There is so much information out there about your food, your diet, what you should eat, and what to avoid that it can be extremely overwhelming. New fads, new supplements, new diets – it all changes from month to month depending on where you look. Below you will find a few simple strategies to help you take the guesswork out of sourcing your food. It’s so important to know where your food comes from and what you are really eating.
Find your Food
Where did your food come from? No, we don’t mean “where did you buy it,” but where did it originally come from? Was the chicken you eat raised on a farm where it could roam free and forage for food or was it confined to a cage and crammed in with thousands of its closest friends for its whole life? Was your broccoli grown in rich, organic soil or was or grown in sandy dirt with chemicals and GMO’s? It’s important to keep in mind… you are what you eat. In this case, you’re eating EVERYTHING the plant or animal has been through on its way to your plate. You’re eating the stress, hormones, chemicals, and disease or you’re eating the nutrient-rich contentedness that was present in each organisms’ life as it grew to become your food. Choose wisely!
Eat Simply
A great rule of thumb to abide by is try to describe your food with one word only. For example – broccoli, potato, chicken, almond. Avoid things like – pizza, protein bar, bread, chip. These “to be avoided” foods are made up of chemicals and processed compounds that don’t individually resemble food but when combined together can create the foods we know and (unfortunately) love. If you don’t recognize the words on your food labels, it’s not something you should be feeding your body! If you don’t know what an ingredient is, neither will your body and thus there will be zero nutritional value.
Are you Leaking?
Leaky gut is an increasingly common term used to describe the condition in which the lining of the digestive tract becomes permeable to too-large food molecules. These toxic molecules are allowed to enter the bloodstream and lead to a whole host of issues – including allergies, asthma, autoimmune disease, eczema and psoriasis, IBS, rheumatoid arthritis, thyroid issues, fluctuating moods, and type 1 diabetes. The most common components of food that can damage your intestinal lining and lead to leaky gut are proteins found in un-sprouted grains (gluten), sugar, GMO’s, and conventional dairy. Luckily, you can avoid leaky gut by cutting these problem foods out of your diet and shifting more towards healing foods – like bone broth, raw cultured dairy, fermented vegetables, coconut products, and sprouted seeds.
Now that your nutrition is up to date, where is your fitness? Receive personalized fitness plans to suit your body and lifestyle so that you can live life without limitation! For more information on how to obtain your goals while tracking your fitness, contact Genesis Performance & Fitness, located in Thousand Oaks, California.
