Fuel Our Bodies

Our bodies are fine tuned machines that will run smoothly as long as we take care of them.

Exercise is a huge component, but even more important is how we choose to fuel our bodies.

If we were given a brand new Ferrari would we fill it with the cheapest regular gas? The answer to that question seems obvious, yet when it comes to our own bodies many of us fuel it with inferior subpar fuel.

The number one cause of death in the United States is not firearm related, nor is it heart disease. Firearms account for thirty eight thousand deaths a year. Diabetes accounts for nearly twice that, at seventy nine thousand.

The American diet is killing us! The processed foods loaded with sugar, high fructose corn syrup (which has 61 different names), corn sweetener, corn syrup, dextrose, fructose, fruit juice concentrates, glucose, high-fructose corn syrup, invert sugar, lactose, maltose, malt syrup, raw sugar, sucrose, sugar syrup, cane crystals, cane sugar, crystalline fructose, evaporated cane juice, corn syrup solids, malt syrup.

Sodium, white flour and extra oils make up more than seventy percent of the average American daily caloric intake.

I decided a decade ago that I was going to treat my body better than I had been. I stepped up the exercise and watched the food I chose to eat. I have tried various meal plans over the years. It has been mostly trial and error learning what foods work best for my body. I can tell you that it has been almost three years since I cut out sugar and I have never felt better.

This year, I decided to make some more changes to my diet. I began eating a diet of mostly whole foods and it has worked out great.

How do you know if a food is a whole food? If it has a label, it is more than likely is not a whole food. Whole foods are as close to the form they exist in nature as they can be. I try to eat foods that don’t have labels. Fruits, vegetables, sweet potatoes, nuts. These things make up the majority of my diet and I don’t limit the amount that I eat of them. I don’t eat any white carbs. If I eat bread, it is homemade from freshly ground whole wheat, with no added oil or sugar.

When I traveled to Israel they had such fresh vegetables and fruits that I upped my portions daily. I was still stuck in my head thinking I needed meat to make sure I got enough protein to sustain my athletic training. Then I read a book called “The Engine 2 Diet” about the health benefits of a plant based diet. I highly recommend this book. I learned that we can get more than enough protein from beans, grains and fruits and that our body does not store more than fifteen percent of the protein we ingest. Eating too much animal protein (including dairy based protein) is hard on our bodies. Plant protein, on the other hand, does not have the same toxic effects. Did you know that spinach is 50% protein?

Since then, I have made another change to food choices I make on a daily basis. I have dropped meat, eggs and oils completely from my regular daily meals.

This is the beginning of my new eating plan so I’ll give it few months and report back. I can say that today, as of week three, I feel great!

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