I recently had a client who told me the greatest thing I did for her was to
teach her that food was a friend, not an enemy. She had spent her whole life locked in an eternal battle against calories. ‘I cannot eat this’ I should not eat that’, ‘This is bad
for me’ etc. etc. To her food was something she had to limit in order to stay thin, it was never a case of what she consumed, but more so how much. In essence calories played a much more dominant role in her life than actual food quality. This took away from her enjoyment of food and even worse enveloped her in guilt whenever she did ‘lose a battle with a brownie’.
Life should not be this way, nor does eating healthy have to be. Food and the process of cooking and eating should be enjoyed.
As the old adage goes ‘We are what we eat’ and the nutrients contained within what we eat have specific roles to play in our body. Whether that be building, assisting or facilitating, our body will gather what we consume and stick it with the jobs it was meant for. A really dumbed down example is protein builds, fat communicates and carbohydrates energise whilst vitamins and minerals work with these to ensure the jobs are done efficiently (in reality the science is way more complex and complicated but this will work for the sake of understanding). As we can see, there are many jobs and many workers for the roles and common sense would suggest that a diet void of any of the major nutrients will create an imbalance within our body, hence the danger of restrictive dieting (zero carb, low fat etc.)
The roles micro and macro nutrients play in our body is dictated by the jobs we supply them. We must create a demand, usually in the form of acute stress i.e. exercise that requires the body to utilise fuel, breakdown and rebuild. Without this stress/ demand, the food we consume will have fewer roles to play in the body and will therefore not be utilised or used and will likely be placed in storage and then we put on some extra timber.
A job or role for nutrients does not have to be high end performance. Day to day living requires billions of chemical reactions that keep us alive and thriving, and it is not just oxygen that fuels this process but the chemicals contained within the food that we eat. Therefore, the state of our well-being and how efficiently our body operates on a day to day basis will be determined by what fuel we supply. You cannot piss in the gas tank of a Ferrari and expect to hit full speed. Our bodies or beautiful machines that require the right fuel to work so provide it or don’t act surprised when you feel tired, sluggish and generally like crap.
So the take home message here is for you to consume foods rich in nutrients, move more so these nutrients have roles and jobs and do not just take up space and learn to love the food around you.
EAT WELL – MOVE OFTEN – BE HAPPY
patrickjennings1 