The Science Behind Healthy Eating

I've decided to go a little more in-depth about healthy eating.  As you know, I follow a more Paleo diet, and at first this post was titled: "Paleo - A Little More In Depth".  But I realized I can't just box this information up and label it as "Paleo", because giving it a label makes it seem too much like a restrictive diet, or even a fad.  But healthy eating, in general, shouldn't be like that.  Sure, there are diet plans out there, not only Paleo but SCD or low-carb, Whole Foods, etc., but I don't want to label any of it.  Eat healthy, period.  So this post will cover a bit of what I discuss in my classes at ClassOnMain in Red Bud, so for those of you who came and need a refresher, or those of you who missed it and want info, this post will help you.  But this post will help ANYbody understand the importance of eating a healthy diet and how exactly that works.

Many of my clients and friends have been asking me for more information, and I realized I haven't gone into enough depth in my blog about Paleo, so here I am!  Lately I haven't been saying I "follow the Paleo diet", though.  I feel like if I put a label on the way I eat, or if anyone does, it makes it seem more temporary.  Like "I'm following the South Beach Diet" and when you're done with all the phases then you'll be off the diet and back to your eating habits prior to the diet.  Or "I'm doing Weight Watchers" and once you reach your goal you can stop and go back to eating the way you did before.  And then what happens?  You balloon out even worse than you were BEFORE you started the diet.  Most of the time.  I know I've seen it happen a lot.  I've never bothered with following a "diet" strictly for that reason.  Until I found Paleo.  But the thing about this is: it's not a temporary diet.  It's not a program with stages or phases that you follow for a designated amount of time, nor is it a point system that guides you towards your goals.  This is the rest of your life.  You don't "phase out".  You don't reintroduce bread or reintroduce sugar.  You avoid it forever.  Which sounds awful if you're a carb-a-holic (like I once was).

But it's not so bad.  It's actually pretty awesome, once you find the right substitutes for the junk you used to eat and know how to work with it.  But it takes baby steps.  And the determination to change your life for the better.  To burn off that excess fat.  To reduce your risks of diabetes or heart disease or autoimmune disorders or digestive disorders or cancer or allergies, acne, depression, anxiety, etc. etc. etc.  To FEEL and LOOK better physically, emotionally, and mentally, inside and out.  All this can be affected by what you eat?  Oh yes.  And it is.  I speak from personal experience, I know people who can speak from personal experiences, and I've read countless stories and testimonies from soooo many people who have changed their lives by what they eat.

When you look at it on such a large scale like that - the REST of your LIFE - and living a healthier, brighter, stronger, happier life not just now but forever - cutting out detrimental "foods" doesn't seem like such a hard decision, does it?

Okay, so it's still difficult.  But hopefully you're feeling more motivated to do it now that you've thought about all the issues you may currently have that you can reverse by eating better (which means getting off medications, followed by eliminating side effects from those, followed by reducing your risk for future diseases those could have caused... yay!).  And with motivation and determination, you can definitely achieve this goal.

You may have read my story awhile back about how I came across this, but to recap in a nutshell I was struggling with postpartum depression and PTSD and the counselor I was currently seeing suggested I get on Zoloft to make all my troubles go away.  And any of you that really know me probably can already guess that my internal reaction to that suggestion was gasping and falling out of my chair.  This chica right here says NO to drugs.  Period.  But, if I was in bad enough shape that she would suggest that, after knowing how against drugs I am herself, I needed to take action.  She said my alternatives would be trying St. John's Wort, exercising, and changing my diet.  So I got on St. John's wort, started squeezing in some time to jog in the evenings with Harlee in his stroller, and, da-da-da-duuuummmm: changing my diet.

