Over the years I’ve worked with clients and students on weight loss, muscle gain, improved health, increased physical function and performance.  One of the first things I talk about?  Food.  Food is the back bone to everything you do.  Unfortunately it’s also the part of fitness most ignore, forget, struggle with or simply misunderstand.  Without making changes to your diet, you’re setting yourself up for failure and frustration.  Worse yet, many assume since they lift every day that they are suddenly healthy despite how badly they eat.  This simply isn’t true.

We have to understand how our brains are wired when it comes to food.  Much like this month’s article, “Is that a gun in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?“ evolution has provided our bodies with instincts and cravings to help us survive.  There are three basic cravings we have when it comes to finding food to keep us alive; fatty, sweet, salty.  Fatty is a source of calories and typically protein (meats).  Sweet helps us find a good source of energy and fiber.  Salty leads to a source of conserving water.  These pleasurable tastes help us remember where to find food and which foods to eat.  These cravings worked well for finding food thousands of years ago.  Unfortunately, we’ve come to an age where food has become a business that can make a lot of money.  Like most big businesses the bottom line is what is important, not providing the customer with the highest quality food.  Therefore, they remove the “real” food and quality calories with processed food.  It’s cheaper and the sweets taste sweeter, fats taste fattier and salty tastes saltier!  Due to this processed food, the body takes in fewer nutrients and more useless calories which the body can’t use properly and therefore sends signals to eat more.  Furthermore, the brain gets used to these extra tasty foods, so the real food now seems less favorable.  Since the body isn’t receiving the proper calories and nutrients it needs, it continues to send signals telling you to eat more!

Let’s go a bit deeper now.  How are these processed foods affecting your body and its functions?  First, let me quickly explain how the body is affected by sugar as it is usually the main ingredient used for creating processed foods.

When you eat a carbohydrate (fruit, veggies, sugary foods) the body breaks them down into simple sugars which then are released into the blood.  This raises your blood sugar level, how fast it does so is determined by its glycemic index.  This, for the time being though, isn’t important or relevant to this article so we will hold off for another day. What is important is how the body reacts to the blood sugar rising in the blood.  This is where the Pancreas and Insulin come into play.  As mentioned in the book, “It Starts with Food“, think of your Pancreas like a thermostat in the body and insulin like the air conditioner.  The Pancreas recognizes the blood sugar is rising so it then releases the Insulin hormone into the blood to redirect the blood sugar into the body’s storage compartments for current or future use for energy.  In doing so, this lowers the blood sugar.  Why is it important to keep blood sugar levels low?  High blood sugar, known as hyperglycemia, is harmful to the body’s organs, including the brain.

Here’s the problem, the body can only hold so much energy!  When the energy tanks hit full capacity, they stop taking in the blood sugar.  This is very bad if the body still has high blood sugar!  When the tanks are full it forces the blood sugar to stay high, this in turn triggers the Pancreas to release more insulin to FORCE the blood sugar into the these tanks (cells).  Because of the constant forcing of the sugar into the cells, these cells become damaged.  This damage is what leads to insulin resistance, and inevitably Type 2 Diabetes among other issues.

So how about that processed food?   Processed food is essentially fake food.  Companies take real food, remove all the nutrients, replace it with artificial sweeteners among other things, and this leaves a food item with all the calories of real food but none of the nutrients.  NOT GOOD!  Normally when you ingest “real” food, the body recognizes that it’s being fed and releases a hormone called Leptin which tells the brain “it’s full”, therefore you stop eating.  However, with processed foods, the body doesn’t recognize that it’s receiving calories; therefore, it never gets the message from Leptin to tell you that you are full.  So, you keep eating.  Eventually, the “full” feeling you get, is your stomach stretching from holding too much food.  Here’s the kicker, since your body doesn’t realize it’s receiving calories, it continues to send those sweet, fatty, and salty cravings telling you to eat more!  If you consistently eat “fake” food, then your body assumes that it is always starving!  When the body is in starvation mode, it stores fat, slows your metabolism and tells you to stop moving so much to conserve energy!!!  To make matters worse, while you’re in this starvation mode, your body stops burning fat for energy unless.  So all of those endless hours on the treadmill?  Only burning stored energy, not fat.  Potentially even burning lean mass such as muscle.  YIKES!!

So to recap, stop eating so much sugar and processed foods and eat real food!  If it looks like it did when it came out of the ground (or off the tree) or looks like it was just cut off of the animal, it should be good to go (yes, there are exceptions, even normal looking fruit, veggies and meats can be altered).  If not, pass on it!