT you want to sell off, not the muscle.
But a big crash
[diet], which was set up by the previous gluttony
[the result of excess deregulation, akin to asking
a 4 year old to guard the birthday cake], you're
now attempting to accomplish very quickly what
should normally happen over a longer period of
time.
If you were to experience
a slow economic downturn, your ability to get
rid of the fat is much better, allowing you to
streamline your portfolio smartly rather than
just trying to get rid of everything all at once.
You cut your calories, increase your activity
and gradually lose the fat.
3 - Market Instability
If you've got a
retirement savings plan and you've looked at it
recently, you've probably seen a graph that does
up and down just like the numbers on the scale
of a yo-yo dieter.
The crash is followed
by a binge of people buying cheap stocks (because
the price is so low and because that Kentucky-fried
birthday cake just looks so good), followed by
another crash, followed by another binge. And
so on.
This constant cycle
of crashing and rebounding does nothing to stabilize
the economy. It only makes you want to eat more
and makes you fatter.
4 - The Great Depression
Now you're really
feeling bad about yourself. You've gained back
all the weight you lost when you crash dieted
only you lost muscle and gained back fat.
You're in the middle
of a great depression. What's it going to take
to snap out of it?
5 - The Two Magic Words
I'm
talking BAIL OUT, right! Government
to the rescue, right! WRONG.
Look at how well
the bail-out worked. The stock market keeps tanking
and keeps yo-yo dieting. Until the government
takes high fructose corn syrup out of the food-lobby
pyramid, you can be pretty sure the government
isn't going to solve your weight problems.
Now come the REAL
two little magic words that will make everything
okay…Personal Responsibility.
I am VERY sure there
are predatory lenders out there who convinced
people that they could afford homes that they
really couldn't just as I'm sure there are food
manufacturers trying to convince you that Lucky
Charms are healthy because they suddenly contain
calcium…
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When you get
down to it, nobody is holding a gun to your
head to eat that last chunk of Texas Toast
with extra cheese, butter and frosting.
Just because something is available doesn't
mean you HAVE to insert it into your face
(or sign the paperwork that says you're
fine with 5% APR jump on your mortgage when
it resets).
When you put
Personal Responsibility into practice, you
take CONTROL over your finances and your
nutrition. You realize that the world does
not owe you a lean body…it's something
you have to work for and make an effort
for, just like it takes work and effort
to pay your mortgage every month.
If it sounds
too good to be true…well, you know
how the rest of THAT goes…
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In this case, it's
a lesson Wall Street should learn from Sesame
Street. Like Cookie Monster says, cookies are
a "sometimes" food - meaning if you're
greedy all the time, it's going to eventually
catch up to you and you'll have to pay for it
(unless you're AIG, apparently, in which case
you've got a license to keep on partying without
any hint of accountability - I guess the parallel
to that would be liposuction!).
So how do you take
the next step? Glad you asked! I've got links
to a number of excellent fat-loss programs you
can use to take control over your life and put
that newfound Personal Responsibility to work!
Metabolic Surge - Rapid Fat Loss
by Nick Nilsson (that's me!)
Click
here to learn more about Metabolic Surge
Burn
the Fat, Feed the Muscle
by Tom Venuto
Click
here to learn more about Burn the Fat, Feed the
Muscle
The
Truth About Six Pack Abs
by Mike Geary
Click
here to learn more about The Truth About Abs
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