5 Crucial Questions to Always Ask About Your Food; Necessary For Improving Health or Losing Weight

Today’s blog intentions are to help YOU in making food choices simple. I know how difficult it can be to determine whether a food is healthy or not, so I hope this helps make it easier!

First food for thought, we need to stop believing that the food industry has our best interest in mind, because I am sad to say that is far from the truth. The food industry is wrecking our health. The evolution of the food industry is one of the leading attributing factors of the obesity problem we have today. The only interest the food industry has in mind is profit.

Take a look at commercials for example, they are either about fatty foods that wreck our health, processed snacks promising false claims, or commercials about pills that are supposedly a solution to poor health *caused by the food you are eating you saw in the previous commercial. When is the last time you saw a commercial about how to actually boost your immune system, an ad about the healthiest food on the planet, or natural ways to improve our health and well being???

For today's blog, I am giving you 5 QUESTIONS you can ask about the food you eat, so you can feel confident you are making a healthy choice. I hope this helps you become aware of what your food actually is, what's in it, and where it comes from!

The 5 Questions You Need to ask about your food at every meal is as follows:

1. What is the nutritional quality of this food?

2. What are the ingredients?

3. Are these ingredients nutritious and healthful?

4. Where do these ingredients come from?

5. Will this get me closer to my health goal?

When it comes to nutritional quality of food, I do not mean necessarily what carbs, protein, or fat would you get from the food, but more importantly, what vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, phytochemicals, and anti-disease components are in this food? What is the nutritional bang for its buck? What are the beneficial non caloric nutrients compared to the amount of calories?

When it comes to weight loss, I recommend focusing on improving health first, weight loss as a side effect. The key foods to consume are the ones that contain the most amount of nutrients for the least amount of calories. This is what we call nutrient density to calorie density.

The key to any weight loss regimen is to be in a caloric deficit. Well, how do you get into a calorie deficit without sabotaging your health? By eating foods that have a low caloric density with a high nutrient density, such as fruits, vegetables, starches, and legumes. Pictured below is an example of this.

As you can see from the image pictured, you can eat high volumes of foods like fruits and vegetables, potatoes, rice and beans, and this can put you in a caloric deficit just by filling your belly with these foods. This is how you can eat more food and weigh less. Because these foods are so calorically dilute and yet filling.

Regarding the ingredients of the food, this may be the most important part of the nutritional label of a given food. Avoid the nutrition facts which tells you the protein fats and carbs per serving, but look at the ingredients! What are they? Is it a long list of things you can't say? if so, that product is heavily processed and is definitely not health promoting!

Rule of thumb I live by is to shop majority from the produce section, stick to whole foods that do not need a nutrition label, and avoid foods that have a long list of unpronounceable ingredients. If the product contains any additives or non- real-food ingredients, such as natural flavors, monosodium glutamate, fortified or enriched white flour, you should begin to question WHY are these there? If you don't know what an ingredient is or why it is there, put the product back on the shelf and burn some calories as you walk back to the produce isle where you will find all your real, whole, natural plant foods!

The fewer ingredients in your food, the closer to nature the better, the healthier you will be, and the smaller your waist will become.

When it comes to food being healthful, think about these food additives for a minute. Ingredients such as "natural flavors" is used as a marketing scam many times. Food companies can even put on a label "made with real fruit" except with no regulation on a percentage of real food that actually goes in the food. Companies can then create synthetic fruit flavors that make up most of the food, and the food actually contain little to no real fruit juice at all...

Yes, not real fruit, synthetic flavors made in a lab, and this is allowed by our food industry.

These "natural flavors" have NO health benefit. But REAL natural flavors from that red delicious apple though, does.

Food companies add these additives to food for one reason and one reason only, to increase profits, not with nutrition in mind and most definitely not our health in mind. Real nutrients that are beneficial come from our mother earth (not in a lab) and are designed for us to thrive on. The least the food has been altered, processed, or refined, and as close to nature as possible is best.

Most of the food you buy has come from a long journey to the shelf. With that long journey, food companies feel the need to add preservatives to extend shelf life, along with chemicals, growth hormones, antibiotics, pesticides, and fertilizers. Most of this information you will NEVER find on a food label, it takes someone like me who is aware of this information to spread the word and tell you. So do me a favor, do your family and friends a favor, and share this blog post!

Lastly, ask yourself the question, will eating this get me closer to my goals? If not, you know the answer. Choose wisely. If you don't have goals, set some. I once read a quote once that said "If you're through growing, you're through" and that is the truth. You're either growing and progressing, or you're dying. You are either on the success curve or failure curve at all times. It all comes down to the choices you make day in and day out, and what you do consistently over time. Always be asking whether your choices will get you closer to your goals.

I hope this helped you learn something new, and you feel more empowered to make better choices that support you and your health. You deserve to know what is exactly in your food, and how it affects your body and your life! I hope I can encourage you to take back control of your life, and to ask questions about your food.

Eating healthy food does not have to be boring, restrictive, or distasteful, as I would not eat this way if that were the case! I eat delicious foods on the daily, I eat whenever I am hungry, I never restrict myself, and I am always satisfied. It's is the best of all worlds.

If you are sick and tired of struggling, worrying about your health, or feeling bad about yourself, please reach out. I would love nothing more but to help you. I know the tools to lose weight and keep it off for good, all while improving your health and well being.

👉 Don't miss out on the New Year New You 50% Off Special on my Transformation Program and 1:1 Coaching services. Join the program and start your transformation now by clicking HERE!

Please like and share as this blog post as it greatly helps me out, and I want nothing more than to help change the world.

XOXO,

Taylor