If you build a house with crumbly bricks, you'd expect it to fall.
If you put soda in your car's gas tank, you'd expect it to break down.
And with all the talk we do here about balancing meals for health and body composition goals (it's important to know how much protein, fat, fiber and intentional carbohydrates your body needs), it's just as important for us to think about the quality of the food we eat.
This is because every cell in your body turns itself over. You are an ENTIRELY different human, in a physical sense, than you were a few years ago. Each cell turns over and organs are rebuilt. What are we building ourselves out of with each version we create over our lifetime? Food!
Inside a nation that consumes mostly ultra-processed food, most humans here are mostly made up of ultra-processed food. How much of our bodies is now constructed from corn syrup, soybean oil, preservatives and microplastics? And the bigger question becomes, why are we surprised when we experience depression, excess body fat storage, anxiety, brain fog, dementia, prediabetes or type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, elevated triglycerides, arthritis, bipolar disorder, PCOS, hypothyroidism, autoimmunity or insulin resistance? We are constructing cells and body parts out of things that were never meant to be used to construct cells and body parts. Of course they won't work well over time!
So what can we do? Yes, PFF + intentional carb balancing matters. Yes fitness, sleep, stress management, purpose, relationships, grounding, sunshine, hydration and temperature variability matters. But so too does the make-up of our food.
Some people, when they start a health or body composition journey, start to become more mindful of things like calories or even overall food balance (macros). And many fill find themselves looking at food labels for the calories or macros, but not yet paying attention to the ingredient list. And guess what? That's ok ... at first. We can't tackle everything at once.
But if you have been aiming to get the balance right but aren't yet reading ingredients, you may want to start. There's a lot of nuance of course but as a general rule of thumb, long ingredient lists are typically a red flag. To me, any kind of artificial dyes or flavors are too. We avoid high fructose corn syrup and hydrogenated oils completely as well. And we really limit things like seed oils and added sugars. This has been our way of thinking for our whole 10+ years of parenting so far but the cool thing is you get to shift your boundaries whenever you want to AND you get to set boundaries wherever it makes sense for your particular family or circumstances.
One simple way to start that won't overwhelm you or your budget? When one ultra-processed food item runs out in your home next, try to replace it with something less processed. Example: you eat the last of the Ritz crackers today and shop for Mary's Gone Crackers or Simple Mills crackers next. Unfortunately the less processed, higher quality food typically costs more so you could start to make some things on your own to offset the costs, buy the item less frequently if it's not a necessity in your home (like buy Mary's Gone Crackers every other week rather than Ritz every week). Thankfully, unprocessed or minimally processed real food tends to be much more affordable than the higher quality 'convenience' items.
Ultimately, you have your own boundaries, goals, budgets, food access, etc. Do what you can with what you have and where you're at. <3
Nutrition isn't everything but I will tell you, the more we get in a nourishing balance of food at each meal and with nourishing quality (more real food, minimally processed and far less ultra-processed food), the tendency is for us to start to feel better in ALL the ways and build momentum towards the other health pillars we've been wanting to address.
Your cells are turning over right this very minute. What are you made of today? What do you plan to be made of tomorrow, next month and next year? Unlimited opportunities to (literally) build a new body.
If you need help, my 28-day metabolism-boosting course, TRANSFORM: Body + Mind is for you. It it there for people with fat loss, "toning up" and health optimization goals who want to learn more about how their body and metabolism actually work and thrive. The next round isn't until September but there's a special going on right now for the 4th of July: join now and get early access so you can do all the workouts, have the optional meal plans, all of the resources, and have access to the whole course and all the materials ahead of time. Then, you'll be in the live September round with the rest of the group! CLICK HERE FOR MORE INFO or to sign up. We do things in a wildly different way. And that's why you see wildly different results. Get ready! ;-)
XO,
Tara