Off to a healthy start? Get cooking! Part I
The first rule of self-defense against the damages of unhealthy eating, in today’s world, is swearing off lab engineered foods laden with ungodly chemicals and addictive sugars. The second rule is to, well, engineer our own, by deciding exactly what goes into a dish and what stays out.
Do I think it’s all about repudiating certain known offenders such as sugar and additives and finally using the fancy tools in your kitchen drawers? For the most part, yes, but it can be baffling to plan and prepare your own meals if you don’t yet have a nutrition design in place, or simply put, you don’t quite know how to choose and combine ingredients, not to mention time your cooking and feeding in such a way that you can successfully manage your weight and your health.
To easily start a doable home-cooking career, trust your gut - literally. And since your gut goes from your mouth to your butt and works in solid partnership with your brain, that entails paying attention to three bodily functions:
Taste. Choose the healthy recipes that appeal to you, the ones that include wholesome ingredients you recognize and like. Attempting a feeding strategy based on foods touted for their health benefits but that wrestle with your tastebuds spells nutrition havoc. That is not to say you shouldn’t venture to try new vegetables and new protein sources, just ease into the transition by opting for what you know first. Hold off on exceedingly avant-garde recipes that trumpet hyper-functional foods (you must learn to walk before you can run, right?).
Digestion. Assess how you feel overall after eating certain foods and/or certain combinations thereof. Your gut talks to you, it grumbles, kicks and goes on strike if forced to deal with intruders. Keep in mind there are stealth intolerances to certain foods that will require life-long adjustments, as well as temporary ones that may resolve through progressive adjustments (more on that in this reading room).
Emotions. A feeding regimen you can stick to is not a makeshift intervention, it is yours to manage, you need to own it. Which brings me back to point n.1: when food tastes good, your taste receptors send important signals to your brain that contribute to your emotional well-being, and in turn, feeling good greatly improves your odds of staying on track. But taste is not the only thing that regulates the brain-gut axis, there are several other factors that inform that relationship, namely your gut’s microbiome, a community of bacteria lodged in your gut that gives the brain an awful lot of instructions. Did you know, for instance, that certain types of microbes instruct your brain to make dopamine (the pleasure chemical you release when your mouth ‘waters’), whereas others tell your brain to make you crave lots of sugar?
On a final note for this first cooking strategy bulletin, always pick vibrant, live foods that brighten up your kitchen counter, and remember that when it comes to fruits and vegetables, each color of the spectrum is code for a much needed nutrient.
If you don’t control what goes into your food, somebody else will at your own expense, so get cooking - it gets easier and easier, I promise.
[Author: Ursula Avella]