Wait a minute wrong subject. I know quite a bit about nutrition and supplementation. Probably more about supplementation than actual nutrition because true nutrition means you know how to eat. I have marketing guys, sales reps, and all kinds of multilevel marketing schemes chomping at the bit to get me to hawk their wears. Really, chocolate for $110/month?
Everything I learned from nutrition/supplementation I learned from a book. I needed to learn it from my grandmother. If you are low on Vit. C, don't take a pill, eat an orange, chomp some cherries, blend some blueberries. Funny thing is those don't sell so it is take this pill, drink this potion. The reality of our situation is business, and big business at that. I do take a lot of supplements, this is out of need because what we have done to the earth, and more importantly our food supply. How many of you realizes that tomatoes in Dec really isn't right? Did you also know that those tomatoes are picked green before fully ripened and then forced to turn red with the use of ethylene gas? That is why they do not taste the same.
Our food industry, let me stop and not rant. Our food is picked to early, forced to look good through chemical engineering, and grown on nutrient depleted ground. So you have to be wise in the foods that you do choose to consume. I always wondered why our home garden looked different every year and it is because Grandpa was organic and sustainable, before those words were even coined. Mom canned, I snapped and picked, but we had good food.
I digress because I have, hopped the tracks. Here is the question we should be asking ourselves. What makes us healthy? Before I started my journey to be healthier, and be an example of health for my children, friends, family, and patients, I always thought of food as something to other than fuel and a drug. The paradigm shift to thinking of food as a drug really needs to happen. Think about it this way. Food controls mood, food controls hormones, food controls chemical reactions withing the body, food affects how the body functions. That in it's very definition would be one of the most powerful drugs on the planet. Also as with drugs there is good food and bad food, unlike drugs the side-affects are something that the body is designed to take care of. Food does not work on the principles of inhibition. So it does not for acid and STOP the body from working. Does that mean that you can go around eating candy and junk food. No junk food is like just that JUNK. The body really can't process it. It is full of sugar and artificial this and that. Which in turn taxes the body causing systems to go out-of-balance.
There is also a timing issue to eating and keeping the body in check. We have all heard of the 3 squares a day. But did you know that if you are exercising that you actually only have enough glucose in the blood stream for 45 minutes for exercise? 3 meals a day for fueling, even when you don't exercise is not enough. Did you know if you have waited until you are starving you have waited too long to eat. At that point in time you have stimulated the sympathetic nervous system to produce a stress hormone called cortisol, you have tapped the adrenal glands for adrenaline. So you body is stressed and wired. So I want to give you some rules of thumb and some analogies.
First off lets think of your body as a high performance vehicle. You would NEVER put cheap gas in an expensive car. How much is a heart surgery, that is if you survive the heart attack? The number 1 sign of coronary artery disease is death. So back to the analogies. If your diet is rich in cheap foods and sugars, then you are most likely pro-inflammatory. This leads to all kinds of joint issues and degenerative diseases. I do know a back surgery is any where from $15k to $25k depending on how many levels, your 20% of that $4000 with a loss of income and lost work for 6 to 8 weeks. It starts to add up. Your body is your most important tool.
So how should we take care of it? I am still learning. Like I said I used to work under the guise that I could take a pill and fix it. Not so. You have to eat right. A big HEALTHY breakfast. This really is the most important meal of the day. From the time you get up, you start burning calories at a faster rate. So you have the most caloric need from that point forward. After breakfast every 2 to 3 hours you should have a snack of 100 to 200 calories. Then a descent lunch, a snack 2 to 3 hours later, then dinner and finally if hungry a small snack after dinner.Here is what and how I eat.
Breakfast around 7
Breakfast in a blender (recipe on page 38 of Tosca Reno's Eat Clean Diet)
2 to 2.5 hours later I will eat an apple or banana with peanut butter, or a Clif Bar, or a handful of almonds
11:30 to 12:00 Lunch Mixed greens salad with chicken, carrots, bean sprouts, what ever I can find to top it off, I use Good Seasonings Italian dressing that I mix with Olive Oil and Balsamic Vinegar. I usually put Bleu Cheese on it too
3:00 Recovery drink
6:00 Dinner
7:30 to 8:00 Almonds, apple peanut butter, just a small snack.
Ok it has taken me ALL day to compose this so i am stopping here. :-)
No comments:
Post a Comment