Food Serving A Purpose

 Food talks are everywhere. Turn on the news, radio, or any talk show and the discussions are about the best foods to eat or remove from your diet this summer. The main topic in majority of these discussions surround how to improve your health, making changes in body image, or both. The stories are of popular entertainers, vegans, religious practices that monitor food intake, the flat belly diet, the slim calm sexy diet and so much more. Despite the fact that our eating behaviors may vary from individual to individual, with some emphasizing a sensitivity to animal products or food allergies. In all honesty weight loss is numero uno for the majority of folks .

If weight loss is the goal, before plunging into your next eating venture ask yourself this question, would this change require me to eliminate an entire food group from my diet?

Eating is very important to carry out even the simplest functions in our body. Yet some of the greatest myths involving weight loss surround the foods we eat. One of the myths I often encounter surround weight loss and food elimination.  Removing certain food groups such as“Bad Carbohydrates” from our diets, because they make us gain weight. The second myth communicates the less we eat, the greater the amount of  weight we lose. These myths may not be true for everyone, but if you find areas that you most identify with, draw from the trues mentioned.  We will spend this blog post highlighting the first myth.

Take notice of the level of commitment and discipline when someone convinces themselves that weight loss happens faster if you stop eating bread, dairy products, or meat. Follow me here for a moment because this is true to an extent.  Anytime you remove foods that you frequently eat from your diet, weight loss of some sort will occur. I believe it goes deeper than this, what really happens is we look at where we are and determine that we are overweight and out of shape, so what we are currently doing must not be good enough. Therefore committing to a new diet plan becomes easy, not because it is the right thing for us, but because we are hungry for change.  We need to do something different, something new. Now all it takes is one persons story, a few pounds lost, and we are sold. We become passionate about a task without proof, allowing thoughts of a "slimmer and fitter you" serve as a driving force. Then like the weight watchers commercials of Jennifer Hudson, you too want to sing and tell everyone about  this new thing. This is not a knock against weight watchers because I believe they offer a program that assist people in identifying the freedoms associated with food and eating. I'm saying we speak highly of diets that we are only beginning, while persuading others to get on board with the changes we expecting to experience.

Do you find that you identify more with the concept of food elimination (I will not eat _____ anymore; I stopped eating ________) as a method of changing your eating behaviors?  

Something to think about: If a healthy (without disease) person were to ask a medical professional whether they should give up something like carbohydrates for weight lose. About 99% of the time you would be encouraged to not eliminate any food groups because each are  necessary components for healthy living. If necessary, they will have you replace foods within a food group with other foods. For example if pastas cause you to bloat instead of removing all grains from your diet, they may suggestion you replace pasta with brown rice or oats. Or become more attentive to reorganizing your eating and eating behaviors (how often you eat or how much you are eating). In most cases they would not condone eliminating an entire food group unless it was causing some sort of medical malfunction within your body.

I have placed a chart below containing the 6 classes of Essential Nutrients the Body requires and the major food sources from those categories.

Proteins	Form important parts of muscle, bone, blood, enzymes, some hormones, and cell membrane, tissue repair, water regulation, acid-base balance, help in growth, energy supply.	Meat, fish, poultry, eggs, milk products, legumes, nuts
Carbohydrates	Supply energy to cells in brain, nervous system, and blood, and muscles during exercise	Grains (bread, and cereals), fruits and vegetables, milk
Fats	Supply energy, insulate, support and cushion organs, absorb fat soluble vitamins	Animal foods, grains, nuts, seed, fish, and vegetables
Vitamins	Promote chemical reactions within cells	Abundant in fruits and vegetables and grains, also found in meat and dairy products.
Minerals	Help regulate body function, aid in growth and maintenance of body tissues, act as a catalyst to release energy.	Found in most food groups
Water	Makes up 50-60% of body weight, assist in chemical reactions, regulate body temperature, remove waste products.	Fruits, vegetables, liquids

Have you been tempted to deny your body any of the food groups? If so, did you consider the effect the changes would have on the internal functions of your body?

Take the time to discover what works best in getting your body to function at it’s highest potential. Each of our bodies respond differently to certain foods and those things that energize one person may cause another to feel sluggish. Some foods will cause one to feel bloated and others to feel light. Some may increase factors that lead to weight gain and others weight loss. The important thing is when we recognize these things, we must not take it to be permission to remove an entire food group from our diet, but as permission to experience foods outside of our "normal" that has the capabilities to promote wellness.

Prior to beginning your next weight loss adventure ask yourself this question, will it supply me the freedom to eat WELL? 

Mrs. Nez