We’re eating ourselves into a grave!

Today I am going to give a little tough love! I know that starting a healthy path is rough, I have been there. I know how it feels to look one way in my mind, but see a photograph that looks completely different (My before picture). It is HARD. However, one day I got fed up. I looked unhealthy and felt terrible. If you are battling health or weight you have to reach that breaking point of being “sick and tired of being sick and tired”. The first question once you commit to beginning a healthy life style should not be “Well, can I still eat this?” You’re setting yourself up for failure; that question reveals that you are not ready to change.

The secret is simple; it all starts with the FOOD. What we put into the machine determines what comes out. Yes my friends you can throw away all your diet books, tips, tapes, DVD’s and complete low-carb library because that is the basis of all you need to know. It is the food. It’s the food that makes us thrive or kills us, it’s the food that is giving us energy or drains us and it is the food that adds nutrients or depletes them.

Today in America we are literally killing ourselves with food, and I don’t just mean by being overweight. We are killing our bodies with foreign man-made chemicals, mutated cellular organisms and toxic filler. Our bodies were never designed to eat, digest and use the radical ingredients that are found in our food supply today. The crazy thing is all this death is wrapped up in a cute little cupcake, catchy slogan or hilarious commercial that will bust your gut - literally. Even so called marketed "healthy food" is running around as X-Men mutants of the real thing. 

How have we as a society allowed this extreme dissociation between what we eat and where is comes from? Have we become so distracted by iphones, TV shows, careers and social media to realize that the killer we fear is not outside but in our refrigerator? How many loved ones have to pass away from lifestyle induced diseases like cancer, heart disease and diabetes to make us realize that something is wrong? How does it ever become normal that at the age of 40 doctors in America begin to start people on blood thinners, statins and pharmaceutical cocktails that make us customers forever? Will it ever stop?

I am not coming from a place of judgment because this very well could have been me today, but my hope is that people wake up and THINK. It boils down to the daily seemingly insignificant choices we make to fuel our bodies; to eat a bagel over eating fruit, to forgo vegetables for a pizza, to continually feed our sugar addictions. It has nothing to do with being overweight or thin because thin people are dying of the very same diseases. It is about our health. Think long and hard about what you want for your life. Do you want to battle diseases and prescriptions for the second half of your life or do you want to LIVE?

Start today by educating yourself. Some of my favorite food documentaries are Forks over Knives, Ingrediants, Vegucated and Fat, Sick & Nearly Dead. It is so important to find out where your food comes from. My rule of thumb on everything I eat is: How close is this food to its natural state?  If there are too many steps in the process then I usually don’t eat it. Nutrition doesn’t have to be so complex. Eat life! Most of our diets should be food that is grown and has been in the sun. Give your body a period to detoxify and rid itself from old habits and toxins (detox video).

You deserve to be healthy! You deserve a good life! Give yourself that chance. Share your thoughts comments and questions below. 

Free Yourself from Calories!

I remember being over 200 pounds and desperate. I had tried everything and nothing was working. So one day feeling very low I humbly joined a weight loss club. I was so excited! I remember buying all of the books, weighing in at the meetings and joining my group members weekly to discuss our weight loss issues. My instructor often brought us free “weight loss club” snacks that were very low in calories but very delicious. I signed the dotted line and thought I had found my people! It was comforting to be able to discuss my late night binges, or the really BAD weekends of throwing caution to the wind; those people understood. There was an unsaid “Eating-fat -while-trying-to-be-skinny” mentality that existed in my club. Weekly we shared our low calories food finds. For example; “ABC Company makes this delicious dessert that is only 10 calories” or “XYZ brands makes this yummy cheese spread that is only 15 calories.” I remember one night eating 5 of those 100 calories snack pack cookies and thinking; this can’t be healthy, but at least it was only 500 calories. I finally came to the end of my 6 month weight loss club membership only having lost 7 pounds; I knew then there had to be a better way.

The problem was the weight loss club’s reasoning for my future weight loss success was based on a math equation (factoring in no variables). They told me I could still eat the horrible bad food that got me overweight BUT they were just going to replace it with a lower calorie, chemically altered, extra processed replacement; instead of teaching me how to reprogram my relationship with unhealthy food. Yes for some this works for a while. We eat the lower calorie cookie instead of the really bad cookie or we eat the extra thin pizza instead of the doughy pizza; thinking all the while this will last. Well the process is doomed from the start. The focus is on what we can’t have instead of what we can. We are constantly reminded of the really good versions of the stuff that makes us obese, and before long we are back to buying the same foods that made us overweight in the first place. It is a vicious cycle.

But there is a better way! The process I went through to lose weight was all about retraining my taste buds and focusing nutrition. Most yummy horrible foods today are packed with flavor but low on nutrition; this is why you can still feel hungry after eating a big Mac with fries. I used to go into a deep depression after eating 3 slices of pizza and still having room for dessert, but it was all about the nutrition. I learned to like highly nutritious foods. The process of learning I went through was juice fasting (My juicing video), during this time my body was flushed of all toxins and my cravings for bad foods disappeared. While I fasted I researched nutritious foods that I planned on eating like: Kale, lentils, quinoa, squash and many more. The cool thing about fasting is it also makes you appreciate food, and so when I began eating healthy it was easy!

I encourage you to free yourself from calorie counting! Don’t get caught up in hype of calories in and calories out. While it is important to watch portions; the real focus should be on the nutritional content of the food you eat. Retrain your taste buds, get rid of the junk and become the healthy person you always wanted to be!

How was your experience in a weight loss club? How have you learned to eat healthy? Share your thoughts comments and questions below. 

Recipe: Quinoa Italiano

Food: Mashed Butternut Squash

Roasted Pumpkin and Butternut Squash

I made this recipe tonight and it was out of this world amazing! So fun today sharing all the food that I ate for the day. Check the lunch and breakfast here. Happy Eating!