Healthy eating is something really simple. As it often happens, we turn simple and approachable things – those that come to us instinctively, into something complicated. We implicate around simple stuff, complicated methodic, rules and the accompanying sense of guilt. This is completely true for diets. We, women are queens when it comes to torturing our bodies. We take a diet and we filter it through our own fears and convictions. We read about one diet and we decide to start following it and then – day after day we take out everything healthy about it and we take it down to food, that doesn’t give our body anything, besides more deprivation.
For the past 7 years I’ve been involved in the world of healthy nutrition. I traveled a long way, and I made a lot of mistakes. Mistakes, which often left me feeling overwhelmed and confused. I was making the effort, yet I never achieved my goals. Healthy lifestyle was supposed to make me feel better and my trials showed the opposite. Looking back on the past, I see how I sabotaged my own progress. Sometimes when we are too goal oriented and when we want to achieve our goals as soon as possible we make mistakes that cost us a lot.
Often times we have some kind of an ideal, a goal and we try to stuff reality in our notions about how things are supposed to happen. In fact, we should use reality in order to build the path to our dream – step by step.
Today, I will share with you some of the mistakes I made in the past. These mistakes are common among women.
1.Eating too much vegetables
“Too much” is a vast concept. Everybody has a different definition, but you can always feel it when you are overdoing something and when you are doing it in moderation.
We wrongly substitute the word “healthy” with “low – calorie”. When we have a wrong definition, we get a wrong execution. This notion, urges us to build our menu on the base of foods, which are low- calorie and nutrient – deficient. Every one of you knows what it feels like to be hungry. You want to focus on something, but your body is constantly annoying you, telling you that it wants food. Still, you don’t want to give it too many calories, so it won’t store them as fat. What could you do in order to content both – your own self and your body? You can fool your body with food that doesn’t contain many calories.
That’s what I used to do. I used to eat little, but not enough. I used to get hungry pretty quick, but I knew that it wasn’t time for my next meal. I had the perfect option – VEGETABLES. A couple carrots, a couple pickles, a pepper or two and whatever is in season. What matters is to have something to chew, something that engages me and tricks my body that I am feeding it.
I’ve reached to a point where I ate A LOT of vegetables. I remember how I encountered the blog of a pretty famous fitness model, who claimed that you can eat more than a kilogram of vegetables a day. What matters is to eat less from the calorie – dense food. I listened to her and I followed her advices.
What are the results?
You stuff your body with vegetables. You feel bloated and your body doesn’t feel satiety. You are constantly thinking about food and you need something that is calorie – dense. Something that will feed your body.
What is the conclusion I made?
Eating vegetables all day long, doesn’t lead to better results! The problem is that for most people, getting in shape is a fight with their weight. If we know better, how our body functions, then there is no need for a fight. Just synchrony. Every time when we eat, this leads to a reaction from our body and a need for our digestive system to work. How do you think that this would influence your body – eating vegetables all day long?
What is the solution? Eating enough quality and nutrient – dense food. If we eat a steak with some veggies, our body will feel satiety and we won’t need to eat something every 30 minutes.
It is far better to eat 3-4 times a day, in enough quantities, than eating less, all day long.
2.Substituting food with energy drinks and coffee
This is common among women. “This is my third coffee. I don’t feel like drinking it, but I am hungry that’s why I am buying it.” When I used to drink coffee, I’ve made this mistake as well. I get hungry, but it is not time for my next meal, that’s why I search for a way to trick my body. I give it coffee, Isostar, Gatorade or something from the sort. When I used to do this, my body didn’t feel good. There was always that acerbity in my mouth. As if I was tasting the artificial sweeteners and the artificial coloring in these drinks.
Besides that, drinks that contain caffeine, increase cortisol levels – the stress hormone. When we are hungry, its levels rise. It is an instinctive reaction left from our ancestors. When you are hungry, cortisol levels rise. Our senses sharpen and we get more alert, in order to find a prey and guarantee our survival. Nowadays, we are neither walking around with spears, nor bears and wolfs are chasing us. Our survival is in danger by other factors, but not by food scarcity.
