1. Is your dinner becoming food for bacteria?
2. What's the best bedtime snack?
Read and see if you would like follow the tips.
Terri
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Is Your Dinner Becoming Food for Bacteria?
Eating properly can be difficult to most of us. It is not about what you eat but about HOW you eat -- putting our teeth to the purpose they were created for: CHEWING. It's so easy to gulp stuff down, once we've chomped on it a few times. Sure it fits down the throat, but it needs to be a lot smaller if it's going to absorb through the walls of your intestines.
All of our grandmothers used to say, chew your food 32 times. Well, that's good advice. One that people used to ACTUALLY follow when mealtime was a time to connect with other people, enjoy nature and reflect on the day. You know, back when it was a form of relaxing entertainment. Now days, we have "higher" forms of entertainment: laptops, bursting email inboxes, 800 gigabyte Ipods, 500 TV stations and INSTANT downloadable movies.
North America is a Type A Personality continent. We are driven by the need to be highly productive, make more money and get more stuff (even though most of us fail at these three goals miserably). We often ignore our needs. You know the old saying, "We spend the first 50 years of our life making money and losing our health, so we can spend the last 25 years losing our money to get our health back."
Funny thing is... if you look at the 2% of the population that is actually wealthy, they are often quite healthy. They live a much more balanced life than the 98% of the population that's living paycheque to paycheque.
But the point I'm getting at is that you NEED to make time for chewing your food. PLEASE take me seriously on this one. It sounds so simple. But it's very important . You don't have to count 32 times each mouthful. You may want to do that the first mouthful as it may help you slow down.
But you need to chew until you don't feel anything solid in your mouth. You need to break it down by thoroughly mixing it with your saliva. Many of the foods we eat require enzymes in your mouth to start breaking them down. Some doctors even believe that you can only absorb certain nutrients on your tongue. But most importantly, food needs to be small when it hits your stomach. The enzymes and acid in your stomach have only a couple of hours to breakdown the food before it hits the small intestine. If you're sending large chunks down to your stomach, only the outer coating of the food will be diminished.
When these large chunks of food hit your small intestine, they can't be absorbed. Instead they become food for unhealthy bacteria in your colon. These bacteria produce toxins that damage your colon wall and gas that causes bloating and flatulence. These toxins damage the walls of your colon and make it difficult to push food through. Plus, the increased number of bad bacteria weakens the good guys who actually stimulate the pumping movement of your colon.
In short, incompletely chewed food becomes toxic inside your colon. It constipates you. It does not nourish you. So you need to make sure that when you eat, you chew. Chew until it's liquid. You'll probably find that less food will satisfy you (as you'll be absorbing more). You'll also find you enjoy your meals more.
It's sad, but in our society, people almost look upon it as strange if they see you thoroughly chewing your food instead of wolfing it down. Let's face it... anything out of the normal rat-race lifestyle is going to raise an eyebrow. If you eat in a public place, alone, you may want to bring a book or magazine. If people see you reading, they assume that's why it's taking you longer to eat.
If you're eating a meal with others, chewing teaches you to become more of a listener. Most of the time people aren't really hearing what the other is saying. They're just waiting for them to finish so they can say what they want. You'll feel calmer, and attract more true friends, if you can be a listener.
Above and beyond chewing, there are certain foods (when prepared improperly) that are difficult or IMPOSSIBLE to chew properly. You may likely be eating these foods every day, and that is why your constipation, gas and bloating are so bad.
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What's the Best Bedtime Snack to Avoid Constipation in the Morning?
(The answer may surprise you, but it'll also help you stay slim.)
Now if you believe the TV commercials, the best bedtime snack for you is a bagel or a bowl of cereal (maybe with some sugar sprinkled on top).
They claim that the carbohydrates make you drowsy and the milk acts as a natural sedative.
Baloney!
Well almost... Yes, the starch will make you drowsy (but the real goal is to sleep DEEPLY). Milk can work as a natural sedative IF you warm it -- most people eat cold cereal (a constipating combination right there).
Seriously, I can think of little benefit to women slicin' n' toastin' a bagel at 9pm at night, coating it with butter and putting it in their mouth. It may make you feel sleepy but it will probably cause your blood sugar levels to crash around 2am disturbing your sleep. Plus, putting a bagel in your stomach before bed means it's either...
