Too much of a good thing?

Do you ask yourself if you can eat as much as you want if it is healthy? Well, yes and no. It all depends on where we are with our health, what "healthy" looks like to you, the time of day and the ingredients that may be disguised as healthy, and even the healthy ingredients.

Some hidden sugars exist in many "healthy" foods that are packaged foods. So we always want to be careful and diligent to read labels on everything we buy, regardless if it is for us to consume or not. It creates a healthy habit and everyone wins who will eat the food we buy.

Some things to look out for that are incognito are maltodextrin (actually is a version of sugar - stay away from), cane sugar - it again is just sugar so can mess with our immune systems, elevate blood sugar levels and wreak havok on our metabolism to name a few.

Even eating as many bananas as you like, even though considered healthy by most, will create an imbalance of sugar load on the system and could be damaging to the delicate balance within the body. This load of sugar, even though natural, creates a situation that the body will secrete a hormone called cortisol as a fight or flight response to deal with an overload of sugar. When the body cannot remove this over-abundance of sugar, it will quickly convert it to fat and store it for a rainy day, no matter how much fat we already have stored.

So what I do is to listen to my body. I eat slowly when I can. My body then has the time to catch up to what it needs. Another way to track is to keep a food journal and not only document the food, also document your mood, how you feel and your level of hunger.

Sometimes it is effective just to be extremely aware of what we are putting into our bodies.

Until next time, live with enhanced health and awareness of what makes you feel energized and alive!

Kimberly