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4 things you need to cut from your diet
Healthy eating habits are crucial to a healthy life. A lot of people like to start the new year out with resolutions to work out more, which is great (I am doing that myself). But if you are wanting to lose weight, eating right is 75% of the battle. Here are 4 things you need to cut from your diet this year.
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Sugar
Glucose in the Body
Sugar is almost unavoidable.
Its in just about everything, surprisingly, even some bread.
Our bodies don’t actually need sugar (unless you have a medical condition that requires it), and the main thing your body does with sugar is to store it.
Glucose in the body creates and insulin rush.
When this happens, your appetite can increase and can cause over-eating, a big player in weight gain.
There are ways you can use this to your advantage if you are body building, but in your typical, day-to-day diet there is really no reason for it.
Unwanted Growth
The consumption of Sugar can also lead to candida growth, and cancer.
Sugar is a great feeder.
It feeds fat cells, it feeds tumors, it feeds the yeast in candida. In an article at BeatCancer.org, they talk about how sugar encourages the growth of these unhealthy cells.
“Cancer cells uptake sugar at 10-12 times the rate of healthy cells.”
Candida loves sugar, and when you have Candida overgrowth the symptoms usually include craving sweets constantly.
Sugar can also repress healthy immunity, giving your body less of a chance to find off illness.
Addiction
Sugar is often referred to as a “legal drug”, because you can never really be satisfied, and getting off of sugar is extremely hard for most people.
It’s not a nutrient, since our bodies typically don’t need it.
Cutting sugar from your diet usually causes a detox effect, and can make you feel drowsy, cause headaches and fatigue, cravings, mood swings and even poor sleep.
But once you are used to not “needing” sugar anymore, you wont crave it nearly as much.
Processed Food
Processed food is anything that you buy in a package at the grocery store.
A good rule of thumb is that if you buy it in a box, make sure that “USDA Organic” and “NON-GMO project verified” are labeled on the front of the box.
Related Content: 5 Step Cheat-Sheet for Eating Healthy on a Budget
The stuff that they put in processed food to keep it shelf stable, make it taste AMAZING, and to keep you buying it, are things you should never consume.
Processed foods are typically laced with sugar, MSG, GMO’s and lots of salt. Your body needs very little to none of these things.
Buying boxed items like crackers, cereal, cookies, breakfast items from your grocery stores health market, or buying them at your local health food grocer will be your best bet.
Also, making these items yourself, while time consuming, means that you know every ingredient that goes into them.
Unknown Substances
This should be a no brainer, but if you don’t know what the ingredient does, or what it is, don’t eat it.
You need to know what you are putting in your body.
Say you went to the gas station and were filling up your car. When you get ready to start the pump, you are selecting which gas to use.
The first option is unleaded, the second is higher ethanol, and the third is a giant question mark.
You wouldn’t fill up your car with the last one, right?
Its unsafe, you don’t know what’s in it, you don’t know what it will do to your car.
Why wouldn’t we treat our bodies as well as we treat our vehicles?
Related Content: 6 Reasons you are NOT meeting your Health Goals
Soda
Soda almost just fall’s into the sugar category, but I wanted to put it by itself.
Drinking soft drinks and soda is pretty much just like drinking syrup.
Soda has an addictive quality because of the high sugar content, and paired with the caffeine, soda becomes a very hard habit to break.
When I met my husband Ashton, he was drinking 1-2 Dr. Pepper’s or Coke’s a day.
When we started living together, I didn’t want it in the house(I still don’t like the idea of buying more than one, and only for special occasions), and buying it felt like buying drugs.
That may seem terrible, or exaggerated, but to me its the same.
Eventually, he stopped drinking soda because he wanted to take better care of his health. And then he stopped craving it.
After cutting it from his diet for a long period of time, he bought a soda and tried to drink it, but he said it was pretty awful and tastes like syrup.
We still get a soft drink if we go to the movies or to dinner, but cutting it mostly out of your diet has so many amazing benefits, including weight loss and better mood.
Aspartame in soda.
You don’t realize it when you drink it everyday just how much sugar is actually in soda.
The other main ingredient that I avoid at all costs that is in almost all soda, is aspartame. Aspartame is found in most sodas and diet foods and drinks.
There is a list of side-effects from aspartame consumption at healthline.com, including
- Depression
- Weight Gain
- Headaches
- Cancer
- Birth Defects
and more. These side effects may only be in extreme cases, but Aspartame IS very bad for you, and to me there is no reason to put something in my body that effects it in a negative way, especially if I am aware that it does.
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