Easy Food

Hi there!

Thanks so much for stopping by our site and taking the time to learn what you can do with your shopping to make yourself and your family healthier.  If there’s one thing I learned in my Physiotherapy degree, it’s to always question accepted science and be sure that what I’m teaching and doing is accurate and up to date with the latest and best science.

I’m going to let you in on a well kept health and fitness secret!

Chances are, you’re here because you want a way to lose weight and live healthier without spending hours in the gym, or even exercising at home.  I don’t have time or motivation to exercise at home, and I don’t expect you to either!

What a lot of people don’t realise, and it’s kind of an industry secret, is that losing weight and living healthy has WAY more to do with healthy nutrition than it does about exercise.  Now don’t get me wrong, exercise is FANTASTIC for your mental and physical health and can make you look great and feel strong and confident, but sometimes in the early stages of our journey into looking and feeling amazing, it’s better to just sort out the nutrition side of things first so we don’t end up making ourselves exhausted and overloaded before we’re ready.  Exercise should be fun and not work, and it’s a lot easier to do when your body is lighter and more energetic!

Exercising without considering your nutrition is like trying to run with your hands tied behind your back.  Doesn’t really sound like much of a problem, after all, we use our feet for running, not our hands, right?  Well try sprinting with your hands tied behind your back.  Then try long distance running.  Then try cross country running.  You’ll soon find out how much running uses your whole body to perform and compete, keeping your balance and shift your weight.

There are some food principles that generally need to be followed.

• Avoid artificial flavour, artificial colour, flavour enhancers (MSG and related compounds), artificial sweetener, sugar.
• Pay close consideration to ditching the wheat.
• You will also need to seriously limit alcohol to get the results that you want.

Now of COURSE we all know that meat, veggies and fruit are the healthy way to live.  This doesn’t mean that you have to go without the convenience foods.  We all have to live realistically right?  If you have kids and are short on time, convenience foods are the bomb, but we have to make the best of a not-so-great situation, right?  So the suggestions below are based on convenience foods rather than foods we ALL know are healthy, because there’s no point trying to teach you what you already know!

There is no substitute for eating whole, real foods daily!

So, what can you do with your shopping to change the way you feel and the way your clothes fit, without making DRASTIC, unsustainable changes that make you miserable so you feel like you’re on a “diet” and can’t wait for it to be over?

(I just want to take this opportunity to state that I have NO affiliation, financial or otherwise, with any of the brands mentioned below.  They are simply the better choices for your body.)

