Eat To Perform Blog

I was talking to a family member who recently said, “I went off of sugar for a week and I feel great – I just think I am an addict.”

A lot of people over consume sugar because IT’S ENERGY SPECIFIC. And yes, I am aware your brain likes sugar, it is quite literally its primary energy source.

The BIGGEST reason people over consume hyper-palatable foods is because they aren’t prepared and often let hunger go too far. If you wake up at 6 am and don’t eat until noon, it’s about to get ugly because no one chooses kale in that situation.

When people think of things like donuts or ice cream, they tend to think of them as carbs - they aren’t JUST carbs. That’s not where A LOT of the calories come from. For instance, the grease in a donut is not carbs. Part of what makes a food hyper-palatable is a combination of calories that make that food TASTY. Refined sugar is awful alone but add it to fried grease and you have magic.

So I started sending him my meals just to give him a different perspective and he was like “wow, you are literally eating all of the time.” And what he meant was that I make eating a priority in my life so that when I see a donut, I don’t feel a need to eat 6 of them.

That’s an interesting point too. I am not around donuts a lot so when I eat them it’s a special occasion. I probably haven’t had a donut since my daughters were young (they are college age now) but if they wanted to go to a donut place, I wouldn’t say no.

Food is energy, if you are constantly under eating…guess what? You aren’t going to sit down and eat five pounds of kale. You need a good mix of nutrient dense foods with responsible calories but also have SOME ENERGY dense foods so that you don’t feel imprisoned by your food choices.

Is sugar bad? Maybe. But you know what’s worse? Denying yourself of nourishing foods so that your body needs to catch up by eating hyper-palatable foods.

If after Halloween and Easter you just can’t help yourself, maybe analyze whether you are eating enough most of the time. You might just figure out that you are hungry. And absolutely, if you get over hungry, having a family size bag of Kit Kat’s might be the result.

If you think you need help with your nutrition one on one coaching often leads people down a much better path. To talk to a coach and see what your EXACT Eat To Perform plan will look like simply go to https://www.eattoperform.com/ (also you can live chat with a coach using the button bottom right on the site