Food Consumption

Do you make sure every day you eat a certain amount of food, getting in the RDA, recommended daily amount? If so, you could be doing yourself more harm than good. The dreaded calorie counting. There are some vitamins and minerals we do need in large amounts on a daily bases, like Vit. A and D, calcium and salt, to name a few. For most vitamins and minerals, our bodies will store some of them for a rainy day basically. Others, we do not need in as high amounts, so if you miss a day here and there, not a problem. If you think back to our hunter gather days, you would go through feast and famine, time of plenty and times of scarcity. During the summer you would have an abundance of vegetation, but in the winter, not much. So, it does seem a little weird to think we have to have a
certain amount every single day? This is not an excuse to not eat healthy.

The best tips for this are:
 Eating in season, local and fresh, as often as possible.
 Listen to your body.
 Always go for nutrient density.

Looking at food consumption on a day to day basis is not exactly the way to go either. A better way of looking at this is a weekly intake or even a monthly intake. Take out a journal or find something on line you can use, and plug or write down your food consumption every day, not amounts, but more what you are eating. I do not want this to become a caroling counting thing or an obsession over food, just a general idea. After a few weeks of doing this, you will have the hang of it and be good to go. Look at what you are eating. It is a wide variety of vegetables and fruit in season, protein and fat? How much processed food are you in-taking? The nice thing about an online product, is it will tell you how much of everything you are eating, just do not mind the fat portion if you are eating like me? It will be WAY off! Look back over the week and ask yourself if you have eaten a variety of food, what your body is telling you you need to eat and where you might need to make changes?

Ask yourself how you feel after each meal and about 15-30 minutes after, if you remember. The reason for this, is to help find out if you have intolerance to certain foods, say gluten or maybe combinations do not work for you. If you begin to notice a pattern, say bloating, gas and cramps after eating gluten containing foods, try taking this food out of your diet for a month, take note of how you feel. After this month, add it back in and see if these come back. This is the best way to find food intolerances, it can take awhile, but in the end you will feel better.

We should vary the amount of food we eat daily and not eat the same food every day, this one can be hard, not eating the same thing everyday. I am like everyone else and get fixed on a food, like protein pancakes or bone broths. Varying the amount I eat is pretty easy. Sometimes I do 24 hour fasts, other times I only eat twice a day and other times I can not get enough food in me! By listening to my body, my intake varies widely. By doing this, I am not getting my body used to a set amount of calories every day. By doing this, our bodies adapt and we can get stuck in a rut. By changing everyday, our bodies are guessing and do not know what is coming next, it is kept on it toes.

This is a quote from a book I read recently, you can find it online from here: www.milk-diet.com
"However, it must be remembered that the calory is, after all, only a unit of measurement – nothing that contributes to the nutritive value of the food it measures."
The Milk Diet: How to Use the Milk Diet Scientifically at Home by Bernarr Macfadden, 1923.



Nutrient dense foods are always the way to go.
Saving the world one stick of butter at a time.
God's many blessings be showered upon you,
Jenn