Your Relationship with Food – Functional vs. Dysfunctional Foods

For one to truly make a positive change in their lifestyle, they need to respect their body. Your body has to be like that best friend that you would never hurt, never damage, and always treat with the utmost respect. Here is a new way to look at your relationship with foods and positive steps to take…

What I want to make you realize is that some of the most important choices you make every day of your life is what food, beverage, and beauty product to put in and on your body. I then want you to understand that the moment of truth for each of these choices depends upon your belief system as it pertains to your relationship with your body. For one to truly get healthy, you have to want it for yourself, and you absolutely have to believe that a healthy body is what you “need”. The key is to transform that “need” into a “want” in order to begin replacing old habits with new practices.

Each food, beverage, and beauty product that you put into your body serves an important function that will cause the organs and systems to respond. The working process of change and improvement is in how consistent you are in making the right incremental choices. Success in anything comes not from a silver bullet solution, but from incremental execution. The execution is in the choices that you make. Each choice is one part of a working whole. That working whole is physical and mental health.

Some examples of incremental improvements are replacing morning coffee with a healthy alternative such as Matcha green tea. Another incremental improvement is replacing soda with iced herb tea, water or Kombucha Tea. You get what I’m saying. You can see that depending on your level of imbalance, there may be fifty or more incremental changes that you have to make in order to achieve your optimal health.

To begin, one has to both “want” and “need” to understand the nutrition and overall energy value of foods. So, let us lay down the foundation for your change. I like to break food down into two categories to make it simple in the beginning: functional and dysfunctional…

Functional foods are any food or natural supplement such as superfoods that has health-promoting capabilities and are packed with vital nutrients that essentially will nourish and help create a healthy environment internally. Simply put, they include organic unprocessed foods that are in their natural state, which is what our body craves. Functional foods are best categorized as follows:

Dependent on how it was grown or produced (organic vs. non-organic and fresh vs. processed in a factory)
How far the food is from its natural state (blueberry vs. blueberry pie). Foods in their natural state include fresh veggies and fruits, raw nuts and seeds, dried beans, whole grains and raw fats/oils. These are foods your body can recognize and utilize immediately compared to a hamburger on white bread with a bag of chips and soda, which are foreign toxic invaders to your digestive system.
Whether it is a “whole food” or not. (brown rice vs. white rice that has been stripped of fiber & nutrients)
The time of day it is eaten (eating often and regularly vs. inconsistent and late night eating)
The sum of the individual values of each ingredient if it is a combination of ingredients(wheat grass by itself vs. the benefits of a combination of all green superfoods).

*If you only followed one guideline it would be to eat over 50% of your daily intake from fresh foods that have not been processed.

Dysfunctional foods have a more negative impact on our health. Rather than nourishing and promoting health, as with functional foods, dysfunctional foods decrease energy, create acidity, encourage bacteria and viruses to grow and quicken the aging process. Dysfunction foods are best categorized as follows:

Processed foods including most foods in a bag, box or can.
Refiined grains (white flour, white rice)
Sugar-laden soda, juice and sport drinks
Alcohol
Ingredients that you can’t pronounce or recognize – these are generally chemical preservatives, flavor enhancers and synthetic dyes.
Saturated animal fats/products in large quantities
Fats and oils that are refined, hydrogenated, and cooked

So how do we make the most conscious choices throughout our busy day? The first step to staying balanced within a fast pace lifestyle is planning ahead. Try to not leave the house without a natural food that can sustain you between meals, and if possible, bring your meals and snacks all in one pack. The most common enabler for wrong choices is being unprepared. The fast food industry thrives on the lack of preparation.

When you do eat at a restaurant you can always make healthier choices. Choose the grilled salmon, steamed veggies and vinaigrette salad rather than the fried chicken with mushroom cream sauce, mashed potatoes and buttered vegetables. It is all about choices.

What I am asking you to do as you move forward is to open up your mind to how the way you eat is a lifestyle and not just a diet. I am not asking you to change who you truly are, but am inviting you to realize how much of a positive influence food can be on your overall being. Opening the mind is the first step to making a change. Once your mind is open, you can allow in the building blocks necessary to develop a solid foundation for what may be the most exciting and important change you ever make.