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Nutrition is vitally important to the maintenance and healing of your body. This is especially true when you are trying to grow muscle tissue, replace missing cartilage or mend broken bones. The quality of the foods and supplements you put into your body will partially determine the quality of the tissue you grow. Some of you remember the adage: "You are what you eat." Today we might borrow from computer lingo and say: "Garbage in--garbage out". In order to maximize your healing, enhance your quality of and recovery from work-outs and put the brakes on the aging and disease process, I'll share some of the nutritional strategies I've found to be helpful.
So far, if you guessed that I'm a vegetarian you're partially right. I was, at one time, a vegan (one who eats no animal products what so ever), but I have since taken a more moderate approach to nourishing myself. As you live, you learn and one of the things that I've learned about what's good for you to eat is to pay attention to what your distant ancestors ate as you've inherited many of their biochemical and physiological traits. Another important clue as to what constitutes YOUR ideal diet is your how quickly you metabolize food and how frequently you defecate. These are important clues as to how much meat (if any) you should consume. In short, if you tend to metabolize food quickly and defecate very regularly (often more than once a day), you likely have inherited a meat-eating physiology. Recently, the book "Eat Right for Your Blood Type" has shed some more light on the very controversial subject of what is best to eat. Essentially the book gives dietary recommendations for each blood type. I'm an O+ and as such, according to the book, I'm a classic meat-eating type. As I'm also a fast metabolizer and defecate once or twice daily, this led me back to eating meat after 30 years of non-meat eating. My return to eating meat did not cause even the slightest adjustment for my digestive tract further confirming that I've inherited a meat-eating physiology. I finally had to come to terms with the fact that while philosophically I am a vegetarian, my consciousness resides in a classic meat-eating body. As I am of Nordic / Germanic extraction, for me that also means including fish (mostly wild salmon) and a small amount of cheese and butter and occasionally soft boiled or poached (fertile) eggs. This does not absolve me of the necessity of eating plenty of fruits and vegetables as they contain many important phyto-nutrients and the fiber necessary for health elimination. I still eat a 'plant based diet' along with regular (but not daily) meat. I did not always eat like this…..I grew up eating a S.A.D. (Standard American Diet) with it's heavy emphasis on animal proteins . I can still remember eating large bowls of Steak Tartar…a dish of raw, ground meat mixed with raw egg and spices. I was in my early 20's when I read my first book on nutrition and my diet has been evolving from there. You should do some investigating and find what works for YOU. In addition to my "plant based diet" with abundant amounts of fresh fruits, veggies, grains and legumes, I believe in the importance of eating as much raw and "live" food as possible. Some sources suggest that 80% of our diet should consist of raw (uncooked) foods in order to obtain optimum amounts of food enzymes which are mostly destroyed by cooking. For most of us, this is an unrealistic goal as your social and/or family life would be disrupted. Imagine if 80% of your food intake was in the form of uncooked plant foods…tough to manage. As a compromise, I eat fresh fruit every morning and I religiously eat a large salad AFTER dinner or lunch with a variety of veggies and lettuce and top it with a generous helping of FRESH sprouts. I enjoy alfalfa, radish sunflower, pea and clover sprouts. Sprouts contain virtually all the vitamins, minerals, proteins and enzymes considered vital to health. Additionally, sprouts are a "live" food. That is, they are a concentrated source of the living enzymes and "life force" that is lost when foods are cooked or not "fresh from the field". If you add sprouts to your diet, be sure they are fresh as they can become a source of harmful bacteria as they get old. Another way to add nutrient-dense foods to your diet is by using some of the increasing number of whole food concentrates on the market. These are mostly in the form of powders with a few being in liquid form. They are the result of some pretty sophisticated technology which can convert raw foods into a concentrated form without heating them to the point of destroying the all-important enzymes. The variety of food concentrates is amazing and new products appear on a regular basis. Many fruits, vegetables, grains and herbs are available in this easy to use form. Their advantage is that you get a rich source of bio-available (easily absorbable), high quality nutrients in a convenient, concentrated form. They can be consumed as capsules or in bulk when mixed into blender drinks, salad dressings, deserts, etc. Their only downside is that the fiber is largely discarded in the process, so you must still be sure to consume sufficient amounts of 'real' plant food to meet your fiber needs. Fiber is important because it regulates the rate of nutrient absorption and forms bulk for healthy, regular elimination. Regularity in eliminating wastes is as vital to health as proper intake of nutrients. When waste backs up in your colon, some is absorbed into the blood stream and adds to the toxic load on your body. Speaking of elimination, it is vital to address the importance of drinking enough fluids…..especially clean water. Water helps deliver nutrients throughout the body. Water helps eliminate wastes. Water replaces fluids lost to perspiration and evaporation from breathing. Water intake throughout the day helps keep you from over-eating. Water is the second most important element to life after air. I take clean water with me EVERYWHERE…..biking, skiing, kayaking, traveling, work, etc. you would be hard pressed to get too much water……DRINK UP!!! To summarize basic nutritional principles: |
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The
principles of good nutrition are so widely obtainable and controversial
that I won't attempt
to outline them all here. I would, however advocate following the recommendations
of eminent Cornell University Professor of Nutritional Biochemistry T.
Colin Campbell, author Dr. Dean Ornish and many others and adopt a "plant
based diet". For more information on what constitutes a healthy diet,
I suggest you visit these web sites: