As the saying goes, “you are what you eat,” and while we’ve all been working to clean up our diets and help our clients live healthier lives, we’ve also been recognizing that it’s hard to learn how to eat healthily.
The typical person follows the Standard American Diet (SAD), characterized by sugary desserts, high-fat foods, refined grains, high sugar drinks, and processed meat products. Made up of numerous processed carbohydrates, hydrogenated oils, sugars, chemical additives, and processed fats, SAD is severely lacking anything that can really be considered healthy. Add to that the fact that most people get the majority of their calories from sugar, flour, and refined oils and consume very little in the way of vegetables and fruit. The result is declining health and wellness.
Build Healthy Habits
Juanee Surprise, DC, DCBCN, former president of the American Chiropractic Association Council on Nutrition, finds that with 68 percent of Americans overweight, it’s apparent that people are eating too many calories and the wrong kinds of calories. She says that one of the biggest reasons for the overweight population is trans fats, which can be found in just about all packaged foods commonly found in SAD, and trans fats are associated with an increased risk of heart attack and stroke. Dr. Surprise also reports that if a person consumes too much-processed sugar; insulin resistance, then metabolic syndrome, and eventually, diabetes, develops from over-use of the pancreas.
What to do? We need to build healthy habits. Just 30 years ago, the food available was mostly fresh and grown locally. Today, the majority of foods served, whether at home, in school, or in restaurants, are highly processed. That means we need to simplify the way we eat. We need to look for whole foods, with all-natural ingredients. We need to cook at home more. We also need to:
- Find a reason to truly “care” about avoiding disease-promoting refined foods.
- Eat more vegetables during meals to create the sensation of fullness.
- Remove the temptations.
- Drink more water.
- Exercise.
- Get plenty of sleep.
- Fight stress with exercise, not food.
For those wanting to take healthy eating to the next level, Carlson Chiropractic Center also offers Food Sensitivity Testing. We also work to help our patients learn which foods they can and can’t eat, how to dine out safely, and learn how to read food labels and check the ingredients for problems. To learn more about how food sensitivities may be impacting your health and well-being, give us a call. Your body deserves better than the Standard American Diet, and wellness can be yours with just a few simple changes!