The Healthy Whole Food Diet
One of the major issues with obesity and weight issues is nutrition. If your body is starving and requiring high quality nutrition and you keep feeding it junk food and non-foods, it will continue to give you hunger signals. Your body is crying out for nutrition.
When we feed our addictions instead of our body, we suffer. We need to face our addictions and feed our body. We need to feed our body with whole foods.
Whole foods are the only honest way to get healthy. There are no shortcuts.
What exactly are whole foods, you might ask?
Whole foods are real food that hasn’t been altered in any major way. This means fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, legumes and whole grains in their natural form. Whole foods can also include some forms of meat and dairy, but a lot of meat and dairy are also highly processed.
I am a fan of the whole food, plant-based diet, which is largely a vegan diet. But before you go running for the hills, I am not trying to covert you to a vegan. A lot of people when they think of a vegan, think of someone who is is radical, doesn’t shave their legs and is a product of the hippie culture.
You can eat a whole food diet, centered largely around whole plant foods and also include some meats if you wish. I simply encourage more plant food then meat. I’m not a fan of the carnivore diet, or the keto diet and I don’t encourage it for several reasons. Although I have never been on a carnivore diet, I have been on a vegetarian keto diet, before I became whole food/plant-based.
The carnivore diet is centered mostly around meat. For many on the carnivore diet they don’t eat anything else but meat. And so this is a diet that is 100% saturated fat. Not so good for the arteries.
The keto diet is a very low carb diet. If you eat an apple, you likely exceeded your daily limit of carbs. So I want to talk about carbs for a moment.
Breast milk, the perfect food for a newborn baby who is in its greatest growth and developmental stage, contains more carbohydrates than protein or fat. If you just look at things from a logical perspective, wouldn’t you think nature knows what it is doing?
Human breast milk contains 87-88% water, 7% carbohydrate, 1% protein and 3.8% fat. This should give us insight into what our body needs to be healthy.
We need a lot of water, carbohydrates, fats and proteins. But proteins don’t have to come from meat as so many people are conditioned to believe.
The meat and dairy industry have spent a ton of money on advertising to convince us that we need a high protein diet to be healthy and gain muscle mass. But where does that baby get its protein? How does it develop the muscles that take it from a limp child in its mama’s arms to holding itself up, crawling, walking and then running all over the place?
We need carbohydrates in our diet. When I went low carb, I had a hard time adjusting and was very low in energy. After I started burning fat instead of carbs, I did okay for a few months, and then I crashed. I was craving fruit. I wanted a whole apple. I wanted some quinoa. I wanted starch!
These aren’t the types of cravings that one might have who is addicted to unhealthy carbs like doughnuts and cookies. I was craving whole food. My body wanted and needed the carbs. Giving my body carbs was like giving a thirsty person water. After I started eating carbs again, I could never go back to Keto.
I feel a whole food diet is much healthier and much more sustainable then really restrictive diets.
The plant-based diet is actually not a restrictive diet at all. There are so many delicious plant foods that we can eat and thrive on. But like I said before. If you believe you can’t or don’t want to stop eating meat, you don’t have to, but you probably do need to cut out processed meats and cheeses.
Chicken nuggets and a McDonald’s burger aren’t going to get you to where you want to go. If you truly want to feed your body good nutrition, and you want to eat chicken, have an organic, free range chicken breast and a big salad and a side of broccoli. Or chop up your wild caught salmon, or chicken and put it on top of your salad or in a Buddha bowl. Use meat sparingly. And try having it only once a day or three times a week. This gets you focused on getting all the healthy plant foods into your diet. These are high nutrient dense foods that will truly nourish your body.
When you begin to truly nourish your body, you will get healthier and start having results. Because your body really seeks health and wellness. Your addictions may want cookies, but your body wisdom wants fruits and veggies.
So you will really learn to listen to your body and feed it what it truly thrives on.