But the last few weeks I've been researching different types of food we can eat and how they affect our body. In particular how processed food can affect our mood and health.
I've been thinking that I may have been eating healthily, but maybe not nutritionally.
The last two weeks I've been trying to eat mainly plant based, whole foods. Some guidelines for myself are
- Each meal has a plant based element to it.
- Either fruit or vegetables (or both!) which make up the majority of the meal.
- If there are grains, they are whole grain (unbleached and as unprocessed as possible).
- Only eating processed foods that have 5 or less ingredients and that have real foods as part of the ingredients (e.g. swapping bread that has flavour enhancers and random numbers in the ingredient list for a bread that is made of wholemeal flour, yeast, oil and salt)
- limiting meat to only one meal a day, or less (and it's whole meat, not processed)
I defiantly notice a difference. The biggest difference is that I'm sleeping better, and actually feeling rested when I wake up. My mood is improving a bit, but it's really hard to gauge. The weirdest difference is that when I do eat a meal that is all processed (like grabbing take away on the way home, or eating one of the freezer meals I had left over) a few hours after I eat it I feel queasy and unwell for a bit. When I feel this way I can go - "Oh yeah, I ate that didn't I? Opps."
I'm interested in seeing how this goes.
I know these ideas can seem a bit extreem - but I'm willing to try it out to see if it helps me lead a better quality of life, and I figure it can't hurt. These are some of the resources I've been reading.
In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan
100days of real food
Green Smoothie Girl/12 Steps to Whole Food
I can garentee I won't ever get fanatical about it - it's more a case of eating as well as I can for the majority of the time and not worrying about little things now and then. And, as yet, I haven't given up my diet coke :).
2 comments:
I've been working for the last few years on reducing unnecessary additives in my food. Things like: I only by pure cream - why should there be anything in my cream except cream? I make all our biscuits - there's still plenty of fat and sugar, but far less preservatives, colours etc...
Exactly - I've started eating the real yogurt, not the low fat/full of synthetic sweeteners yogurt. It's a bit of an adjustment (much more sour than yogurt I had been eating) but so thick and creamy.
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