Obesity epidemic | Fitness is Sweet

Hey guys! I must admit, this post is going to have a much different tone than I initially anticipated. I thought I’d be more or less dead right now, but I actually feel great. Last night, I got the least amount of sleep I’ve ever gotten since coming to college, and maybe since ever. My day was crazy busy so I was up super late doing a lab report. At least super late by my standards-I will never pull an all nighter! I got a whole 3 hours of sleep. The good news? At this point my week is more or less over so I can just sleep. For the record, I attribute my current energy level not to my new eating habits but rather to a miracle. But I’ll definitely talk about the eating habits as well!

Last night I went to weight lifting, but since my knee isn’t 100%, I couldn’t go into nearly full squats. Apparently to going into full squats puts a ton of strain on your hamstrings because mine are smoked today!

Let’s first go over Wednesday’s food. Wednesdays are traditionally where my healthy eating breaks down, and my habits did see some changes.

Pre-run energy bites. Slightly bland, but super convenient and do the job perfectly! I checked out the macronutrient distribution, and it was just where I wanted it for pre-workout.

Overnight oats made with plain yogurt and milk, chia seeds, coconut, and extra thick rolled oats. This was super thick! And I may have been a little heavy handed on the vanilla…topped with berry compote! Which we desperately need to make more of…

Plus an orange.

Same old, same old for lunch, but I don’t seem to get tired of it! Although I’m thinking of mixing it up next week…quinoa fried rice? Also, Christine’s Garlic Balsamic Brussels Sprouts are one of my favorite things ever.

After class yesterday, I stocked up on bananas. This was the best sight ever.

Yesterday was a little weird because I had literally zero time for dinner, so I had several snacks.

A beautiful blood orange, banana with sunflower seed butter and unsweetened chocolate, plus some seaweed salad. The seaweed salad probably had a little sugar in it-that was definitely not the best judgement on my part, but I’m still alive. Dried mango. The bowl of yogurt, bananas, and sunflower seed butter was after a sorority event that ended late-I was starving! At the event, I faced my first real temptation-homemade cookies and toppings.

Here’s “dinner” after weights, eating while racing between events: a cold turkey burger.

These burgers are THAT good that I eat them cold, in a plastic bag, and still love them.

One thing about eating real foods is that all the thought has been taken out of it-I just listen to my body without even thinking. Yesterday, I had quite a few different snacks throughout the day, but I didn’t think twice about them and just ate what I was craving, and it did the job perfectly. When I was up really late doing work, it didn’t even occur to me to eat food to help me stay up, which is something I definitely would have done in the past.

This morning, coffee was absolutely necessary. I actually woke up for spin this morning. Whether or not that was a good decision, I don’t know. My 3am logic isn’t always sound, but 45 minutes didn’t seem like it would make that much of a difference sleep wise, but spin would definitely energize me and help me wake up.

This was by far the best one in a long time!

One thing about food prep-it makes things so easy when you’re a zombie. Leftover overnight oats and berries were just sitting waiting for me.

I’m to sure what it is about Tuesdays and Thursdays, but for some reason despite the fact I have earlier and more class, I’m much more awake. I knew I’d probably be ok in Nutrition, and if I made it through Chem I’d be ok because I’d be active and moving around in lab in the afternoon. I was surprisingly fine in chem-I think it helps to have someone to sit next to and crack jokes with to keep me awake!

Here was lunch-cumin roasted cauliflower was the veggie of the day!

I’ll write up the rest of my food a little later, but I want to talk about some things I’ve been noticing.

It’s been less than 4 days. But I’m seeing changes. Real, noticeable changes. I look leaner and healthier, and it’s not my imagination-my barista even noticed! I think a lot of this has to do with cutting out sugar-my body isn’t holding on to so much junk. I’ve been feeling great-I haven’t had a single stomachache, something that seemed to happen everyday (which I always thought was sugar related).