Some of my family members were trying the Atkins Diet and were having great results.  I knew the jist of it was avoiding carbs, and I'll be honest I haven't really done any extensive research on it beyond that, but Justin and I decided to start avoiding carbs.  We both had a few pounds we needed to lose, and I had a life I needed to turn around.  So, no more bread - sandwiches, dinner rolls, tortilla shells, anything like that; no more pasta - good bye spaghetti night, our favorite fettuccine alfredo, macaroni and cheese; no more cereal or oatmeal for breakfast; no more cookies or cake or brownies; no more chips or crackers or pretzels; no more white potatoes; no more sugar; all that gone.  We never realized how heavily we relied on these kinds of carbs... Our dinners turned into meat and vegetables.  Breakfast was fruit.  Salads, sandwiches with lettuce leaves replacing the bread, and that's about it.  The weight was FALLING. OFF.  It was magic.  It was exciting.  But eating was really. really. boring...  So that's when I started researching what other people do - the people who have diseases that prevent them from being able to eat all that "good" stuff.  How do they enjoy life through culinary indulgences?  That's when I discovered Paleo.

Basically, Paleo is eating the way a caveman would have eaten (like in the Paleolithic Era, which ended once agriculture and industry began, about 10,000 years ago).  Now, I've heard arguments from people that if you want to be true Paleo you'd have to eat bugs and you couldn't eat modern vegetables like carrots because those didn't exist back then, but I don't get that deep into it.  I'm eating in a way that relies on nature as my food source.  So that I don't have to rely on industry or agriculture or factories for my food sources.

I've been eliminating the word "Paleo" from my "diet" or lifestyle because, sure, I'm probably not eating EXACTLY like a caveman would have, and I don't want to get technical about it anyway.  Plus I don't want it to sound temporary, like I said before.  I want to keep it simple:

• Eat real, whole foods provided by nature.
• Avoid processed or refined foods and anything man-made or artificial - if your food has been through a factory before it got to your plate, it probably isn't good for you.

Of course this research-a-holic had to know WHY all of this works so well though, and I learned quite a bit on my quest for information.  Some of my best knowledge came from the book Practical Paleo by Diane Sanfilippo, who is a nutrition consultant with a history of bad health that's been reversed by following a more Paleo lifestyle (and therefore the motivation to help others change their lives too).  I'll try to keep this simple and to-the-point so everyone can understand this without any trouble.

The big factor here is carbs.  There are good carbs and bad carbs, but the one thing you need to remember is:

• Carbs = Sugar

Whether good or bad, carbs convert to sugar in your body.  Whether they started as a Snickers bar, a banana, a slice of bread, or a sweet potato, it all turns into glucose: sugar.  Bad carbs have no nutrients - your body can't really do anything with them (that's why they make you fat).  Good carbs, however, have nutrients that your body can use to convert the carbs into energy.  Unless you burn it off in exercise first, your body will store glucose as glycogen in the body - also known as fat.  There are two kinds of fat: triglycerides (circulating blood fat) and adipose (body fat - either on your butt or around your organs).

If your goal is to reduce body fat, blood sugar is an important factor to keep in mind.   Here's why:

Your pancreas secretes insulin in response to high blood sugar in order to bring your blood sugar down to a normal level.  It spikes when you've consumed a lot of carbs (and you know why - because carbs = sugar).  It'll pull nutrients from your blood stream to help burn the carbs for energy.  Your body fat isn't going anywhere though.

If your blood sugar is low, however, your pancreas will secrete glucagon, which is the opposite of insulin - it'll pull nutrients from storage (in your fat cells) and release them into your blood stream to be used for fuel.  If insulin is dominant, glucagon can't do its job.  Insulin is dominant if you've eaten carbs.  If glucagon is dominant, however, you can burn fat.

So, if you've eaten a banana for breakfast and you go to work out (or you eat it after your workout, whichever), then your insulin responds to the banana, since it's so high in natural sugar.  Sure, it's loaded with nutrients that are great for your body, so you're certainly not hurting yourself by eating it, but your body fat isn't going to go anywhere if your insulin is working on that banana's sugar.  If you've eaten bacon and eggs for breakfast or some form of low/no-carb, high-protein food, your body is going to pull nutrients from your fat reserves for fuel.

Get it? Fabulous!

