I once went on a date with a guy who said “there’s no way you can convince me that what I eat affects my mood or energy.” He generally ate a tin of peaches for breakfast; pizza, curry or lasagne for lunch; and toast with beans, jam or Vegemite for dinner. Probably not that uncommon for a corporate guy who has no time to cook.
Don’t get me wrong, me and GF toast are the best of friends when I’m busy.
Or lazy. Or can’t be arsed cooking.
So, most days really.
Yes, pre BGC I sometimes turned dates into market research/ eating habit surveys back when I was studying health coaching and being an orthorexic born again vegan annoying person. This chap in question was not the most relaxed chap I’ve ever met, and needless to say I declined a second date.
But I totally understood where he was coming from, because I used to think the same. I put a whole lot of processed food into my body and because nothing went visibly wrong, I believed that it was fine.
Never once did I consider that the waves of boredom, irritability, fatigue and inability to focus could have anything to do with the quality of my diet.
So what has food got to do with living a blood good life?
All the biochemical processes in our body rely on the availability of nutrients to carry out their daily tasks, including regulating the hormones that affect mood, energy and ability to focus.
So you can imagine, it’s pretty important to make sure your body has a continuous supply of nutrients to keep everything running smoothly. Processed foods are normally stripped of nutrients, so your best bet is just to eat real food that someone from ages as ago would recognise. Especially vegetables.
Real food has one ingredient and doesn’t come in a package.
Since I’ve been eating pretty well for a few years now, I notice the wave of fog come over my brain when i eat something I used to live on daily (two minute noodles, bread, rice bubbles, pasta, cheese – basically, stuff with no colour). But when i was in the fog, I had no idea I was in a fog, it was my normal state of being.
Don’t let the fog deceive you into believing that this is as good as it gets.
Despite a brief foray into vegan cooking and general foodie enthusiasm, I’ve finally accepted that I’m just not cut out to be Jamie Oliver, so I smush some spinach into a green smoothie most days to make sure I’m at least getting some greens in, and BGC and I have taken to ordering from Eighty Twenty Meals in Melbourne – they cook us delicious semi-paleo/ gluten free meals and deliver them fresh to us twice a week.
Check them out!
I’m not an affiliate, just a big fan. Espresso pulled pork with sweet potato today.. Yummm! They have paleo, 80/20 paleo and vegetarian meal options, all processed crap/ refined sugar free yet super delicious
We order 10 meals and split them into two, which means lunch and dinner is covered for both BGC and I, for $87 each per week!
By the time we split the large portion sizes into two, it ends up costing about $8 per meal, which is a heck of alot cheaper than the time and effort it takes me to go to the supermarket/ market every week, buy a whole lot of crap that I didn’t mean to buy, then waste hours making stuff and then throwing it out because it tastes yuck, and then going out for dinner anyway.
Not to mention all the work I don’t get done because I’m busy A. cooking, B. stressing about cooking, or C. too hangry to work because I can’t be bothered making anything even though I’m starving.
Priorities yo. If you’re busy as heck (of course you are), look into one of the many amazing healthy meal services out there, they’re seriously magical, and WAY more affordable than you think they are when you factor in your hourly rate and the cost of stress and randomly binge eating sugar because you’ve come to work unprepared, again.
Moral of today’s story:
You wouldn’t put diesel in your petrol car and expect it to run perfectly would you? So stop putting non-food processed crap (or at least not too much of it) into your digestive tract/engine and notice how much better things run!