I feel enlightened. And I’m so happy I have a blog to share this with the world. It’s been 4 days. FOUR DAYS. That’s it! And yet, I look at 4 days ago Aurora and feel like I’m looking at a different person-I feel like my metabolism was so screwed up. And that was me-a relatively healthy American. Our whole country’s metabolisms are messed up! And I believe that now more than ever. Eating has just been so easy for me these past few days. I eat when I’m hungry, I eat what I crave, which is whole foods. I had some baby sugar cravings after the 2 pieces of mango, but nothing serious. It’s just so amazing to me.

One difference between this project and other dietary changes I’ve tried to make in the past is that I don’t feel restricted. I’ve tried both Paleo and Whole30, and I really missed certain foods with that. Now? I love the food I’m eating! I can eat whatever I want and feel great! It’s wonderful!

(Just taken selfie-do I look different?? Haha)

While I feel amazing now and I want to help everyone in the country realize this, I understand something else. Over the last year, my eating habits slipped a bit, but now I’m finally starting to feel like myself again. I thought-“this is amazing, I wish I had done this months ago!”

But here’s the thing. Months ago, I wasn’t ready. To completely overhaul your diet, to change the way you think, to change the way you express emotions (because who hasn’t celebrated with food?), you have to be ready. And you have to be inspired. This isn’t just about me. This is about proving that for optimal health, you just need to eat real food, no crazy diets. And that anyone can do it. I mean heck, I’m in college, with limited time and limited kitchen access, as well as temptations around every corner. But I’m doing it, and I’m feeling great, and I’m changing, both in body and mind. And that’s just after 4 days.

I’ve said it before-I feel enlightened. I feel like I understand cravings and metabolism and the problems with our country much better now. (But there’s also the possibility that I’m sleep deprived and delirious…) Food has always been a struggle for me-this is unhealthy, this tastes like cardboard but is good for me, this is unhealthy but I’m going to eat it anyways, even though it’s not that great and I’m not hungry. Sound familiar? I’m realizing how many places in my life I would have normally reached for something sweet, but now I just don’t. And I’m still alive. I don’t miss it-although I’m excited for my one dessert this weekend! Food is just so easy. No stress. No anxiety. I just eat. And my food is delicious and I enjoy it-but that’s that-no guilt, no gross feelings, no seconds/third/fourths, no afterthoughts.

And that’s how it should be.

I wish I could properly express to the world how night and day I’ve felt. I want to get the blood sugar tests done this weekend as well so I have some harder facts than the rainbows and butterflies I’m currently spurting out my mouth.

I wish this project could inspire people to try what I’m doing-cutting the fake processed junk out. Now more than ever I believe this is the problem and the root of the obesity epidemic. I just wish I could make people see.

Before I get into the topic of today’s post, I’m going to go through my day really quickly! I began the morning by training the other half of the Quidditch team. The movements were a little more unnatural for this group, but their form improved so much by the end! I can’t wait to see how they do the next time we do this workout!

I got paid in green juice.

I believe it was pineapple-apple-kale? In terms of green juice, I love anything with kale and pineapple! And this was made fresh this morning!

I also requested the pulp.

All the fiber and other good stuff is there! I had visions of stirring it into my oatmeal, but it was a lot blander than I was expecting. And my oatmeal was already really thick so I couldn’t bring myself to do it.

Immediately after training, I did another run through of my Spin audition playlist. I feel really confident about it-I love the playlist, which is exactly how I need to feel about it! I’m in the process of arranging a live run through-as in I gather a whole bunch of people and practice with them as students. I left my workout feeling energized and happy.

My hunger was kind of strange today-it’s weird for me waking up early to train people and not going straight into a workout, so my eating routine for the whole day was kind of thrown off.

I still got some good stuff in there though!

Chicken, mashed sweet potatoes, and roasted carrots.

For snack a little later, I had a Quest bar, which may not have been the best decision for me. From all of yesterday’s Olympic lifting, my legs were aching a bit and protein seemed like a solid idea though.

The problem was that I really didn’t like the aftertaste of the bar and had to eat a date afterwards to cleanse my palate, plus my stomach starting hurting a little later. Not sure why I eat a food that I know doesn’t always work for me!

