Habit 5: Rethink Your Food Choices

In a dream, I see myself in a beautiful garden full of fruit trees and I am hungry.  I see a luscious apple tree and I run towards it.  I spy the biggest, juiciest looking apple on the tree.  I start to salivate as I pluck it from the branch.  I take a bite, and I’m immediately disappointed.  It tastes okay, but it's just not as great as I was expecting it to taste, especially for something that looks so delectable.  I’m really hungry though, so I eat it anyway.  I’m about to walk away when I notice my stomach is still growling.  I reach up and take another apple.  I do this 2 more times, yet my stomach still feels empty.  That’s when I realize something is very wrong.  I should feel full and satisfied, but instead I feel sick and a little bit dizzy.  I lean against the tree to steady myself and the whole tree tips over.  I look closer and realize the tree isn’t even real.  It’s just a prop…and so are all the other trees in the garden.  I grab an apple and look at it more closely.  It's nothing more than apple-flavored wax.  Feeling duped and cheated, I shout “Hey! Is there any real food in this garden?"

Living In the Real World
I’ve been through multiple pregnancies and have always struggled to get back down to my “normal” weight afterwards.  It’s hard work.  It can be very time-consuming to prepare healthy meals and fit exercise into my schedule.  I have to admit that I’ve tried just about anything that promised to help with those endeavors, from supplements and detox teas to protein shakes and meal-replacement bars.  I was counting calories and skipping sweets, attempting to follow all the traditional dieting rules as well as the trendy ones.  Unfortunately I did not lose much weight, and when I stopped all my crazy efforts, I gained weight even more quickly than before.  In the process my hair started thinning, I was fatigued, I got headaches all the time, I bruised easily, and I felt physically awful.  I couldn't understand what was going on.  To further complicate matters, I followed the exact same diet and exercise plan multiple times, but got completely different results.  It just didn't make sense.  It was so frustrating, and I know I'm not the only one who has experienced this.  This topic comes up in conversations a lot, especially with fellow moms.

Awhile back, I was hanging out with my friend Karla and we were talking about nutrition.  We got on the subject of food additives and preservatives and she recommended a book written by Jillian Michaels.  That name probably sounds familiar.  She’s one of the fitness trainers on the show “The Biggest Loser.”  Jillian has exercise videos and Wii games and fitness products galore with her name attached to them.   Anyway, I've been working my way through that book for several months now.  It's called “Master Your Metabolism.”    I expected it to contain a lot of exercise advice, after all Jillian is the queen of fitness.  However, I was surprised to learn there's very little in it about exercise.  It’s promoted as a diet book, and that made me immediately skeptical.  I assumed it was going to include the usual advice to eat fewer carbs, less fat, and more veggies—stuff I already know, just said in a different way.  As I started reading through the first few pages I was pleasantly surprised.  It brought up a lot of topics I hadn’t considered before.  Jillian goes into great detail about our food choices: how the right ones can add years to your life and make you feel great, while the wrong ones can really mess up your body chemistry and lead to unexpected medical problems.  The book is heavily peppered with scientific facts, research, and statistics, which can be hard to follow at times, but I still recommend it.  It's an eye-opening look at what's in our food and how those additives affect our bodies.

Where's the Beef?

How often do you actually read the labels on the food that goes into your mouth?  This past summer I started to take a closer look at what I was really eating, especially all the stuff labeled “diet.”  I’m staring at a canister of 100% Whey Protein Powder right now.  Maybe there’s some good stuff mixed in there, but I suspect most of it is artificial junk.  Some of the ingredients I can’t even pronounce, nor do I know what they are or how they will affect my body.  Out of the 15 ingredients there are only three I recognize, which are cocoa, salt, and sucralose.  The rest look like chemicals to me.  I might as well be eating wax apples on cardboard trees.  I understand now why my dieting habits don’t lead to success.  Even when I stay under my suggested daily caloric intake I’m not getting the nutrition my body requires.  The food I’ve been eating is calorie-rich, but nutrient-deficient.  Many diet fads have the potential to damage the metabolism, making it even harder to reach weight-loss goals.  So, not only do these foods leave me feeling unfulfilled, they may actually be harming my body.  I might not realize what I'm eating, but my body can sure tell the difference between the real food and the artificial junk, and it's protesting!  

