How eating can kill you...

Robert Dickens

Elite Personal Trainer

The other day I saw a Facebook post where someone was saying they are fed up of their diet and want to get back to “real” eating. Their “diet” was nothing but eating healthy! Carbs, good proteins, fruits and vegetables.

I thought to myself, isn’t it funny how people classify healthy eating as out of the norm and as a “diet” and to them, proper eating is take-outs, junk and over-eating.

All this reminded me of a couple who were my clients a few years back.

This couple were all about take outs every night, fizzy drinks, sweets and pastry every day and basically not eating that well. To them, their diet was healthy. Their justification was that their take-out was Sushi, their pastry was gluten-free and their fizzy drinks were Burdock root and energy drinks! They also lived on tea and coffee.

I remember I slowly got them off the above and got them on to a good daily diet of home-cooked carbs, proteins and vegetables. The biggest challenge for them was to get the restaurant and take-out mentality out of their head. They just didn’t associate take-outs with bad diets and health risks.

This couple carried on the healthy eating without any slip ups for a good six months. Then one weekend, they decided to go back to their old habits. What they saw was an eye opener for them. Their new healthy body quite literally told them that they are poisoning themselves. Here are some of the symptoms they experienced literally overnight from going back to their old ways:

• Palpitations from coffee, insomnia and being unable to sleep.
• Total dehydration at night due to the excess salt in take-outs even the seemingly healthy Sushi dishes.
• High blood pressure and tightness of the chest.
• Excess acid and the feeling of having over-eaten.
• Skin eruptions.
• Craving sugars and sweets and subsequently feeling tired after the ten minute sugar rush dies down!

Many of you may be used to eating in an unhealthy way and see it as a way of life and seeing anything which is even slightly more normal as “dieting”. This is really just a state of mind and you CAN change it and you MUST change it if you want to have a long and healthy life with no ailments.

Start today with a few simple steps:

• Don’t eat take away or restaurant food more than once a week.
• Don’t drink fizzy drinks. Drink water.
• Cut down tea and coffee to once a day, ideally in the morning.
• Eat sweets and pastry once a week as a treat. No more.
• Make sure your plate at every meal has around 60% good carbohydrates (pasta, potatoes, rice, bread) and 30-40% good proteins (lean meats, fish, eggs, low fat dairy).
• Eat your 5 a day of fruits and vegetables.
• Eat some seeds and nuts when hungry: pumpkin, sesame, walnuts, almonds etc.

See healthy eating as a new way of life that will change your body and help you live longer. Eating can poison you but it can also heal you. Make the right choices.