“It Starts with Food” - Dallas Hartwig and Melissa Hartwig is another amazing book which I read in 2019 and changed my life for good.
I was reading a book called “Soulful Simplicity” by Courtney Carver. In one of the chapters she called out a program called Whole30 on how it helped her.
It created a curiosity in me to check out the program. Immediately, I felt that it would also help me to understand about food and on how to eat healthy food.
We often try some form of diet and it helps us to reduce weight, but after we stop the program, we may again start increasing the weight. This is mainly because we are not aware of food and how it affects our body.
This abstract will help us to understand about food, and foods which we should avoid and foods we should eat. It will also provide the benefits like weight reduction, positive mindset and other major health benefits.
Finally, I have provided the Healthy Meal formula for each meal based upon my understanding. I think this might help us to create every meal.
This book can be splitted into Four parts,
1. Good Food Standards : This will talk about how food make us less healthy and more healthy and its framework.
2. Less Healthy : This part will talk about the food which we should avoid.
3. More Healthy : Again, this part will talk about the food which we should eat and its benefits.
4. Meal Plan : How to design every meal which we eat.
“The food which you eat will make you either healthy or it will make you less healthy”.
This framework started with the paleo diet, if you are not aware of paleo diet, it is a diet which will take us to how humans ate food before agricultural.
The objective of any good food is to
1. Promote a healthy psychological response.
2. Promote a healthy hormonal response.
3. Support healthy gut.
4. Support immune function and minimize inflammation.
But every advertisement which promotes food will try to make us crave. Their main objective for them is to sell us more food.
Promote a healthy psychological response:
If we eat a healthy food, our brain will send a signal saying “I’m almost full“ by which we will automatically stop eating. But when we eat processed foods like chips, our brain will not send us correctly, because processed foods are designed to fool our brain.
These biological signals lead us to overeat sweet, fatty, salty foods while keeping us malnourished. Chronic consumption of these foods does not just affect our taste buds, our perceptions, and our waistlines. Over time, they literally rewire our brains.
Promote a healthy hormonal response:
Hormones are chemical messengers that are usually transported in our bloodstream. They are secreted by cells in one part of the body and bind the receptors in another part of the body. Their main objective is keeping our body in balance.
The key hormones which play a major part are Insulin, Leptin, Glucagon and cortisol.
You can stop overconsumption and dial all the way back to insulin and leptin sensitivity, retrain our body to burn fat and restore cortisol levels.
Support healthy gut:
The purpose of the Gut is to absorb nutrients from food, but it is also a critical part of immune system. We should consume foods, that support normal healthy digestive system, eating anything other than that will affect the integrity of our health.
Our body is home to trillions of bacteria and most of them are in the gut. These are considered good bacteria as it helps in digestion and immunity.
Support immune function and minimize inflammation:
When we talk “support immune function” we mean that our food choices should result in a well-rested, highly effective defense system. In other words, food should not cause excessive ongoing immune activity, also known as systemic inflammation.
Certain foods sneak past our gut’s defense system and create immune chaos.
Now let’s talk about the foods which we should avoid.
Any food that does not promote the above 4 objectives should be avoided.
Sugar, Sweeteners and Alcohol:
Let’s see how it affects it affects,
Healthy Psychological Response : These foods light up pleasure, reward and offer super normally stimulating flavors without providing any nutrition the intended.
Healthy Hormonal Response: These foods disrupt our normal hormonal balance, promoting leptin resistance, insulin resistance and elevating cortisol levels.
Support Healthy Gut: These foods directly affect our gut by letting foreign substances get inside the body.
Support Immune and minimize Inflammation : Any food that fails the third test will be defaulted to fail in fourth. As these foods will lead to the development of systemic inflammatory symptoms.
Seed Oils:
Industrial seed oils or vegetable oils are extracted from the seeds of various plants.
Let’s see why it is considered bad,
Oxidation: As these oils interact with the external stresses like air, light and heat. It will expose them with oxygen and can cause molecules to react with oxygen and creates an oxidation process.
Too much Omega 6: Consuming seed oils with high levels of Omega 6 will promote systemic inflammation.
Common oils to avoid: Canola, chia, corn, cottonseed, flax, grapeseed, hemp, palm kernel, peanut, rice barn, safflower, sesame, soybean, sunflower.
Legumes and Grain:
This is the product which came as part of the Agricultural revolution, As the humans started to settle down 10,000 years ago. They needed food to feed lot of people every day, due to which they started mass produce foods very cheaply which can be stored and consumed over a long period of time.
There is not a single health promoting substance present in grains that you can’t also get from fruits and vegetables.
But we have been told that we will get the necessary fiber only from these, but we have forgotten that there are lot so fiber in fruits and vegetables.
Dairy:
Cow milk is the perfect food, if you are calf. Likewise, human breast milk is the optimal food when you are an infant.
Milk is an excellent source of energy and building blocks to rapidly grow mammals that are too young to eat adult food.
But when children are growing, they no longer develop at the same aggressive rate as infants. Once they are weaned from breast milk, it simply does not make sense to keep giving the growth hormonal food which we initially gave them as infants.
But we often take milk as it a good source of calcium, but there are other non-dairy nutrient dense foods which have more calcium than milk, such as Kale, spinach, meat, seafood, nuts.
Once study compared the absorption of calcium from Kale and Milk and found that kale is a clear winner.
Now, let’s see what are the foods which will meet all four standards,
Meat, Seafood and Eggs.
The first category of goods that will make you healthier includes meat, sea food and eggs. All these foods are very dense protein without any of the downsides of the vegetarian proteins.
Protein are necessary building block for growth and repair of skin, hair , tendons and muscles, it also helps us to recover from general activity and exercise and is used to produce hormones, enzymes, neurotransmitters and antibodies.
Upon digestion, complete proteins send signals to you brain that tell you to stop eating, as you are full and well nourished. Eating meals and snacks that include moderate servings of protein will help us to consume less, effectively maintain body weight.
Animal protein sources includes Meat, seafood, eggs, organ meats and bones.
As always try to buy organic and pasture raised.
Vegetables and Fruits:
Vegetables are the best way to include carbs in your meal. Carbs is a great way to get all your energy you need in a micronutrient dense package.
In addition, vegetables are distinctly anti-inflammatory which will help us to fight against cancer, stroke, systemic inflammation.
Eating wide range of vegetables daily will ensure a wide range of micronutrients intake every day.
Like vegetables, fruits are a carbohydrate source loaded with vitamins , minerals and fiber.
In addition, fruits provide taste buds with natural sweetness in a much healthier form than the supernormal sweetness of candy, cookies or cake.
Eat all the fruits and vegetables and opt for the Organic variants of these.
The Right Fats:
Fats are the excellent source of energy, and our goal is making our body more efficient at using fats for fuel( from our diet and fat stores).
Fat is also critical to many metabolic processes and ensuring our diet includes healthy fats means we are getting the right build blocks for our vital organs, cells and hormones.
Good Source for Monosaturated Fats includes, Avocado oil, Olive oil, Hazelnuts, Olive, Avocado, Macadamia nuts.
Good Source for Animal Fats includes Clarified butter, Ghee, Duck fat, Goat fat, Pig fat, Beef fat.
Good Source of MCTs(medium chain triglycerides) includes coconut oil, coconut milk, coconut and coconut butter.
Good Source of Polysaturated fats includes nuts and seeds. Best choice for nuts includes Cashews, Hazelnuts and Macadamia.
This would be last part where we talk about how much of each food is required for every meal.
Our body knows how much we should be eating than any calculator
Your meal should consist of all the food which we talked about
Animal Protein + Vegetables + Fruits + Healthy Fat = Healthy Meal
Animal Protein – 60%
Vegetables – 30%
Fruits - 5%
Healthy Fat – 5%
This book helped me to better understand about food and how it affects our body. It also helped me to buy healthy food for my family including kids.
Another positive outcome which I saw was, I reduced close to 20 pounds and feeling lighter. To me this would help anyone who wants to eat healthier food and take care of body.
As old saying goes, our mind and body should function in sync to create a better version of us each day. This book translated me to take care of my body and it might help others as well.
I hope my learning would help someone who is reading this.
Thanks for reading!!!