Macronutrients
This page is where many nutritionist consultants start and stop. Yes, food is important, but there are nuances. Perhaps it's not whether you eat tortillas, but if they contain folic acid or not. Please take one thing away from this page: EATING FAT DOES NOT MAKE YOU FAT.
Fat
Fat is an essential nutrient. Our brains need fat and cholesterol to have optimal health. If fat is taken out of foods, that food space is usually refilled with chemicals and sugars. Sugar is NOT essential to our body, but fat is. If you don’t eat fat for a while, you can cause harm to your gallbladder. The gallbladder stores bile which is produced in our bile ducts. When you eat a fatty meal, bile is released to help digest that fat. Eating fat regularly helps our gallbladder and bile ducts work properly. Low-fat diets reduce the use of bile, leading to gallbladder stones, digestion problems, and if it gets bad enough, gallbladder removal. Keep all your essential body parts intact by eating healthy animal fats and avoiding fake “I can’t believe it’s not butter” and vegetable oil fats.
Protein - Essential Amino Acids
Amino acids are the building blocks of making proteins, which is what we use to repair our muscles and cells. Did you know that you only digest about 49% of the protein in an egg? 33% of protein in meat? 3-17% of protein in those protein shakes? The rest is either converted to sugar or excreted. If you are eating a lot of protein but still not getting enough, this is the “Protein in a Pill”. Scientists have cracked the code on the perfect ratio of each of the 9 essential amino acids needed in the human body. Essential Amino Acids (EAAs) are 99% digestible, meaning that they are almost perfectly usable. I use them when my muscles are sore, plus before and during races.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07VJK2LGG
https://bodyhealth.com/blogs/news/the-power-of-essential-aminos
https://getkion.com/blogs/all/how-to-use-amino-acids
https://bodyhealth.com/blogs/news/the-science-of-protein-utilization
https://www.bulksupplements.com/products/essential-amino-acids-powder
https://www.bulksupplements.com/products/essential-amino-acids-capsules
Carbohydrates, Blood Sugar and Insulin Response
Here’s what happens when you eat a big meal with lots of carbs or sugar. The glucose content of your blood goes way up. This, left unchecked, could kill you. No joke. Your body, to save your life, produces insulin, which helps usher that glucose into your fat cells. This safely reduces your blood sugar down to acceptable levels, and the process happens over and over throughout the day while you eat. Type I Diabetics can’t make insulin, so they must carefully regulate this through an insulin pump. Type II Diabetics make lots of insulin, but their fat cells don’t want to take in more sugar, so they become insulin-resistant. More and more insulin is then required to force the fat cells to take in sugar. This is actually really easy to fix. STOP eating sugar and carbs/bread/pasta. It’s the sugar that makes you fat, and the blood sugar/insulin cycle is how it happens.
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So. You gave in and ate that sweet potato. There are a few things you can do before, during, and after (larger than usual/worse than usual) meals to help reduce the impact on your body. Fresh-squeezed lemon juice or apple cider vinegar in water with a meal helps reduce blood sugar. So does a large sprinkle of Ceylon Cinnamon. Bitter Melon Extract is a great supplement for the regulation of blood sugar, too. You also might try cooking your starches the day before you want to eat it. Reheating potatoes or rice turns some of the carbohydrates into resistant starch, which doesn’t raise blood sugar.
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If you want to test foods out yourself and see real time impact on blood sugar, consider wearing a glucose monitor. Unfortunately, it’s still hard to get them without a prescription (senseless, I know) but any doctor should be able to proscribe them to you. I use a FreeStyle Libre, which connects to an App on my phone. Occasionally I stick one on the back of my arm and eat odd foods to see what impact they have on my blood sugar.
https://www.freestyle.abbott/us-en/home.html
https://bioptimizers.com/shop/products/blood-sugar-breakthrough
The biggest change you can make for good health is to limit your intake of sugar, wheat, and processed fake foods. Replace them with meat (particularly beef), butter, liver, collagen or bone broth, and eggs. Don’t give up anything bad. Just eat less of it. Consider the 80/20 rule; eat well 80% of the time. Then, for the rest of the time, don’t feel guilty about enjoying a meal that’s not so good for you. Eggs and meats will make you feel satisfied. Consider the carnivore diet if you would like to lose weight. I think it is one of the healthier ways to slim down. Consider intermittent fasting, or a 1 day fast once a week, or just skip a meal occasionally. Eat less or less often, but overall, keep your calories up. Starving yourself long-term will lower your metabolism. Basically, the takeaways from all good diets include avoiding vegetable oils, fried foods, and sugars, and eating plenty of good fats, veggies, fruits, and other real foods. People disagree on some details, but really, it's just what works for you, your lifestyle, and your body.