Now that you know you need to drink lots of water and get lots of sleep, lets explore the types of food that you're eating.
There is SO much information in this book about specific foods and what good and bad they do for your body and why. I'm just picking out some of the highlights. The biggest things that I've taken to heart from this section are to fill you diet with "living foods" and avoid any sort of processed food like the plague.
FOODFirst it is important to define what the author means when he says "Living Food."
"Living Foods were created for our consumption. they exist in a raw or close-to-raw state. Living foods include fruits, vegetables, grains, seeds, and nuts. They are beautifully packaged in divinely created wrappers called skins and peels. Living food looks robust, healthy and alive. No chemicals have been added. It has not been bleached or chemically altered. Living foods are plucked, harvested, and squeezed, not processed packaged, and put on a shelf. Living foods are recognizable as food."
-The average person consumes seventy tons of food in a lifetime. Are you going to consume living foods that protect from disease and energize or dead foods that lead to diabetes, cardiovascular disease, obesity, and fatigue?
-Your brain can't sense that you're full for 20 minutes, so eat slowly and stop when you're still a little hungry, if after 30 minutes you realize you didn't get enough then have a little more.
-Eating a "low calorie, optimal nutrition diet" can extend life by 30-50%
-Starchy and sugary foods raise serotonin (feel good hormone), but water can raise it too, remember?!?! So don't let your brain trick you into eating unhealthy foods!
I think that I need a whole post just to talk about processed food, I just have so much I want to share!!! We have cut out about 95% of processed foods from our diet and we are feeling great and loosing weight!
Why you shouldn't eat processed food:-"The creation process that produces processed food strips away valuable vitamins, minerals, fiber, enzymes, phytonutrients, and antioxidants. You see, they remove the fiber and wheat germ, which are rich in nutrients, and sell them to health food stores."
-"With dead, processed food you get the worst and lose the best. And yet food companies hire the brightest minds and chemists to make their foods as addictive as possible so you can't just eat a little bit."
-Most processed food contain terrible ingredients: sugar, white flour, high fructose corn syrup, oil and all the ones you can't pronounce. Here are the worst ones:
1.
MSG (monosodium glutamate): technically it's the sodium salt of an amino acid. MSG doesn't have a taste like salt or sugar, but it does enhance the taste of food by "by increasing sensitivity of your taste buds" which tricks your brain into thinking it tastes good and making you want more. Manufactures put MSG in food specifically to make it more addictive and to stimulate your appetite so that you want more of that food. Why is it so bad? "Neuroscientists generally agree that glutamic acid (present in MSG) is neurotoxic and kills neurons by exciting them to death. The very young are most susceptible." MSG messes with the insulin/blood sugar levels which is why you feel hungry an hour or so after eating foods high in MSG. There is a list of about 20 different health problems that occur in MSG sensitive peoplean hour after they eat it. Some of the symptoms are cramps, nausea, headache, chest pain, blurry vision, diarrhea.....the list goes on.
The tough part is knowing how to tell if a food has MSG because it can be called by about 15 different names on an ingredient label. Here are some of the most commonly used names: glutamate, hydrolyzed protein, gelatin, Yeast extract, yeast food, autolyzed yeast, sodium caseinate. Some high MSG foods are Bouillon, soy sauce, pectin, corn starch, natural/artificial flavors/colors, Chinese food, and fried chicken.
2. SugarI think everyone knows sugar is bad, but here is some info you might not know about it.
-When you overeat sugar, your body goes into fat-storage mode
-Directly after eating high sugar foods your immune system cells are impaired
-High sugar intake has been strongly linked to ADHD
-Yeast loves sugar so eating lots of sugar can worsen yeast problems for women
-Sugar excess leads to diabetes by increasing insulin levels
-Sugar is highly addictive
-Check your ingredients on processed food, sugar is usually in the top 3 ingredients, even in the salty foods. Sometimes it's called corn syrup, dextrose, glucose or other "ose" words.
3. Fats-hydrogenated fats are the worst kind and are taken through an extreme heating process that changes the chemical structure. This makes the fat solid at room temperature and have a much longer shelf life. Almost all items in the middle of the grocery store contain this ingredient to preserve them.
-hydrogenated fats (trans fats) raise LDL (bad cholesterol) and lower HDL (good cholesterol). It's also more harmful to arteries and is "implicated in heart disease and cancer."
-Margarine is originally grey so it has to be dyed yellow and flavored to resemble butter. ewww
-"This is such a deadly fat that we need to avoid it entirely." If partially hydrogenated or shortening are on the label DON'T buy it. It's not worth it.
-Here are the types of fat from the worst to the best: Trans fats(hydrogenated and partially hydrogenated), saturated fats, polyunsaturated fats (omega 6 fats), monounsaturated fat, omega-3 fats. There's so much science to all of this I don't even want to go there, just eat fats sparingly.
And Lastly, here are a few tips about eating healthy:
-Organic produce is better because it is grown in a soil that is richer with nutrients and that doesn't have all the chemicals.
-We can't afford all organic produce, or just grow our own garden, so I pick and choose the organic foods I buy. I always try to buy leafy greens organic and never bananas or other thick peeled items organic because they're protected by the peel. One day I will have a beautiful garden and orchard an we'll eat nutrient rich foods at every meal. Until then I can only do my best.
-Did you know that it is recommended to have 5-12 servings of fruit and veggies each day?!?!
-Red meat has a higher concentration of toxins than nearly all other foods.
-Dairy products aren't as great as you think. Think of milk as a food, not a drink. I plan to read a book called "The China Study" that goes into more detail about Dairy and meat products so I won't say anymore about that quite yet.
-The best ways to cook foods that will preserve nutrients are stir frying, steaming and grilling.
This next paragraph is a little extreme, you could say I'm getting a little obsessive.
I feel SO strongly about food. My body can only function properly when I'm feeding it the fuel it needs. I think that eating healthy is hard and it requires you to take a stand. It requires self control, courage, and a strong mind. Most people in our world are eating food that is HORRIBLE for them so it makes it seem "normal." These days it's also "normal" to do drugs, steal, use vulgar language, lie and cheat and lots more. It's easy for me to have the courage to resist stealing shoes at the store, but do I have the courage to not eat fast food or the determination to spend the extra 30 minutes a day to create healthy meals? Eating healthy is a habit and a way of life, it's different then what "normal" people do, but it's one area where I do NOT want to be "normal."
We brought his booster seat so that we could buckle him in for snacks, it worked like a charm for keeping him in his seat! Throughout the movie he would yell "Buzz Lightyear" and "to infinity and beyond" when he say Buzz doing something cool. It was a fun treat for all of us. We haven't been to the movies in a VERY long time!
Then we came home for cake. Of course it was a Buzz Lightyear cake. I went against my better judgement and smothered it with sugary frosting, or maybe I was going with my better judgement- it was his birthday after all. :)
