You Are What You Eat or… Food Can Make You Fat

 I have always had a basic understanding of how to eat healthy, and I’ve tried to eat right but also how to enjoy the foods I truly like! A lot of it is balance…if I indulge myself at a dinner with friends, then I make up for it the next day by eating very healthy and trying to fit in a great workout!

For the most part my system has been effective…but then in my early forties I found I couldn’t sneak in that extra brownie or those chips and guacamole and easily “work it off”! One day I looked in the mirror and saw not just belly fat but -eeek- back fat, too! Not a pretty sight…

Since I felt like I was getting enough cross-training type exercise, I decided to take a good hard look at what I was eating. I am a carb freak-I love bread, pretzels, pasta; and I have a bit of a sweet tooth. And although, I have tried to eat whole grains to replace white flour foods, plus eat naturally sweet foods along with avoiding white sugar…to be honest I’m simply not disciplined enough to completely eliminate some of my fave foods!  :-D  But I pulled out my nutrition books and re-read from my new (older) point of view.

Processed foods are called that for a reason! In very simplified terms, when you eat good-for-you foods your body works to efficiently use every bit of the nutrients, leaving almost nothing left to turn into belly fat! In bad-for-you foods, a manufacturer does all the work for you so it gets into your blood and turns to sugar which increases insulin production which slows your metabolism which causes belly fat! Nice, huh? Beware: a lot of “low-fat” or “diet” foods have a high sugar content to improve the flavor!

So to start off easy and not be completely overwhelmed try these tips:

• Begin by reading labels (I know I say this a LOT but once you go through some of the foods you frequently eat, you will know)
• RUN!! if the first ingredients are any of these: enriched, fructose, glucose, corn syrup,
• Try this trick: every time you eat something match it with equal amounts of veggies or fruit (and NOT the stuff that is in syrup!)
• Replace some of high sugar, processed foods with low-fat protein like string cheese, a little natural peanut butter on a banana.
• If you find that eliminating white flour and sugar is too difficult, begin with making doing it one day a week! Maybe two…

We all know there are lots and lots of good healthy reasons for eliminating that jiggly stuff around your middle. It’s not just about that rockin' muffin-top look! Check back in a few days the multitude of the medical reasons…..