How one finds a perfect diet.
On cooking and un-cooking for weight loss. Evolution, raw food, self-experiments.
This blog is inspired by the book I read last week,
“Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human”
A book, that made me think in a new way of what I call now “body energy mathematics”.
We are not what we eat. We are not what our food “ate/consumed”. We are really and ultimately, what we are able to assimilate, to digest, to absorb and use, and that depends on so many factors — on our gut microbiome, on our metabolism, on our state of health, on our emotional and physical state and state of health at the moment of eating, it depends on how we chew, how fit and robust or not our digestive system is — it depends on how we cook and prepare our food.
Did you know, for example, that you are able to absorb 40% more protein from a cooked egg than from a raw egg?
Did you know, that when you properly cook your food (not burning it of course) you increase its nutritional value, sometimes as much as 90% (raw potato VS cooked potato)?
Did you know, that if we didn’t cook our food, we would probably have to spend another 4 hours chewing! Just to get all the energy requirements met!
That’s why most animals in the wild are constantly either eating or looking for food.
Think about how much time we are saving daily just because we cook! Cooking is a HUGE time saver for our species — that’s why we can do so much more with our time!
And by cooking I mean not only temperature cooking, but modifying our foods in some way, making the eating and digestion processes easier mechanically or chemically: cutting, blending, fermenting, treating with salt and acid, sprouting, drying — all of that helps our digestive system to do less work and absorb more nutrition from what we eat.
Even raw foodists cook! NOBODY eats ONLY wild foods, the way mother nature provides it anymore. In fact, the author of the book is convinced, because of all that evidence, that a modern homo sapiens can not survive indefinitely on raw wild foods only, the way other animals do.
What does it mean for you? For your diet?
Digestive process is one of the most energetically expensive processes our body performs, it can take up to 30% of your energy expenditure.
Some foods give your digestive system a really hard workout, giving very little in return — your fiber rich non-starchy vegetables, greens are the most “expensive” foods.
Some foods are very lazy: let’s take an Oreo cookie, for example, it requires very little energy to absorb all the calories from it. We get a lot of energy cheaply (But of course no essential micro nutrients and blood sugar spikes in overfed state on top, that’s not a good news for your health, performance or waist size).
The more you make your digestive system work — the easier it is for you to lose weight. That’s the main takeaway for you today.
So yes, there are foods, that make you lose weight easier.
That’s why you might have heard about negative calorie foods, that make your body spend energy, because by the time you are finished digesting your meal, you spend more energy than you get out of it.
That’s why, for example, you might consider eating raw broccoli VS cooked broccoli — you’ll burn more calories but also will absorb less energy.
For maximum weight loss, besides eating healthy foods, changing the quality of your diet, include huge salad with lots and lots of raw vegetables and greens in your daily diet, give your digestive system a good workout and your waist will start shrinking faster. I notice in the mirror, how my waste gets thinner and leaner, every time I add a huge salad to my daily diet! It’s like magic — a workout from inside out! Plus I love my salads with some yummy dressing to accompany my meals!
For more details on how you can use cooking and un-cooking to get lean and lose more weight, shoot me an email to Angela at CreateYourself.Today.
And check out this really fascinating book, that will make you re-think the vital importance of cooked food in our evolution, society, culture — in everything that makes us human.
Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human by Richard Wrangham
Another great resource on the subject I absolutely loved from one of the best food writers.
What about your perfect diet?
Listen to this short 10-minute episode of my podcast, A BETTER SELF DAILY, to learn how to design your perfect diet, what to learn, what to pay attention to.
You don’t get healthy and stay healthy.
HEALTH is a DAILY PRACTICE. One bite at a time.
Daily Bite of Health
Eat raw vegetables for maximum lean weight loss.
