STOP and LISTEN!!

It is probably something you have heard before - "Just do the basics well". Yet we seem to be very adept at making things more complicated than they need to be - we look beyond the mark, find complexity, see obstacles, use excuses and basically find ways NOT to do things as simply as we could...

Perhaps it is part of human nature as the more we complicate things the less inclined we are to do them and that therefore provides us a reason NOT to do anything which ends up being the path of least resistance...

You see simple doesn't necessarily mean easy. In fact to keep things simple and resist the urge to overdo or complicate things is most often quite a bit harder to do. In fact, to simplify is usually to improve.

So what? Well a lot of life is about making things as simple as possible. Lets use nutrition as an example. Do we read and read and read and try and try and try all the latest things out about nutrition and still not get the results we want.

Do I count calories or not, buy free range or hormone free, go vegan or go raw or vegetarian, eat this meat or that meat, drink fruit juice freshly squeezed or eat fruit, do I have this food or drink 30 minutes before or 2 hours after that....... and on and on it goes until we get to the point where things are so complicated you either don't eat anything or you just eat everything!

Keep it simple I say. The simplest way I've found is to listen to what your body tells you. Get really good and knowing yourself and understanding how you are feeling. Sounds a bit weird but hey if I feel like a drink I'll have one, if I'm hungry I'll eat and by the same token if I don't feel hungry I won't eat.

We seem to have gotten so out of touch with what our bodies are trying to tell us that we have ended up eating ourselves senseless - as in no longer able to make sense of or understand what our bodies are telling us.

Simplest thing you can do is STOP and LISTEN! Get to know what that food is doing to you!

Food is SOOOO IMPORTANT!!

Was out visiting another corporate team yesterday introducing the 13 week program for health and wellness that they have just started with us here at FitPro Health Clinics.

Being proactive they have already done plenty of measurements like hip:waist ratio, heart rate, blood pressure and so on for baseline measures. Many of them are looking to improve their health and wellness and most are wanting to lose weight and expecting that I would talk about what exercises were going to help them lose the most weight.

Once I mentioned that nutrition was so important and that abs were actually made in the kitchen not the gym there was lots of discussion from everyone! So many people are confused with all the different theories and advice that is being pushed out there from all manner of sources - GPs, nutritionists, dieticians, friends, weekly magazines, trainers, neighbours and pretty much anyone else you can think of.

Should we eat eggs or not, can we eat cereal, what is the best breakfast to have, when should we eat and how often each day, what is this thing about coconut oil, is sugar bad for you, my doctor says that my cholesterol is high so what can I eat and probably the most often asked questions of "what will I eat if I can't have what I'm eating now?!"

Big food industry has done a great job of making us think like the 'food' they make is the only food we can eat. I was so glad when one of the people there actually brought up about how we should simply eat what our grandparents ate 2 generations ago - SO TRUE! I'm not sure how many people realise that if we did that we would have about 50kg less sugar per year than we currently do! 100 years ago it was 2kg per person whereas today we are consuming about 70k per person each year (that's on average... so some actually have a lot more than that!).

The best advice I would say is to do your best to reduce all processed foods from your diet (diet as in what you eat for life - not the latest fad 'diet') and eat as many good real foods as you can! Good real foods include things that organic meat and veges, a little fruit, some nuts.

Try it for 7 days and see what happens and how you feel - just eat meat, LOTS of vegetables, eggs, a little fruit, and some nuts and see how you feel your body will actually have a chance to absorb some nutrient dense foods and start to build your body with some good building blocks.

You probably have some questions too about nutrition. I'm about to come up with some short answer type information leaflets for the corporate team I'm working with now so if you have a nutrition related question that you are not sure of flick us an email with your question and we will answer them over the next few weeks and even send you a copy of the leaflets we make up..

Have an awesome week eating awesome foods!!