1. No more sugary or artificially sweetened soft drink.  Recommended drinks as substitutes are mineral water, either naturally flavoured or unflavoured.  If you want to, you can add a little natural cordial to it to give it flavour.  My personal favourites are Schweppes naturally flavoured mineral water and Barker’s brand cordial which is relatively low in sugar and has no preservatives or artificial colours or flavours.
2. Plain flavours instead of special flavours.  That means Red Rock Deli sea salt chips are great as well as their sea salt and balsamic vinegar flavour, or any other brand of “plain” chips.  The green plain Doritos are great too.  Avoid flavours such as barbecue, chicken, pizza, cheese, bacon, etc etc etc.  MSG and its cousins, which are frequently labelled as things like “hydrolysed vegetable protein”, “modified wheat extract” and “flavour enhancer 621”,  are used on lab rats to make them obese, ironically so they can study obesity.  Go figure!
   By the same token, choose plain or plain wholegrain Sakatas rather than Fantastic rice crackers.  Sakatas are free from flavour additives, the ingredients being rice, vegetable oil and salt (plus or minus grains/seeds).
3. If you’re going to buy lollies (I don’t recommend it because if you have them at home you’re going to eat them right?), buy the Natural Confectionery Company or Haribo.  They are free from artificial colours and flavours.
4. If you’re going to buy chocolate, aim for dark chocolate for you and avoid ones with artificial colours and flavours (some have coloured centres, etc).  My personal favourite is Old Gold with Roast Almonds.  For kids, Smarties are naturally coloured these days and the colour is still fun.  Or Freddo Frogs can be a good choice, either milk or milk/white chocolate.  Anything without artificial colours and flavours.
5. Choose REAL BUTTER over any dairy blend or margarine etc.  Nuttelex is basically glorified margarine so don’t go there unless you’re vegan for ethical/moral reasons (health reasons just doesn’t cut the mustard UNLESS you have antibodies to casein, the milk protein).  There are a number of brands of spreadable butter available now.  One brand that comes to mind is Buttersoft.  Why real butter?  There are fat soluble vitamins in butter that you don’t get from vegetable oil.  And vegetable oil is supposed to be liquid at room temperature unless you’re talking about coconut oil.  It is heated way beyond natural temperatures for extraction, then chemically altered to become semi-solid at room temperature and then bleached/deodourised to make it palatable, and then colours and flavours are addd to make it taste butter-like.  Just trust the cows, they know what they’re doing!
6. Refrigerated milk over UHT off-the-shelf milk. Check out this site for an explanation: http://www.foodrenegade.com/just-say-no-to-uht-milk/
7. Choose rice bubbles and corn flakes over wheat-based cereals.  Wheat is one of the most common problematic foods that cause people to gain and keep weight and suffer from inflammation.
8. In the same theme, instead of buying bread, try to buy rice cakes or corn thins (plain ones). The plain flavoured ones are a better alternative than bread and provide an interesting crunch with your meal.
9. For dips, seek dips that are preservative-free.  This can be quite tricky but Black Swan brand are pretty good.

This is information that is just starting to reach popular medical opinion but has taken a LONG time to get there, due to food industry pressure.

FAT, is NOT the enemy it has been made out to be.

Even saturated fat!  The ONLY fats that are a problem for your health are trans fats and oxidised fats (usually from overly heated unsaturated fats that have been chemically altered as a result of being heat-damaged).

Eating Fat has a lot of benefits to your body.

• If you don’t eat fat you don’t get fat-soluble vitamins such as true vitamin A and E.  Vitamin D is also found in pastured egg yolks and high quality milks.
• Fat is used to create cholesterol which is the building block for new cells and hormones within your body.  When we hear ‘fat’ and when we hear ‘cholesterol’ we immediately think DANGER, very BAD, but this is not necessarily the case.
• Fat is slowly digested, which means that if you eat it with carbohydrates and sugars, it slows the absorption of those high-glycemic foods so you don’t get a FAST blood sugar hit.  That’s good because it helps you control your insulin sensitivity.
• Fat helps you feel full by causing the release of leptin, which sends a message to the brain saying that you don’t need to eat anymore.

If you have ever gone on a very low-fat diet, you will know that all you can do is think about food when you’re on the diet.  Just don’t do it.

So, if you have been struggling to keep a healthy weight all this time, try these simple tips and see what happens.

If you lose weight and start feeling amazing, send me a text on 0401 118 962 so I can celebrate your achievement with you!  If you have before and after photos, even better!

Check out our Facebook Page too at https://www.facebook.com/bodysmithgym/ to keep up to date and see how much fun we’re having keeping fit and healthy.  It might even inspire you! 😉

We provide 21-day nutrition programs with our personal and group personal training programs.  If you’re after something specific to guide you exactly with WHAT to eat and WHEN, contact us and we can get you on a program that is going to change your life!

To learn more, have a scroll through our blog posts at www.bodysmithfitness.com.au/blog and when you decide that you’re ready to take the next step in your fitness journey, go to our home page www.bodysmithfitness.com.au and click “Request a consultation”, fill in your details and subscribe through the link in your email and we’ll get you started into turning your body into a healthy fitness machine!  Feel confident, sexy, healthy and happy and start smashing your fitness goals now!

Stay Healthy,