Do you chose to eat to live or do you live to eat?
This is a good question.
For me it was the latter, I was almost obsessive about food. I counted everything that I ate, I even had my own book to write everything that I was eating during the day. I was worried about what I was putting into my body and I counted calories and numbers. I would have a guilt trip after every serving of black forest gateau and I would hate myself for it. I thought that if I wrote it all down, logged my food intake and counted the numbers I would be able to find a system that would free me from this. The reality was though, that the counting and watching kept me in a vicious cycle. It was just exhausting.
The turning point was when I came to the realisation that I was living to eat and I wanted to eat to live. I had to accept my body issues and let go. I chose to let go of worrying about how my body felt and how other people viewed me and I empowered myself enough to be able to say to myself,
“I am what I am, and if you cannot accept that about me then there’s the door, see you later.”
This was a big turning point for me and it was from then that I started to realise it does not matter, what numbers you are putting into your body. What is important is how you feel about yourself and your body. This in turn started to grow into its own natural evolution about the quality of the food that we put into our bodies and the importance of quality, not quantity.
The knowledge of functional foods helped me with this unbelievably. All of a sudden I did not have to worry about the numbers on the back of labels, instead I started to look at the nutritional value of foods and I took that one step further to the vibrational energy of the food. Food became a value in my life and the value it gave me was a boosted immunity, increased energy and vitality, with the added bonus of being far less stressed and being able to be relaxed about what I was eating. This within itself was immense.
When we find a way of eating that allows us to be relaxed about the types of food we eat, it makes it all so much easier. I had a student who had a history of eating disorders and once she discovered raw foods, it became easier. She did not have to worry about what she was eating, as long as it was raw food, it was ok.
A concept that helped me through my transition was learning about nutrient dense foods. These are foods that have high amounts of vitamins, minerals and antioxidants and are extremely healthy for us to eat. We commonly tend to gravitate to energy rich foods as they give us that immediate ‘lift’, though it is short lived. Nutrient dense foods, on the other hand are rich in goodness and when we eat them, we have a more sustained feeling of ‘lift’ that lasts a lot longer, though the lift feeling is a lot more subtle. Nutrient dense foods give us a burst of goodness and richness because they are highly packed with super nutrients.
Nutrient dense foods are not energy dense. These are different food categories. They give us nutrients, not energy. Energy dense food could be like sugary snacks, they might give us a rush of energy, though it is a short term blast that is not sustainable. Energy dense foods can be high in calories, whereas nutrient dense foods are commonly low. You get far more value for money with the super energy dense foods.
You would have to eat between 2 to 5 slices of white bread to get the same Vitamin E levels that you would from 1 slice of wholemeal bread. This is the difference. It is about quality, not quantity.
All whole food and unprocessed foods are more nutrient dense. It is in the process of processing foods that we lose so much goodness. Milling, freezing, bleaching, heating and all other processes can easily leach out up to 85% of vitamins or minerals out and send them off down the drain. This is why we are best reducing or avoiding processed foods.
Organic foods are more nutrient dense than non-organic foods. Foods grown in a chemical free and organic environment, richer in organic materials will have higher nutrient levels. It is very easy to taste it.
So the advice given here is to aim for quality foods and forget about the quantity. In this case it is more is NOT better.