diet – Health by Brenda

Fasting, whole foods and being a work in progress

I came down sick over the weekend. It was fairly obviously something I’d eaten, but that wasn’t so easy to track down. Two lovely ladies, out of the goodness of their hearts, had offered to cook for me, giving me two days off of meal responsibilities. What a blessing!! Everything was delicious, but my stomach was not happy and I wasn’t willing to insult it further. So I took advantage of almost my entire family having other places to be and extended that vacation two more days. I got better. I pondered the nature of disease and recovery, and noted that I had no sign of bacteria or virus, and no medications were involved in healing. As is so often the case, it was all food that made the difference.

Fasting has become a hot topic as the global obesity rates continue to rise and impact chronic disease rates. The assumption is that, if people are overweight, then they must be eating too much. Complete fasting, or at least limiting food intake to a shorter window of time each day, is seen as the long-lost key to perfect health. I wish it were that simple. If there were a magic bullet of health, a fountain of youth we just had to drink from, this wouldn’t be a worldwide issue.

According to Dr. Jason Fung, the de facto expert on fasting, many chronic diseases can be reversed by stopping eating. Giving our body a chance to process what we’ve taken in each day allows us to better utilize the next day’s portions. Cycling food and rest, which promotes assimilation, is the biggest secret to health. I fully agree.

But there’s a simple point I want to make. Most modern diseases are caused by nutritional deficiencies – malnutrition. Not enough good quality food. Merely cutting back what you eat without changing what you eat isn’t going to solve the problem of poor health.

Many years ago (over 100, as I see it), food was made from whole ingredients: ground grains, fresh butter and milk, grass fed meats and locally grown vegetables. Processing was initially instituted to remove molds on grains, which made for a safer product. As processing improved and became more widespread, glaring deficiency diseases appeared. The government decided to replace the lost nutrients in flour, and Vitamins B1, B2, B3, and B9, along with iron and sometimes calcium, were added back in. But let’s look at what really happened. A grain of wheat, when refined, has the outer 2/3 removed. This includes all the fiber and B vitamins, about 17 nutrients in all. All that’s left is the starch and most (not all) of the original protein. Then the denuded grain is “enriched” with five, maybe six, synthetic replicas of what was taken out. That’s hardly what most people think enrichment means. And, as nutrition expert Sally Fallon explains, digesting enriched flour requires more B vitamins from your body than it gave you. That’s not how eating is supposed to work.

According to some estimates, refined white flour in bread, pasta and cookies makes up about 1/5 of the American diet. Think about that a second: if 20% of what I eat depletes my body of more nutrients than it gives, then ceasing to eat those foods may cut the depletion, but I’m still hungry. I’m still not getting what I need. More to the point: if a good proportion of the diet does nothing more than promote malnutrition, then cutting back isn’t solving the problem. There’s still not enough nutrition to produce health.

Fasting, in any form, is a good rest from a basically whole diet. But most of us grew up on the standard American junk food diet, which we’ve already seen doesn’t sustain us well. A better solution than trying to cut out the bad stuff (a losing proposition, in my mind) is switching to whole foods. Freshly prepared ingredients from the farmer’s market provide more nutrients and fill you up faster, for longer. You may actually eat less because non-processed food contains all the necessary fiber, vitamins and cofactors required to synthesize them. Your body is satisfied because it has what it needs and doesn’t have to waste resources on detoxifying chemistry experiments disguised as dinner.

Know that this doesn’t happen immediately. If you’ve ever had a plate of brown rice after growing up on Minute rice, you know what I’m talking about. The flavors are different. You may have to mix the two for a couple weeks to start adjusting. (My poor mother was not happy after I proudly served her whole grain everything for a weekend. It tasted good, but later – !!! Lessons learned.) We’re all works in progress, and fast food is a fact of life. Just do the best you can with the meal in front of you – add more veggies and opt for real foods over processed as much as possible. Don’t sweat the poor choices and celebrate the good ones, especially as they add up. Don’t judge your progress by a particular meal, but how the meals add up. What does your diet over the entire week look like? Are there more leafy greens and water, or french toast and soda?

