For optimal nutrition, never eat the following foods! Part of my journey of healing my body after two consecutive accidents and having all these injuries was really getting on top of my nutrition.
I had been mostly a sugaraholic my whole life. I tried to eat healthy or whatever that idea was of being healthy and, to really get the results that I was looking for because I’d gained all this weight, I was having all this pain and then I was having fatigue and I couldn’t focus, nutrition was a big part of how I got my health back.
The first step is awareness and then how to navigate and take out certain foods that are toxic.
Enriched Foods
The two things we’re going to be going over today are enriched foods and fortified foods. I’m sure you’ve seen the label enriched foods before. This is where you process refined foods. During that process, the vitamins and minerals, a lot of times, are lost. So what companies will do is add in isolated vitamins and minerals and make it sound like it’s still a whole food.
We need to stay away from these foods as much as possible, especially if they’ve been highly refined and most of the time, it causes a stickiness in our bodies. A lot of times, you’ll see this in pastas and breads. We want to go to natural alternatives.
Then we have fortified foods. Fortified foods is taking more of the whole and natural foods. When they have been through a process, companies actually want to raise the nutritional value so they add in these isolated vitamins, minerals, and nutrients. Then natural synergy is lost.
When you have whole foods, there’s a whole harmony, there’s a whole synergy that happens when you eat that food. Your body knows what to do with it. Through the isolation, things like calcium carbonate might be added, which now we know that can build up and make calcium deposits in our body or, maybe you’ve seen vitamin D2 has been added. The best way is to get vitamin D is through being in the sunlight. The thing that we can metabolize is D3. Our body doesn’t even know what to do with D2.
Just having these little things that we can be aware of. There’s other laboratory foods like artificial colors and flavors and additives and things like that. What are my top tips here?
#1. We need to read nutritional labels. The nutritional label is going to be on the back of any food, especially if you’re shopping more in those center aisles. Just a rule of thumb, when you go into the market, the outer perimeter is usually where all the whole foods are and then in the center aisles, that’s where the refined foods are.
You’ve got to read those nutritional labels and to be able to navigate that because a lot of things like cereal for instance, is very fortified. Most of the time, things like that are just loaded with sugar.
That sugar is going to peak and valley all day long so it’s going to make it so we don’t have stabilized blood sugar. We want to eat foods that stabilize our blood sugar and we don’t want to have things that have high glycemic load that’s going to put us out of balance. When we read the nutritional labels, look at the whole label and be able to navigate that.
#2. Eat whole foods. This was hard for me because I was eating so much sugar and I love baked goods. There’s actually ways to start taking those out and to know that after about two to three weeks of taking out these highly sugared, highly processed foods, your taste buds change. Things like sweet potatoes and red bell peppers start to taste like pure sugar.
#3. Healthy substitutions. You don’t have to give up taste and you don’t have to give up your favorite foods. There’s usually a healthy substitution. I go into detail on my website and my online programs and it’s really a new way to navigate and to add in those foods and just have natural alternatives. These are just a few tips. There’s more here but in general, it’s looking at how you can eat more whole foods and to take out those lavatory, refined foods and things like enriched foods and fortified foods.
What healthy alternatives do you love? I would love to hear your comments!
