4 Quick Questions To Ask Yourself Before You Eat ANYthing.
Just answer these questions and you'll be eating healthy and feeling great in no time!
Whether you're trying to lose weight, eat healthier, or bring more consciousness to your eating habits, I'd like to offer you this quick questionnaire to help you make choices that are in line with your goals.
The next time you find yourself with a fork in your hand, try to ask yourself the following four questions before that fork makes it to your mouth:
1. Am I hungry?
Seems kinda obvious, but you'd be surprised how often we eat when we don't actually have a hunger for food. Spend an extra few moments checking in with your body to see if it's really FOOD that you're craving. Maybe you're thirsty. Maybe you're bored. Maybe everyone around you is eating. But are YOU hungry?
2. What do I really know about what I am about to eat?
Where did it come from? Who made it? What's in it? Okay, these are more questions, I know - but, sometimes, the more information we have about our food, the easier it is to decide if we really want to ingest it. Does it look fresh? Can you blot the grease? Look at the labels on your food. Can you recognize and describe all of the ingredients listed? If there's anything on there that seems more like a fancy science word than a yummy food word.....maybe you could make a different choice.
3. Is my body going to recognize this food and know what to do with it?
Our bodies have been digesting whole foods since the beginning of time. Our digestive system knows what to do with an apple, a whole grain, spinach, a tomato. The nutrients in whole foods are easily accessible to our bodies - and they flow through our pipes very naturally, so to speak. Chemical preservatives, hydrogenated oils, lab-made 'food stuff'.....not so much. It gums up the works. If it didn't come from the ground or off a tree, your poor body gets a wee confused and bogged down trying to figure out what to do with it. Help it out, won't you?
4. How will I feel physically in about an hour after I eat this?
Can you try to notice how certain foods make you feel after you eat them? Some foods leave you feeling fantastic, energized, light, strong - while other foods leave you feeling foggy, sleepy, heavy and just....gross. And then, of course, we all know about the 'sugar crash', don't we? It always amazes me that we expect and understand that ingesting a drug is going to have an impact on the way we feel....but we don't extend the same understanding to the food we ingest. If you want to get rid of a headache, you know you can take an aspirin. If you want to feel fantastic, energized, light, and strong - you can choose to eat something that naturally creates that response in your body.
I hope this is useful. Please feel free to leave comments and questions! Thanks!
To Your Health!
Coach Nicole