You've Been Lied To

Our body is an amazing conversion unit. It can take individual compounds in our food and convert it to energy for us to use. This isn’t just limited to the energy required for us to breathe, talk, and walk. It also includes energy for our body to reproduce cells, heal injuries, and grow. I don't know about you, but I don't want my new cells to grow sub par because of a lack of good nutrients. That kind of stuff causes cancer, people!

So what kind of fuel are you putting into your body? What kind of energy are you giving your body to work with?

As much as we could wish away the fat from our body, it really is quite a useful thing. You already know form 7^th grade science that it keeps us warm and cuddly in a case if buttery goodness but what you may not know is that fat also stores toxins.

Toxins; a word that seems so popular lately but what is it really?

The truth is that you are exposed to toxins daily through the air, food, and water that we consume. This includes pesticides, organochlorides, preservatives, and so much more that I couldn’t even list them all!

When we ingest these into our body, our body freaks out and says, “Woah now! That’s just not natural”. It doesn’t know what to do with a foreign chemical that it can’t use for energy and so it puts it away in our fat cells to deal with it later. In fact, if our diet is rich in toxins, our body may even create more fat cells in order to store these toxins! Yikes!

The sad truth is that most Americans have the SAD: Standard American Diet. This diet is high in processed foods, chock full of preservatives, and low in natural, whole foods complete with a mostly plant based diet. But we can’t help it!  We are constantly being tricked by greedy, money grabbing companies that care more about profit than their customers.

Let’s take this for example:

Ah, the Kashi brand! Totally organic looking, right? And look! It has almonds in it which are so good for you plus 8g of protein and 5g of fiber. Smack the “all natural” label right on it and BAM, you’ve fooled a lot of people into thinking that this is healthy.

But let’s dig deeper.

Ah, there it is; a list longer than my wedding party filled with ingredients like “natural flavors”, “mechanically fractionated palm kernel oil”, and “vegetable glycerin”. Um...who invited them to my meal? Not to mention they manage to pack 13g of sugar into one small bar.  That’s a little more than this much sugar:

What the hell, Kashi?!

You don't have to be munchin' on Twinkies and Snickers bars to lead a life full of preservatives. So go ahead and stay within your "calorie limit" with these little devils but I promise you that it's the quality of the calories, not the quantity.

Sure, reducing your caloric intake will make you look skinny but if you are fueling your body with preservative-filled foods, you will still be unhealthy.

Okay, I realize how this sounds. It's like you can NEVER eat anything pre-packaged again and heavens forbid you do! No, I'm not saying that but what I am saying is to be aware of what these companies put into your food and realize that when it comes to losing weight and feeling healthy, you don't have to restrict or count calories, you just have to make sure the calories you do eat are wholesome.

Help me stop the madness here of counting calories, people.