I'm focusing on the bottom line…figuring out which foods are bad for me and understanding why I shouldn’t eat them anymore.  It's a pretty long list.  Honestly, if I follow Jillian's advice and get rid of everything she suggests, my pantry would be pretty bare.  I'm concerned.  I really want to eat better, not only to lose weight, but also to feel healthy again.  However, I don’t have the time to be as obsessive-compulsive as Jillian is.  In my mind, the main benefit of processed food is the amount of preparation time it saves me.  I like the fact that I don't have to cook for hours or think too hard in order to get dinner on the table every night.  I open a can, or a box, or the freezer and simply heat and serve.  It’s as close to The Jetsons style “instant dinner” as I can get.  I really hate to give up that convenience, BUT…I can’t ignore the side effects anymore.  Some of this stuff isn’t as harmless as we’ve been lead to believe.  It's scary and the statistics are proving it.  Here are some stats taken straight from Jillian's book:

• 24 million Americans have diabetes (1 in 4 don’t even know it yet)
• 57 million Americans have pre-diabetes.
• 1 in 4 people have metabolic syndrome.
• 1 in 10 people have an underactive thyroid gland.
• 1 in 10 women have polycystic ovarian syndrome? (PCOS)
• 1 in 13 women have severe PMS

That was published in 2009 and the numbers continue to rise.  

What about our kids…what’s all this artificial stuff doing to them?
Our daughter is extremely sensitive to the dye Red 40.  When she consumes this stuff she becomes Hammy the Squirrel on Red Bull.  No joke.  Her teachers have actually sent home notes on more than one occasion that she “fell out of her chair 3 times today.”  One might expect that from a busy toddler perhaps, but not from a 9 year old, and that falling out of her chair business was still going on in 3rd grade.  Definitely outside the realm of normalcy.  When she eats Red 40 she becomes ADHD for as long as it takes for her body to work it out of her system.  We taught her, if food is red, orange, purple, or pink in color, just avoid it.  Now she's old enough to check the label.  If it contains red 40, she doesn't eat it, and the difference is amazing.

More Articles & Research
Food additives and preservatives can be linked to ADHD and autism, but also to a whole slew of other health issues.  If you want to read more about that, here are some other articles:

Dangers of Food Additives and Preservatives
http://www.buzzle.com/articles/dangers-of-food-additives-and-preservatives.html

Food Dyes May Exacerbate Hyperactivity in Sensitive Children
http://abcnews.go.com/Health/food-dyes-hyperactivity/story?id=13221478

Why Cut Processed Foods?
http://www.100daysofrealfood.com/10-reasons-to-cut-out-processed-food/

Autism and ADHD: The Nutrition-Behavior Link
http://www.wholefoodsmagazine.com/supplements/features/autism-and-adhd

Autistic Spectrum Disorders Fact Sheet & Low Salicylate or Feingold Diet
http://www.autism-help.org/intervention-bio-salicylate-feingold.htm

Not Convinced Yet?
If you are still wondering about the validity and reliability of these articles, test it for yourself.  Try cutting out processed food and see if you notice a difference.  It will probably take awhile to feel results…it takes time for your body to get rid of all the junk you’ve been putting in it.  Try it for 10 days and see how you feel.  Try it with your kids and see how it affects their behavior.  Try it for 30 days for a complete reset. 

How to Get Started
First, remove all the processed junk out of your pantry, fridge, and freezer. If you are frugal like me, this will be a painful process.  I can’t bear to throw the stuff away (as Jillian suggests) because that would be a waste of food and a waste of money.  Donate non-perishable items to your local food pantry.  Store the stuff down in your doomsday bunker.  It doesn’t matter what you do with them, just get them out of your kitchen.
Next, rethink your food choices.  You can follow Jillian’s lists of what you can and can’t have, but I find that too complicated.  Let’s keep it simple: only eat real food.

There’s a really great site I found called 100 Days of Real Food.  They have free meal plans available for download, with kid-friendly options and budget-friendly options.  They have a 10-day pledge or 100-day pledge to help motivate you to make better food choices.  They also have rules to help you determine what is considered “real food” and what is not.

I've also done the Whole 30 Challenge.  It's hard, but totally worth it if you can stick to it and not cheat.  I felt like a new woman.




This Week's Challenge: Rethink Your Food Choices
Work on removing all the processed food from your household over the next few days.  Re-evaluate your eating habits.  Before you put something in your mouth, make sure it will truly nourish your body. 
 
Speak Up!
I’d like to hear from you.  Do you have any books, articles, blogs, or other resources you would recommend on this topic?  Do you have any personal stories about how your food choices have affected your health or how changes in your diet have led to a healthier lifestyle?  Please share them here...

Have a healthy week!  -Sarah