STOP IT!

Growing up, you may recall getting a stern "talking to" by people in your life who loved you and wanted the best for you. Their desire was to steer you down the proper path and to discipline you when they saw you straying from it. Ok, because I love you, I must have this serious conversation with you. It may not be easy, but it has to be done. STOP EATING FAST FOOD. STOP IT! JUST. STOP. IT. Fast food, as well as a majority of sit down restaurants, are nutritional suicide. If you want to be healthy, you absolutely have to commit to giving your body what it needs and avoiding (as much as possible) what it does not need. Start your day by giving your body what it craves. Find yourself on the chart below, just using gender & age:

This gives quick and easy guidelines for what you should be fueling your body with each and every day. What? How are you supposed to keep track? PAY ATTENTION TO WHAT YOU EAT. If you are eating food with labels, look at them! DO NOT put food into your body unless you know what is in it. Plain and simple. DO NOT do it. Like I said earlier, never ever eat fast food. The only thing fast about it is how quickly you obtain it and consume it. However, there is nothing fast about what it will take to undo the damage you have done to your body in such a short time with your careless choices. I want to make this blog "real" so I will always be giving suggestions for what works for me. I allow myself to eat as much "God food" as I want. God food is what grows naturally and is unprocessed. God food is fresh fruit, veggies, raw nuts, seeds, water, tea, etc. You get the point. God food includes food that does not require any processing, other than a quick rinse under the faucet. I get as many of these as I want. Anything else I consume, other than one lean protein per day, has to be earned. Earned? Yes. You will be less likely to consume garbage that you do not need once you become more aware of its ingredients and the effects it has on your body.

This is a screenshot from a run I went on last week. Notice that it took roughly two hours and ELEVEN miles to burn 804 calories. ARE YOU BEING SERIOUS? Take a look at what may be a more realistic run for a lot of you:

Two miles = 163 calories. Now....Click on this link and take a glance at the McDonalds Nutritional Chart. Right now we are just looking at calories, but go ahead and glance at sugar & sodium content. This should put things into perspective for you:

http://nutrition.mcdonalds.com/getnutrition/nutritionfacts.pdf

How many items were 163 calories or less? Did you find any? Even if you choose something from their menu that has the least amount of calories, how was it on sodium? How about sugar? Saturated fat? Is it worth it? Run 2 miles and tell me that you want to waste your hard work on garbage. That is the thinking that has turned everything around for me. Today I was sitting in my jeep at a stoplight and observed as people came in and out of a Steak N Shake. I wanted to puke. Everyone was overweight, even the children. It was SO sad. What are we doing? Quit thinking about eating as a way to just fill a void and give yourself a temporary sense of happiness. Quit putting food in your face until you feel sick. A greasy hamburger does NOT fuel your body. French fries do NOT fuel your body. A milkshake/soda does NOT fuel your body. Do you not want to feel better? Put good in and you will get good back. I promise. 

There ARE things that are bad for the body, but good for the soul. For example, pie. I love pie. I love baking pie....I love eating pie. However, I only eat pie when I have earned it. There are days where I will run 5 or 6 miles specifically so I can have it. Sometimes I will get home from the run and decide that the pie I have been craving for an hour is no longer worth jeopardizing what I am working so hard for. Some days I decide that it is. ;) Either way, I have to earn it before I eat it. When you begin to think like this, there is no guilt when you indulge. There is no starving yourself to make up for how you "failed" the day before. (Don't ever do that, by the way. We will talk more about that later.) 

Start today. Be conscious and cautious about what you put into your body. Your stomach is not a garbage can. You deserve better than that. Right? NO. MORE. FAST. FOOD. (Say it.)

(Happy 9th Birthday, Eva Renee. Mommy loves you very much!)