Enhance Your Health
Health Tip of the Week: Preservatives
Diet fads seem to come and go. Over the course of my lifetime, I have seen many diets. No fat, low fat, high carb, low carb, count calories, calories don’t count, Slimfast shakes, Weight Watchers, Nutrisystem, Cabbage Soup diet. You name it and I have seen it. The crazy thing about all of them is that if you were to try it and stick with it, every single one of them would cause you to lose weight. Invariably, sticking to a diet long term is not really possible for the majority of the population.
Old habits creep back and so does the weight gain. Diets are not really sustainable. They are basically designed for short term use which makes them destined for failure. What needs to happen is lifestyle choices need to change. And the only way that happens is one has to be open to change and more importantly open to learning.
Learning is the key to successful lifestyle changes. The more you know, the more apt you are to want to make a change and then have that change become your lifestyle choice.
To give you an example, when I was a younger guy, before trying my hand at competitive bodybuilding, a meal for me would be a box of processed Kraft macaroni and cheese topped with 2 heaping tablespoons of Shed’s Spread margarine. Not very healthy. But once I started to study nutrition I learned the make up of food. I learned about calories and how they were made up of carbohydrates, fats and proteins. I learned about vitamins and minerals and fiber.
My view of what went into my mouth gradually changed and my food choices began to reflect my new knowledge. The more I learned the healthier my eating habits became. It became a simple matter of knowing that certain foods were bad, while other foods were good.
Granted, the major problem with eating has to do with taste. People eat foods because they like the way things taste and unfortunately, junky, bad food can taste pretty good. On the other hand, good healthy food can taste pretty good as well. So, once again it comes down to a choice. Do I eat good or do I eat badly?
With me, I changed my mindset and decided based on everything that I learned about nutrition, I would choose eating healthy. I decided that while living to eat can be fun, it was much better for me to eat to live.
My food choices became about eating meals that were good for me and balanced nutritionally. Do each of my meals have the vitamins, minerals, fiber, protein, fat and carbs I needed to be healthy? Foods that are not in this grouping would be considered empty foods or empty calories. Basically eating foods with very low nutrient count, but were high in calories because of sugar and sweeteners.
These types of foods also contain large amounts of chemical additives that either preserve or add color to make your food choice attractive to eat. Junk food manufacturers know that if they add certain chemicals or sweeteners to their products, the bodily reaction is that you want to eat more.
So, the bottom line is that everything comes back to choices and I have found that the more you know the easier the choices become. Over the next few weeks, I will discuss the latest research concerning healthy eating and will be writing on ketogenics, intermittent fasting and other dietary options.
Chiropractic Thought for the Week
Pain relief? Yes. More mobility? Yes. Enhanced performance? Yes. Improved health? Yes. Increased quality of life? Yes. This is what chiropractic care can do for you.
Not sure about the how or the why? Here it is. Spinal adjustments realign your spinal joints, balancing your neck and back musculature. This increases mobility and relieves aches and discomforts. Most importantly, spinal adjustments improve nerve flow to all of your body’s internal systems and organs. Doing this improves the function of your body’s insides, thus enhancing health.
The outcome of less pain, more mobility and improved health leads to a greater quality of life for you!