Turning our diet around is the key to health. I’m not arguing that you move to Pennsylvania and buy a plow and a Morgan. Whole foods are still obtainable in your grocery store – you just have to stay out of the middle aisles. Learn to cook, if you don’t know how. Cooking videos on YouTube are a great way to learn and be inspired to try new foods.

Greek salad with balsamic rubbed tilapia

Have questions about how to turn your diet around? Comment below and I’ll do my best to help you tailor your diet to your needs.

What diet is best for me? or, How to use a Food Journal

What diet is best for me?

Which supplement should I take?

How do I know which brands are best?

These are such common questions, and very good ones to be asking. The problem is, there’s no right-and-done answer. People are complex organisms, and what works for one individual may not work so well for the next. Bio-individuality explains the differences in individuals as well as the plethora of supplements on the shelves and the number of diet plans that all seem to work for somebody.

How do you find what will actually work for you?

The honest truth is that no one knows but you.

Your body is unique, and like no one else’s. You have different parents, different eating and stress patterns, different energy levels, different chromosomes from every other person on this planet. We are all similar, yet each of us is a one-off creation with custom requirements.

The only way to know what your body needs is to test and see what works and what doesn’t.

It’s simple, yet very scientific. Experiment, observe, and document – the fundamentals of science are the basics of keeping a health journal. Writing down what you observe – a journal – is key to gaining success in personal health.

Basically, you need to note what you do and how you feel each day until you get a clear picture of what foods cause fatigue or constant cravings for more, and which ones energize you. It’s important to note the times of everything, even if it’s just morning or evening. You will begin to see how particular foods impact you. You can also note exercise and sleep, as foods often affect the quality of both. Moods are very important to watch. I was in high school when I noticed that I often fought with my mom in the mornings before school, leaving me crying bitterly all the way to school. By the time I arrived at school, I was exhausted and snacking on my lunch, leaving me not enough food to get through the day. It didn’t take long to isolate a particular breakfast cereal which caused me major mood swings – which combined with a milk sensitivity to ruin my day. When I ceased having cereal with milk for breakfast, all that drama ceased.

It’s not difficult, and it doesn’t have to be perfect. You’re just looking for patterns.

First thing in the morning, note your baseline: how do you feel before adding food? Fill in the time and whether you’re energetic, motivated, well-rested or feel run over by a truck. Then have breakfast and note what you had, and how you feel immediately afterward. Are you satisfied? Or are you craving sweets or something else? If there was much time between waking and eating, note the time you ate. One or two hours later, note again the time and how you’re feeling. Are you tired, or still energetic? Grouchy or content? Needing a cup of coffee or a treat?

Repeat this for everything you eat for one week, including the weekend: the time, what you ate, and how you feel, both immediately and several hours later. Put each entry on a new line to make it easier to spot similarities. Figuring out supplements will require you to treat them like a food, isolating different supplements from each other by several hours or alternate days. You will begin to see patterns after several days (maybe sooner!) of how each food or supplement impacts your energy levels and moods, both immediately and over time. Bloating and nasal stuffiness, for instance, often happen hours later or the next day.

As you begin seeing that protein for breakfast leads to a productive day, or a smoothie turns you into a snackaholic, you will learn what works and what doesn’t. Experiment with new eating patterns. Pretty soon, you will have a custom-made, workable diet plan that is tailored to your individual needs.

You don’t have to do this forever – just until you find what you’re looking for. The more you track, the better picture you will have. And keep in mind, as your needs change, you may want to repeat this exercise to see why old patterns are no longer working. Fine-tuning is part of staying healthy over the long term.

The first journal I used for my son. It took years to correlate foods and moods because I didn’t note times of both. It still helped me find intolerances and develop a diet for him.

Let me know if you try this, and what you find!!

I found this post really fun inspiration for watching my health: http://steadystrength.com/10-motivational-nutrition-quotes/

Teaching Children to Eat Well

I heard a blurb on the radio the other day about how a study had come out proving that it wasn’t worth the fight to make your children eat vegetables. I didn’t hear the details of who published it; I was too busy collecting my jaw from the floor and listening to their rationalizations. From what the DJ said, the psychosocial damage to both parent and child totally outweighs any benefit of the vegetable eaten, and over time, forcing the issue of food makes no statistical difference in how the grown child eats.

