A good friend of mine recently shared a story with me that had him overly frustrated.
Reaching into the mini-bar fridge in his hotel room, he was hoping to find something to ease his starvation. Still dripping sweat from his 20 minutes of running on the hotel treadmill, his hunger pangs were melting away his desire to avoid putting back on all the calories he had just lost. As he surveyed his options, salted peanuts, a mixed bag of nuts and dried fruit, he felt compelled to take a look at the nutritional label to find out how many calories he was about to ingest. Thinking about all the effort he had just put into his workout, he felt completely frustrated not wanting to risk jeopardizing his potential long term results.
Not too long ago I was that same guy trying to loose weight and increase my energy levels. I was frustrated because I knew exactly where he was coming from, looking for healthier calories, but having no clue how to find them or what options were the best. I wanted so badly to tell him everything I knew about calories, but instead provided him with a few simple options he could take with him on his next road trip to avoid the mini-bar blues.
Anybody who spends a lot of time on the road would benefit from creating their very own travel bag of mixed nuts and seeds including almonds, hemp seeds and some dried unsulphered fruits. Take along a box of whole grain crackers, especially my favorite, Mary’s Crackers.
Pack some homemade power bars on your trip. Making you own bars is easy and takes less then 10 minutes. Watch my video below to learn how.
Now that I have revealed some tips on avoiding the mini-bar blues, I would like to share with you what I learned about calories while regaining control over my pre-diabetic state.
First off, not all calories are created equal. It’s great that you might be trying to loose a few pounds and therefore are counting your calorie intake. But to succeed with your health goals it is crucial to be aware that not all calories are created equal. In order to explain this better, let’s take a quick look at calories.
Each calorie is defined as a unit of energy and your body needs a certain amount of calories each day to maintain essential body function. With every bite you take, the food you eat is providing you with the energy you need to perform daily actions. If you go over your needed amount of calories each day, and you’re not a very active person, you will eventually gain weight.
The number of calories you should eat daily varies depending on your activity levels, gender, age, weight and height. The minimum suggested daily calorie intake for women is 1200 and 1500 for men.
But in North America we tend to eat on the opposite end of the scale, somewhere in the range of 3000 to 5000 calories daily. That’s a lot of extra calories being stored in your body and the leading cause of weight gain.
The average adult should look to consume 2000 to 2500 calories per day. These calories should be made up foods that offer superior nutrition, but this is where we get into a problem.
Most of the calories we consume are heavily refined, over processed and void of essential nutrients. This means that when we reach for the salted peanuts or a bag of chips we are fueling our bodies far differently than if we were to reach for hemp seeds, or a bag of almonds.
Energy is supplied through the foods you eat and are made up of the essential building blocks of all life. These essential building blocks are fats, proteins and carbohydrates.
The more you eat whole foods, foods that have not been broken down, altered or transformed in any way - such as nuts, seeds, grains, beans, fruits and vegetables - the more your calories will supply you with quality protein, essential fatty acids and complex carbohydrates. With so many diets focused on calorie counting it’s no wonder so many people are confused as to why they keep failing when trying to achieve their desired health goals.
The more you eat over processed, refined foods, you can be sure your calorie intake will be comprised of simple sugars which will only leave you weak, tired, and susceptible to weight gain.
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About 30 days ago I made the personal decision to go gluten free. Since then I have had many people ask me why?
At first I decided to cut out gluten because I discovered that I had several bad habits that effected me mentally and physically. As much as I follow what I teach, specifically the 80/20 Rule of eating, where 80% of my diet is made up of whole foods and the other 20% I eat what I want when I want, I often find myself challenged to maintain my course. For the past year I have found myself including beer into my 80% as well as sugary baked goods from local coffee shops (preparing my e3 for LIFE book for publication). These two bad habits, beer & baked goods, on their own and within the 20% would be fine, but increasingly they have become a daily occurrence and for me that is unacceptable.
Going gluten free has been on my mind for some time, but mentally, I have viewed as too painful to try.
It’s too difficult
I won’t be able to eat much
I don’t really want to
Now that I have a few bad habits I want to eliminate, going gluten free was the logical choice. By focusing on gluten, not only do I eliminate the unhealthy attributes associated with a gluten diet, but it also allows me to remove my two biggest junk habits, beer and baked goods.
Now I don’t need to single out beer or baked goods, which would double the pain. I just focus on gluten free and in one swoop I have eliminated many of my bad habits.
So why go gluten free? It was easier on my mind to remove two of my biggest bad habits by going gluten free and not having to focus on each one individually. Does this make sense? The health benefits are a bonus because when you remove gluten from your diet you also remove an enormous amount of health issues.
According to a review in The New England Journal of Medicine, consuming gluten can cause at least 55 illnesses including: chronic reoccurring canker sores, fatigue, anemia, cancer, irritable bowel syndrome, lupus, multiple sclerosis, osteoporosis, and many other autoimmune diseases.
Gluten is also linked to a number of psychiatric and neurological conditions, including anxiety, autism, dementia, depression, epilepsy, migraines, and neuropathy.
We all experience some health issues related to our consumption of gluten. To what extent? the only way to know is to remove it from your diet or reduce it to the 20% mark. You may even eliminate some of your bad habits you no longer want at the same time, BONUS!
If I told you all you needed to eat in the morning was a smoothie no bigger then a 1/4 cup and you would have abundant energy all day, would you believe me? The truth is many North Americans tend to consume all the wrong types of nutrients before they begin their day. Not only are our portions sizes too big, but we don’t tend to chew our food either. So now you walk out your door to begin your day and all your energy is going to digestion and most of the food you just ate has very little nutrients to be absorbed.
Ideally you would start each day with a 1/4 cup smoothie with hemp seeds, quinoa, rice milk, spinach, ground flax seeds and ground unhulled sesame seeds. Talk about a boost in nutrition. By consuming your breakfast in a smoothie form you are easily making the nutrients available for digestion leaving you with extra energy to go about your daily routine. If you are tired of the mid afternoon crashes, GET ON THE SMOOTHIES!
There is a video of me preparing my smoothie under the recipe section.
I just ordered a new dehydrator from Excalibur. This is something I would never have owned 10 years ago, but now I can’t live without one.
I am so stoked!
Do you own a dehydrator? If you don’t own one, are not familiar with what they are or what to do with one, let me know and I will share with you a world of raw food that will improve your health forever!
Are Cheerios a Healthy Snack? Check out this post from my friend Snack Girl. I posted a comment you can view below. Let me know what you think, healthy or not?
My Comment
As much as one might believe Cheerios is a healthier choice for cereal, the truth is, you might as well be eating Frosted Flakes. The way you body reacts when using the nutrients found in Cheerios is no different then any other commercial processed food that has very little in the way of nutrients. A quick burst of insulin and then an energy crash, that is what you can expect when you eat Cheerios.
I love cereal and always have. That is why now I eat 1/4 cup of my favorite cereal and add hemp seed, ground flax seeds and almonds to boost the nutritional value and give me the energy I need to enjoy my day. I even add quinoa to my cereal a few times a week. So Good!
