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ASK THE NUTRITIONIST: Is your diet providing you with enough energy, nutrients?

In this week's Ask the Nutritionist, Nonie De Long offers healthier solutions to common dieting traps
2022-01-02 cooking healthy food stock
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Dear readers, 2022 has arrived! Do you feel different? Do you want to feel different? Do you want to feel better, with improved mental and physical health? When we start a new year we often feel invigorated to take new steps toward some goal that we’ve been waiting to tackle. With health conditions like type II diabetes and obesity on the rise, it’s no wonder health tops many people’s resolution lists.

While I don’t advocate dieting, I do suggest taking stock of the way we eat and live to create health. What does that mean? Well, good health doesn’t fall from the sky. It’s built, day after day, month after month, year after year. We are never going to have a different genetic makeup than we do presently - but we can change the factors that switch those genes off or on. Cells that get abundant nutrients function better and have less mutations, while cells that are fed substandard and nutrient deficient foodstuff don’t perform their best. Eventually this path leads to disease - of whatever variety your genes say you are susceptible to.

So, if you’re seriously interested in improving your health, there’s no way around asking yourself what improvements you can make to your diet.

Last week we talked about mindset and how that sets us up for success or failure when approaching food. This is why so many diets fail - in my opinion. They create a mindset of restriction that causes the person to feel a lack of joy around food. And who can sustain that long term? If everything you really enjoy is taboo, how do you keep going with the diet? It’s just a matter of time before the self control gets weak. Then we get the dieter’s cycle where food becomes a source of guilt and shame. Nobody needs that layer of emotional attachment to food complicating their lives. If you have already arrived at this place - where emotional eating is wreaking havoc with your health - it really is time to get professional help. Seek out someone who specializes in emotional eating and disordered eating. These are complicated disorders and require specialized care.

Let me suggest an alternative to the dieting mindset. One where food is neither good nor bad. It is instead beneficial and health giving or not beneficial and health taking. Think of it like a bank account. Some foods put us in a clear state of surplus or abundance. We have abundant energy, abundant strength, and abundant mental clarity. And others put us in a state of overdraft. We have a deficiency of energy, strength, and clarity. We are unable to function optimally. And if the deficit situation becomes chronic, we don’t have the reserves to power through the day or heal from injuries or bounce back from emotional and mental assaults. It’s a rotten paradox: this is when we have the least energy to make changes to our diet - but when it becomes the most essential.

So let’s talk about creating a surplus of energy and nutrients. How do we best do that? Which ‘way’ is right? I want to suggest one question you can ask yourself to determine if food is going to put you in the surplus column or the overdraft situation.

Does it come from a farm or is it made in a factory?

By this standard it’s easy to see that commercial packaged foods and baked goods are not health giving foods. With all their preservatives and chemicals, excess sugar and salt, and unhealthy fats, they will put us in the deficit column.

On this note I need to speak to fats. Vegetable and seed oils are factory processed foods. They are not health-giving. Natural animal fats and olive or avocado fat or coconut or sustainably grown palm fat are far superior in every way. But beware of olive oil that isn’t really pure olive oil. Learn more about that here.

We can also see that natural, whole, ethically raised meat, poultry, and eggs are superior to egg replacement goop and highly processed meat alternatives. I know we have been sold the idea that these are superior, but I believe nature’s design is best. And I don’t believe mono-cropped GMO, factory produced foodstuff is better for the environment than natural cattle. A grass fed cow does not produce methane gasses, and ruminants are able to utilize land that otherwise is unable to produce food. They can even reverse desertification. For more on this, you can tune into the writings of eco activists Vandana Shiva or Allan Savory.

It’s a simple rubric to apply: farm or factory? That makes the nutritional value of foods really simple to assess.

In addition to this rule, I would add five more questions that I think can be very helpful and easy to apply to ensure we get the nutrients that we need.

  1. Am I eating a variety of meats/ fish/ proteins, vegetables, nuts and seeds - or am I restricting myself to the same ones regularly? Variety means more diverse nutrients. This is always a good thing to avoid any deficiencies and also developing food intolerances from too much repetition. The most natural way of eating is seasonal, with foods rotating with the seasons. This ensures a variety of nutrients in rotation and created much better health than we have today.
  2. Am I eating thee meals or less per day? I know traditional dietetic advice suggests meals plus snacks, but this is outdated and proven to be detrimental for many. In order for it to work, all snacks have to be healthy and proportioned right. And when we’re fat adapted, we are not hungry six times a day. In fact, evidence is showing fasting for one meal a day several times a week is optimal for most adults. I maintain that more than three meals - or snacks plus meals - is too much for adults and any teen that is not active or has weight issues. The recommendation that we need snacks in addition to meals has done nothing but wreak havoc on our health. It has created an obesity and diabetes pandemic. If you are serious about your health, snacking has to go. Balanced meals are superior in all regards. They are intentional. Even fruit as a snack is substandard, in my opinion. It’s high in sugars and can spike blood sugar which contributes to diabetes. Fruit is best eaten just after a meal to curb sweet cravings without spiking blood sugar - up to 1x per day. It should not be taken as a snack or meal replacement for adults or teens. Children are unique in their energy requirements because they are so active and are growing exponentially. But when their weight becomes an issue I don’t recommend snacks of fruit for children either.
  3. Do my meals contain a perfect protein of at least the size of my palm and an assortment of brightly coloured vegetables? The colours in vegetables actually signal the nutrients they contain. Perfect proteins contain all the amino acids - which are the building blocks of muscle, enzymes, and neurotransmitters.
  4. Do I eat an unpasteurized, fermented food every day? This takes care of your gut biome, which regulates how you digest and absorb nutrients from foods. It also regulates inflammation, mood, immunity, and so much more. You can choose from fermented kefirs, miso, natto, yogurts, vegetables, kombucha, or condiments like kimchi. But including this simple side dish to one meal per day has great benefit for your health and digestion.
  5. Do my meals leave me feeling energized and content or bloated and tired? If you feel tired, bloated, or headachy after a meal, or your heart races, you are sensitive to a food in it or you are becoming insulin resistant. An easy way to determine insulin resistance is to consume a bowl of starchy food like white rice or a plate of fries. Do you feel tired an hour later? Or as my nephew calls it, do you go into a rice coma? That is insulin resistance. You are on your way to type II diabetes if you don’t reign it in. A healthy meal should leave us with more energy than before we ate. We should not feel too full or sleepy or lethargic after. These are all warnings of incompatible food choices. Learn to listen to your body and it will guide you!

These aren’t difficult rubrics to use and they can lead us in most cases to make much healthier food choices that allow for personal preferences and leave our joy for food intact! I hope you will join me in a cooking class to share that excitement for healthy food!

As always, readers can send their questions to me by email or find me online. Happy, Healthy New Year!

Namaste!
Nonie Nutritionista



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