Sunday Story…Past Paleo

The other day, one of my students, Elianna (age 6), asked me if I ate candy when I was kid and followed it up by asking if I still liked candy and why didn’t I eat it. The answers are pretty simple…Yes I ate candy when I was a kid, and yes, I still like candy but I don’t eat it because it isn’t good for me and it doesn’t help me do what I want to do in my life. I think this may have been a little hard for her 6 year old brain to get around but she tried.

Let’s be honest…for many of us there is nothing that says home like the smell of fresh baked bread. All of us have grown up with certain memories that are ingrained in our psyches conjuring up memories of happiness, contentedness or comfort and a lot of this has to do with food…the taste, the smell, the texture all combine to trigger those feelings. But that doesn’t mean that I should continue to eat them. When I walk through the Costco bakery on Wednesday morning and the cinnamon rolls are baking….mmmm sugar and cinnamon, yeasty and warm and I remember. Then I also remember what is going to happen if ingest that cinnamon roll today…the bloating, the sluggishness, the intestinal upset, the kick of insulin and the resultant crash. And that’s the short term reaction!

Many of you have taken the 30 day challenge to eliminate sugar, grain, dairy, legumes, and processed food (anything in a box or a can, or a bottle) from your diet. If you haven’t done it yet, you should. In so many of us those substances are toxic to our bodies and we don’t even know it. Eliminating those things from your diet will give you a baseline to find out what your system will and will not tolerate. Some of you may be able to eat some dairy or some non-wheat grain, or legumes without reaction. Wheat, high fructose corn syrup and other sugars, and industrial seed oils appear to be the leading causes of dietary disease (read 90% of disease here). These things do not belong in the diet of any human.

Your diet should really be simple and maybe we should stop labeling it “Paleo”. Eat natural food in other words…whole foods free of toxins, foods that are nutrient dense, and food designed by nature not man. That description could lend itself to a lot of interpretation so let’s drill it down a bit more…animal meat and fat (sustainably and humanely raised), vegetables (both starch and non-starchy), a little bit of fruit, seeds and nuts (and the resultant butters and such), fermented foods (for gut health). Gee that sounds a lot like what we have been talking about all along…eat meat and vegetables, seeds and nuts, some starch and a little fruit in quantities designed to support exercise but not fat storage. For lack of a better word I guess we can keep calling it paleo.

The fact is this: What I want you to do is find out what the optimal food is for your body…the optimal food that fuels your activity levels…the food that has you feeling great all the time…that has your hair lustrous and shiny, your nails healthy and growing, your skin luminous and free of flaking and scaling, your teeth strong…that keeps you free of infection and disease…that feeds your brain and has you thinking clearly.

Eliminate grains, sugars, legumes, dairy and processed food from your diet for 30 days. Just 30 day, that is all I am asking. There is no magic pill on this subject…cut the crap and the toxins out and then try again in 30 days and see what happens. You may be able to eat a little cheese (I can’t) or maybe some non-gluten grains (I can’t) and perform well. And that is the bottom line…what you eat affects how you perform in the world, how you think, how you feel and who you are.

So, no, Elianna, I don’t eat candy anymore. That doesn’t mean I don’t like it…it just means that I don’t like what it does to my body. You get to decide what it does to yours.

Namaste
John
“Teaching Focus, Inspiring Transformation”
www.martialartsnevada.com

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