Eating Beats Exercise

If you know me, you know I love exercise. Exercise is great for your health, your athletic ability, and can be fun. In my opinion, exercise is very important in life. Living longer, having more energy, performing better and looking better is pretty awesome... and exercise helps with that! Note what I said: "helps with that" I didn't say "does that". Why? Isn't exercise the way to get rid of fat, increase muscle, and feel better? It sure will help, but by no means will it do all that by it's self. What do you need then? Nutrition. Proper Nutrition.

Today Dad, Colleen and I were watching a video about the Daniel Plan. It seemed like a pretty good diet and lifestyle changer. I just wanted to mention something one of the speakers mentioned. He said that many people follow the SAD diet: Standard America Diet. I found it pretty funny, but sadly kind of true.

In America we have Burger King, McDonalds, and many other fast food places to eat at. A ton of the food we can buy at super markets are processed, chemical filled and/or pretty fatty or sugary. None of that is good for you. I'm going to talk about eating healthy in this post... and what not to eat.

To start this off I'll use an example: let's say you have a car that runs on gas, like your everyday car. If you fuel it up with gas, it should be fine driving. Now, what if you dilute your gas with liquid plastic, sugar, and grease. Will your car still drive well? I highly doubt it. A car is way simpler than the human body, so obviously you won't just need one super food to keep going. I'll talk more about what to eat soon enough... right now I'll tell you what NOT to eat!

Alrighty. This is the part you hate, I'm going to tell you not to eat some stuff. The food I'm going to tell you not to are addictive and every where. First thing: don't eat at fast food places. These are all pretty terrible. Grease, chemicals, and maybe-it's-meat aren't good for you don't eat that. Subway is fine, just try and stick with their healthier foods.

Next: don't eat donuts. Yeah. They're great looking, great smelling, taste great, but man, they're bad for you. Pretty much sugar and flavoring. Actually I'm not even sure of what is in donut. Usually if you don't know what's in a food (unless you don't know all your veggies) it's not very good for you.

Sugar. Don't eat that. If you drink coffee, tea, iced tea, lemonade, etc, try to taper off the sugar. It's bad for you! Sugar can give you fat, loss of energy, and from what I've read/heard, it's also bad for your brain and digestion. According to the Daniel Plan guys, a ton of diseases and sickness can be partially due to eating habits. I'm not a professional, but I agree. While I'm on the sugar topic, don't drink soda. Soda is terrible for you. There is so much sugar (or really fake-and-bad-for-you sugar) in soda. Have you ever noticed how soda makes you feel bad afterwards? Yeah, that's because it's bad for you. You might get an energy burst from the caffeine and sugar, but that will taper off, and leave you even more tired. Believe me, I know. If you know me, you know I have tons of energy. I rarely drink soda. Coffee is much healthier than soda. It tastes pretty bad for some people, but it's better. Tea beats coffee and soda, so trying to get caffeine from that would be better. Better yet? Try and get off of caffeine, it's pretty much a addictive drug that isn't TOO bad for you.

Ok. I'm still on the sugar rant... You must know by now that sugar is pretty darn bad for you. It's bad for you in so many ways that I really don't want to write it all out again. So try and cut most, if not all sugar out of your diet! Here's how: don't drink soda, sugared coffee or tea, Kool-Aid, milkshakes (the wrong kind), and any other sugar filled drink you know of. Don't eat donuts, cake, cookies, pies (sadly), syrup, ice-cream, candy, etc... any thing really sugary! I still have trouble not eating pie. I doubt I'll break this habit for a long time, because I love pie! Luckily, most fruit have a healthy (natural) sugar in them, so next time I make a pie, I'm going to try to cut out most, if not all the sugar.

Ok, so it may be really hard for you to get out of the habit of eating those foods. I know, I did it for many of them... serval times. A huge help was: honey. Honey isn't great for you... but it is good in moderation! Why else would God have His people eat honey and milk all the time? It's good for the immune system, and not as fattening or unhealthy as processed sugar. Still, it's good to not eat too much honey, Proverbs 25:27: "It is not good to eat much honey, nor is it glorious to one's own glory." When I have tea, I put honey in it. It tastes pretty good! How about syrup? Honey can replace that. Not quite as good tasting, but much better for you. I've replaced the sugar in some recipes with honey, tastes slightly different, but I like it!

Trying not to eat dessert? That's a real tough one. When someone offers you cookies that they just baked, not only does it smell and look great, you feel bad not eating their cooking. I still have trouble saying no, but if I think of all the negatives of sugar, I can usually say no. If it's a pie, well...I fail at saying no, unless I'm sick.

What happened with me was that once I took 2-4 weeks off (lost around 5 pounds, by the way) of sugar and then I tried having a dessert again. It literally felt like it was burning my throat. The sugar was too sweet for me. At first I got mad because I wanted to eat it, but then I realized: if sugar doesn't feel good as I'm eating it, then I'm less apt to eat it, thus it will be easier to avoid sugar!

So pretty much, the longer you're off of sugar the easier it gets to stay off it! The less sugar you eat, the better you feel. So why not sacrifice a few minutes of increased pleasure for a longer, better, healthier life!

