The proverb warns that 'You should not bite the hand that feeds you.' But maybe you should if it prevents you from feeding yourself.
~ Thomas Szasz
Without movement, we deteriorate quickly. But it’s hard to move without fuel.
Throughout history, we have had to work to eat. We hunted and gathered initially, later farming and cooking from scratch - all very time and labour-intensive activities.
Never have calories been so easily accessible with such little effort. Is this progress?
While an abundance of time and effort has been spared for innovation, today, much of what we consume is highly palatable ultraprocessed lab-made foods that lead to overfeeding by undernourishing.
About weight loss
Wisdom is doing now what you are going to be happy with later on.
~ Joyce Meyer
When someone tells me they want to lose weight, I share the following thoughts.
Language matters. Focusing on ‘losing’ something seldom leads to sustainably achieving an ideal outcome. We are inclined to find what we have lost. We must focus on ‘gaining’ health, and health starts in the kitchen.
While exercise has countless health benefits, seldom is it effective at weight loss. We break down muscle at the gym and prime building back better in the kitchen with increased cravings for more food and drink. If we cannot allocate sufficient time and resources to preparing nutrient-dense foods, increased cravings, and food consumption interfere with weight release.
We associate food with comfort and nourishment, but much of what we find in grocery stores and restaurants, while comforting and calorie-dense, lacks nourishment. Our bodies are left looking for the missing nutrients and struggle to manage toxicants like herbicides, pesticides, colours, artificial flavours, preservatives, and other additives.
When it comes to toxicants, think of the body as a bucket. The body tends to do a good job containing harmful chemistry, often locking it up in fat cells during our reproductive years. But, over time the bucket gets full. When it overflows, we experience symptoms.
When we lose weight, the mobilization of the toxicants can impair our health and well-being.
Healthy citizens start with healthy food production
Healthy citizens are the greatest asset any country can have.
~ Winston Churchill
Our leaders and public health representatives must become better at managing our food supply. Dietary guidelines are seldom evidence-based. Stakeholder interests often trump healthy population needs.
In the meantime, we have to take control of our health. Body tissue is constantly turning over. By eating food that our great-great-grandmothers would recognize, we rehabilitate our taste buds and gradually create healthier body tissue.
By creating healthy cell linings with high-quality fats, we respond better to hormonal messages and adapt better to environmental challenges.
Feeding the right microbes in our gut helps improve our immune function (good microbes keep harmful microbes in check). A healthy ecology in the gut produces nutrients that heal and seal the intestinal lining, reduce inflammation, clean up toxins and toxicants, and provide vitamins, reducing our need to supplement them.
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