Apologies in advance today is a little heavy hitting on the diet gurus out there.
Yesterday I read an interesting article on the human intestine.
It’s up to 28 feet long and due to the villi within, has a surface area larger than your skin!
Well it impressed me anyways and got me thinking.
You see we hear so much about eating healthy food and nutritious diets, but so little time
is spent learning about what our bodies can actually digest.
This an issue close to my heart as I’ve had IBS since my early 20s and this brings with it a host of glamorous afflictions such as bloating, constipation, diarrhoea and nausea to name drop a few.
Clearly there are many more serious ailments to suffer from but IBS can prove to be severe in some cases.
What I’ve found over the years is that each time I made a concerted effort to clean up my diet and stock up the fridge I would suffer from debilitating symtoms resulting in me wasting most of the good food I had just purchased.
What I learned from this is that I had to adapt a suitable diet that met my needs.
REVELATIONARY – yes I know…
But it’s more difficult than you think when you buy into a specific dietary plan or nutritional way of life.
Take a typical kitchen conversation.
Talk turns to fitness invariably someone will volunteer their unwavering support for one type of diet.
You know the ones.
They’ll swear by the effectiveness of their chosen diet camp and exclude all other diets that contradict in any fashion, any of the controversial practices of their plan.
Not only are they convinced but they’re not happy until everyone else is too.
If you think for a moment how diets become popular they tend to have similar formulas – polarise opinion, add some controversial practices, start a hate campaign on a specific food ingredient (eg. Crossfit /Gluten) and then mix in some celebrity endorsement and the recipe is complete.
Who doesn’t want to follow the diet that got Woody Allen shredded??
It’s very easy to become entrenched with any one of these ideologies.
But, we are all individuals and a one size fits all approach doesn’t fit everyone.
We have a plethora of dietary plans that nobody seems to follow and as a nation we’re getting more obese all the time.
Reigning this rant in for a minute and returning to the topic of digestion. I believe if we focus on digestion as much as we do on nutrition we would all feel healthier.
Not just in terms of indigestion or allergies but this follows on to our energy levels.
No doubt you’ll have noticed your energy levels plummet after a heavy lunch. Perhaps a meal which prioritises protein rather than simple sugars would help in this instance as it affects how quickly food is metabolised.
Avoiding energy peaks and troughs is more beneficial for us than having insulin take over and do that job for us.
Pay attention to how your body processes different types of foods and don’t become a diet zealot who’s unable to open their mind to the possibility that there may be another way.
There’s always another way.
Embrace your unique individuality and don’t overthink nutritional excellence. Spend some time focusing on how your nutritional plan makes you feel. Commit to consistency.
Losing weight, shredding fat and getting fitter is just as much about mindset as following the latest diet craze.
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