Is skipping a meal really healthy for you? You could do a quick search on the net and ask that very question, you would get loads of different answers or even a handful of journals giving you the science behind it all. There is a scientific journal from 2014 that goes on about how breakfast is the most important meal of your day. The down side of this study is Pepsi co paid for it and they own Quaker Oats. Now I am not here to debate if its wrong or right, I’d only suggest finding an independent study to read instead.
We seem to be the only species on the plant that appear to eat according to the time, some get a little upset if you question or suggest not to. Work, life or other obligations will obviously dictate when we can eat too. We are also the only creatures obsessed with weight lose and so on.
Books on the paleo diet, which I think is just being called keto diet now, talks about our ancestors and how they would have eaten in Paleolithic times and so on. That’s great but no one really knows right and what region it applies too, it’s second hand information really. Yes how humans lived then is nothing like now, we have to deal with other humans tampering with our food rather than getting it from the source. Preservatives like sugars are added as well as other chemicals, which our ancestors didn’t consume of course. Eating what you want no becomes dangerous, not being eaten by a huge animal dangerous.
How about we stop for a second. Dump out all this confusing and conflicting information and start over. Lets keep things nice and simple. Whichever diet you’d like to follow, great, lets just keep a few things in mind, a few guidelines that can be followed.
Small changes
By making a few small changes here and there, allows not only your body to get used to your ‘new diet’ but it will let your mind to start perceiving it as a normal habit. When I say small I really mean it. For example: opting to eat foods that have 5g or less of sugar per 100g/100ml. This would help your body taking in less added sugars from packaged food. This does not apply to real whole foods like fruits, nuts, seeds and veg. This could take you a while to get the hang of as it means having to check everything you buy. If this is too difficult at first go for things that are 15g of less instead. According to government recommendations men should eat no more than 10 teaspoons of added sugar and woman and children are 9 teaspoons. With this in mind, on average 100g’s of milk chocolate can be 12.5 teaspoons of added sugar. High sugared drinks are the biggest offenders and should be the first to take a dirt nap.
Hunger
If you’re not hungry and its ‘breakfast time’ should we eat? Hunger is subjective; this changes from person to person. We are informed that 3-6 meals a day are what is needed to maintain or gain a healthy body. With this, a person’s first meal can be anytime of the day. This way of eating has been given many names: intermittent fasting, intuitive eating, time restrictive eating and so on. I think it’s best to look at it as in you eat when you need/want to. The only rule is just eat something. How you approach this is up to you, what times you eat is up to you. The control is yours, not the clock and not some Dr or “guru”. Once you’re comfortably full you just stop, simple. You take into account your smart food choices and eating when you want/need this does make for a more pleasurable experience and any “guilt” you felt when eating more/less than you think you should, will dissipate. Holidays/weddings/social events, these you have no control over unless you’re preparing the food, if you are not, don’t stress, enjoy the meal and the following day you just carry on with your own eating plan.
Fibre
Yes fibre. This in my opinion is the king of the food world. There are two types of fibre from our foods (soluble & insoluble). I will only be talking about the effects of soluble fibre here. Fibre is natures stopping mechanism to prevent us from over eating. If you happen to ingest more fibre than the body can handle, you will be spending some time on that porcelain throne. It’s the barrier that slows down glucose absorption in the small intestines. This means that with slow glucose absorption your body can use stored glucose (glycogen) and you will then have more room for storage and very little would be stored as fat. If some one placed 10 apples in front of you and told you to eat as many as you could in one go, how many would you eat? One? Two? If those apples were juiced, you’d drink all 10 in one go. We can’t over eat high fibred foods. You take that away (processed foods) you’d have to eat so much more often to be satisfied and full.
I could write a huge “guidelines list” but that would get really boring really fast (said like Johnny Bravo). These are just a few things you should keep in mind when sorting out your own diets. An obvious one when weight loss is a goal (fat loss really) is keeping added sugars as low as possible. As we get older things do seem much harder, but following these guidelines, making them fit your life with a little exercise you’ll notice that excess body fat will melt away. I can’t promise fast results, I can promise improved health benefits. Your risk of metabolic disease will reduce for starters. Again you will need to reduce added sugar intake along with the above suggestions for this journey of yours to have a chance.
All the best
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