Top Three Foods To Change Immediately

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There is so much diet dogma out there today - ketogenic, Mediterranean diet, fasting, whole30, and on and on! It’s so hard to know where to start when we are hit with so much information ALL THE TIME!

With so much information, how do you know where to start? Let’s redesign your health and look at some simple changes you can make to get started. I always recommend three basic changes to your nutrition to start out with: Change Your Meat, Change Your Fats, and Ditch Refined Sugars.

Change Your Meat

Red meat, poultry, and seafood are all excellent sources of protein for your body. Your body uses proteins as building blocks to produce hormones, to fight infections, and to run all reactions that occur in your cells.

You may eat most or all of these types, so what is the problem? It’s all about how that animal that you are eating lived its life. At the most basic level, we need to take in food, break it down, and use it as building blocks to build what we need for our bodies. You need to eat the highest quality food for your cells to be built optimally - just like you would build a house out of lumber, not rotten wood. So, shouldn’t the animal that you are eating be treated the same way? YES!

Sadly, the way in which our cattle, poultry, and seafood are raised is VERY far away from what those animals need to build their best bodies. Not only are they fed poor diets, but they are often injected with hormones and raised in very poor living conditions.

So what should you be looking for when purchasing meat?

  • For red meat, you want to look for grass-fed and pasture raised cattle.
  • For poultry and eggs, try to purchase pasture-raised poultry.
  • For seafood, you preferably want to find wild-caught varieties.

One of the best places to find the best sources of meat is your local farmers market where you can actually talk to the farmer that raised these animals! Don’t be afraid to ask them questions.

Change Your Fats

Fats are probably the most misunderstood of all macronutrients. Fats are a source of slow burn energy. They make up hormones, help certain vitamins to be absorbed, and make up our cell membranes (coverings).

During the latter half of the 20th century, poorly designed experiments and Big Food money led us astray from healthy fats. Instead, we have moved to inflammatory fats that have wreaked havoc on our bodies. Inflammatory and anti-inflammatory chemicals must be properly balanced for optimal organ function. When these scales tip more towards chronic inflammation, we end up with a variety of chronic diseases like diabetes, obesity, heart disease, etc.

The most inflammatory fats in the body are “Franken Fats” - healthy fats that have been corrupted, which end up being toxic to the body. Franken Fats include hydrogenated and partially hydrogenated fats (i.e. shortening), highly processed vegetable oils, and trans fats. I can’t stress enough how you need to go to your pantry right now and throw all of these out!

Remember that we need to keep our inflammatory response balanced AND we need our building blocks to be optimal. So, what are some healthy fats that we can transition to? For our best biological performance, we need a combination of different types of fats - examples include animal fats (like butter, eggs, tallow), coconut oil, olive oil, and avocado. Don’t forget as you include animal fats, the source of the animal is just as important as in the Change Your Meat section!

Ditch Refined Sugar

Can you guess what we replaced healthy fats in the latter half of the 20th century with? You guessed it! REFINED SUGARS!!!

Refined sugars, such as high fructose corn syrup, white table sugar, brown sugar, turbinado, and cane sugar all cause an increase in blood sugar levels. Common foods that contain refined sugars are sodas, cereals, cookies, cakes, and processed foods.

Why is a rapid rise in blood sugar levels a bad thing? We aren’t built to constantly have high blood sugar levels - so, these high levels will lead to more inflammation. Our bodies will also store all of this excess sugar eventually as fat. Refined sugars do NOTHING good for the body.

Still Struggling?

Have you already made these changes and you still feel fatigue, weight gain, poor sleep, stress, pain, or other health issues? Although these nutrition changes can make a huge difference for many, sometimes we have a deeper root cause to our health issues. Get signed up for a consultation with Dr. McAlees today by clicking here.



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