Fruit, vegetable, meat (eggs and beans)

This is the phrase I repeat most often at work. You know, if I had a dollar for every time....I could easily be about $11,000 more rich in the past 5 years.

What is lacking from this list? Carbs and dairy! (For the sake of this discussion, 'carbs' include rice, bread, tortillas, cereal, oatmeal, cake, cookies, etc.).

Why?

Sugar.

Sugar is the enemy of health. Cancer feeds off of sugar. Diabetes loves the sugar. Yeast devours sugar. Are you getting the point?

The spiel is, "No tortillas, rice, pasta, potatoes, bread, sweet bread, oatmeal, cereal, cakes, cookies, pies, ice cream, juice".

This diet is applicable to the majority of my patients. Why? Because sugar is the enemy of health. The breakdown of carbohydrates (bread, rice, etc.) is sugar. We have the three main macronutrients; carbs, protein, and fat. When carbs, specifically starches, are ingested they hit us as glucose and we get that "sugar rush". Kevin at Rebooted Body talks about why sugar is such a problem in our diets.

Sugar saturates items we would never imagine. The various names; high fructose corn syrup, corn syrup, maltose, lactose (milk sugar), fructose (fruit sugar), sucrose (table sugar), agave, etc., can be deceptive.

So, when you eliminate carbs, you eliminate a great source of additional sugar in your diet. When I explain this to patients, they always respond with, "I don't eat sugar!", meaning, "I don't ADD sugar to anything". When I press them about their diets; rice, tortillas, and oatmeal top the list of offenders.

By eating fruit, vegetables, and meat, you cut out the most serious offenders and are stocking up (hopefully) on REAL food. Nothing processed or detrimental to your health. Are there exceptions? Obviously. But, if you make better choices every day and choose to have cake for your birthday, your body will be in a much better state. Also, you may start to notice when you eat things that are not conducive to good health, your body tells you. You may experience bloating, GI upset, diarrhea, fatigue, mental fog, and on and on. Your diet is a relatively simple fix to quite a few ailments, you just need to heed your own warning signs.