As we move to talking more about food

I feel I should share some background on my thoughts on food.

1) I believe food is the most powerful medicine we have. It has the potential to either nourish your body, do nothing, or weaken it. If you get all the right stuff, you'll nourish, if you put junk in, you'll weaken it. It's that simple. It also controls the gene expression in your body (epigenetics--we'll talk more about this in the future). It can heal your body (we'll talk a a lot more about endothelial cells in your blood vessels, but not tonight).

2) I believe we haven't figured out EVERYTHING that is good for us and bad for us. I also believe that as we understand our own genetic make up better we'll understand what we should and shouldn't eat specifically (there are folks trying to figure this out, now). I believe we're a long way from there and I do believe certain unequivocal truths about food for everyone...

Greens are wonderful for the body
Fiber is just as important as greens and it's best when you can get it from the whole food, not as a supplement
Sugar is bad (probably less bad for some people, but it's still in the not good category)
Sugar is less bad when you eat it in the form nature packaged it (once again, whole food)
And two "rules" to carry with you:
You should be able to pronounce all the ingredients in a food you eat!
Eat when you are hungry, not just because the clock say it's time, or for comfort.

I'm not sure where I fall in regards to classifying fat. Obviously, a little is necessary for health, but what is the right amount? And, given how many changes the body goes through in life (like pregnancy, or being a growing kid with a crazy-fast developing brain), what is the right amount of fat for a given person at a particular point in time? I tend to eat quite a bit of fat, but I also work out like crazy. Am I eating too much fat? I'll be thinking more about this as I blog. A lot of people I really respect think the amount of fat consumed should be around 10-15% of daily calories. I easily eat double or triple that amount.

Some other questions I have are at the intersection of exercise and food. Food is the fuel, and exercise keeps your body moving well, so how do they relate? Does exercise change your food requirements? Can exercise mitigate some of the effects of bad food? For example, if you run a marathon can you eat more sugar/carbs around the time you're running a lot without the bad effects? Should you? What about exercise and fat intake? And, of course, a lot of people, including myself, want to understand how exercise affects how much protein you need.

So many questions and so little in the way of answers!

So what do I eat? I eat mostly plants, and mostly green ones; I try for 2-3 servings of green veggies 4-6 times a day. I ALWAYS eat 2-3 servings 2 times a day, and usually it's 3 times a day; working towards eating greens 4-6 times a day is tough! For meat, I eat salmon and eggs. That's it. I don't take in any dairy. I'll talk more about my decisions and why in the future. In the past, I posted a little about eating plant based + salmon and eggs, but I will be revisiting my decision and continuing to think about what will make me feel and be the most healthy and in balance.

I'm going to make it a goal to post at least once a week on food, but we'll see. I do all of this to be as healthy as possible for my family. I watched my Dad suffer from the effects of Type 2 Diabetes and I am currently watching my Mom take a lot of medicines to keep her going (cholesterol medicine, blood pressure medicine, medicine for either bone cancer or osteoporosis) while also watching osteoporosis make her shorter and shorter. I feel she's not dying, but rather, shrinking away; it's very sad. While I realize that death is inevitable--life is fatal--I hope that I can live a vibrant life by eating right and exercising. I hope I'm still doing Zumba at 99.

I leave you with a post on another blog; take a look at and think about what you could never do for you and your family.
ttp://www.diseaseproof.com/archives/inspiration-i-could-never-do-that.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+DiseaseProof+%28Disease+Proof%29