What you put in your body matters. Proper nutrition is the basis of health and fitness. Food is more than just for pleasure, it is fuel for the body. What you put in your body is what will come out.
If you continue to eat unhealthy foods then your body becomes unhealthy but when you eat healthy foods your body becomes healthy. Sounds obvious right? The truth is we’ve heard it over and over again but why don’t we take action and do something about it. Why do you continue to ignore it? Is it because you don’t care? Maybe you just don’t believe? Or perhaps you just need more information.
We all must educate ourselves as to why we need to consume the right nutrients and best quality foods. We are not saying to give up all the foods that you love forever. We are simply saying for you to be more conscious so you can make an educated decision with what you put in your body. Let me tell you how we got into eating healthy and we are able to stay consistent with consuming as much high quality foods as we can.
When we were younger we didn’t care all that much about vegetables, nutrients and even water intake. We had all the energy in the world and we felt fuelled on a daily basis. However, we wanted to change the way we look. We wanted to lose a little bit of unwanted body-fat and gain some strong muscles. This was when we started learning about counting and tracking our macronutrients. Counting macros is keeping track of how much carbohydrates, fats and protein we consume on a daily basis. We kept count of our calories. The reason for this is we needed to know exactly how much we ate. If we’re losing body-fat then we maintain what we’re eating but if we’re gaining body-fat then we either bump up our weekly physical activity or decrease our calories. That is tracking macros in a nutshell. Obviously there is more to it than what is said but I wanted to keep it simple for you so you can understand.
Anyways, the point is that we ate almost whatever we want just as long as we we’re within our daily food intake. The quality of what we ate did not matter. We we’re still getting results with our physical appearance. We continued this method for a number of years and as we got older we noticed some changes with our bodies. Trust us, they’re not good changes. We started feeling more lethargic and heavy. Our movements we’re slow and even the way we think was slow. Our cognitive functions, brain power, we’re not as good as they were when we we’re younger. Not to mention we felt bloated after eating our meals. We don’t mean full we mean bloated. These 2 can feel the same and yes you can feel bloated if you eat a large meal but we felt bloated even after eating small meals.
Eventually, we looked into as to why we we’re feeling these symptoms. After some searching on google we found that we had poor gut health. We can get into the science, the diagrams and the heavy terminology but let’s keep this to the point for simplicity’s sake. All it is that we are not digesting and absorbing our food properly. This was due to the fact that we were eating poor quality foods over several years. We ate a lot of takeout and consumed large amounts of processed foods. Not very good for the digestive tract. It wasn’t the biggest deal to us but we knew that if we did not change then we will be regretting it years down the line.
Basically, we had poor gut health which lead to a lot of bloating and feeling tired. Which also cost us productivity with our work, fun weekends with loved ones and even our love life started to go down. All we wanted to do was sit down watch television and do nothing. It’s not that there is anything wrong with it’s just that we wanted to do more fun activities and we had high goals. Our body was preventing us from taking massive action.
Their is a cost for not taking care of our bodies. A lot of time, energy and experiences wasted. It may feel like your just staying put and not moving but in reality you are moving backwards. We never stay still in life, we either grow or decay just like plants. The same goes with our minds.
So what can you do to turn things around?
Here are some things you can do to start taking great care of yourself.
1.Whole foods over processed foods
The next time you go grocery shopping notice that all the healthy foods are on the outskirts of the store. You want to stay looking in those areas. They usually keep the processed stuff in the aisles. Why whole foods? Whole foods have better nutrient quality versus processed food with no additives. Processed foods usually lose most of their nutrient content while being manufactured in the factory. Whole foods generally are digested well and promote digestion which will lead to a healthier gut. Processed foods are known to damage the gut long term. When the gut is healthy then we can absorb nutrients from food much quicker and in a safe manner. This leads to better energy levels, mood, longer lives and over all general health. Incase you still don’t know the difference between the two, a bag of chips is processed and an apple is a whole food. Pretty much anything is is not packaged is a whole food.
2.Healthy Snacking
Now this may sound like we are contradicting what was just said above but the truth is that we are all different. Some can be
strict but for the most of us we need our treats in life. However, this doesn’t mean you eat junk but finding substitutes is a great option. For example, instead of frying french fries you can oven bake the fries or better yet air-fry them. One of our favourite substitutes is a company called TUBIFY. Tubify is a company that make freezies with real fruit ingredients. Whenever we crave something cold and sweet we opt for these nutritious treats instead of eating ice cream or other freezies that are filled with additives. There many other companies that make healthy versions of snacks, you just need to look around.
3. Oral Health Matters
We talked about how the gut is so important to maintain and keep healthy but no ever really talks about how important our mouth is. The is known as the gatekeeper of your gut. When you think about it digestion starts in the mouth. It is the first place where food enters so why not take care of it, right? Yes you got it, brushing your teeth and flossing but we want to share with a next level way to keep your mouth and everything inside healthy. You may not know but most toothpaste products out there are filled with “fluoride”. Not to say fluoride is bad but an excess of it can damage your teeth. The next time you shop for toothpaste make sure to look at the labels to search for fluoride-free toothpaste. A great product that we like to share with our friends and family is a toothpaste called GOOD ORGANICS. They have a toothpaste that come in tablets that are fluoride-free and have no preservatives or dyes. All you need is a little of water then chew on the tablet and start brushing.
4. Alternative for coffee
We know what you’re thinking and know we are not saying to give up your coffee. Caffeine can actually be good for
your gut and promote healthy bacteria growth. The things is that coffee can be addicting and as we both know our society tend to be busy these days and a boost from coffee is needed throughout the day. However, caffeine has the tendency to keep us up at night and sleep is very important for managing gut health. Some alternatives can be decaf coffee or tea but the best one we found is called WIZE TEA. This drink is made out of coffee bean leaves. Wize Tea is able to extract the beneficial ingredients from the leaves to create this delicious juice like beverage. Every time we need a boost of energy to get some work done we opt in for this tea. The best thing about is that it has subtle caffeine effects so it doesn’t keep you up all night.
When you start looking at health as more than just looking a certain way and start looking at it from the inside out then the quicker you will reap the benefits of both internal and external health.
There is always a way to be healthy and it doesn’t have to be miserable or difficult. In today’s world we have found the answers to almost everything, we just have to look.
Once again, what you put in your body matters.