Well I’m on a role regarding this subject because we can really apply it to so many aspects of our existence. But today I’m going to take a different angle on it. I’m going to talk about food and what we were meant to eat. Now this is nothing new and I’m certainly not the first to understand it or write about it. Many have done that. I’m just reiterating it because it’s so important and because I have recently taken in this information and put it to good use. I lost fifty pounds in the process and have embarked on an eating plan which will just become the way I eat as far as I can tell.
Trust me, I have had the same problem as a lot of you out there. I’ve been overweight since I was a young woman and I have lost and gained the same fifty pounds many times over. It’s ridiculous. But it’s the way I am. On May 21st I had to have my gall bladder removed…quickly. It was the first disorder I have had that was related to what I put in my mouth. For those of you who don’t know this, gall bladder disease is at least in part due to fat consumption and I was doing plenty of that. So it was gone and I made a decision to make a change. Problem was I had made that decision before and nothing had ever stuck. A day or two later my husband was listening to talk radio and heard somebody talking about an interesting book, Never Be Fat Again, by Raymond Francis (http://www.amazon.com/Never-Be-Fat-Again-Permanently/dp/0757305318). The title sounds a little gimmicky but it’s a serious book about our food and food sources. Suffice it to say I read the book, followed the plan and in 6 months had lost 50 pounds without starving myself. At no time during the diet did that old thought of looking forward to getting back to eating “regular” food ever insinuate itself into my head as it had with diets past. I really do think I have changed the way I look at food and the way I eat food…for good. I can’t swear to it, but right now, as it stands I think it’s for good.
But the point is that humans were meant to eat a certain way and the sooner we get back to that way of eating the faster we will get back to the way we were meant to be. We were meant to eat whole foods. We were meant to eat mostly fruits and veggies. Think about it. We were hunter gatherers. We picked things up off the ground, off trees and plants. It was a while before we figured out that little animals tasted good and even longer probably before we figured out that cooking them was a tasty thing, thereby beginning to put charred meat in our mouths (which is probably responsible for our high rate of colon cancer). Just like we didn’t appear at the same time soccer fields and snow skis appeared, we didn’t come on the scene at the same time as Hungry Man dinners. We were not ever meant to eat processed foods. There were no buckets of refined sugar and flour for Fred Flintstone. We had to cover large areas on foot in order to find enough food to fill our stomachs. And somewhere along that evolutionary path we developed a most wonderful hormone, insulin. Insulin helped us have a big appetite when food was available and then it helped us store fat and slow down our metabolism in response to eating so we would have a source of stored calories for those periods when food wasn’t as available. Great then. Formula for disaster now when so much food is available and cheap.
So to keep it simple…what would a caveman eat? Fruits and veggies, nuts and whole grains and the occasional squirrel. Keep it whole (whole foods) and whenever possible, keep it organic, because that’s how foods were back then.
And let me remind you of exactly what sugar is. It’s white, brown, beet and cane, turbinado, and confectioner’s. It’s molasses, syrup and honey. It maltodextrin and dextrose, corn syrup and …chocolate.
And let me remind of exactly what refined flour is. It’s bread and rolls and tortillas and wheat bread, corn bread and biscuits, pancakes and…doughnuts.
And it’s all processed and it’s not what cavemen ate and it’s bad. And if you stop it cold turkey in about a month you will no longer even want it. And you will lose weight, even if you can’t exercise because you have bad knees because you did things humans weren’t meant to do.
4 comments:
Barbara, another excellent post about what it means to be human. Count me in as having the perennial problem of being fluffy. My problem is directly related to opening my mouth for the wrong things.
The underlying problem to the above is how do we unlearn, or even forget, that we found those desirable foods tasty before. Chocolate is a very good example of the type of food that's hard not to miss if stricken from the daiy menu.
BTW, I hope the directive to eat "whole foods" didn't apply to squirrels. :)
Keira,
Don't ever let it be said that I said to eat squirrels. But particularly not squirrels and gravy as that would not be a whole food.
blb
Good morning Barbara,
I would like to comment you on your first literary effort. I just completed your book and found it to be a very pleasant read. I did enjoy the "ending". With that out of the way I do have a few concerns about your "What Were We Meant to Be: Part 2". While I do agree that diets loaded with high fat and processed food are not ideal I disagree with your assumptions on the diets of "cave men". According to an article by Gabe Mirkin M.D. "If you believe in the teaching of Charles Darwin, you should be interested in what the caveman ate because our genes have changed very little in the last 30 thousand years, even though our methods of acquiring food have changed greatly. So our enzyme systems that process the food that we eat are more likely adapted to what the caveman ate, rather than to food and eating habits that have been developed in the last few thousands of years.
A recent issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (June 20, 2000) shows that analysis of bones from two Neanderthals from Croatia for isotopes of nitrogen prove that the cavemen hunted for meat and killed his prey. Since plants and animals accumulate different amounts of nitrogen with different atomic mass, it is relatively easy to determine what these people ate. The data suggest that virtually all their protein came from eating meat. Neanderthals lived about 30,000 years ago, before agriculture was established, so they may not have had much choice in their diets. This study does not contribute to the debate about why Neanderthals disappeared but does tell us that meat was an important part of the diet". I am sure that you will "google" Dr. Mirkin to read the rest of the article and it actually does support a balanced diet that includes higher amounts of fruits, vegetables and whole grains. I believe that stress and lack of physical activity are a greater threat to health than diet. Please keep in mind these are just my opinions and as Dennis Miller says "I could be wrong". It was a pleasure seeing you at the World Championships and I look forward to your next book.
Ron,
Thank you for your comments. I really didn't mean to imply that we shouldn't eat meat at all. Everything in moderation, try to avoid processed foods (I prefer a plain ol' steak to a meat lover's pizza) and eat organic as much as possible.
blb
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