How to eat to win & Food Sequencing
So you have learned there is no perfect, one-size-fits-all diet for everyone. And why the perfect diet for you is one that takes into account everything from your physical make up, sleep, stress, lifestyle demands, internal health and external environment. And is restrictive but doesn’t feel restrictive to you… making it sustainable.
As you have learned there are a number of practices, protocols and principles that you should implement into every one of your days. These will pay dividends in your results, energy and focus.
Nothing will effect how you think, feel, look and your overall quality of life more than your nutrition.
For most people, I believe that if you are dialing in everything you have learned from me five to six days a week, you can give yourself a little grace on refeed day and maybe even one other time during the week should something pop up. Any days you plan to deviate from your new way of eating and looking at food — I recommend you exercise or get extra movement in on that day, along with the recommendations below and in the previous section.
Did you know… Overeating is much more likely to take place when we consume immunogenic and or allergenic foods early in the day. Why? Because it initiates a roller coaster effect, through spikes and dips in your blood sugar levels and immune response, that make us even hungrier and cause our cravings to be even stronger. Crazy right?!
Here’s how it works:
You eat processed food containing carbohydrates (sugar)
Your blood sugar goes up
Your body releases insulin to shuttle that sugar into your cells to be used as energy
For most people your body will release too much insulin, causing an added DROP in blood glucose levels and the inability to make good food choices
Your body is super smart and in order to bring glucose levels back to normal it will increase hunger and cravings for more sugar
So you eat more – usually junk food because they give your brain and warm fuzzy shot of feel good neurotransmitters as soon as they hit your tongue.
This viscous cycle has a tendency to continue until we either: eat ourselves into a coma or go to bed for the night. When we sleep, our Leptin hormone resets. This is why we generally don’t wake hungry.
So, if you know eating off plan might be eminent — try postpone the cheat meal or dietary deviation for as long as possible, as this shortens the window available for you to make bad choices and allows you to start the next day with a clean slate. Stay busy, keep your mind focused on your goals, increase movement and limit deviations as much as possible.
How I recommend you eat to win;
First make 50+% of the food you consume come from plants. This includes green vegetables, berries, herbs and seasonings, nuts, seeds, cacao and anything else that comes from a plant but is non starchy.
Your healthy fats will come from real butter, dairy, red meat, coconut oil, avocado oil, and extra virgin olive oil (don't cook with EVOO).
You want your vegetables lightly dressed in some healthy fats to enhance nutrient absorption. If you struggle with digestive problems like gas, bloating, constipation or diarrhea, you will probably respond better to cooking your vegetables and taking digestive enzymes with a salad if you notice issues there also.
When it comes to fruits, your focus should be on those that are nutrient dense, low glycemic and organic. When in maintenance mode you can play around with some other fruits. ALWAYS avoid dried fruit!
Consume the carbs I have approved. Remember if you don’t consume adequate carbs proportionate to your calorie expenditure over the week, you can down regulate your thyroid hormones, create a catabolic (muscle wasting) internal environment, kill your sex drive, make your moody and screw up your digestion. * Most people who start a new health journey, avoid all carbs and in doing so, deprive the good gut bacteria in their gut of the beneficial fiber it needs to thrive.
The remainder of your nutrition should come from clean animal products. *Get organic etc WHERE possible, if not DON’T stress.
Include Fairy dust and SIRTfoods into your meals daily!
By basing 50+% of your food around plants, we lower your exposure to systemic inflammation, metabolic diseases, heart disease, cancer and diabetes. And increase your water intake, along with fiber to feed those good bacteria that you have learned so much about.
FOOD SEQUENCING
This section is a little smaller but I guess the information is new to most of you. Not many people talk about the importance of eating foods/macros in certain order and ‘why’.
Different foods have different digestion times. The easiest way to optimise our digestion process though, is to eat the food in the right order. This is called “sequential eating”.
This means that we eat and finish one food at a time, before going to the next one. Our digestion system works in a “strata” formation, meaning each type of food is digested in the order in which it is eaten. Food does not co-mingle in our stomach unless it is eaten mixed up. When we eat one food at a time, the food remains layered in our stomach, and it is then digested one layer at a time.
It is not so easy to give up our eating habits, but just giving sequential eating a try for even one week, might surprise you and improve digestion, increase your body’s ability to absorb more nutrients and will result in an overall good feeling.
In addition, it is believed that one of the main benefits of sequential eating is weight loss.
For a few reasons;
If each mouthful of food, we are usually eating, consist of different foods and gets mixed up in your stomach, our appetite is constantly stimulated. This leads automatically to the consumption of more food than needed, to meet our bodies’ requirements. With sequential eating, we can lose weight because we eat less.
When we eat our protein first we stimulate gastric juices in our stomach which causes us to digest our food better and feel more satiated.
According to a study from the American food journal, eating your protein first helps controls blood sugar and helps you metabolize carbs better.
How to do it;
Below listed are the simple guidelines for sequential eating during lunch or dinner.
Do not drink during your meal. Most beverages will dilute and wash away the enzymes needed for proper digestion.
Start your meal with the most watery food and end it with the least watery. So this would be soup first and starch/carbs last.
Next would be your salad or green vegetables and fat.
If you like acidic fruits, eat them after the raw vegetables but before you eat any cooked foods containing starch or protein. This will help bump gastric juice's (stomach acids) and enzymes again.
Then protein. *I know the studies above say eat protein first - this is a yes if you have lots of digestive issues - especially low stomach acid and gallbladder issues. But if not, eating fiber first slows down digestion and blood sugars/post prandial glucose.
And lastly your carbs or starches or sugar.
Sequential eating is not difficult to put into practice. It is a first step to an easier food digestion process. It is directly related to the principles of proper “food combining”. But… before you panic and say “what if I’m eating a sandwhich” or “what if Im’m eating a rice or sweet potato bowl”??
These are just guide lines that you can remember or use when possible, like if you are having a meal that is more the traditional meat, starch and veg layout. It’s just another tool for you to implement when you can or like. Otherwise, please do not attach too much stress to it.
NOTE; I do practice this though – as much as I can and on refeed day to help with the blood sugar impact.