The food game seems so complicated at times; I get told by the trainers in the gym to eat more protein, by the mirror to eat less bread, and by books that animal protein causes cancer and that if I do eat protein, don’t mix it with carbohydrates (and by all means don’t eat refined flour based carbs). Wow, can someone just bring me a pizza?
Seriously though, after dealing with some health issues and reading the China Study (and taking a flexitarian approach to eating1) I realized that the burden falls on our own shoulders to sort out what works for us when it comes to food and I decided to develop a framework of what works for me. The framework has but a few rules and it seems to me that by keeping it simple I save money and feel, look and perform healthier then ever2.
First, the over simplified diagram of what I learned after spending 15 days on a fast, which was to eat most if not all of my food from the upper left part of the following image:
A non-scientific graph outlining our food choices from natural on the left to processed on the right and where these choices typically plot in terms of being healthy or unhealthy.
And so the simple rules:
- Eat most if not all of my food from the upper left part of the image above
- Avoid meat
- No refined sugar or flour
- No milk (I was never a big milk drinker)
- Avoid coffee unless it is necessary to use it as a stimulant
- Avoid alcohol
And that is it. There really isn’t much more to it. Eat as much un-to-low-processed food as you can, easy on the meat and by all means drop the refined flour and sugar. A simple, and actually rather inexpensive framework for eating that has worked for me. I will say that having a minor health issue and doing a 15 day fast is a great educator and motivator to get on a plan like this and in that sense it isn’t for everyone. Once on it, though, the results make it hard to stray back to poor eating.
Anyways, I’ll just repeat what the footnotes say: I’m not a doctor, always consult your doctor before doing anything like this. I certainly did!
{ 1 trackback }
{ 0 comments… add one now }