I'm talking sugar.
The Standard American Diet is full of it. A typical day in my eating life of the yore could have gone like this: cereal for breakfast, or a bagel and OJ. A granola bar would have been an excellent morning snack. Lunch consisted of a PBJ, some pretzels, and a yogurt. Or a Lean Cuisine. I'd be hungry again around 2:30 or 3:00 so I'd reach for, oh, I don't know, a Zone Bar? Some Cheeze-its? For dinner it was pasta with garlic bread. Eating every 3 hours or so, and I was usually still hungry, cranky, sleepy, and irritated.
Can you see all the sugar there? Or the carbs that digest into glucose, which is the same thing?
Dr. Mark Hymann, in the video on this blog, referred to sugar as a recreational drug. The Standard American Diet has us eating too many carbs, including too much pop and other sugary drinks, and too much processed food. (80% of processed food has added sugar!) We are eating this way, and we shouldn't be, and he feels so strongly about sugar, he says it should be consumed only very sparingly. Let me show you what happens when you eat a day's worth of food like the one I mentioned above:
(Side note: I'm pretty sure I got this right, but it's all super new to me, so if you find an error, please tell me!)
Your body wants to maintain an equilibrium, called homeostasis. A constant temperature and balanced blood sugar levels are examples of this. If you eat a bowl of Lucky Charms and a side of toast for breakfast, you get that super quick surge of energy from the sugar. But the body does not like for blood sugar to be high, so the pancreas releases insulin to ferry the sugar from the blood, and sends it one of three places: the liver, the muscles, or fat cells.
As the insulin goes to work, your blood sugar levels don't just go to normal range, they crash way below normal. This crash signals your brain that you're hungry again, and the hormones coursing through your system leave you craving those same sugars it just removed from the blood. You reach for the granola bar and then the whole cycle repeats itself for the second time that day.
This is where we've been misled about dieting and calorie counting or carb counting or counting whatever. We shouldn't be counting anything. We shouldn't be eating every three hours. Instead, we should just be eating those nutrients that will satiate us and keep our blood sugar in normal range. When you eat that way, you can have three meals a day and be good to go.
In Body Love, Kelly LeVeque suggests instead we create meals around these four macronutrients, the Fab4:
Green and fibrous carbohydrates
Purpose: promotes gut health by feeding the beneficial bacteria, adds all the essential vitamins and minerals we need, removes toxins from the body
Green carbohydrates, think: Organic veggies deep in color (have as much as you want!)
Fibrous Carbohydrates, think: fruit, whole grains (including oatmeal, pasta, and whole-grain breads, rice, wheat, seeds and nuts, starchy veggies such as potatoes, corn, and squash, and beans, lentils, and peas (should be a small portion of your meal)
Protein
Purpose: cell and tissue growth, signals to your brain you're full
Think: Grass fed beef, free range chicken, wild caught fish, eggs, a protein powder with a full amino-acid complex (Arbonne's!), quinoa, buckwheat, chickpeas
Fat
Purpose: brain functioning, hormone production and balance, immune protection, slows digestion
Think: Wild caught fatty fish, avocados, the oils: olive, coconut, or a clean butter, and nuts, chia seeds
LeVeque says, "When the body doesn't get sufficient amounts of these food sources, or the foods come in a form that has been modified by chemicals or is low in nutrients, the body adjust in a number of negative ways, most of which lead to weight gain and inflammation." (p. 18)
Basically, if you are not eating that way most of the time, your body is probably in a constant state of inflammation, which means your organs are working OVERTIME, ALL THE TIME to correct everything back as close to homeostasis as possible. This chronic inflammation manifests as a variety of symptoms: acne, psoriasis, weight gain, poor sleep, migraines, PMS, brain fog, etc etc. If left untreated, ask LeVeque goes on to say, "Your body might turn on itself and develop diseases such as atherosclerosis, diabetes, and cancer" (p. 19).
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| Optimal blood sugar levels, created by eating #Fab4 at each meal |
I'll be back again soon with another post on some of my favorite Fab 4 smoothie recipes. Some people say that a protein shake isn't a real meal, but I disagree. Mine are packed with vegan protein, spinach, avocado oil, fiber, and some fruit to sweeten it up. We're talking 5-6 hours of no hunger and no cravings because your blood sugar is set to a normal range. That's a win in my book!
If you don't want to wait, here are a few things you can do now:
1. Contact me about Arbonne's 30 Days to Healthy Living (30DHL). Our program is built around balancing blood sugar, creating optimal gut health, and eating clean, all of which will lead to reducing inflammation in the body and releasing those symptoms mentioned above!
2. Get a copy of Body Love and read for yourself.
3. Watch Fed Up on iTunes, I watched it last night, $3.99 rental.
Thoughts? I'd love to hear from you! Have you completed a 30DHL? Read Body Love or watched Fed Up? Were you already aware of this blood sugar situation or is this new? Please leave a comment with your feedback!
Be well, friends!
