What should I eat?

When I first started health coaching, I asked a lot of professional moms a lot of questions. My questions were geared to learning how to help them the most. I wanted to know if and how health coaching could help them. I asked questions like:

• What are your current eating habits?
• Are you content with them?
• Have you tried to change them before?
• What has stopped you in the past?
• What are your obstacles now?
• How do you want to feel in your body?

And I got amazing feedback! I’m so grateful for those women who gave me their time and their thoughts. From those conversations, there were two overwhelming ideas. I’m going to share one with you in this post. (Don’t worry. I’ll share the other one in time.)

These accomplished, Xennial and Generation-X moms asked:

What should I eat? I can do it if I know what to do!

And honestly, I struggled with that. I didn’t want to tell them what to eat. That sounded like a d-i-e-t to me. And I don’t support the d- word.  See … I can barely write it, much less promote it.

As a coach, I want to educate you about eating to honor and respect your bodies. I also want to help you build healthy eating habits so that you feel confident in your body. And I want to support you when you feel frustrated, confused or stressed. More than that, I don’t want you to feel frustrated, confused or stressed by the process! I want it to make sense and be attainable and sustainable. And I want you to be in charge of it. I just want to guide you.

Over time, I’ve realized that I can both educate you about how your body uses food and make specific food recommendations. I can help you learn how to eat healthy. That’s why I created the Sugar Solution Lab (SSL), my one-of-a-kind, step-by-step system for building healthy eating habits without confusion or overwhelm. I can’t wait to introduce SSL to you because it’s about more than food. It levels up your knowledge and self-assurance. 

But it all starts with knowledge. So, for now, let’s talk food! There are 4 major substances you need to give your body every day for growth and energy. They are water, carbohydrates, protein, and fat. When you understand the importance of each one, you can make better decisions about what you eat. So, buckle up and keep reading about what nourishes your body. From here on out, I’ll call these 4 nutrients.

Before going deeper, you should know that all foods naturally contain more than one nutrient. Only water is pure. By that, I mean water is just water. It doesn’t contain carbohydrates, protein or fat. But that’s not true for foods. No food is purely a carbohydrate, or purely a protein, or purely a fat. If it is, that means it was extracted or separated from a whole food. Think of olive oil. Olive oil is purely a fat but it’s extracted from an olive which isn’t. So, typically, foods are categorized by their most plentiful nutrient. 

How does food digest? What is metabolism?

As soon as you take a bite of food, your body starts digesting it. Digestion starts in your mouth and continues in your stomach and intestines. Digestion is breaking down food. After your food is broken down into its nutrients - water, fat, protein, and carbohydrates - your body puts those nutrients to work. The broken down components build you up and become energy. That is called metabolism. 

So, let’s break down what gets broken down.

Water

Believe it or not - water is more vital to your survival than food. The wilderness survival rules of 3 sum it up nicely. Here they are:

The Wilderness Survival Rules of 3

• You can survive for 3 minutes without air (oxygen).
• You can survive for 3 hours without shelter in a harsh environment (unless in icy water).
• You can survive for 3 days without water (if sheltered from a harsh environment).
• You can survive for 3 weeks without food (if you have water and shelter).

Water is so important because you’re mostly made of water. By weight, your body is approximately 60% water. 60%! More than that, there are a bunch of body parts and systems that are mostly water. For example, your blood is about 90% water. Your muscles contain more than 70% water and your skin contains over 60%. You’re really very … watery!

As you can see, your body’s natural processes require water. And your body doesn’t make water. When your body needs a resource that it doesn’t make, the resource is called “essential.” Therefore, water is essential. You have to drink water to survive! But drink even more water to thrive!

And that leads us to the obvious question … how much water should I drink? You’ll hear many answers to that question, but they’re mostly based on guesses. But we don’t have to guess! Remember - you’re about 60% water. And that water comes from what you drink and what you eat. So, let’s figure it out together.

In medicine, we often use the 70 kilogram man as an example. 70 kilograms is about 150 pounds. Multiply 150 pounds by 60%. That’s 90 … ounces not pounds. That’s just about 3 liters! And that would take more than 11 glasses of water, not 8!

