Eating whole foods for our gut and brain health doesn’t have to be complicated. It’s actually really easy because we just have to head towards real food as opposed to fake food, also known as processed food.
If you know my backstory, you’ll know I was addicted to junk food and practically lived on it. After getting sick, I cleaned up my diet and my life and haven’t looked back. I no longer rely on food to make me feel better (which it only ever did in a temporary way), and instead, rely on good, whole foods to nourish my body and help my brain. My gut is grateful and my brain no longer feel like its on fire. I can think clearly and no longer operate in a cloud of fog like I used to.
So, here’s what we can expect when we ditch the processed crap altogether! Check out the following graphic for a summary.
Our addiction to processed foods breaks when we eat whole foods
Go on! Do it! Break up with your relationship to junk food. If I can, trust me, anyone can 🙂 Because processed food is designed to be addictive – this keeps us coming back for more . So the more we eat, the more we want. I remember saying I’d not eat McDonald’s again and then find myself in the drive through again. It was almost like I was taken over by some crazy addict waiting for my giant slurpie! That crap is addictive! When we stop eating it, we no longer want it.
And a side bonus when we ditch the additives in the addictive processed foods, normal food (which is what we should be eating), becomes more appealing. It tastes better and we get added side benefits of feeling fuller, access more nutrients, which both then have a knock-on effect for our gut health and brain health. These addictive chemicals also create inflammation in the body, not to mention the weight gain. When I stopped eating them, the weight fell off.
Stop eating inflammatory foods and get less inflammation as a result
Go figure! Whole foods are not designed to cause inflammation in the body. We certainly don’t eat an apple and start to swell up. That ‘swelling up’ is often fluid retention or a reaction in our body. I can actually feel it gather in my body because I’m so sensitive to fake foods now. Real food doesn’t cause that.
If we continue to eat inflammatory foods, our body struggles to achieve balance. I’ve been there so I know. Through only consuming whole foods (ok, I do sneak the odd potato chip here and there and eat out occasionally), my body is not constantly trying to achieve homeostasis. I’m not being completely bombarded by chemicals. My body can handle small amounts of processed foods but this is very rare now.
Here are some reasons why the body strives to achieve homeostasis.
Our bodies have enough to deal with without us giving it more things to do. Just think, by removing just one product from our lives, could give our bodies a chance to heal. By removing 5 items, just think about what it could then be capable of. Now if we remove 90% of toxic things from our lives, what are we capable of now?
Don’t wait for something to go wrong and live in regret that you didn’t do something about it earlier. We are capable of learning the easy way, and the feeling once we rid our body of these harmful additives is amazing.
Hold onto to your hats all you good looking folk out there!
Eating whole foods could improve how we look 🙂 Well this might not equate to a nose job or getting rid of deep set frown marks, but eating whole foods can certainly make our skin look brighter and more vibrant.
Because we have less inflammation in the body, and we’re getting the nutrients, minerals and vitamins we need from whole foods, we look better.
If our gut microbiome is disrupted, this is going to show on our skin. The skin on my hands used to be covered in eczema. Check out these before and after pics of my hands. The skin on my face has also completely cleared up. If you have problems with your skin, look to what you’re consuming first and go from there.
What is happening on the outside is just a reflection of what’s going on on the inside. Our skin is a reflection of our health. Dark circles will appear if we don’t get enough sleep. We might get patches on our skin if we are sensitive to additives in food (maybe because they are toxic to our body). Or our hair may fall out, lose it’s lustre, and get dry. These can all be the result of environmental toxins. Eat whole foods and see if the same problems occur. My bet is they won’t but I can only base this on my own experience.
Eating whole foods for energy - now who wouldn't want more of that?
We need certain vitamins, nutrients, and minerals to actually survive. If we deprive ourselves of these, we will cause some sort of imbalance somewhere in the body. I’m no doctor (and this is NOT medical advice), but our food is a major source of energy. If our body is given what it needs, it can convert the right foods into energy, keep us fuller for longer, both of which help us with motivation and being the correct weight to actually do stuff. Stuff like exercise, looking after ourselves and others, and having the energy to enjoy life.
Eating whole foods to help us regulate our emotions
We literally are what we eat. If we eat junk, we are …… Now, I don’t want to judge because I used to be in the same position and I just couldn’t see it. I spent many years of my life feeling miserable because of the food I was eating. I felt like crap!
The crazy thing is, it doesn’t have to be this way. Once the addiction to processed fake food is broken, everything changes, including our emotions. If we have an unhappy gut, we will have an unhappy brain. The two are so closely linked and that’s why I have the tagline ‘discover the first brain’ because what we put in our gut affects how we feel. I believe the gut is the first brain for that reason, not the second.
Put good stuff in = feel good
Put bad stuff in = feel bad
I’m no mathematician so maybe that’s why it took me so long to figure this one out 🙂
Reducing stress in our lives will also help as we tend to reach for the not-so-great crap when times are challenging.
Here are some additional ways we can help our gut and brain in times of stress.
Also, check out this related post here:
Helping Our Gut and Immune System when Under Stress
Clearer thinking through eating whole foods
As I’ve said many times before, when I was living on processed food with very little nutrients and a whole heap of chemicals, my brain felt like it was on fire. I was extremely hyperactive, had major difficulty focusing, and my concentration was shot. Since ditching the chemicals for real food, these symptoms have all but disappeared. Check out this article on the worst foods for our brain which also includes alcohol – HERE
Goodbye brain fog and hello clarity!!!!
Reduce our risk of disease by eating whole foods
I think this is pretty obvious so I won’t go into much detail here other than if you don’t want to rely on the current and future health system, get healthy now. If we continue down the road of chemical laden foods that disrupt our gut and subsequent brain health, then we’re heading down the medical route.
If the past 5 years are anything to go by, people are starting to move away from the medical model of treatment and are moving towards a more holistic approach to healthcare – me included! I have zero faith in the current system so I do everything to stay as healthy as I possibly can – it’s also a great way to rebel against the system too 🙂
Related Post
Bottom line
Our food is making us sick! I don’t know any other way to say it. We can no longer rely on regulatory agencies set up to make sure our water is safe and our food is free of cancer-causing and disease-causing crap. So, the easiest thing to do is to research what goes in our mouths.
The next post will go more into detail on how we can do this. In the meantime, if you’re unsure about an ingredient on the back of a packet, bag, box, or container, look it up and find out what it is.
