Diet

I've discussed foods, exercise and a few other things regarding health and the holistic connection between them all, but until now I had not truly discovered their significance. Over the course of about four months I've been subjected to foods that were not to my particular liking, but had limited choice in the matter, pseudo-choice technically. I'm going to discuss a series of diets I went through to test my body's reaction to them, these findings will be without regard to food ingredients/contents. Since energy drinks and sodas have become so popular, I'll start with those.

While energy drinks and sodas technically weren't part of an involuntary choice, I made the decision to test their potency and effect on my body. The jolt from the caffeine and B-Vitamins is obvious, but what's more the reaction was the same from either the sugar or sugar free option. Both caused immense bloating and a strong desire to consume more, the forming of an addiction. After a couple days in a row I became more tired than awake, no energy drink solution was enough to keep me awake. I could easily control my intake by limiting myself to one per day, but why put myself through those stressors by having to constantly combat an addiction, so I'll just avoid them.

I've decided to add in soda here so that energy drinks aren't singled out. Every soda or carbonated syrup drink is sweetened with either sugar, high fructose corn syrup, aspartame or sucralose. There are stevia items that do exist, but I don't have any experience with them so I can't speak for them, although I imagine they're much cleaner considering my experience with stevia in my nutrition powders. All the items above had the same effects, this is very interesting because aspartame and sucralose have zero calories, yet caused the same feel of insulin spike I might get from their sugar or corn syrup counterparts. So maybe it's the caffeine right? I drink coffee every morning and no soda or energy drink comes close to 120mg per can. Essentially what I'm saying is that we're not saving ourselves by eating fake, calorie free sugar, it's still doing damage and probably much worse because they contain carcinogenic compounds. So when you go for a soda, try for one with sugar, it's real and it's harming you all the same, I'd actually lump corn syrup and fake sugars in the same category, because that's what it really is.

I consumed milk with every meal to determine its effects while combined with different foods. This was done on a meat diet and vegetarian diet on and off for a couple of weeks. My result was the intolerance of milk products, this was based on indigestion, poor bowel movements, gas and abdominal pains. Of course this is extreme, who drinks milk for every meal? But I continued to consume yogurt and cheese with no problems, it seems the culprit has been the cultivation of milk and its lactose. Although yogurt is from the same source, the active cultures are capable of neutralizing its negative affects. That leaves me with eggs and meat and how I determined which were a more suitable protein.

During the milk experiment I discovered which meats worked best consumed together, and that was no meats, they all caused intestinal inflammation. Without milk the only meats that didn't cause inflammation were seafood products, those not battered and fried, this also only covered catfish, salmon, alaska pollock, shrimp and I had crab legs once, what a waste of time. The fried items caused more inflammation than any meats, now moving on to eggs. I didn't always have eggs because I missed the serving times for breakfast most days. But eggs caused no intestinal problems, although they caused gas and sinus inflammation; other than their complete amino acid profile and 100 PDCAAS, they fall short in nutritional value and require a large number to compensate for other foods.

After I felt I'd tested everything I decided to take a few days off and go on what I would consider a detox diet. I still had Sunwarrior so I drank it throughout the day and felt wonderful, but I wasn't done just yet, now I wanted to test out the "American diet." How I did this was to consume exactly what was served, without complaint or any food restraint. After a week I couldn't take it anymore, I felt sick, lethargic and constantly bloated. I went on another detox binge for a couple days.

I continued on my vegetarian diet for about a week until I decided it was time for another experiment. This time it would be portion size and meal timing. I normally eat once every three hours and slowly increased it every day by a half hour. After a week I was eating about twice a day and it was a horrible torture. I was never hungry and when I did feel hungry, it was all at once and I felt starved. This was also on a vegetarian diet, so I decided to try it with meat and see if it changed anything, and it didn't. I could hardly stomach food and I would burp up food throughout the day from the large dinner I had the day before. I felt absolutely horrible and I still do, I'm currently coming off of that diet now with some really interesting stomach pains and heartburn; with these feelings I decided it was time to record my findings.

I've left out a lot of minor details like grains and what I ate at certain times to determine at what times of the day was best, but I'd like to keep this short. I've found that equally proportioned meals throughout the day assisted in metabolism and prevented insulin spikes. The one big meal I had for dinner on those days kept me up at night, my heart would race from the massive insulin spike I would receive. I suppose anybody could get used to these things over time, but if someone was used to it, how long before it starts affecting their health? It's hard to tell, but it was immediately adverse for me, I wouldn't want to imagine what damage it could do over time.

In conclusion, I'll be sticking to my six meals per day and eating them all equally, which includes dividing all my nutrients equally throughout all of my meals as I had somewhat done previously, but with greater scrutiny now. Eating any particular item for an entire meal, i.e. fruit, did not benefit me in any way, it only caused cramping and insulin spikes. A common "snack" for people is fruit and I'd advise against it, eat it in conjunction with meals. Overall after everything has been done, the outcome is balance, not daily balance, but balance for every meal. I want to be clear about the insulin spikes I keep referring to, and I only mention it because after every spike my energy levels dropped drastically after. I've recently had no energy for my workouts the past couple weeks and I'll post my recovery methods in a later post.