The first thing I want to talk about is the macro nutrients. There are 4: Carbohydrates, Fat, Protein, and Fiber. We will discuss the first 3 in detail, the last one not so much. The first one I would like to talk about is carbohydrates. What are carbohydrates? There are good carbs and bad carbs. The good carbs are vegetables, fruits, beans, nuts, and seeds. Bad carbs are things like cakes, cookies, chips, sugar, candy, and most snacks. There are some carbs that are kind of in the middle like bread, pasta, oatmeal, quinoa, and rice; if eaten in moderation.
What is the purpose of carbohydrates? They are the body's main energy source. They get broken down to glucose, which is food for our cells. Kind of like fuel for our body. The problem is that we are not that active anymore. Our body doesn't need all that fuel, so it stores the extra glucose by turning it into fat, so we will have it if we need it. If we eat carbs all day, which is a typical American diet, we will have a lot of extra fuel that our body needs to turn into fat, because it doesn't need it.
Please remember this: FAT DOES NOT MAKE YOU FAT, CARBS DO! This is the physiology of fat, and all of the "low fat this" and "low fat that" does nothing to help you lose weight. As a matter of fact, in order to make the same high fat food taste good without fat, they usually add sugar, which are more carbs. Low fat food makes people more fat, not less fat. Another marketing scam to get people to buy products. This kind of outright lie by food companies really make me angry, because they fool people into thinking their food is more healthy, when it certainly is not.
One of the sneaky ways we get a lot of extra carbs is by drinking them. I am addicted to sweet tea, and am slowly weaning myself from this favorite treat. Now I try to buy unsweet tea, and add stevia to it. But soda is by far one of the worst things we can drink. So much sugar, and the carbonation is not good either. So the goal for this week is to give up the soda, if we are drinking it. In our house we stopped buying so much of it, and only had it for our Sunday after church meal. So we were only drinking it once a week, then the kids even noticed that they didn't miss it as much. I used to love Coke, but now I can't drink it, it is too sweet for me, which still shocks me.
One other thing I did was that I used to get a 20oz coffee and put 8 packets of sugar in it. Yes, 8 packets. I cut down to 5, and a after a month 4, and now am down to 3. My other favorite treat was a Starbucks frappichino. About a month ago I got one and couldn't drink it because it was too sweet, I was shocked that my taste-buds changed so much.
This weeks goal: Drop the soda if you are drinking it. (Do not buy diet soda either, please) (If this is hard, try drinking it once a week as a treat, or buy Zevia, a soda made with Stevia) If you drink sweet tea, just cut back to half as much, and replace it with unsweetened with Stevia only. (Please do not use Aspertame, Sucralose, or Saccharin. The reason why will be taught in another lesson) Of course you can always drink water.
For this week I want you to just be aware of how many carbs you are actually eating. I am not asking you to give up any at this time, but awareness of how many and what your favorites are will help you in the future to make better choices.
It does help if you implement these rules in your whole house, if you can't drink soda, then no one else can either. Keep the stuff out of the house so you are not tempted. We are trying to help our whole house get more healthy, so even our kids and husbands need to eat right. They might complain at first, but eventually they will get used to it.
Let us begin a new chapter of our lives, and live to be more healthy!
Comment please on stevia as some brands are not pure. I personally would not buy stevia in most grocery stores. Oh, yeah you can grow it too!
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