The question is... Where to start? Jillian Michaels tells you to go through your cupboards and throw EVERYTHING unnatural out. If I did that, honestly, I really would not have any food left. Sad, huh?!
So, I figured we would start with the things we eat most in our house.
Items being removed from my home:
Milk- Personally, I don't drink Milk anymore. I stopped about 8 months ago, but my kids and husband are still Milk drinkers! (I get my calcium from other sources and take a supplement)
Bread- I was buying Grandma's Honey whole Wheat
Peanut Butter- Jiff or Skippy- depending on what they have bulk at Costco
I will/have replaced these items with:
Milk- Almond (for myself, my oldest son might drink it was well) Organic- for my youngest and husband.
Bread- Prairie Grain Bread Co. -Honey Whole Wheat Bread (they are a local company) Or anything else I can find that is as healthy as this. I'm actually looking at getting my own grain, grinding and making my own %100 whole wheat bread. (I'll keep you posted on that one). This bread was a HUGE hit! (Picked it up at Smith's)
Peanut Butter- Recently Costco had an Almond Butter- It is so creamy and delicious. We've already switched over to this for daily lunches.
I would like to share with you the ingredient changes:
Jiff Peanut Butter:
Roasted Peanuts and Sugar, contains 2% or less of: Molasses, FULLY hydrogenated vegetable oils (repressed and soybean), mono- and diglycerides, salt
Almond Butter:
Dry Roasted Almonds
Grandmas Honey Whole Wheat:
Whole Wheat Flour, Water, wheat gluten, honey, yeast, HIGH FRUCTOSE CORN SYRUP, soybean oil. Contains 2% or less of each of the following: Cultured wheat flour, salt, distilled vinegar, yeast nutrients (monocalcium phosphate, calcium sulfate, ammonium sulfate and/or calcium carbonate), corn starch, dough conditioners (ascorbic acid, azodicarbonamide, enzymes), soy lecithin, milk, soy flour.
Contains wheat, milk and soy
Prairie Grain Bread Co. - Honey Whole Wheat Bread:
100% Stone Ground whole wheat, water, honey, raisin juice concentrate, salt, yeast.
Which product would you choose?
Again, I should probably go through my cupboards and throw ALL the "crap" (and it is crap) out! I think if it was just me... I could do it, but it is going to be an adjustment for the family. Regardless, it is an opportunity to educate.
Some of the items I am becoming fully aware of, and taking an extra look at in my food include, but not limited too:
(The following information is pulled from Jillian Michaels book. Master Your Metabolism. I highly recommend you get this book and read it. There is a lot of information on each subject, and there are MORE subjects then included today, but I'm just pulling bits and pieces. If you want all the nitty, gritty... you will have to purchase/rent this book yourself, but I will share as much as I can!)
Hydrogenated Fats, AKA- Trans fats- This includes anything partially or fully hydrogenated. Created for the convenience of processed foods allowing chips, cookies, crackers, (Twinkies) pies, breads, etc. to sit on the shelf FOREVER and NEVER go bad. Hydrogenated starts out as regular fat and is then blasted with hydrogen to change the liquid into a solid at room temperature.
Hydrogenated increases your "bad" LDL and triglycerides and decreases your "good" HDL. (raising your risk of heart attack, heart disease, metabolic syndrome, inflammation, high blood pressure, hardened arteries, osteoporosis, type 2 diabetes and Alzheimer's)
You only need 20 to 60 calories from artificial trans fats a day to start damaging your health. So, you know how they claim "No Trans Fats" on the packaging?? Manufacturers are permitted to use that claim as long as one portion contains less then 500 milligrams of trans fats. It only takes a couple items like Margarine, cookies, chips etc. to meet that quota. ** Interesting, huh?!
Refined grains- Refining grains help extend their shelf life removing bran and germ from the grain, fiber, vitamins, and minerals, B vitamins, thiamine, riboflavin, niacin, folic acid and iron. These include white pasta, flour, tortillas, white rice and white bread (raising insulin resistance, diabetes, fat, high blood sugar, chronic low-level inflammation, heart attack and stroke) **
High Fructose Corn Syrup- HFCS (this one makes me really mad!) Did you know we went from producing 3,000 tons of HFCS, in 1967 to 9,227,000 tons in 2005. (UNREAL!!!!) HFCS helps companies boost their profits for pennies. (Giving us ALL the unhealthy benefits.. Yaaa! right?!? I don't think so...) University of Pennsylvania, found that fructose doesn't suppress hunger hormones ghrelin levels the way glucose (table sugar) does. Women who ate fructose instead of glucose had higher ghrelin levels throughout the day, overnight, and into the next day.
(Why, you ask?) Glucose is metabolized by all your cells; fructose must be metabolized by the liver. HFCS somehow tricks the body into not releasing insulin and leptin, two hormones your body releases when you're done eating. And unlike regular sugar, HFCS does nothing to dampen ghrelin, whose rising levels demand that your body eat MORE! So, if you eat or drink HFCS, you'll actually continue to consume more calories, even twenty four hours later, then you would had you just eaten plain table sugar. HFCS also increases triglycerides, and high triglycerides prevent leptin from working in the brain, so it can't tell you to stop eating. (This makes me sick, and mad!)
(My favorite part) You've probably seen ads from the Corn Refiners Association, trying to make it seem like people who avoid HFCS are paranoid. Don't buy (into) their crap- and certainly don't eat it! (parentheses are my comments :D) **
Artificial Sweeteners: Researchers at Purdue University found that when animals were fed yogurt with saccharin they later consumed more calories, gained more weight, and put on more body fat than animals that were fed yogurt sweetened with glucose, a natural sugar with the same number of calories.
The theory goes that just as we can have mental and emotional associations with certain tastes, our bodies have caloric associations with sweet tastes.
Normally, when we eat sugar, our body register sweetness and comes to understand that very sweet things means lots of calories. However, when we repeatedly drink diet soda (or anything else with artificial sweeteners), this understanding breaks down- your appetite says, "Okay, here's the sweetness, but there aren't many calories- that must mean I have to eat a lot of sweet things to get my needed calories." The next time your body is given something sweet to eat, your body doesn't recognize how many calories they hold, so you overeat them... (scariest part) As the animals continued to eat the artificial sweeteners, their metabolism started to "forget" that most sweet things do have a lot of calories. Scary!... One more plausible explanation why artificial sweeteners make us fat might be the fact that aspartame, aka NutraSweet, is an excitotoxin, a chemical that may cause permanent damage to our brains appetite center. And the earlier these neural changes begin (giving diet coke to kids) the worse it is. (parentheses my comments) **
People... Start reading labels. Get informed. Just because it's produced and available, doesn't mean we SHOULD or HAVE to eat it!
I am not a Doctor, nutritionist, trainer, or any of the above. Just a loving and concerned mother, who wants the best for her self, children and family! They are the opinions of me. Take them as you will. Research and do what is best for you personally or you and your family.
Good luck on your journey.
Natalie
**Information taken from Master Your Metabolism-by Jillian Michaels
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