Ok. I've ranted for a pretty long time about sugar. Now on to fat. I have more trouble in this section of my diet, because many meats with high protein, have high fat. I love meat and protein, so it's pretty hard to avoid the fat. Before I get into more detail, I'd like to tell you that there are good fats, just like there are good sugars (sugar in fruit and honey). If you haven't researched much about health and/or fitness then this may be a surprise to you. I don't remember all the bad fats, but I think they're mainly omega-6's and omega-12's. The good fats are omega-3's. These fats are found in fish. I'm sure they're found in plenty of other foods that I can't remember or ever heard of, but the best source I know of is fish. Fish oil is good for your joints, brain, and heart. So eat your fish and/or take fish oil. Anyway, what to avoid: Hot dogs. Not only are they fatty, but I bet you don't really know what they're made of. Neither do I, but I know it's bad for you. You should also avoid hamburgers. Yes, sadly. They're really fatty. Luckily they usually are real meat, so you get protein out of it, but the fat is pretty darn high. I still have trouble saying I shouldn't eat hamburgers, because they're high in protein and my metabolism is so fast I barely get affected by the fat. I'm sure that when I get older, I'll need to have less hamburgers because of all the fat.

Hamburgers? Well... actually most hamburg. It's quite fatty. This is a very sad fact in life, because hamburg is amazing. If you buy the expensive/less fatty hamburg and drain most of the fat, it isn't too bad. It has some up sides, like the protein, but shouldn't be eaten too often. If you have to eat hamburg to fill yourself so you don't eat dessert, then by all means, have some. Some fat is better than some sugar!

Ok. I'm getting a little long winded, do I'll try and shorten my reasonings for the next few foods.

Pizza. Pizza is greasy. Greasy means fatty. A lot of the pizza is not-that-great for you, but the grease is the worst. Try to avoid pizza. It is highly unlikely you'll be able to avoid all pizza, so to make it much better for you pat down the pizza with a paper towel. Boom, there goes a ton of the grease!

Sausage... sausage is great. Tasting. It's pretty fatty too. Avoid it. If you can't avoid, or love it too much cut down on it some and wipe it down with a paper towel to get rid of some of the grease.

Ok... many people will really hate this: don't eat bacon. Bacon is probably the fattiest food I know of. It's so bad for you... just don't eat it! Luckily for me, I don't really like it. If you can't stop eating bacon, at least cut off the flabby fat and wipe it down. That should decrease the fat greatly. Sorry folks: Bacon is bad.

French fries are really good... but really bad. Don't eat them if you can. Home made fries aren't as bad, but you have to wipe them down so you're eating less fat. The same goes for chips.

I hate to say this........ but chicken wings are bad too. Really greasy and fatty. I love them, but they're still pretty bad.

If you have a really fast metabolism (like me) then the above foods (besides fries and bacon) shouldn't be too bad... but the average person should try to eat less of these.

Notice, I didn't say chicken breasts. Why? Because those are actually quite low in fat, and higher than all of the above in protein! Chicken breasts are probably the best non-fish meat for you!

Ok. Now that you cut out most of those foods, what should you eat?

If you are really good, you won't be eating those fatty foods. If so, you might be lacking protein. Chicken breasts, beef jerky (the fat has been dehydrated and now is gone), peanuts, peanut butter (homemade is best), beans, eggs and fish are great sources of protein. Protein shakes aren't as good, because they have sugar in them. They are good for immediately after a workout because they are easily digested, thus feed your muscles quickly.

I mentioned above that there are some good milkshakes. The good ones are protein shakes, and fruit shakes (or smoothies). Pretty much a good dessert is a fruit, not sugar, based food. Fruit is sweet, and good for you!

How about carbs? Are bread and pasta the best?! No. Not really. All natural, whole grain bread is the best bread in my opinion. White is terrible. Wheat is ok. The more processed it is, the less your body gets out it. Jack LaLane once said: "If man made it, don't eat it." That's pretty good advice if taken right. Of course a human will prepare your food, but not 'make' it. Humans make the chemicals in some of the foods we eat. Humans aren't as good at making food as God is, so natural food always wins.

Pasta is pretty good for you, but not prefect. Veggies are much better carbs. A mix of pasta, veggies, and bread is a really good carbo load. Bread and pasta are heavier and less healthy, but get you energy faster. Veggies are pretty much the best thing for you, and they have good carbs!

Now, it's really hard and expensive to eat healthier. You pretty much have to go really natural... but look at it this way: you'll save money in medical bills! Eating healthier makes you healthier, thus less of a need to spend money on medical stuff!

To sum this post up I'd like to challenge you. Because I bet you that almost all of you won't actually eat healthier after reading this. I challenge you just to take nearly all your sugar out of your diet for one month. One week will do nothing, because you can't break bad habits in one week. One month isn't that long, so if you don't think you can handle it, just count down the days. It only took me a month see how great it is to be sugar free. If you have fat, you'll likely lose weight, granted you don't load up on fat and too much carbs. I'd recommend weighing yourself now, and at the end of your month of no sugar. You also could measure your waist. You won't lose much weight, unless you run and do a little strength training. So try running/walking briskly 2-4 days a week along with your sugar freeness and see how you feel. If you want, add 1-2 days of weight training. You should lose weight. If you're really good, cut out a lot of the fat too. You'll lose weight quickly then!

Alrighty, so I just said you'll lose weight if you do all that healthy eating, so what if you want to gain weight? If you're under weight or a skinny guy wanted to put on muscle eating health is still for you. If you're under weight, you probably just need to eat more. Fat won't be good to get, so eat protein and carbs and you'll gain some muscle to balance your body out. Same goes for skinny guys. Lift, eat, and sleep. You'll need to eat more if you lift, and even more if you want to gain muscle mass. You'll need plenty of sleep too, because that's when you actually build muscle. Eating fatty or sugary foods will help you gain weight... but that weight is going to be fat. You don't want fat. Eat loads of protein (chicken, fish, eggs, peanuts, beans) and carbs (tons of veggies [one of the best is broccoli], bread, pasta) to gain muscle. You don't need go run much to gain muscle, but running will keep your fat percentage low and keep your heart strong. So do both.

Yeah. So eat healthy. Try not eating sugar for a month, start now. Or you'll never do it. Have fun!