Hello People!

I hope your having an awesome Friday!

I’ve just come back from a discussion on BBC Hereford and Worcester with Andrew Easton, where we were looking at a study done in New York to see if people were given information on how many calories were in the food and the exercise equivalent needed to burn off the food, would they cut back? The answer was yes, especially in teenagers. So what do we think about this being bought over to the UK?

It has really been an interesting topic to look at and sparked a cool debate on facebook.

I want to cover a few points today, number 1 being that if they are pointing out the “negatives” of eating junk food full of chemicals, hydrogenated fats and tons of refined, cheap white sugar and toxic sweeteners wouldn’t it be great if there were signs to tell people what natural, healthy, organic produce could do for them? Why not provide recipes to create healthy, delicious dishes that will help people with issues specific to them, for example, fresh herbs like coriander and parsley are very detoxifying and aid removal of heavy metals from the body, pears support lung and breathing issues, chia seeds are full of omega 3’s and turmeric is a wonderful anti-inflammitory!

On to the point of viewing exercise as a way to burn off “something we shouldn’t eat”, a punishment, a way of trying to “undo” a meal or possibly a binge? I think we should change the way we view exercise. I am very lucky to work with a remarkable lady who, through many, many operations on her knee, can no longer bend her knee joint and she once said this to me, “I get so upset when people moan about running or having to exercise, I would love nothing more than to be able to go for a run, to feel free again”, it blew me away, we take our bodies for granted and look to punish them with deprivation diets and grueling workouts. I think we should shift our thoughts to the fact that we are blessed to have bodies we can move, we are able to learn new skills at any age and are able to constantly evolve. So move your body because you can, in ways you enjoy and do it often! We are still discovering how simply your standing posture can have a positive or negative effect on our hormones. By standing tall and proud, we can significantly reduce our stress hormone, Cortisol and increase testosterone and actually have a positive effect on our nervous systems! So by exercising in ways that make you feel good you will actually shift your hormones to a better state, you will get an endorphin release that will make you happy and you will stimulate the body to be more efficient at it’s everyday tasks, like digestion, detoxification, breathing and so on. Instead of thinking you need to run a marathon to burn off that curry look after yourself every day through movement, good nourishing foods, lots of water and meditation so that when you do have a curry you can really enjoy it as a treat.

One issue I do see with bring the general public’s attention to calories is that most people don’t actually understand what a calorie is…. It’s a unit of energy, 1 calorie is the amount of energy needed to heat water by 1 degree. They find out the calorific content of a food by burning the food in a machine and depending on the burn time equates to the amount of calories the food has within it. The issue is, that we simply do not burn our food, we do not incinerate our food, we chew it and think about it, digestive enzymes are used to break down the cell walls of our food, we add stomach acid to the contents and slowly churn the food around our stomachs, to then pass into the intestines where we absorb either nutrients, nourishing our bodies and aiding elimination of toxins or our internal organs have to deal with chemicals in false foods that will hinder our ability to live with ease, putting strain on our bodies and being stored in fat cells.

Not all calories are created equally!

An avocado for example if one of nature’s most nourishing foods, feeding our brains and are wonderful for anyone who wants beautiful skin, hair, nails and is also wonderful for people looking to conceive. But calorie wise, it’s quite high, so some people avoid them because they believe they are fattening, which they certainly are not.

A diet coke has zero calories, but is packed with toxins and chemicals that have been linked to over 90 different health issues.

So to sum up, I think it’s great that we are looking to change and try to educate people about food and exercise, but I think that with marketing and only small snip-its of information you can see how we can get confused. As always education is key, looking to aim for progression and not perfection and hopefully getting Britain happier and healthier!

If you have any questions please do not hesitate to get in touch!

Have a wonderful nourished weekend all, move and do something fun and eat amazing delicious food! You deserve to be amazing!

Love Aimie x