Mack Newton is a personal trainer/motivational speaker from the USA. He is an exceptionally good presenter and is extremely knowledgable about health and fitness. I first saw a video of him speaking on the RichDad.com website. Mack has a fascinating story of how he overcame early problems in his life. He is into health and how to get others to become more healthy through changing their attitude to food, life and exercise. I found his 2 hour talk to be extremely inspirational.
Some of the topics he covered included " Don't try lose weight, just eat healthy" and "Why you shouldn't eat Bread!" After considering all his points both topics sound extremely logical! He says that healthy people cannot be fat. That if you are healthy you are automatically your target weight. So how do you get healthy? It comes down the diet and exercise - the obvious two.
He has designed something called the 3-2 eating plan which enables you easily become healthy. You can eat 3 things and Drink 2 things.
Drink
Water, lots of it. 120 oz a day. This is equivalent to 3 litres per day. Mack says that 90% of people walk around dehydrated. This affects your ability to think, it is not healthy and actually means that your body holds on to water and stores it.
Drink Fruit Juice. Real fruit Juice, not friut drink from a carton.
Food
1. Meat. As much as you want. Remove the fat. Fish is good. Ham is not meat. Ham is a by product with lots of additives.
2. Any vegetable as long as its green. Broccoli, Asparagus, etc
Green vegetables have the best nutrients out of all vegetables. Peppers have almost no nutrients. Lettuce and cabbage are mostly water. Salads are generally a no no because the contain more fattening ingredients that good ingredients by weight
3. Fruit. Eat moderately. If you have a Mack Shake (read more below) then this is equivalent to 80% of your fruit intake for the day.
Mack has a great idea for a fruit shake to have every morning. I started doing this about 3 months ago and it has been great. I have lost about 9kgs.
Mack Shake Recipe
One Banana
Half an apple (Skin on is fine)
Orange Juice.
Into a blender. Thats it
Foods to Avoid
- Salt
We don't need it in our diet. The low amount of salt we actually need is found naturally in the above foods/meat. We don't need to add extra salt to our cooking. Salt is like a drug. Once we have it, we need a little more, and then we get used to having it and feel bad wihout it - just like nicotine. We end up craving it with every meal. We don't need extra salt to season food. this just masks the real flavour of the food. Avoiding salt also means that we need to cut out things like salty snacks, potato chips corn chips etc.
- Bread.
- Excessive Sugar
- Coffee and Caffeine. We dont need it. Its just a drug
- Starch rich foods like potatoes, corn
- Food with chemical additives - which is pretty much anything that comes in a packet. Check the ingredients labels. If you can see an numbers in the ingredients list such as (621) or (202) then these are chemicals, and hey we don't need them in our food.
From personal experience. Once you stop eating things like potato chips you just don't crave them. Once you break free from the need for salt you just dont need it. You can get your power back and you feel a lot better being in control. After 1 week of avoiding salty foods, I was over the craving. Its about just putting your mind to it. I haven't eaten Potato Chips now (not even at parties) for almost 4 months - its quite amazing.
To read more on Mack Newton and his techniques visit his website macknewton.com or do a Google search.
Auckland, New Zealand
Friday, January 11, 2008
Review - The Theory that Savers are Losers
The first time I heard the theory that "savers are losers" was from Robert Kiyosaki, author of Rich Dad, Poor Dad. Its a funny statement to make, but when you listen to his argument it really gives you something to think about.
Essentially the theory explains that people who save money, be it in the bank or wherever are actually losing money, due to inflation. When you park your money somewhere where it is not actively invested and working for you all you can really expect is a few percent in interest. When inflation runs at the average 3% in western economies any interest you gain simply gets eaten up by the natural run of inflation.
So all the money you are saving gives you either the same purchasing power as the year before, or worse you are actually able to buy less with this money than you could last year.
To put it in money terms, say you have saved $1000. You put this in the bank at 3% interest. 3% Interest? The bank rate may be 4-5% but after tax you will generally receive around the 3% mark. After year 1 the dollar amount in your bank account is $1030. Lets say over the year inflation ran at the average 3%. That is prices for everyday goods rose on average 3% in the economy over the year. So lets reduce the $1030 by 3%. Your $1030 can now only buy you $999.10 worth of goods compared to the previous year. So in effect you have lost money by saving!
So what does this mean? Does it mean that we shouldn't save?
I think saving is a good idea and a good habit to get into. But isn't it crazy to think that all your hard work to save is actually dissolving by the day? To think that saving money alone will enable you to "get rich" or have a great retirement is a flawed way of looking this issue. You really need to increase your savings at a faster rate to escape inflation and to see some real benefit from tucking away your hard earned cash and not spending it.
So how can we increase the return we get on our savings?
We need to look further afield than simply putting money in the bank. There are so many options and other methods of receiving a higher return on your money. In future blogs I will be investigating and reviewing all kinds of options for us to achieve a higher return.
So please keep checking back to this blog for ideas on how to increase your money and avoid the "Savers are losers" theory.
If you would like to add a comment, even just a few lines, then please click below to add your comment. It would be great to hear from from blog readers.
Auckland, New Zealand
Essentially the theory explains that people who save money, be it in the bank or wherever are actually losing money, due to inflation. When you park your money somewhere where it is not actively invested and working for you all you can really expect is a few percent in interest. When inflation runs at the average 3% in western economies any interest you gain simply gets eaten up by the natural run of inflation.
So all the money you are saving gives you either the same purchasing power as the year before, or worse you are actually able to buy less with this money than you could last year.
To put it in money terms, say you have saved $1000. You put this in the bank at 3% interest. 3% Interest? The bank rate may be 4-5% but after tax you will generally receive around the 3% mark. After year 1 the dollar amount in your bank account is $1030. Lets say over the year inflation ran at the average 3%. That is prices for everyday goods rose on average 3% in the economy over the year. So lets reduce the $1030 by 3%. Your $1030 can now only buy you $999.10 worth of goods compared to the previous year. So in effect you have lost money by saving!
So what does this mean? Does it mean that we shouldn't save?
I think saving is a good idea and a good habit to get into. But isn't it crazy to think that all your hard work to save is actually dissolving by the day? To think that saving money alone will enable you to "get rich" or have a great retirement is a flawed way of looking this issue. You really need to increase your savings at a faster rate to escape inflation and to see some real benefit from tucking away your hard earned cash and not spending it.
So how can we increase the return we get on our savings?
We need to look further afield than simply putting money in the bank. There are so many options and other methods of receiving a higher return on your money. In future blogs I will be investigating and reviewing all kinds of options for us to achieve a higher return.
So please keep checking back to this blog for ideas on how to increase your money and avoid the "Savers are losers" theory.
If you would like to add a comment, even just a few lines, then please click below to add your comment. It would be great to hear from from blog readers.
Auckland, New Zealand
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