You Really Are What You Eat
If I ask you, "What is the key to losing weight and being healthy?" Would your instant response be "Eat fewer calories and burn more"?
The idea that every human body is like a scale is referred to as energy balance. This concept has been taught for decades to explain to people how to lose weight. It's still taught today. My nutrition professor in college taught me that to be healthy, "It is as easy as eating less and exercising more." Soooo glad I paid all that money to learn false information.
The concept of energy balance is that every person on Earth can lose weight if they exercise more. How many of you have tried that, but it didn't work? Energy balance is NOT the way to be healthy and may help some of the population lose weight but not the majority.
The human body is more complex than eating less and exercising more. The term is bio-individuality. Bio-individuality means that every human body is different, and one is not like the other. There is not a one-size-fits-all with health and nutrition. Think about it. Do you have a negative response when you consume dairy, but your friends do not? Or do you get bloated when you consume carbs, but your friend can eat a plate of fries and still look like a size 2? That's because we are all different. So why would the concept of energy balance be true for every person on this planet?
The four holistic ways to lose weight and live a healthy life are as follows:
- Bio-individuality: understand everyone is different, there isn't a one-size-fits-all
- Eat less processed foods and more whole foods
- Move your body
- Have your primary food under control
What is Primary Food?
Are you ready to have your whole mindset shifted around health and wellness?
Primary food is the food outside of your plate:
- Relationships
- Career
- Regular physical activity
- Spirituality
Relationships
Think about it. If you fight with a friend/family member or you're going through a breakup, that affects the food on your plate. This is also where bio-individuality comes in because some of you will binge eat your feelings and others will lose their appetite and not be able to eat for a week. Have healthy and supportive relationships so that you may live a healthy life.
Career
If you have a job that you hate, you won't have the energy or the drive to do what fuels a passion in you. Not liking your job can cause you to spend less time in the kitchen and more time eating takeout in bed every night. (I'm not judging). Maybe you have a hectic, high-demand job that you feel that you can't control, causing you to eat more because you can control what you put into your mouth. Find a career that makes you excited to get up every day. Be passionate about what you do.
Regular Physical Activity
Move your body. You do not need to be in a gym for 2 hours every day. And you really shouldn't be. Geez, find a hobby. You can have an incredible workout in 20 minutes. It is all about how much you push yourself. What I mean by move your body is that you can walk on a lunch break, take frequent stretch breaks, and take advantage of your standing desk. If you have a great workout in the morning and then sit all day, that's not moving your body. Get off your butt.
Spirituality
You do not have to belong to a religion or believe in a God. The importance of having a healthy spirituality is to believe in something, anything, greater than yourself. I hate to break it to you, but you are not The Almighty. Humble yourself. Often.
These four primary foods affect the food you consume, which would be your secondary food. The food you eat. Do you have your secondary food under control? Are you eating more whole foods and less processed foods? Are you moving your body every day? If not, that's okay. Start by changing one section to work on. Once it becomes a habit that you don't have to remind yourself to do every day, add another.
If you are a person that eats a lot of processed foods, try adding more whole foods to your plate. This will crowd out the processed foods. Get to a point where your plate is filled with so many whole foods that you don't have room to add a processed food. Once you have that mastered, maybe you want to start focusing on having your career under control because you find that your desk job answering phones isn't what excites you to live every day to the fullest.
Like I've said many times, health and wellness is a domino effect. Everything is connected and affects the other.
Comment below on what small section step you can take to have your primary food under control. Click the heart at the bottom if you liked this post and share it with your friends!
