The biggest factors that make up this total load are devastating forms of stress called "dominant burdens." You have to fix these dominant burdens or you can't progress and you can't heal!

A dominant burden is a damaging and degenerative form of stress that your body cannot compensate for. This type of stress is the modern day killer! There are two dominant burdens that cause the majority of the metabolic and hormonal breakdowns that lead to so many symptoms and so much misery. They are:

* The insane over-consumption of refined carbohydrates and refined fats and oils. (bad carbohydrates and bad fats)
* Chronic abuse of your stress response. (bad emotions)

Dominant Burden #1

Bad carbohydrates and bad fats and oils are disease producing monsters. In order for a woman's body to breakdown to the point of severe hormones imbalance, crushing fatigue, stubborn, vicious weight gain and up to 34 well established and unspeakably frustrating symptoms, something has to be causing it.

It is an absolute certainty, no matter how much you may be led to believe otherwise, that refined sugars and starches (bad carbohydrates) and refined fats and oils (bad fats and oils) are a main cause of all this misery. Let's briefly discuss bad carbohydrates first. Believe it or not, the national average for refined sugar consumption to be between 150 to 170 pounds per year for every man, woman and child in this country. That's about a half a pound a day. Absolute insanity!

That doesn't include all the other refined carbohydrates that ruin your metabolism. Think of all the white flour by-products - white bread, doughnuts, cake, pasta, bagels, & white rice. These make up a huge percentage of the average person's diet. This sugar consumption is devastating millions of lives and getting worse by the day.

This is not a "low carb" discussion. The damaging effects of all this bad carbohydrate has not been exposed until recently. It ruins your metabolism and hormonal system far beyond the "lesser" problem of weight gain.

Here's some proof. We have epidemic levels of young children who are developing terrible metabolic diseases like type-2 diabetes caused by gorging themselves on a half a pound of sugar a day! Consumption of these bad carbohydrates can produce severe diseases in a fraction of the time that it would take cigarettes or alcohol to do it! Your metabolism, hormones, mind and moods don't have a prayer!

Consuming bad fats is devastating to your health for a different reason. It promotes a stealth killer that is underlying virtually every symptom and condition you may have. It's called "silent inflammation."

Put bad carbohydrates and bad fats together and you have the modern day cause of so much of your suffering.

Dominant Burden #2

Your body has a beautiful and brilliant design characteristic. When it perceives danger all else becomes unimportant and every resource that improves your awareness, strength, and energy is activated. You know it as your "fight or flight" reaction. Kick this reaction into gear and you've activated your stress response.

In an emergency your adrenalin-cortisol response is very appropriate! But for many of you in a high anxiety job, a bad relationship, or financial troubles you're pumping adrenalin and cortisol into your system on an almost constant basis! And that is a one way ticket to a physical, mental and emotional disaster! But it's not just an extreme emotion and a big surge of stress hormone that causes the damage.

You can worry constantly about circumstances in your life and keep your stress hormones over-stimulated all the time. You can also carry around the burden of unresolved stress and eat yourself alive because you can't forgive or ask for forgiveness. And even worse yet, all of these factors lead to what many women are very familiar with, "emotional eating."

And when the foods of choice are bad carbohydrates and bad fats, which they often are, then both dominant burdens are ruining your health. It doesn't matter if it's the ups and downs of a big surge or the constant elevation of these powerful hormones, they will rip your metabolism to shreds, drain you physically, mentally and emotionally, exhaust your reserves, lower your immunity, disrupt your digestion and put you in harms way of every disease you are genetically susceptible to. This is how stress kills!

Chronically activating your stress response, which can be described as "an investment in bad emotions" has the same devastating consequence as the insane over-consumption of bad carbohydrates and bad fats. Because your body and mind can't compensate, the degeneration is more rapid and much more brutal than other forms of stress. Your life changing moment!

What I am about to tell you will transform you into a new person! In a world filled with empty promises you can bet your life on this! You have been living a kind of equation. It goes something like this. On one side of the equation is your total burden of stress. The two "dominant burdens" are the most devastating forms of stress. You now know it as your total load. On the other side is your ability to resist, handle and process this "total load." When the total load is more than your ability to handle it then your body and mind will show signs of breaking down. There are thousands of different ways this can happen. Every person will have different genetic strengths and weaknesses that determine how their body and mind will cope with their "total load." Unexplained weight gain is one sign. So are fatigue, irritability and mood swings. Inflammation and pain is another. Loss of sex drive is yet another.

If you experience hot flashes, night sweats, headaches it's a clear and definite sign that your total load is more than your body can handle. Heart disease, cancer, type-2 diabetes, severe depression, arthritis and all other major disease states are also a sign, just more progressed.

In a nutshell:

* The fastest and most effective way to restore your physical and mental/emotional well-being is to reverse your personal "total load."
* The fastest and most effective way to restore your figure and lose "the weight you hate" is to reverse your personal "total load."
* The fastest and most effective way to get fat, fatigued, sick, diseased and die long before your time is to increase your personal "total load."

The LFR 90 Day 3 Step Plan is all about reversing your personal total load and giving the ongoing support you need at every step of the journey!

One last thing before we move on. Total Load is the combined burden of all the stress that you personally experience. Although the dominant burdens we described are the most devastating forms of stress that contribute to your total load, it's not the only contributor.

Let me give you some examples of the different kinds of stress that make up your total load and you can do a little self assessment. This will help you to realize the areas in your life that contribute the most to your personal total load.

Mental/Emotional Stress

This form of stress has the most to do with our own perceptions. Things like job stress, relationship stress, financial stress and the many stressful events of modern life contribute to emotions like worry, guilt, apprehension, and anxiety. Did you know that humans are the only living creatures that can stress themselves into a full blown panic without ever having a stressful event? We can just think ourselves right into ulcers! It's the "emotional investment" you give that determines how damaging the stress is!
Nutritional Stress

This includes eating incorrectly, eating too much, eating too little, skipping meals, eating too late at night, "dieting," and the 150 to 170 pounds of "sweet suicide" you may be eating every year (the worst stress of all).

Chemical Stress

Alcohol, cigarettes, recreational drugs, pharmaceutical drugs, preservatives and chemicals in food and drink, chemicals from indoor and outdoor pollution are all examples of chemical stress. Your major hormones, especially adrenalin and cortisol, really take a beating while trying to protect your body from the effects of these chemical stressors.
Physical/Sleep stress

Not moving enough, and its opposite over-exercising, are both physical forms of stress. Lack of restful, quality sleep is a tremendous physical and mental stress. Good health, both mentally and physically, requires an optimal amount of resistance and cardiovascular exercise counter balanced with adequate sleep.
Unresolved Stress

This type of stress is different from mental/emotional stress. Unresolved stress is like a constant weight around your neck and consequently you never really get a break. It's the accumulated events of the past that you haven't released. Things like forgiving yourself, forgiving others, especially your parents, not moving on after a traumatic experience, letting go of guilt, resolving self–hatred, and coming to terms with the death of a loved one are all examples of unresolved stress.

Hormonal Stress

This is the worst form of stress when it comes to how you feel. Nothing depletes your energy and ruins your peace of mind, self confidence, and joy for life like hormonal stress. This form of stress is not as much a cause as it is an effect. In other words, hormonal stress is the result of all the other forms of stress putting unrealistic demands on both your major and minor hormones.

The 90 Day Plan 3 Step Plan is designed to reverse and reduce your personal total load and change the equation so the momentum shifts from health destructive to health restorative.