Calorie Counting or Nutrition Conscious?
Calorie Counting or Nutrition Conscious?
If you base your food intake on calories - you may lose weight - but die of 2000 calories of french fries. That seems a little silly, but so does the idea of approaching your diet from a numerical perspective. My grandparents weren’t thin or skinny, but they were healthy. They didn’t count their calories, but ate foods that gave them the nutrition they needed.
Anorexic people are not only the victim of too few calories - they’re missing the necessary nutrition to provide the body with the fuel it needs to perform the many functions necessary to a healthy lifestyle.
It was the single most important consideration given to the title of my book, "Make Eating A Lifestyle Change." Food without exercise is like putting a lot of gas in your car and then letting it sit in the garage. Each of the foods we eat provide unique nutrition that functions to protect and improve certain functions of the body and the digestive process. Lutein for the eyes, lycopene to fight cancer, lecithin to clean out the arteries, blueberries, tomatoes, oatmeal, and fresh fruits and vegetables coupled with fish, chicken, bison or beef each perform a special duty in the body. And so, it is necessary to understand how to plan a "nutrition-based-regimen" of eating that best suits your lifestyle. Nutritionists have complained about the term "lifestyle", but there seems no way to avoid the research showing foods’ relativity to body functions and the battle between antioxidants and free radicals. If you want to stay healthy, you would be better served if you knew what your body needed most and put aside the taste appeal as a kind of devil in the "garden of evil."
These past four years, my wife and I have become more convinced that tastes can change but eating bad foods will always result in poor health. Julie uses the word "freedom" a lot as a way of describing the ability to walk away from "bad food." She may feel good about that and impressed with the results. Then again, it may be this "Mars & Venus" thing. I see it as a kind of self-discipline and she sees it as "freedom." In any case, it works. My grandparents instinctively ate foods that provided a balance of fiber, nutrition, function in the digestive tract and mood. They started most meals with a small glass of red wine (made by grandpa). It relaxed the body and made it easier to settle down to a good meal. Soup warmed up the body while preparing the digestive tract with the lubrication needed to lead the way for the food that followed. The salad provided the fiber and volumized the bulk, producing a fiber that would maintain regularity and keep the waist slim and attractive. The main entre' would provide the protein necessary to muscle and the bulk necessary to proper digestion.
No, they weren’t slinky, skinny or thin, but they were healthy, strong and able to perform tasks extremely difficult in the early part of the 20th century. They were survivors and that was an amazing accomplishment considering that both my maternal and paternal grandparents would have a child or twins about every two years. For most poor families and practicing Catholics, that amounted to about 10 children in their child-bearing years. Of course, there were no birth control pills and they simply believed that God wouldn’t burden them with more than they could handle. Nine girls and one boy in a home on the side of a hill near a coal mine - with only four rooms and no bathroom - is hard to comprehend by today’s standards. My father was a coal-miner and wasn’t looking for a skinny woman. He fell in love with a strong and beautiful woman with skills taught to her by her mother. Skills that would carry her through the many years of difficulty she had to face.
Calories weren’t counted, but good food was a blessing and they prayerfully sat around the table each day to enjoy fresh eggs, fresh fruit and vegetables and the wonderful, magical combinations of Grandma’s cooking. I always was amazed at that skill and the way she could make so much from so little.
Maybe each of us would be well-served to take a trip back in time to determine a future less stressful and healthier, loving and productive.
If 2000 calories of french fries, cola, trans fats, beef and baked goods is your idea of a healthy "diet," you may want to look around and see what that kind of eating is doing to a generation of young Americans.
If you base your food intake on calories - you may lose weight - but die of 2000 calories of french fries. That seems a little silly, but so does the idea of approaching your diet from a numerical perspective. My grandparents weren’t thin or skinny, but they were healthy. They didn’t count their calories, but ate foods that gave them the nutrition they needed.
Anorexic people are not only the victim of too few calories - they’re missing the necessary nutrition to provide the body with the fuel it needs to perform the many functions necessary to a healthy lifestyle.
It was the single most important consideration given to the title of my book, "Make Eating A Lifestyle Change." Food without exercise is like putting a lot of gas in your car and then letting it sit in the garage. Each of the foods we eat provide unique nutrition that functions to protect and improve certain functions of the body and the digestive process. Lutein for the eyes, lycopene to fight cancer, lecithin to clean out the arteries, blueberries, tomatoes, oatmeal, and fresh fruits and vegetables coupled with fish, chicken, bison or beef each perform a special duty in the body. And so, it is necessary to understand how to plan a "nutrition-based-regimen" of eating that best suits your lifestyle. Nutritionists have complained about the term "lifestyle", but there seems no way to avoid the research showing foods’ relativity to body functions and the battle between antioxidants and free radicals. If you want to stay healthy, you would be better served if you knew what your body needed most and put aside the taste appeal as a kind of devil in the "garden of evil."
These past four years, my wife and I have become more convinced that tastes can change but eating bad foods will always result in poor health. Julie uses the word "freedom" a lot as a way of describing the ability to walk away from "bad food." She may feel good about that and impressed with the results. Then again, it may be this "Mars & Venus" thing. I see it as a kind of self-discipline and she sees it as "freedom." In any case, it works. My grandparents instinctively ate foods that provided a balance of fiber, nutrition, function in the digestive tract and mood. They started most meals with a small glass of red wine (made by grandpa). It relaxed the body and made it easier to settle down to a good meal. Soup warmed up the body while preparing the digestive tract with the lubrication needed to lead the way for the food that followed. The salad provided the fiber and volumized the bulk, producing a fiber that would maintain regularity and keep the waist slim and attractive. The main entre' would provide the protein necessary to muscle and the bulk necessary to proper digestion.
No, they weren’t slinky, skinny or thin, but they were healthy, strong and able to perform tasks extremely difficult in the early part of the 20th century. They were survivors and that was an amazing accomplishment considering that both my maternal and paternal grandparents would have a child or twins about every two years. For most poor families and practicing Catholics, that amounted to about 10 children in their child-bearing years. Of course, there were no birth control pills and they simply believed that God wouldn’t burden them with more than they could handle. Nine girls and one boy in a home on the side of a hill near a coal mine - with only four rooms and no bathroom - is hard to comprehend by today’s standards. My father was a coal-miner and wasn’t looking for a skinny woman. He fell in love with a strong and beautiful woman with skills taught to her by her mother. Skills that would carry her through the many years of difficulty she had to face.
Calories weren’t counted, but good food was a blessing and they prayerfully sat around the table each day to enjoy fresh eggs, fresh fruit and vegetables and the wonderful, magical combinations of Grandma’s cooking. I always was amazed at that skill and the way she could make so much from so little.
Maybe each of us would be well-served to take a trip back in time to determine a future less stressful and healthier, loving and productive.
If 2000 calories of french fries, cola, trans fats, beef and baked goods is your idea of a healthy "diet," you may want to look around and see what that kind of eating is doing to a generation of young Americans.
posted by Stan Kent at
7:05 PM
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