Stop Eating Processed Food

Dear 30 Year Old Me,

Look back at your life and think of when you were the fattest.   I’ll give you a hint – you lived in Houston – at least part of it was in Houston.  You were still young – so it’s not slowed down metabolism that made you fat.  You were supposed to be eating healthy and people admired you for supposedly eating healthy.   Yup – you got it!  You were fattest (and least healthy) – when you were vegetarian.  But the truth of the matter is as a vegetarian,  you were not really eating a lot of vegetables.  Remember when you said you can eat as many cookies as you want because there's no meat in those cookies?  You were less a vegetarian but more like a Processed Food addict.

It's hard to accept the truth but I want you to recall those times. Take note – you were eating plant-based food products (except for eggs and dairy – so you were Ovo-Lacto-Vegetarian).   Can you recall what you ate in that period of your life?   Kangkong (water spinach) – check!  Lettuce – check!  Nuts – check!  Fruits – check!   Those food items comprised 20% of what you ate – and those are really good things to eat.  You also ate rice – and pasta – and potatoes.  So that’s maybe an additional 10% of at least good food.   How about the remaining 70%?   You pigged out on Chips, 4-cheese Pizza,  Cookies, Donuts, Cakes,  and a lot of things that come in a can or box with ingredients that you don’t recognize or can’t even pronounce.   You didn’t eat animal meat – but you ate zombified food (that’s what I call it – because they should really be called food for the undead).   You weren’t vegetarian – you were a processed food junkie.  That diet made you fat and sick.

Here’s the thing – you have lost all that extra weight when you started eating meat again and following a tight exercise regimen.  You were not very good at being a vegetarian - so I'm happy you quit that nonsense.  Some people, those who who actually eat vegetables and enjoy it are meant to be vegetarian - not you.

Here’s the thing, before you reach your forties – you will gain weight again.  You will also be sickly.  Your allergic reactions will be tough to manage.   You continue to exercise and you will think – why am I still not healthy?  It’s not what you thought you will feel because you exercise a lot and go to the gym a lot.   You have a trainer that you hire – but you will still be fat.  The kicker here is the fact that you think that the good habit of working out compensates for the times that you will eat processed junk.

Fast forward to this year in your life (I’m 41).   I have discovered a new way of eating.  It’s called the Paleo diet (that’s pronounced Peyleyow – think of the word Paleonthology).   The premise of this diet is that man (or woman) should really be eating food that he can forage or hunt.  According to its proponents, the human physiology is not meant to consume large amount of food that comes in a box with a thousand ingredients.  Humans should really be eating food that is an ingredient (or what we will call whole food).   These are the examples of whole food – sweet potato – and chicken – and beef – and lettuce – and spinach – and nuts.  The Paleo diet means choosing to eat these food items and choosing not to eat processed food.

Paleo is not just about banning processed food in your diet.  Apart from processed food – according to the Paleo experts and practitioners – foraged food – also means not eating the grains that we farm.  This also means not eating animal meat that has been fed grains.  So if you eat beef - it better be beef that consumes grass and not corn feed.  Humans have lived millions of years foraging or hunting for food – and it is just in the last hundreds of years where we discovered agriculture and the convenience of planting and eating grains in large scale.   In this grains category – falls food items like rice, wheat, anything made of rice and wheat like bread and pasta and rice noodles.  So with the Paleo diet I stopped eating processed food and grains.  What are the results – you ask.  Not only did I get to a healthy weight level --- I can truly say that I've never been healthier (less sick) – in my life.

There are many people who are so opposed to this diet.  A lot of its critics take note that if the cave man’s diet is so healthy – why is it that their life expectancy is a lot shorter?  There are definitely other factors to be considered there – Science is one of them.  Mr. and Mrs. Caveman died of communicable diseases that science has not found a cure for yet.  But I doubt that many of them die of diseases that we have right now --- like diabetes (or its complications), heart disease, or allergies (or not being able to breathe because of extreme allergic reaction).   I bet they died of natural causes – or they died because a bear ate them, or they got poisoned or they may have fallen off a cliff or froze to death during the winters --- but not because they were unhealthy.   Hey – I know I’m reaching here – and this weird story about cavemen might not actually be convincing you to hear me out.    But hear me out with the  next thing I’m going to tell you that may actually convince you to try eating Paleo.

I have lost most of the weight that I gained in my late 30s – and I’m now back to wearing 30 inch waistline pants (from wearing 36 inch waistline pants size).   That got your attention didn’t it – Mr. Vanity?   I have also addressed one thing that you suffer from – HANGRY.  That’s a new word for you.  Hangry is that edginess or anger  that  you feel when you have not eaten your 10:00 am snack or your 3:00 pm snack even if you had a good breakfast or lunch.   You actually get hangrier and hangrier when you don’t eat (too bad you don’t turn into a hulk – he’s actually cuter and cuddlier than the monster you transform to when you get hangry).  Eating Paleo keeps you full for longer periods of time.  No more sugar crashing experience.  No more hangry.  For the sake of the people you love and work with – at least try Paleo so you don’t turn into the Hangry monster.

Eating Paleo has also eliminated the congestion that I used to feel in my sinus passageways in the morning.   This is a big thing my young self.  You actually eliminated a lot of things in your life because of your attempt to cure your sinusitis problems.   You quit smoking.   That didn’t help because you still have a clogged sinus in the morning every day after you quit smoking.   You quit coffee and switched to tea – no effect on your allergies.  You got LASIK – to quit – contact lens – but you still have a clogged sinus when you wake up.  Your doctor even told you to quit your dogs --- which you will never do because you love your dogs (that’s a whole story best to discuss in another letter).   Then you discovered Paleo and quit processed food and grains --- especially wheat --- and one day you will wake up and say, "Hey --- where did the allergy go?"

So my dear young one – listen to me.  Stop eating processed food.  Stop eating grains (especially wheat).  You can still have them once a week (but I warn you – the processed food hangover – can be as bad as an alcohol hangover – so moderation is the key to avoiding those terrible hangovers).   Monday to Saturday – eat whole foods.  Good healthful food will do wonders for you.

With  much love,

The 40-something Year old you

(Blogger's Note - this is advice number 2 for the 30 year old me and was written as part of a really long letter found here.)