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Mike Torchia, Wellness Expert, Leads Cultural Shift in Obesity Awareness

Dangers of smoking to make the shift to banning smoking in public places and making the necessary changes to prevent the Tobacco Companies from poisoning us and profiting from it!

Michael Torchia, health and wellness expert in Los Angeles, California, has been leading the fight to cause a cultural shift in obesity awareness and is pushing for a change in American society. His research supports the idea that people are inherently lazy, which is a big problem.

People either don't know how to be healthy, lean and fit or they don't have the means. Most are unmotivated and seek out supplements and infomercial gadgets to achieve fast and easy results. Access to the Internet, publications and other media, can easily lead to information overload.

"There needs to be created a cultural shift in order to have a tipping point of awareness of the severe dangers of obesity in America," Torchia says. "It took 30 years for our society to realize the dangers of smoking to make the shift to banning smoking in public places and making the necessary changes to prevent the Tobacco Companies from poisoning us and profiting from it."

In the 17th and 18th century, obesity was a sign of affluence and success. Nowadays, it is a sign of being poor and not having enough money to afford high quality foods. Everything in our lives is connected. It's not just about proper eating habits and exercising, because it doesn't do anyone much good, without having a healthy attitude, we eventually become stressed and lethargic.

When all these elements in our lives are in proper proportion, it has the synergistic effect of making life even better. Most people today ignore their weight for as long as possible until their anxiety builds up. Then they take the steps to make a change, they go and buy new sneakers and workout clothes and join a gym. Immediately, their anxiety dissipates. Because just taking the steps in their mind creates a comfort zone.

Eventually, the sneakers and the workout clothes go into the back of the closet and the gym membership expires until the anxiety builds up again. Then, the cycle begins again. They buy an infomercial exercise product; weight loss supplement at the nearby vitamin store and their anxiety goes down again. What they need to make is a shift in direction so they're not as anxious and so their bad habits will not take over again because they must fight that emotional factor.

Americans don't realize the impact of things they do, because they take irrational impulses and make them rational. That's just the way the mind works. We explain it to ourselves; we create excuses to fit our emotions, rethink how it was not as bad, to take the sting out of it. So, we write stories in our head to interpret our actions. The mind changes things from what really happened, as though it really did. The brain is not a tape recorder; it reformats things to eliminate the bad and negative thoughts. The mind can form scar tissue and cover painful thoughts. Many people are self-medicated for various reasons, for whatever they are compensating for.

"We must give people positive structure and they must have psychological help," Torchia says. "The human brain is so complex. It is a neurological organism with billions of brain cells. Humans went from sitting around in the Stone Age time with fires and hunting for their food with rocks and sticks to now flying to Mars and making highly technological advances. We have brilliant minds, but we also have serial killers. People are fat because they are in an artificial environment. They need to eat less food and get more exercise. Appetite is naturally regulated and being more active and eating real food instead of consuming junk is one of the steps we must take. Anyone can train their body to burn more calories. If a person is put in the circumstances to consume fewer calories and burn more, they will lose weight."

Positive Balance of Calories = Fat
Negative Balance of Calories = Lean Body

When people starve themselves they burn less calories, move slower, get depressed and the body goes into survival mode. The longer someone goes without eating food; a greater percentage of fat is stored. A calorie is a measure of heat. Energy is burned in the form of oxidation. One must breathe hard when working out. When working out, the body will have the ability to utilize more calories and it creates the need for more nutrients.

When eating carbohydrates or fats the metabolism increases by 10%. When eating protein, the metabolism increases by 30%. A higher pace of cardio must be sustained in less time to burn more calories so the body can be more efficient at consuming oxygen. But people must also realize that too much cardio makes the whole body tired and can affect its ability to function efficiently the next day.

There must be specificity of training - meaning a program must be designed to suit the needs and physical capabilities of each person's body.

We have to become more conscious of