08 Oct Food, Energy, Moods, Hormones and Your Waistline ………..Connecting the Dots
I began writing this article to explain why Fast Food Isn’t Faster and ended up renaming it, but one of the main points is still fast food isn’t necessarily faster!
Today I prepared myself a delicious lunch, as you can see from this photo and I sat out in the garden enjoying the sunshine while I ate it. It got me thinking though about how it’s quite “normal” today to duck out for a burger or some other fast food because it seems so quick and easy, or even a treat.
But believe it or not, it would have actually taken me longer to drive down to the closest burger place, which is only 5 minutes away, get served and drive home than it took me to put this together – not that I eat burgers anymore though!
Picking my leafy greens, tomatoes and those beautiful blue borage flowers from our veggie garden, chopping some bacon and capsicum, crumbling some goat’s fetta, scrambling and frying my eggs, arranging it all on the plate and throwing on a little balsamic vinegar and olive oil took under 20 minutes!
Plus it was far more appealing to the eyes and taste buds than those burgers or any other fast food would ever be! I mean there’s no comparison when it comes to colour or flavour!
And there’s no comparison when it comes to the effect they have on your health or waistline either! Nor is there any comparison when it comes to keeping you feeling satisfied, energised and happy!
Admittedly I don’t normally eat quite as big a lunch as this – it was 3 very large eggs and 2 rashers of short-cut bacon (I was forgetting how big our chooks’ eggs have become) but I certainly felt satisfied and energetic till dinnertime, without the need for my usual afternoon snack.
You see, protein is king when it comes to keeping you fuller and more satisfied for way longer after a meal than the burger and chips. Even though there is some protein in the burger, there’s also way more highly processed carbs from the bread which are converting to sugar known as glucose, as soon as they enter your mouth.
Protein on the other hand is difficult for your body to digest and releases its glucose over a much longer period, hence the feeling of fullness and satisfaction for hours afterwards.
Now while the burger meal is much higher in calories, the most important difference between these two types of meals is NOT the calories, but the hormonal effect. Of course, if you eat excessive quantities of anything, you will gain weight but it’s actually your hormones that dictate whether you store or burn fat, and different foods affect your hormones differently.
The burger will send your blood sugar level through the roof almost immediately and to compensate, your pancreas will pump out lots of the hormone insulin, which can stay high for hours afterwards. The trouble is, insulin is your main fat-storing hormone, and when insulin is high it’s telling your fat cells to store that excess glucose as fat and to hang on tight to that fat!
Bad news, not only for your waistline, but eating lots of processed carbs like this over the long term is going to lead to diabetes, fatty liver, heart disease, Alzheimer’s disease, cancer and lots more!
Oh, and did I mention the nasty vegetable oil containing trans-fats those chips are fried in? It’s going to switch on inflammation big time and inflammation is not something you want to be switching on if you want to stay healthy. It’s going to accelerate all those nasty diseases I just mentioned.
So my question to you is did you get sucked in by the fast food industry to believing their junk “food” is healthy, delicious, nutritious, convenient and time-saving?
Now you might be thinking “well I don’t have a veggie garden or chooks” but really, that’s not my point, because with some forward planning you could easily, and should have all of these common ingredients except the borage flowers, in your fridge because they’re just basic ingredients!
Fast food is not saving you time, it’s not delicious (it’s got additives in it to make you want more though) and it’s certainly not good for your health!
It’s not going to keep you satisfied, you will feel hungry sooner than if you prepared a simple healthy meal yourself and you will set yourself up to eat more. Your energy and moods will also suffer.
And believe me, I know from my own personal experience because I was addicted to bread and sugar for most of my life! I can’t tell you how much better I feel without them and hundreds of my clients over the years have also been amazed at the difference too , but you really have to experience it for yourself to fully understand.
In his book “Wheat Belly – Lose the Wheat, Lose the Weight and Find Your Path Back to Health” cardiologist Dr William Davis talks about the addictive cycle of eating every few hours wheat causes with the blood sugar highs and lows. He also talks about research that shows that people who eat wheat do eat significantly more processed carbs.
The processed carbs you crave in this addictive cycle will keep your insulin high for most of the day and keep your body in permanent fat-storing mode and most of it’s going to your belly!
And another thing, that fast food is certainly not saving you money! Let’s take a look. If I had bought the best eggs I could possibly buy, like Cackleberries biodynamic eggs, the top price I would pay is around $11 a dozen and for 3 eggs it would have cost me $2.75. Add $1.25 for the bacon and another $2 for the greens, tomatoes and capsicum (that’s being generous), plus 60 cents for the fetta and that comes to a grand total of $6.60.
Now I actually can’t find the current prices for M….a’s online but did find them for Victoria from 2014. If you’d bought their trademark burger and fries you’d have paid $5.45 (I’m sure it’s more now) but it’s very likely you’d have added at least a drink and maybe even some kind of dessert.
So you can see, fast food is not faster, nor cheaper and the payoff for preparing your own is great energy, good mood, vitality, happy gut, feeling satisfied for hours afterwards, no weight gain and good health into the future. Oh yeh, you also don’t have to deal with the traffic, finding a car park, screaming kids and a noisy, sterile environment while you eat. What more could you ask for?
So stop kidding yourself. It’s not cheaper, nor faster, or healthier and you’re certainly not treating yourself when you eat this junk. You’re just buying yourself an earlier death, with lots of suffering and misery along the way – cravings, binges, obesity, heart disease, diabetes, arthritis, cancer, endless visits to doctors and hospitals, the side effects of your treatment drugs, losing your independence and ability to remain active at a much earlier age and so much more!
It’s time to start getting back to basics, just like grandma did, only it doesn’t have to take hours, because I know, you don’t have the same amount of time grandma did. But maybe it’s also time to start looking at how you are spending your time. Are you taking shortcuts with food to make more time to spend on Facebook or other unimportant stuff?
Plan out what you’re going to eat for at least a few days in advance or maybe the whole week, then write your shopping list and plan when you’ll do the shopping and cooking. Already you’ve saved yourself time because you won’t be going back and forth to the shops, wasting time trying to decide on what to eat. There won’t be the temptation to duck out to get junk food either.
There’s a saying too, “if you fail to plan, you plan to fail” and this is definitely the case when it comes to healthy eating!
In another post I’ll be talking about how to save yourself time and money while eating healthy, nourishing food that will also sustain you for longer and will keep your waistline in check so look out for that.
In the meantime though if you’d like to have a chat about how I can help you either lose weight or improve your energy, motivation or moods just call me on 1300 599 872 to apply for a complementary discovery session to help you turn your body into a fat-burning machine.