Progessing through my journey

A couple posts ago I mentioned I was on a mission to find an educational science based book about clean eating... so on Memorial Day, still invigorated and infuriated by my recent viewing of 'Fed Up' I made my way to Barnes and Noble to buy the book I had found online. When I got there I was informed that whatever I read online was wrong, and such a book did not exist in actual book form at the store... so off to the "Health" (quotations intentional) section I went in search of just the perfect book. When I arrived in the isle long "Health" section I was greeted by row upon row of books with the most obnoxious titles... all relaying some false hope of how to lose weight quickly by choosing one fad diet or another. The longer I sat there skimming titles the more furious I become... how could any of these books really fall under "health"... needless to say I pulled about 6 or 7 books that had some sort of scientific look to them...6 or 7 out of HUNDREDS!!! That right there is enough to show you all the things wrong with how we view food.

Anyway...despite the piles of books I had to dig through the book I finally ended up with, 'The Science of Skinny' is EXACTLY what I was looking for! Not only has it been very inspirational, it's also been very informative and has caused to me step back a bit from how I am progressing with my clean eating journey. It's made me want to have a better understanding of WHY clean eating is important, other than the statement that processed foods are bad for you and it's healthy for us to eat foods as close to natural as possible. Having a better understanding of how things break down in your body really gives you motivation to run as far away from processed foods as possible...at least for me it does For example... sugar (I've been reading the chapter this week).. in it's processed form is so bad for you, it shouldn't even be considered a food item after all the things they've done to it... the author of the book calls it a "substance" and I agree. But anyway... here's why it (and other processed foods) are so bad for you: When you ingest something and your body starts breaking it down we require other things (vitamins, minerals etc) to complete this process. When food is in it's natural form, many items already contain these essential things all in one perfect package... but when they're processed they are stripped of these essential vitamins and minerals and our body is forced to start drawing from internal sources like our bones and teeth to digest our food... this process is called leaching. As far as why processed sugar is such a toxin... when it's ingested, without all these other beautiful essential vitamins and minerals needed to digest it, it instantly breaks down into fructose and glucose. Fructose immediately goes to our liver to be stored as fat (causing us to gain weight) and glucose is released into our blood stream... causing our pancreas to produce insulin to try and remove this excess sugar from our blood stream and transport it to our cells to be used for energy. Our bodies are just not designed to handle all this excess sugar that we consume on a daily basis (of the 600,000 food items found in grocery stores 80% have added sugar!!!!!) so we are overloaded. Because we're so overloaded, the glucose can't be used as energy right away ...so it's taken to the liver and once again... stored as fat.

So all these processed things, whether their low fat, calorie free...whatever... they all have added processed sugar in them, and every time we ingest something with added sugar our bodies go through the same process. So we can workout to our hearts content... our bodies will never be able to burn off all that sugar that we're ingesting. And I'm not even getting into all the other damage processed sugar can cause!!

I'm really starting to see and understand the reasons why our body should really only be consuming unprocessed, whole, natural and chemical free foods...and even more so... I'm starting to understand how wrong I've been for all these years... and why I've developed such an unhealthy relationship with food. I hated it... every time I ate I loathed it, because that was just one more calorie I'd have to try and burn at the gym. The minute I went over the certain number of calories my body needed to function I was going to gain weight... I spent so much time limiting myself to such a low number of calories, desperately trying to burn off more than I consumed every day... all that time torturing myself!!!!

Well...no more!!! The more I learn about this new journey I've started on the more inspired I become, and the more I desperately want the whole world to know what I know!!! So if you're reading this... SPREAD THE WORD!!!!! It's time to take back our life and our health!!!

Now that my motivational speech is over I thought I'd also share with you a recipe that I've added to my clean eating repertoire that is easy and very versatile... I found the idea on pinterest... some of you might already know about them... I call them "egg muffins"

Egg Muffin Recipe:

What you'll need:
- unprocessed non-stick cooking spray
-an assortment of vegetables (I change it up every week - this week I went with spinach, broccoli and zucchini - I however won't use zucchini again, too watery)
- coconut oil, or some other clean oil
-eggs
-spices (your choice)
-some type of cheese (optional)
-some type of meat (optional)

First, preheat your oven to 350 degrees. While it's heating up, chop up your veggies and throw them in a saute pan with the coconut oil and the spices of your choice. I usually go with salt, pepper and garlic powder. I let them go until they're almost as cooked as I enjoy them.

While they're cooking I start cracking the eggs. I use mostly eggwhites (but this is really just because I don't love the taste of egg yolks, obviously use whichever you prefer.) The number of eggs you need depends on whether you're only going to use eggwhites, and how much stuff you put in the muffin tin. I find I normally need between 12-16 eggs to fill a full cupcake pan (I use 4 full eggs and the rest only the whites.) When you crack them, make sure they're in container that you can easily control how fast you pour them into the cupcake pan...I use my measuring cup with a little spout.

Spray your cupcake pan well with the non-stick cooking spray and then fill with your veggies (if you're using cheese throw the cheese sliced into the cupcake pan as well; if you're using meat also add it at this time - I cook the meat prior to adding it to the cupcake pan) and then slowly pour your eggs over everything.

Put them in the oven for about 35 minutes, remove promptly, let cool and ENJOY!! I make a bunch of these in the beginning of the week and then take two out every morning and put them in the microwave (Nate uses the toaster) and they're still quite delicious!!