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The alchemy of eating right for yourself can benefit from a mini plan, and a little tracking.

10/8/2021

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Nutrition is one of those keys that can seem just too daunting to tackle and certainly that is part of the reason why there are so many “simple” and “easy” or even “magic” dietary plans to follow. Yet, as we all know, the way to accomplish a project that seems overwhelming is to break it into manageable tasks. The added challenge when it comes to nutrition is that the end goal is not obvious. Should you eat a low fat diet? Does it make sense for you to make your meals mostly plant based? Can you count carbonated water as your water intake? And do you really need to be drinking 64 ounces of water a day? Seriously, this list could just go on and on with science supporting and refuting nearly every answer.

One of the reasons that the science isn’t clear is that humans aren’t the same. Starting with the way we digest, there are variances in our ability to break down foods and the mechanisms of motility. Then the variability of the microbiota in our intestines plays such an immense role that research is continuing to find never before imagined connections with our health. And all of that happens before the absorbed nutrients get a chance to make it to our cells where things like the difference in mitochondria (7 types have been found in humans) may provide differences in how we get energy from the food. Check out The Seven Daughters of Eve: The Science That Reveals Out Genetic Ancestry if you want to explore more on the topic of mitochondria. To simplify, we are all different and our lifestyle choices create even more differences among us.

Just trying to determine the right nutrition for an individual is complicated, but in our modern society that is also not seen as enough because we are inundated with how our food industry is not doing right by us nor the earth. Really?! Is there no end to the negatives associated with this basic need for our survival? It is almost as if money is to be made confusing and shaming us. And, along those lines, there is research demonstrating that foods which we are designed to crave when stressed actually don’t satiate us but exacerbate the craving- the opposite of other primates- and the researchers speculate that is due to our belief that the “bad” food is causing us harm, and thus, is increasing our stress.

Rather than hide your head in the sand only coming up for fast food, I encourage you to set some small steps. Start tracking the foods you eat and how they make you feel, decide that you will increase your water intake, or maybe watch the documentary Kiss the Ground (https://kisstheground.com/). There are so many small actionable steps that you can take that will give you more control, and while the ideal magic miracle foods are appealing, they are not the path of you using your ownership to take the best care of yourself.  

As always, let me know how I can help.
Adam
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Why diet tracking gives you the best diet for you.

5/3/2021

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I first started working in the fitness industry during the time when it seemed like the entire nutrition industry believed that dietary fat was evil, and the cause of obesity as well as many diseases. Of course, many now look back on that and think how wrong we were and question how we could possibly have believed such a thing and how, thankfully, we now know the “right” way for humans to eat. Yet, interestingly, body fat is often used as the sign of the diet’s effectiveness on our health. 

The understanding that body fat was unhealthy was presented with the history of how in the mid 1900s we learned how to produce food at such a scale that it was cheap and developed tools that reduced our daily physical activity, creating a social status indicator that was the opposite of how it was previously. With the belief that before this time people who physically worked were thinner from laboring and not able to eat as much due to cost, while those who were higher on the socio-economic scale didn’t have to labor and could eat more. Thus, carrying more fat was desirable until it was easy to do and then carrying less was the ideal. 

While this explanation doesn’t at all address the health implications that body fat is supposed to have, it does give a solid story about how we as a society developed our issues with body fat. It cannot, however, be a true story because it doesn’t explain how the most popular books in the United States in the 1800s were diet books. In the book A Short History of the American Stomach, Frederick Kaufman writes about how many of the new diets of today are actually diets from the 19th century. The modern day versions certainly have new names and the options our food industry has been able to create are remarkable, but the essence is the same. Which I would think could make one question the trust that they have placed in the current dietary plan. 

There are hundreds, maybe thousands, of diet books and they may all work but they are too contradictory to think that they will work for everyone. But they don’t have to work for everyone, they just have to work for you. And that, I believe, should be the guiding focus for whatever dietary plan you have. 

How do you know if your diet is working for you? You pay attention and you track. Tracking means writing down when you eat, what you eat and how much you eat. Paying attention is not only writing down how you feel in your diet tracker, but also watching your body metrics (blood sugar, cholesterols, body weight, etc.) which over time can provide insights into how your body is responding to your diet. The tricky part is to not overvalue the measurements. It can be far too easy to have a number on the scale override your efforts and seem like a much more real indicator of how your diet is working for you than the fact that you aren’t as exhausted at the end of a day. If this sounds familiar, please consider not using the scale. There are so many great reasons to pay attention to what you are eating and while numbers can seem real and objective, placing too much importance on them can cause harm to the far more important goal of optimizing health. 

I know it can be tedious, but the simple fact is that the more you consistently track when, what and how much you eat, as well as how it makes you feel, the better you will understand your body and how to provide the best nutrition for it. 

As always, let me know how I can help.
Adam
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    This blog is written and updated by the staff that support EQUIVITA. Individual blog posts are the thoughts of the staff member that submitted the post.  The content of these posts often support the thoughts and ideas of our organization, but do not always(and we scarcely use definitives) reflect the same thoughts or ideas of the organization as a whole.

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