Eat real food. Period.
This should be the end. Cut and dry. Easy peasy.
But clearly it’s not, because if you look around, we are larger and more unhealthy than we have ever been. Why you ask?
I’m glad you did.
Here is my hypothesis: we started substituting sugar for healthy fats and eating fake food because it’s easy.
People were under the spell that healthy fats made you fat! Which if you think about it, really is absurd. We didn’t last as a species for millions of years by eating a low-fat diet high in sugar. We lasted because we ate a high natural fat diet. (I will get more in to the natural and healthy fats vs evil fats later) For now, back to why we need real food
Eating real food is eating food that is in it’s closets-to nature-state. It means very little ingredients. Better yet, no ingredients at all.
So how do we take our ideas about food and change them to what they really need to be? Start with this, food should be recognizable.
If you were any thing like me, you grew up in a home where “I can’t believe it’s not butter” and white bread where front runners in the kitchen. These are so genetically modified and dangerous. When we begin to retrain our minds about what food is, think about your great-great-great grandparents, would they recognize it? Would they know the ingredients? When purchasing food try and think about this. You should be able to pronounce what is going in to your body. If you can’t, put it back and move on! Stop letting chemists create the food you eat!
Food is the most sacred way in which you interact with your surroundings.
I’ll say it again a 1000 times, when you put food/drink in your mouth, you are telling every single cell in your body about your environment. How profound and beautiful is that?! We have the ability to make it calm and steady or hostile and frankly, scary.
Ok, so we need to be able to recognize our food and we are going to read labels to know what exactly is in that food, got it. Now how do we know what to do when we get to the store? This is a rule I use 95% of the time, I shop the perimeter of the store. I have heard this from many nutritional experts and it is very true. If you think about a grocery store most of the natural and healthiest items can be found along the edges. The produce aisle, lined with oranges, kale, meat, and eggs. All of which I spelled out with no trouble at all, because they are real food. Another place I encourage people to look for real food is at your local farmer’s markets. Farmer’s markets will not have the *maltodextrin or high fructose corn syrup plants, it will be real honest to goodness food!
Another aspect that I think it absolutely imperative is real food should make you feel good!
It should trigger your senses. It should give you energy. It should not make you crash 30 minutes later. You should feel satisfied and better than before you ate! If you clearly are not feeling this way, let’s reevaluate.
So I genuinely hope this helps you start to think about food differently. I hope you start to realize the amazing relationship you have with every thing you eat and know that it is one of the most important things you can do for your health, to help summarize it, I’ve listed out the tips for quick references.
Pro-Tip:
- Food should be recognizable
- Make sure you read labels-can you pronounce the words?
- Shop the perimeter of the grocery store
- Shop at farmers markets
- Good food should make you feel good!!!
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