Food is Nutrition

I really want to address the idea of what the real purpose of food is. For many people, food is a comfort mechanism or a way to deal with depression. For others, it’s an addiction, especially to sugar. For some, it is a way to control their appearance. In truth, food should be eaten to provide the healthiest and most efficient energy for our bodies. When we are healthy and we feed ourselves good foods like green leafy vegetables, healthy organic foods and proteins like wild caught salmon, it will taste good and you will want to keep eating well. Especially if we use herbs and spices to flavor our food properly.

Unfortunately most of us eat so much processed food that our systems are completely out of whack. It’s difficult to get back into a healthy state without putting real time and effort in. And of course, it involves a complete change in diet.

When it comes to weight loss, I have seen so many different “diets” over the years. I’m not denying that many of them yield great results, but in truth, I have also seen the long-term benefits that people have achieved from changing to a more natural eating plan. Calorie counting and fad diets certainly work for many people, but can be hard to sustain over long periods of time. I have seen people start to feel sick again and often fall back into the habit of eating the processed, sweetened and fatty foods that they thought they had left behind. There is a lot of misinformation out there and many of these ‘miracle’ eating plans have contra-indications in terms of your body’s health needs.

Some of the best advice I got was from a girl who was over 300 pounds and lost 200 pounds. She said she researched dieting and found information that worked for her and her body. She had kept on reading, researching and making notes until she figure out a system that worked for her.

While 200 calories of soda or candy or even popcorn may well be the same as 200 calories of spinach, the nutrition you receive from 200 calories of spinach will be far more beneficial to your body than 200 calories of junk. Once you understand how your body works, what fuel it needs to function at its best and how to get that fuel into your system in a simple and tasty way, you will feel so much better on the whole.

There’s no need to cut out all the fun though. I try to ensure that at least 80% of what I eat or drink in a day is healthy, allowing 20% for treats or the odd snack. Life is about balance after all.