Have you ever heard of the saying, "You are what you eat"?  It is important to understand why you should be eating more of nature's foods, rather than eating processed, fast, or junk foods.  If your diet consists mostly of those types of foods, in relationship to "you are what you eat", you will have a body that is run on chemicals, preservatives, and food that has little to no nutritional value. 

We know that processed foods have chemicals, preservatives, white flour, white sugar, and most give us little to no nutrition. The number one reason we eat is to fulfill the need for nutrition in our bodies.  If you are eating foods that have no nutrition, you are defeating the purpose for eating.

If you think that fast food, junk food, and processed foods taste good, it is only because you have trained your taste buds to like that kind of food.  If you stopped eating those types of foods and just ate fresh fruits, fresh vegetables, lean proteins, whole grains, nuts, legumes, and mostly natures foods, you would find that eating junk food, fast food, and processed food, would not taste good to you.  We train ourselves to like the food that we eat most of the time.

Many restaurants and fast food places are mandated to show their fat gram and calorie count of the foods on their menus today.  It is amazing what has happened.  People who actually see how fattening and high in calories these foods are, end up choosing the lower calorie and fat choices on the menu.  These establishments have been forced to put healthier choices on their menus so that we have the choice to eat healthy or not. 

Seeing how many calories, fat, and sodium that are in the foods sold in fast food, or chain restaurants helps us to understand why we have 65% of our population over weight and 33% of adults who are obese.  We really need to understand what we are eating is literally killing us. 

It is not just calories that we are interested in, we also need to care about the quality of those calories. We need fat in our diets, but the kind of fat we ingest should come mostly from vegetables such as olive oil, avocado's, and nuts.  Fat from pasteurized butter and lean animal proteins should be eaten in moderation.

It takes 3500 calories to gain or lose a pound.  It is easy when choosing items from a fast food or chain restaurant to eat that many calories in one meal.  Most of us need somewhere between 1500 and 2500 calories for the day, depending on your sex, body fat percentage, activity level, and metabolism.  Eating 500 calories a day more than you burn will cause you to gain a pound in one week.

When reading the food labels on processed foods, you will find many ingredients that you may not be able to pronounce, and may have no idea what they are.  If we are what we eat, do you really want to eat ingredients that you are not sure what they are?  Not if you are looking to be healthy. Dr. Memhet Oz says, "If the ingredients on a label would not be in your pantry...don't eat it."

Remember that "You are what you eat" when you are choosing your foods.  If you are wanting to be healthy, lean, strong, feeling good, and looking good, choose natures foods for the bulk of your diet.  Then you can be proud of saying, "I am what I eat!".




Wishing You Health and Happiness,
Queenie