- Going to stop you from going into a deep sleep because your gut needs to work on digesting it for the next two hours or...
- You go into a deep sleep, and leave this half-digested bagel in your gut, fermenting. No wonder you don't feel like breakfast the next morning.
Maybe that's why the Cornflakes(R) started promoting their cereal as the "perfect bedtime snack." Everybody was falling for the bagel strategy and then waking up with no appetite for cereal.
Also, having a starch before bed is going to just make you FAT. You're body is burning almost no calories during your sleep. A typical bagel with butter is loaded with TWENTY PERCENT of a typical women's daily calorie needs. That bagel is going to turn into pure sugar around midnight. Two things happen then...
- That sugar rush will wake you up or cause you to toss and turn or...
- That sugar will be sent to your liver, turned into fat and then stored on your hips. You'll wake up with more fat than when you went to sleep.
Despite what the media would like you to believe, any dietician or nutritionist can confirm for you that the main thing making North Americans overweight is starch and sugar. It's not oils, butter, nuts and meat. Fat takes up to six hours to absorb, protein 4 hours, allowing your body time to burn off the energy.
Of course, even an excess amount of fat calories will cause weight gain. But sugar, and starch are the real culprits. They simply digest faster than you can burn them. So what to eat as a bedtime snack?
Nothing.
By that I mean, for two hours before you go to bed, don't eat, drink or take in anything but oxygen.
If you're eating properly during the day, you shouldn't require a snack so close to bedtime. Your body is shutting down. Your stomach is closed for the day. If you throw food into it, it's only going to get half-digested and become food for bacteria in your gut.
Keeping the harmful bacteria at bay and healthy bacteria in the forefront is one of the best ways to relieve constipation. This is what happens:
- You eat a bagel.
- You go to sleep.
- Your stomach and intestines shut down.
- That bagel more or less sits there.
- Bacteria -- both good and bad -- do not need sleep. They come out for the party. You've just left a major chunk of food. They'll swarm all over it, consuming as much as they can. They'll start reproducing like mad in the process.
And just like us, as they consume so they excrete. And what they excrete are toxins that damage the lining of your colon. These toxins emit gas that compounds the bloated feeling of constipation and makes it difficult for stools to pass. So, you need to make sure your stomach is EMPTY when you take to the covers.
If you absolutely must eat something, have a piece of fruit or 100% fruit juice diluted 50/50 with water. Fruit is probably the better choice because it won't make you get up to pee at 2am. The fibre in fruit also prevents it from spiking your blood sugar like juice will.
But again, you shouldn't really need to be munching on food before bed. If you find you feel you need to, you should determine whether it's more an emotional need than a physical one.
If so, then try replacing food with other, more satisfying emotional comforts. Here are a few examples:
- A walk around the block.
- Reading a book, poetry or scripture.
- Listening to an audio book.
- Listening to light music.
- Playing an instrument.
- Meditation/prayer/chanting.
I don't recommend the TV (or computers). The light from TV stops the natural flow of melatonin, the hormone which triggers sleep. The other reason you may be getting hungry at night is because you are staying up too late. You need to aim to be asleep by 9-10pm. This is when the sun sets near the equator and is the
most natural time for human beings to end their day.
After 10pm your brain starts kicking in with new hormones that wake you up, making you hungry and active. I recommend you have dinner finished by 6pm. Then you can have a light snack at 8pm if you feel like it. A piece of fruit and some nut butter is an ideal combination. It digests easily and will keep your blood sugar regulated during the night.
Another reason you may be feeling the need for a bedtime snack is because your diet is out of whack. Most men and women are eating far too much processed foods, which break down too quickly in the body. They also don't eat enough fruits and vegetables which are loaded with minerals and vitamins that truly nourish you (versus just keeping you going).
In fact, most people in our developed country are lacking vital nutrients in their diet. They are literally starving themselves while eating. No wonder their body keeps on demanding more and more food. It's not so much asking for quantity but quality.
Likewise, as I've already mentioned, proper absorption of food by chewing is essential to feeling fully nourished (and also for avoiding constipation).
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