There’s one thing you must do if you want to be truly healthy. It doesn’t matter if you are Paleo, gluten-free, vegetarian, keto, or follow the South Beach or Atkins diets (did I just date myself with those??) Any eating program will work better if you follow this one simple rule. You will be able to maintain a healthy weight with ease. Your blood pressure and blood sugar will be within healthy ranges. You’ll have more energy and food cravings will go away.
So what is this one magic thing you can do to realize all these benefits and more:
Eat real food that you make yourself.
I know I know, it sounds too simple, too good to be true.
But it works.
What constitutes “Real Food”?
I’m glad you asked. Real Food looks like, well, food. Eating edible food-like substances that don’t look anything like food is just part of life now. For example, unnaturally orange crunchy nuggets that stain your fingers simply don’t exist in nature.
Okay, so maybe you haven’t eaten Cheetos in a long time. Or maybe you polished off a bag yesterday. Either way, that’s a fairly obvious example.
Let’s look at another example: energy bars. Energy bars are often promoted as a healthy snack. But they are really just a collection of chemicals and sugar cleverly marketed to be healthy. Few of the ingredients on an energy bar label are found in nature.
A homemade energy bar of oats, dates and almond butter, on the other hand, is a straightforward food that your body knows how to digest and use.
Another example is french fries. Potatoes are a perfectly healthy food found in nature. But when a food corporation gets a hold of potatoes, they turn an otherwise healthy food into, well, poison.
If you make your own fries at home, you have to wash and peel the potatoes (preferably organic!), cut them up, fry them in oil or at least toss in oil and then bake them. Then you have to clean up and do dishes. That takes effort and planning on your part.
Or you could go to a fast food restaurant, and simply order a bag of fries. And those fries will likely be made from non-organic potatoes that are loaded with herbicides and pesticides that harm your health and the health of the environment they are grown in. They will be fried in the cheapest vegetable oil the restaurant can get, and be loaded with lots of sodium. And you will have access to lots of them very quickly and cheaply.
Learn the daily habits that will have you feeling great and full of energy in just six weeks! Check out my ecourse 6 Weeks to Abundant Energy today!
EAT THIS NOT THAT
| Oatmeal cooked in milk with butter and a touch of maple syrup | Boxed breakfast Cereal |
| Homemade Granola Bars (Download my son Paul’s favorite homemade granola bar recipe above) | Packaged Breakfast Bars |
| Plain, organic whole milk Yogurt w/ some sliced berries and a swirl of raw honey | Flavored, Sweetened Yogurt |
| Miso Soup | No Breakfast |
| Homemade Egg Muffin with bacon or sausage | Frozen or Fast-food breakfast sandwich |
Food corporations only want to make money. They don’t care about your health.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but the corporations making cheap food don’t care about your health. They care about their bottom line. To continue to grow their bottom line they need you to buy more. One of the ways they do this is by increasing the “cravability” or “snackability” of the food they sell. Another word for this is the addictiveness of their food.
How does one increase the addictive aspect of food? By loading it with sugar, fat and salt. None of these items are bad on their own. And they can each have a place in a healthy diet. But the corporations are using the cheapest form of these ingredients they can find. And they use them in combination with “flavor enhancers”, or artificial flavors added to make them taste better.
But when food tastes so (unnaturally) good and provides so little nutrition, we can’t stop eating. And what’s really interesting is that when you retrain your taste buds to what real food tastes like, the highly processed, refined, stripped and denatured foods the corporations peddle doesn’t taste so good anymore.
There are no vitamins or supplements that can overcome a diet of devoid of nutrition. Corporations control too much of our food system. So we are overfed and undernourished.
Garbage in, Garbage Out
Many of us will drive out of our way to go to buy the cheapest gas to save a few pennies a gallon. When we apply this same principle to our food choices, our health too often pays the price. The old “Garbage In Garbage Out” (GIGO) principle that first appeared in relation to computing output applies to our bodies as well.
An important question to ask yourself
Ask yourself: “Do my behaviors and actions align with my values?” Most people will likely say they value good health and wellness. But do their actions and behaviors demonstrate that value?
Here are some of the most common excuses I hear for someone to not make their own meals from high-quality organic food:
- “I can’t afford it.” First, organic food may or may not be more expensive. There are many ways to reduce your grocery bill when buying real, organic food. (in my e-course “6 Weeks to Abundant Energy” I cover many of these tactics.) However, even if organic food is a bit more expensive, the money you save by buying low-quality food devoid of any nutrition will be spent on higher medical costs:
- prescription medications and doctor visits
- supplements
- special skin creams and topical steroids to deal with skin conditions (our skin is an outward reflection of the health of our insides)
- laxatives
- pain-killers
- antidepressants and antianxiety medications
- not to mention the costs (physical, mental, emotional, and even financial) of being sick or even just not feeling your best
- and much more all to deal with the side effects of eating low-quality food
- Also, you’ll save money on Starbucks coffee and energy drinks because you won’t need to amp yourself up due to your body and energy so depleted from eating processed foods
- “I don’t have time to make my own food.” Time is an important resource for sure. Even more important is your energy, and what it allows you to do with your time. If you are sick and lethargic, don’t sleep well, have foggy brain, and crash every afternoon around 3 pm, you can’t use your time well or productively. Let’s say you save 5, 10 or even 30 minutes by buying packaged foods. What will you do with that time saved if your energy is too low to be productive? Time spent on making your own food may come back to you several times over in the form of renewed energy and ability to do things you want to do.
- “I don’t know how to cook.” We live in a time when there is more information available to us than ever. Use your time wisely and search the internet for recipes and how-to videos rather than freaking yourself out researching symptoms on Google. Those symptoms are probably caused by… you guessed it. Processed foods.
I offer lots of simple, quick, delicious and filling snack ideas in my ecourse “6 Weeks to Abundant Health”. Check it out today and make 2020 your best year yet!
