I’ve had people come into the gym dragging. They workout regularly and think it’s enough to keep them functioning well. Exercise is great and does boost your energy level, but if you’re not running on real food even that benefit will soon fade. Eating healthy provides the body with nutrients to build new cells and keep all parts of your body in top operating condition. Some foods actually make you feel tired, and not the sleepy, good type of tired like the tryptophan in turkey does.
Spiking your energy level with sugar has disastrous results.
If you’re diabetic, you have to watch your sugar intake closely and know all about drops in your sugar level, but for the vast majority of people, they don’t have a clue about the drain sugar takes on their body. Sure, if you’re tired a sweet treat will boost your energy level, just like a cup of Jo will. However, within a few hours, you’ll be right back down to the basement and maybe even more tired than you were before you ate. Avoid sugary treats to keep your body healthy, happy and running at full steam.
Seriously, can you pronounce all the ingredients in your meal?
If you’re eating processed foods, you won’t be as healthy. Many processed foods contain ingredients you can’t even pronounce and some that are made from the same ingredients as plastic, petroleum oil. Making sure your car has oil is one thing, but that doesn’t make it healthy for your body. Some of the ingredients are preservatives, artificial color and even some “flavor enhancers.” When you switch to real food, whole foods or dishes that you make from whole food ingredients, you know exactly what it contains and it’s all healthy.
Avoid refined flour products and stick with whole grains.
Refined flour has had the nutrients stripped out of them and then added back into them. They’ve had up to 25 extra chemicals adding to them, such as bleach or oxidizers. These types of additives are not allowed in countries like Germany. Chemicals are added to keep the bread soft and fresh feeling, while mono and diglycerides make it fluffy. Dough conditioner can include a mixture of chemicals that resembles anti-freeze, too. As one nutritional saying goes, “The whiter the bread, the sooner you’re dead.”
- Eating a wide variety of colors at a meal helps balance nutrition, as long as those are the natural food colors, not artificial ones. Bright yellow cake frosting doesn’t count, but yellow squash does.
- Real foods from animal sources need one further step. You need to know what the animals ate. If it was hormones and antibiotics, that’s not good. Grass fed beef, that’s excellent. In fact, butter from grass fed cows is heart healthy.
- Real foods contain lean meat cuts, but in smaller portions and more fruits and veggies than meat.
- If you’re eating in fast food restaurants, chances are you’re not eating real foods. That can be also true in even more expensive restaurants unless they’re known for healthy foods.