Chronically elevated cortisol, influences not only the way we feel, but also the way we look. Probably you’ve heard that the places we tend to store fat, indicate about which hormone I out of balance. Well, storing fat around your mid-section, indicates higher cortisol levels.
What are the results?
You drink energy drinks, coffee or other low- calorie drink, which make your stomach feel full. Drinks that do not ring for the satiety of your body. They make you feel bad, but does it matter? After all you are taking less calories.
What is the conclusion I made?
When you feel hunger, you need to eat. Some people can’t differ physical hunger from emotional hunger.
When you wonder if you need to eat, drink a glass of water and if 10 minutes later you are still thinking about food, this means that you are truly hungry. Instead of making coffee, make an omelet.
What is the solution?
Listen to your body. When we give our body what it needs, when it needs it we are in synchrony with it. Then, it won’t resist our goals, nor are we gonna resist its goals.
3. Substituting food with chewing gums or candies
Variety of chewing gums is almost as the variety of fruits and vegetables. There are chewing gums for every taste. Thee is for every caprice – without aspartame, without sugar, without artificial coloring. Chewing gums are another weapon against hunger, Or at least that is how we fool ourselves. The same is true for candies. It is interesting how we take things – if it is not a solid meal, then it doesn’t contain calories and we can substitute our meals with it.
The mouth can be accepted as a digestive organ as well. The tongue, saliva and teeth – they are no coincidence. Everything that gets in our mouth, sends signals to the brain. Chewing, activating the taste buds is a signal for the body that food is coming. If we are constantly signalizing our body that it will receive food, but it doesn’t receive it, this makes it much worse. Our inner instincts will urge us to search solid food. Do not get me wrong. I also love mint chewing gums. But I do not substitute my meals with them.
Candies…pure sugar. Caramel candy, strawberry candy! It is still a candy. Why do you think that it is better to take a candy instead of eating something nutrition dense? Candies are a pure source of carbs ( the once you do not want to eat), artificial sweeteners and colors. With one sentence – nothing that brings satiety to the body.
Instead of fooling our body with gums and candies, it is far better to feed it.
4.Substituting calorie dense foods with low calorie foods
As I mentioned, healthy is not equivalent to low – calorie. Every time when you see progress, you get enthusiastic to achieve better results. You reach to a point, where you substitute your meals, with really low – calorie foods. Suddenly curds and yogurt, become the staple of your diet. You stuff yourself with veggies and you eat a ton of curds. Curds, temporary makes you feel full. In the same time it doesn’t contain many calories. Perfect! Or maybe not?
The goal to be athletic, with a nice, lean body can be achieved with EATING… the right foods. Everything in the body comes up to biochemical processes. For every process you need building blocks. These building blocks come from food. Through it we take macro and micro – nutrients, which aid the functioning of our body. The food we eat, determines the hormonal responses of our body. The hormones our body releases, determines the way we look and feel. If a person is what he eats… who would you be if you eat just curds and plane, boiled chicken breasts? Probably we will feel just as plane, robbed out of “color” and vitality.
What are the results?
You eat low- calorie foods. You are always hungry. Yes, your body is starving even when your stomach is full. When we don’t give our body what it needs, our mind is busy to think about foods, which will give us what we need. You eat less, you feel tired and exhausted. You lose weight, but you do not look athletic, as you want. You have the skinny –fat look.
What is the conclusion I made?
It is far better to eat a steak with salad. It is far better to cook a meal with sea food and stewed veggies. It is far better to use coconut butter for my veggies. I better eat nutrition – dense food. Then my body feels satiety. I get full faster. My body has building blocks. I take care of it and it returns the favor by helping me achieve my goals.
What is the solution?
To eat real food. Food that contains enough macro and micro – nutrients, which give building blocks to our body. The building blocks that help us shape the body we want!
Here is what I’ve been training for the past two days 🙂
Certainly, people need to eat nutrients. There’s no two ways around that. If the long term goal includes maintaining some semblance of health, eating real food is going to happen at some point. That said, most people in Western society are not suffering from too few calories. If what you’re saying is taking the opposite extreme is not the goal either, then we agree. We are all going to have to learn about food, or hire someone who does, and do exactly as that person says.