I thought about going to yoga, but then got wrapped up in other things instead. I had a dining hall dinner of a burrito bowl with mahi mahi.

I think one of the things I don’t prefer about this bowl is that the only seasoning really seems to be citrus. I would love some more spices up in there!

Today I also had a fair amount of sugar, in the form of chocolate and cookies and hall meeting. But such is life. It’s interesting to feel the changes in my body when I eat it though!

Onto today’s topic.

Has anyone thought about the fact that so few bloggers write about obesity? Most talk about reasonably healthy (comparatively) people getting healthier. Which is great-don’t get me wrong! And maybe those people are more the audience of healthy living blogs anyways, but it seems a bit like an elephant in the room to not discuss the obesity epidemic. I’m not even going to get into the percentages in this post, because they can be looked up and are constantly changing.

Today, I cracked open this cookbook, written by one of my favorite people ever, Robert Lustig, a scientist and doctor who looks at obesity, especially in children.

I’ve talked about Robert Lustig before in the context of sugar metabolism, but this book goes a little deeper into more recent possible causes of obesity.

One of the first pages in the book directed me to this video-if you have a few minutes, it’s really interesting, and kind of mind blowing, in my opinion:

This is a TED talk addressing insulin resistance and obesity, as well as the stigma we as a society put on obese people. What was really interesting to me was when Peter Attia discusses how maybe obesity does not cause insulin resistance, but rather, obesity is a side effect of insulin resistance. It is a sign of metabolic disfunction. The hormone insulin removes sugar from the blood and stores it as fat. High levels of insulin will as a result cause more fat storage. No one could ever really figure out why obesity would lead to insulin resistance, but the other way around? It makes so much sense!

Now back to the book-where has insulin resistance come from? It’s not calories in, calories out. It is so much more than that. It’s not just about weight-some obese people do not have insulin resistance, and some normal weight people do, and are at risk for the related diseases. Listen to this: “the majority of the people today, regardless of weight, produce twice as much insulin for the same dose of glucose as people produced 30 years ago.”

Think about that for a second.

That means, MOST people are storing more fat for the calories they are eating than did people 30 years ago.

Think back to 30 years ago-think of movies. Everyone was much slimmer back then. And there wasn’t a significant shortage of food then-food isn’t really more available now.

Things like this make me angry. So angry. Our food system is toxic. In a day and age where we strive for advances that make our lives easier, we pollute our food system in a way that makes eating truly healthfully nearly impossible. (I understand that my readers may disagree with me on this point, but keep in mind, I’m speaking of the general population, which tends to lack knowledge about eating healthfully-clearly healthy living bloggers will have this a bit more figured out!)

THIS is what I want to do with my life-I want to cure the obesity epidemic. I want to uncover ever underlying cause, and help work out a solution.

But it’s not just the obese. Take me for example. I’m a pretty healthy person. I’m extremely active, I eat my veggies, I try to balance my meals. But I still crave sugar and overeat it and feel awful. I still have plenty of days where I’m dragging. I still sometimes struggle to eat healthily. I’m sure my liver isn’t happy with me for the sugar in all the cookies I ate.

How messed up is my metabolism? I’m willing to bet it’s not running as nicely as it could and or should be. And I’m a relatively healthy person.

I’m not through the book yet, and I’m still working on figuring out the toxins that are contributing to metabolic dysfunction, but what I do have to tell you guys is that I’ve been inspired, and am planning a big blog project for the near future. As a blogger, I have a voice in the community, albeit a small one. I have an opportunity to make a difference in a few people’s lives, if I take it.

I’m going to wait until everything is better planned out to give you guys all the details, but I’ll just say that I’m going to spend some time really analyzing what happens to food in our bodies as we eat. I am not going to promote any type of ‘diet’-but I will ask you to consider this: how many of you are constantly trying to lose those last few pounds? Or know someone that is? I’m willing to bet most people.

Consider this-if we store more fat per glucose now than we did in the past, of course we’re going to carry extra pounds. We’re going to work on fixing the problem of the American metabolism.

(But I promise there will be plenty of ‘normal’ blogging as well!)

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