Your diet, what are you really up against?
We’ve all tried to eat differently for many different reasons. The majority of us focused on weight loss but for some of us it’s to feel better, change a health condition, even perform better. Every time we start down that path it more often than not seems soooooo impossible. Constantly running into things that derail us. The obstacles are many!
Why is it so hard for most of us to adapt to a clean eating lifestyle? Lets take a look at some of the big obstacles are here.
- Your Evolutionary Template. We spent most of our evolution hungry hunting and gathering. For a minute think about that. If you have ever walked through the woods or a park think about how much eating you really could have been doing? How much food is just laying around saying.. “Eat Me!” not much, maybe squirrel, rabit, lucky if it was the right season to find some berrys, nuts or edible green veggies. Now keep in mind you are competing with all the herbivores in the woods that are a most likely plucking that bush or tree clean. No pesticides to keep those apples fresh on the branch either. Considering the phrase Feast or Famine, it was more famine than feast. Which is one of the reasons our bodies are so adapted to save fat(Energy) and not give it up. Which brings me to my next topic,
- Three square meals a day. Ha. Those are totally a man made events. There was definitely no rolling over in the morning and grabbing some pop tarts. Talk about getting in some “fasted cardio”. Think about waking up and having to run something down for breakfast. Better be fast on your feet!
- Food Engineering is a huge disadvantage that we face. If you have never heard the term, food engineers design food to what is called the “Bliss Point”. This means they look for the perfect sweet, salty, and whatever the case may be to optimize palatability. Which lends itself to the next topic…
- Chemical Addiction, Habit and Reward. We never had such sweet tasting things or things that excited our brains sooo much. Chemicals or combined chemicals causing our brains to just explode with excitement. Example, the Aspartame/Caffeine combo causing an Excito-toxin is a great example. Refined sugars and sweeteners more addictive then cocaine. Habit, think how often you like to eat (fill in the blank/food) when you are doing (fill in the blank/activity). Going camping, gotta make s’mores! Rewards, you are not a Dog, you don’t need a treat for doing good.
- “Friends” telling you to live a little! This is my biggest pet peeve. These so called friends knowing well and good that you have some goals, but they themselves have failed in this journey so as the old saying goes, misery loves company. “uh,oh Judys’s losing some weight. She’s suffering through one of the many partys/holidays to achieve her goal. Or maybe, just maybe, she’s finally rewarding her body for once with healthy choices (see Every Day Is a Battle and Take that Body)
- The Juggernauts, Marketing and Big Business. We make poor food quality and choices because we really don’t know what the hell is good with all the creative evil marketing and government guidelines. Big business has destroyed our food as well as what we perceive as good food. Commericals telling us how to eat, advertising with implications that these foods are good for us with the interest of selling more of their stuff. That combined with a nutritional value driven into the dirt because they have engineered food for quantity not quality. We are a nation over weight and starving because we are not getting any nutrition from our food, or I should probably say the things playing the part of food on our plates.
So what can you do? How can you battle these things. Well luckily the choices are still yours to be made. For food choices, I suggest applying a Keto Paleo or evolutionary template. Simply, if you think you could have hunt or gathered it naturally in the wild, it could be a good choice. Quality is a battle too. An apple of today is not one of yesterday because of all the factory farming. After you have your new “grocery list“, start moving towards real organic foods. Try avoid foods that aren’t fertilized with chemicals to make them grow. Look for food that is grown naturally and gathers vitamins and minerals from the soil. Eat animals that eat what they were intended to eat, pastured finished beef, wild caught fish etc. Make informed decisions. Read and ask questions, this is your body. If you have to avoid parties, particular friends that derail you or even ritualistic trips, do so for a while.
You only get one body so, EAT LIKE YOU CARE ABOUT YOURSELF!
Cavemen to sheep to cavemen.
We’ve been systematically encouraged to circumvent natural foods. The regression could not be more obvious with cancer, diabetes, obesity, and heart disease, now part of our regimented dialect. It’s a sequence seemingly impossible to break. The commercialization of food has worked as we wait in fast-food lines like herded sheep to get our allotment of chow.
And herein lies the problem; rationally and evolutionarily we know that seeking sustenance beyond a Whopper is ideal, but where do we find it? We hear “try to avoid this, and that, and you should instead eat this….” but most of us in the “I’m Lovin’ it” generation don’t have the fundamental understanding on where to get good food. We’re limited to the grocery store which encourages processed foods, or specialty stores like Whole Foods which may have some healthy alternatives, but it will cost your family a full paycheck to shop at. Some people have access to farm raised this and that, but for most of us living in urban dwellings this is not ideal.
So what can we do?
We are almost truly back to hunter and gather type of lives when it comes to the quest for non-processed foods. It’s an honest expenditure of resources to seek duck eggs; farm raised beef and non-chemically enhanced vegetables. It’s not easy to acquire. It takes means, skills, even sheer drive to feed your family with clean foods.
Until a McDuck Eggs or Home of the Farm Raised Beef Whopper happens, maybe we need to grab a spear and get back to our true roots.
Agreed. I think where there is a will there is a way. People really need to think a little harder about what they are putting in their bodies. But again, we are programmed by the TV/Marketing not to think to much for ourselves. It’s pay me now or pay me later when it comes to the money. Either in healthy food or health Care later from metabolic diseases. 415 million people have Type 2 diabetes. Something almost totally reversible by diet. Instead most get meds.