I think the study missed the point. If the current global health crisis is to be addressed, it must be addressed one kid at a time, one meal at a time. Our habits of eating must change. It’s a lifestyle, not a short-term diet. With that in mind, if you’re in a battle over food with your child, it’s because they’ve already learned what to eat. They eat what you eat. If you’re trying to force them to do what you don’t, they know it’s only a matter of time before you give up; they’ve won.

How should we eat? is a question that starts really early. The newborn is learning constantly. He is watching how you move, listening to how you talk to others, and tasting broccoli in mama’s milk. So good nutrition starts with me, what I eat, and what I provide for my child. As he begins to wean off of milk, his first food should not be french fries at McDonald’s. (I’m ashamed to admit that two of my children did start this way.) Boys love getting to use real tools, and using appropriately-sized knives to help cut veggies for Mommy will encourage them to be part of the process of putting food on the family’s table. (This is how I retrained those two .) Girls can and will do the same, but they’re usually motivated by getting to “play” with shapes and how the finished product will look. Let them be creative with combinations and shapes. And don’t be discouraged when you run out of ingredients for dinner because they ate everything raw as they chopped. I’ve been there.

I did have a mother once tell me she envisioned her children, running horror-flick style through the house with butcher knives. I suppose that could be a problem, but it’s not been my experience. Kids are always welcome in my kitchen. Good things happen there. I allow little ones to snitch snacks while I prepare and they watch – here’s when they learn to keep their hands away from the knives. Toddlers can be given table knives to slice their own banana with breakfast, or cooked baby carrots with dinner. As they gain skill, we move to a sharper knife, and mushrooms or celery on a cutting board at the table where they can work securely. I’ve never met a kid who didn’t enjoy cutting little trees out of a head of broccoli. I think the trick to turn little Freddie into a chef instead of a B-rate movie character is your expectations of him. As you treat kitchen implements with respect and skill, he learns what kitchen work looks like.

Remember to model well, even when you think they’re not looking. They are. They can do more than you think they can. This salad was completely made by children – little ones sectioning oranges, leafing lettuce and slicing grapes, slightly older ones slicing avocados and mixing dressing. I buy sliced almonds, unless someone wants to show off their cutlery skills.

This is lifestyle training, then, more than a health curriculum. It’s not just about what they eat. If all they eat is McDonald’s, they will buck vegetables. They won’t know what asparagus looks like. They might even fear beets. Toddlers learn by handling things, experimenting with flavors, textures, and how things react to touch. By giving them fresh, raw foods, and letting them pick out new ones at the grocery store to take home and prepare, they learn to love real food. You’ll teach them not only that “we eat healthy food,” but that they are capable of doing this for themselves.

This is efficiency at its best. Little Freddie’s pre-dinner time at the cutting board not only kept him from screaming hungrily at your feet while you’re trying to prepare dinner, but taught him how to eat well, manage his health, and keep control of his finances. You helped him to make difference in the world, all while maintaining a happy home. Is this difficult to do in a dual-income home? Yes, but meals still need made. Why not enlist help, even if it’s not the most effective (yet)? The time you invest in making dinner for your family is time you didn’t have to spend at the doctor’s office for sick kids, and money you didn’t have to spend on blood pressure medications for yourself. As you get older, don’t be surprised when they take over the kitchen to make “what they really like.”

The health of our country is atrocious, and the world is not much better. Fighting for health is worth it, but it’s not about fighting our children. It’s about joining together as a family to fight for what is good for all of us. Change starts small – with me. Even if I don’t like vegetables and I didn’t start them out properly, if I know that my children should eat better, then so should I. Admit it to them. Struggle together against junk food cravings. Make peach cobbler to reward everybody for trying your new cauliflower soup recipe. It’s good for all of us, and none of us want to die young of totally preventable illnesses. This is about loving our children, and wanting to be there for our grandchildren.

Raising a family is not about making the kids into something you’re not willing to be. It’s about making sure that what you’ve started makes a difference that lasts into the next generation. If you’re not on the right track, change it, and encourage your family wo come along. Any change is hard; there will be days when ice cream is dinner. But those days should be rare, and getting rarer every year as the family learns to enjoy the benefits of health that eating well brings.