What if your goal is improved health?  Well, check this out:  bad carbs like grains and legumes which are void of proper nutrients for your body to use to break them down (and obviously sugar fits in the "empty calorie" category, too) have built-in defense systems against digestive enzymes.  Just like we have legs to run away from predators, grains (which are the plant's seed and what the plant needs in order to procreate and continue on the species) have proteins that make them difficult to digest so they may pass through unharmed and go on to be planted.  Gluten is the most common and most harmful one, but even gluten-free grains contain proteins that can cause plenty of digestive issues.  Grains also contain anti-nutrients, which adhere to nutrients (like calcium, for example) that our bodies need to use and instead pass them through our system so our bodies can't absorb them at all. So, if you're eating cereal with milk thinking you're getting calcium from the milk, the anti-nutrients in the cereal are actually preventing your body from absorbing the calium, so you've really gotten nowhere with that meal.

So, by eating grains you're not getting any nutrients, plus you're stressing out your digestive system which has to try to work against the grains' proteins, which leads to inflammation.  Inflammation is your body's response to illness, injury, or trauma - which is a good thing - you want your body to respond to that (which is why you shouldn't medicate a low-grade fever, but that's an entirely different post), but if you're eating too much food that's difficult to digest, then your inflammatory/immune response is spending all it's energy on your digestive system, which leaves the rest of your body susceptible to infections, allergies, or even diseases.

If you're eating foods that are compromising or damaging your digestive system, think about the fact that 60-80% of your immune system is found in your gut (remember that post?).  The ability to fight chronic or acute diseases is affected by your digestion.  If you're gut has trouble handling the food you eat, you're hurting your immune system, and when your immune system is affected, your entire body is affected.  Poor eating habits don't just result in a bellyache.  They can result in allergies, skin conditions like eczema or psoriasis, migraine headaches, digestive disorders like diverticulitis or irritable bowel syndrome, and a great deal of other issues.

Eating poorly can damage your immune system and increase inflammation in the body.  The longer you fill your body with junk, the worse your system becomes.  Diseases like autism, multiple sclerosis, Alzheimer's, Hashimoto's, arthritis, depression, osteoporosis, Crohn's disease, cardiovascular disease and even cancer can all be reduced, reversed, or avoided by cleaning up your diet.

This is where Paleo comes in.  It takes us humans back to our roots.  We were put here on this planet by nature and so was our food, so when following a Paleo lifestyle we turn to nature for our food.  Not factories or refineries.  Not boxes or bags.  By fueling your body with foods found in nature, you're giving your digestive system something it recognizes, something that won't damage it and thus your immune system, and in turn giving it something that benefits you systemically.  Your blood will be cleaner, your veins and arteries will benefit and then in turn so will your heart.  Your clean, nutrient-rich blood travels to your muscles, which will be able to function more efficiently, and to your organs (including your skin!) so they'll reap the benefits as well, and with those added nutrients be able to do their jobs more efficiently.  They'll be able to reduce the leftover toxins in your body, which means decreasing excess body fat.  Your nerves will improve, which means your brain will work better, and when it's in charge of controlling the whole works then your entire body will improve, both physically AND mentally/emotionally.

Do you see how important healthy eating habits are? How everything you consume affects your entire body?

It's a pretty big deal.  Hopefully this post made you take a look at your life.  Reflect on your own problems, diseases, or illnesses.  Your aches and pains.  Your weight.  Your mental clarity or emotional state of well-being. Think about the medications you're on.  Even the supplements you think you "have" to take.  Review your past issues, your current issues.  Your family history of diseases that you could actually prevent from happening to you just by eating better.

Now, you could keep buying and eating sandwich bread because sandwiches are easy and convenient.  Or pasta because it's something quick, simple, and filling.  Or cookies because they just taste good and you want a cookie.

Or you can say, no, I want to enjoy my life, both now and in my old age, and I'm going to start by changing what I eat.

And if you've been paying attention to my Guilt-Free Friday posts, you'll know that it's actually quite easy to still enjoy things like cookies!

Hope that helped shed a little understanding on the Paleo lifestyle, and provided you with the motivation to get HEALTHY.