Don’t Stop at Food Substitution, Go for Health Manifestation
It’s gluten free. It’s organic. It’s non-GMO. But my body composition is not budging.
In fact I think I am going backwards. Help!
Today is a great day to check in on your food/health day trading.
Many times, in our efforts to get our food lined up in a fashion that promotes a greater level of health, we inadvertently trade toxicity for ultra processed foods.Let me start off by saying there is zero judgement here. While substituting corn syrup loaded yogurt for vanilla yogurt with 28 grams of sugar may not be the best choice, it's at least a sign that you are consciously considering what you are consuming. This is step one to massive health accumulation.
For example, a patient may tell me they are eating Dave’s killer bread which is far more wholesome than Franz's fluffy white or whole grain bread, but it’s not Ezekiel bread or my wife's fresh milled wheat berry bread. It's still a highly refined bread. I think about this all the time, because from age 16 to about 26, I thought I was making a lot of health promoting choices that were in fact just a health fad or good marketing.
Whether it was soy milk, rice milk, Quiznos (the last time I ate their I threw up), Subway (come to find out they weren’t even using real meat), chicken sandwich instead of a hamburger, Kashi cereal instead of cocoa pebbles, Gatorade instead of soda, Sprite instead of Coke, oat milk lattes instead of regular lattes, vegetable protein instead of whey, I could go on and on with good routines that a book or health magazine convinced me to try out.
Even within the last 7-8 years, I would order sweet potato fries thinking they were a healthy alternative to standard French fries. We are all susceptible. I'm all for sweet potatoes if you are making them yourself, but most sweet potato fries in restaurants or those that come in the bag are coated in cell membrane deranging oil.
All of the substitutions or trades have some forward facing benefit and served as stepping stones on my journey of health accumulation but they were still a far cry from actually being health promoting.
Probably the biggest culprit leading to missed health gains comes in the form of gluten free eating. We feel terrible when we eat wheat products, so we switch to gluten-free flours and hit up every gluten free bakery, but can’t figure out why we have gained 7lbs over the past year.
Consuming rice and cassava and tapioca flours, is going to be sending blood sugar and insulin skyrocketing. Not to mention these gluten-free starches are essentially devoid of all manner of vitamins, minerals and polyphenols. If wheat berries are a challenge for your body, you will be best served using zucchini for noodles and getting really creative with your baked goods.
In fact, my niece actually made a quinoa and sweet potato chocolate cake that tasted every bit like a chocolate cake.
Siete tortillas or chips are not health-promoting foods.
This doesn’t mean they are bad, but when we remove everything but the starch component, press it, heat it, sit at our desk and eat it, we can fully expect that the area around our hips and belly button are going to expand.
Before you call me out as being orthorexic because even Siete chips are off the list, recognize that I bought 3 bags of Siete chips at Costco last week when they were on sale for a get-together. They are indeed a far better option than corn tortilla chips if chips are on the menu.
But If a patient was trying to transform their body composition or get rid of their IBS symptoms, Siete chips are not going to help them reach their end goal. I see way too many people and I have been there myself. Fully willing to go to whatever level I need to in order to see my health manifesting at full capacity but yet not playing with a full deck of cards.
I’m going to bring truth over and over, so that the health related decisions you make are fully informed.
The most fantastic place to live is under the real food umbrella. When we trade, we want to trade up, not across. We want to be creating greater opportunity for health to manifest fully.
You know what happens when you have been eating real food on repeat and nectarine or peach season shows up? You eat six in a day because the depth of deliciousness fills like it is penetrating your soul.