About 75% of Americans are dehydrated; so … drink [hand clap] more [hand clap] water [hand clap]!

Carbs

Carbohydrates, affectionately known as carbs, make up the majority of many meals. Your body most likely burns carbs as its primary energy. When it comes to carbs, so much attention is given to grains like pasta, rice or bread. But carbs are more than that. Fruits are also carbs. So are veggies! 

When you eat carbs - grains, fruits, or veggies - your body separates them into sugar and fiber. Sugar provides the energy. Fiber doesn’t get digested, but it’s so important to keep your gut healthy. Fiber also helps keep your sugar energy steady. There’s essentially no fiber in grains … so that leaves just sugar. When you eat a green, leafy veggie, it’s pretty much the opposite. There’s essentially no sugar in green leafies; there is mostly fiber. And fruit falls somewhere in the middle. Fruit contains plenty of sugar; some more than others. But it also contains fiber.

In general, low-sugar, high-fiber carbs will honor your body the most. They’re the most nutritious and they provide they most long-acting energy. Think greens over grains when you’re building a meal. But your body needs more than carbs.

Protein

The protein you eat is broken down into the building blocks of your body. These are the building blocks of your skin, muscles, gut and more! Protein is like the scaffolding around which your body builds and rebuilds itself.

Protein is really a terrible source of energy. By that, I mean ut costs you more energy to break down protein than the energy that you’ll make in the process. So, you actually lose energy by trying to make energy out of protein. So, your body tries its best not to do it. It would prefer to burn carbs or fat.

So, another benefit of having lots of protein in your diet is increased fat burning. Here’s why. As the percentage of protein in your meals goes up, the percentage of carbohydrate naturally goes down. As discussed above, it’s too hard for your body to make energy from protein. So, it doesn’t. It relies more on fat. That means more fat burning! More fat loss!

Meat and seafood offer you the highest percentage of protein per serving. Not a meat-eater or a pescaterian? Eggs are also a good source. If you’re open to dairy, cottage cheese is a great source of protein. And Greek yogurt is a good source too! You don’t eat animal products at all? Hmm … do you like legumes? Chick peas, black beans, lentils and more! Hemp is also a great source. Soy is mostly protein too, but it’s a controversial choice these days. 

Fat

For decades, we’ve given fat such a bad rap, but it’s actually so important. Fat is in most healthy foods. Let’s call this dietary fat. 

There’s also fat in very important parts of you. You have body fat. It’s normal and necessary to have fat right under your skin! But you’ve got fat in your organs and as necessary parts of your body’s systems too. And you need it! 

You need to eat fat and you need to have fat. Here are a few reasons why:

1. Your brain is mostly fat (and water).
2. Fat is the key building block of hormones including estrogen and testosterone. (Estrogen and testosterone are mandatory for both women and men.)
3. Your body needs fat to absorb several key vitamins: vitamin A, vitamin D, vitamin E, and vitamin K. 

When it comes to fat, there are unsaturated fats and saturated fats. Among unsaturated fats, there are monounsaturated fats (found in foods like olives) and polyunsaturated fats (of Omega-3 fatty acid fame). Have you heard of DHA? It’s an omega-3 fatty acid that’s essential for brain health. You have to eat fat-containing foods to get DHA in your body. Unsaturated fats are totally in vogue right now. 

Then, there are saturated fats. These are the fats that are a bit controversial. But  there isn’t just one saturated fat. There are at least 30 different, individual ones! Several that we eat are lauric, myristic, palmitic and stearic acids. Real-life examples are butter and coconut oil.

When you eat fat, it satisfies you! So, you won’t be looking for a snack in a couple of hours. Fat can also give you energy! When you burn fat, it turns into energy! Eating food with fat doesn’t add body fat. It adds nourishment.

So, when I get the question what should I eat?, I offer the above, totally long-winded answer. Just kidding! I don’t. But I do start with education. I want you to know what you’re eating and why. Food should be meaningful to you. So, to recap, your body needs the following:

1. Water
2. Carbs
3. Protein
4. Fat 

If you’d like some support in learning how to include each of these 4 nutrients in every meal, you should try my 5-day Healthy Eating Habits Challenge. It starts September 9th which will be here before you know it! Click here to join me!