Nutrition, Level 1, Weeks 7 & 8

Goals

• Decrease consumption of fried, processed and sugary foods
• One guilt-free day a week

Cutting Back on Fried, Sugary & Processed Foods

The next 2 weeks we are going to focus our attention on sugary and processed and fried foods.

What are processed foods? Processed foods are any foods that have been altered or modified from its original form.

Potato chips are processed foods. Soda is a processed and sugary food. Cookies are processed and sugary. Lunchables are processed and sugary and salty.

Most processed foods will usually be high in either salt, sugar or fat. Or usually both.

When these processed foods are eaten, you get a sugar rush and big shot of sodium. Both of these speed you up temporarily, and can give you a short lived euphoria or high. The high will usually last about 20 minutes. Followed by a 1 to 2 hour drop in energy. This low energy will leave you looking for another processed sugary food.

Avoiding Fried Foods

Fried foods are a type of processed food. But for our purposes we will consider fried foods and processed foods separate categories.  This will make it easier to cut back on these two.

Instead of cutting back on both at once, we can cut back on them one at a time. Many small changes over time are easier to stick with than a few large changes are once.
For the next 2 weeks, you want to focus on eating no more than four times per food type, per week.

This means no more than 4 fried foods per week. No more than 4 processed foods per week. No more than 4 sugary foods per week.

This will help you to recognize processed foods and realize how many of them that you eat. They are all around us, and can be very hard to avoid.

Cheat Day

The last step that you want to take for the next 2 weeks is to have one guilt free day of eating per week.

This means eat whatever you want to on your cheat day. This will allow you to eat what you want without feeling guilty or feel like you are missing out on something.

Try to use some common sense. Don’t eat fried food and bacon for breakfast lunch and dinner.

But go easy on yourself. Food should be enjoyable, not tortuous.

I hope you have a pain free day.