Need Something Quick? Hungry? Grab a Snickers!

I believe that how we feel should be a direct measure of what we do. Now, I'm not talking about when we are angry and we have the urge to punch someone. It's not that kind of feeling. I'm talking about listening to our body and our emotions and being in tune with ourselves.

It was a few years ago when I let go of my childhood habits to eat frozen pizza, burritos, and chicken pot pies every day and try to eat better. Most likely around the year of 2005. I can't be sure, but I do know that something happened inside of me and I decided that I wanted to eat healthier.

At first, I can remember trying to cook more foods instead of just heating them up. I remember not eating Ramen Noodles and that I was sad about that. They were a staple in college, but when you look at the calories I was kind of shocked even though I didn't really know what it meant. Such a small portion for what I call expensive. I now say that a food is too expensive for me and when I say that I'm not talking cost, I'm talking calories. See, I never thought that counting calories really mattered. And still it's really about eating well and listening to your body. But in the case when your body has lost the ability to cue you when you've eaten to much, then counting calories can be extremely helpful in getting you back to the place where you can know how much is enough or too much.

I also ended up majoring in Health Science. I did an internship with a dietitian/bodybuilder. It was then when I realized I did not want tell people what to eat for the rest of my life or how to exercise. It was personal reasons, but nonetheless it wasn't for me. There was a lot more I could do with Health being my major so I kept it and finished, but that story is for another time. I will be forever grateful for that internship and what it taught me. I wrote diets for people, all kinds of people. People with Celiac disease, msg sensitivity, lactose intolerant, ect. What I came to understand and FEEL about this is where I come from today. What I am saying hasn't all been tested and proven. What I'm getting at is NOT FACT, however, it is what I believe and what I feel. It is in short, my opinion and based on some studies.

Our bodies are capable of so many things! If we sit down and think about it, I believe it is truly a miracle any time a baby is born and is alive. Life is completely remarkable! There are so many small processes that occur in our bodies that NEED to happen in order for it to function properly. Some things are so small  you would maybe find them to be "insignificant," but no! If one of those things doesn't happen, we would not function as easily as most of us do, or not at all.

With that being said, I believe our bodies are made to take in certain things and not others. Our bodies are amazing at adapting, but there are some things that we eat that make it harder for our bodies to process them or not process them at all. And in that, not function properly. Our eating in the past few years has, I believe, caused a lot of the diseases we have today.

 High Fructose Corn Syrup is one of the things that I don't believe should be put into our bodies EVER. I do understand that it is not something that is easily avoided. It is in everything. But I do believe that we can watch out for it so our intake is significantly less. There are correlations between HFCS and obesity which is what the graph above demonstrates, but the more we are educated on this, the more that number of consumption will go down. I think we are off to a good start in the last few years. I'm really not going to go into the scientific reasons why it's hard for our body to process this because you can read up on that yourself. My goal is to get people thinking about it and possibly make small changes in their lives.

What makes me even more irritated is the fact that sugar is already sweet, but we've gotten so addicted to sweeter things than just plain sugar. Artificial types of sweenters are sometimes 200x more sweeter than regular sugar. So, we feel we need to sweeten things up more because the taste isn't how we like it. It's not what we are used to which makes it so much harder for people to eat regular vegetables and fruits. They just don't taste as good. And it's true! It's not going to taste as good when we are magnifying the taste of everything else. They are also hard for our body to process and can have negative side effects.

Along with those two things, there are numerous other things that are added or made in our food before we get it from the store that can have unwanted side effects in our body. We need to learn to listen to our bodies. When we eat something, do we feel good after, or do we feel tired? Do we feel happy or blah? These are things we need to pay attention to more. When you get done eating a meal and you don't feel energized even just a little bit, then we should probably eat something different next time. (And I will be honest here. It is hard to feel things things when we don't really know what kind of feeling we are looking for, because it's subtle.)

Good old fruits and veggies. I know it's drilled in people's minds over and over again, but honestly they are here on this earth for us to eat. Not the artificial flavor of them, but the actual thing!

I'll tell you a little secret. I don't like vegetables most of the time. I never really have liked them. But I'm learning. It's a process. But I will tell you, the more I eat them, the more I like them. I'm used to LOTS of sweet things. My body craves them because they're addictive. Vegetables don't give you that super sweet taste. They are raw, but real. It's what we need to be eating to be healthy. To keep on going when we are in our 70's and still feel good. There is so much that goes into that, but eating right is the start of it all.

It all brings us back to the fact that we need to learn to understand what our bodies are wanting and how we feel afterwards. A lot of us have lost our natural triggers that tell us what we need, how much we need, and how we feel when it comes to food. We just want to be satisfied quickly. But that will just bring us more diseases, more obesity, and more depression. Who wants that in their lives? I know I don't. So, it's time for a change. It will become a lot easier when more people believe the same way and try to do something about it. I don't agree with everything about the food guide pyramid, again personal, but I do think it's a good place to start. And hey, this ^ picture looks pretty cool and appetizing. :)