BREAKING THE CYCLE

Your body evolved to be a highly efficient machine. It carried your ancestors over mountains, deserts, seas, and survived famine, cold, heat, sun, rain, snow, hail, and countless predators. You really need to gain an appreciation for its capabilities. You only get one. No replacements, no returns, no exchanges. If you are so fortunate as to have received a body without serious defect, show some respect for this gift. If you have one with limitations, find ways to explore its full potential.

When you see someone who has been a serious drug abuser or alcoholic for, maybe decades, realize what that body has gone through, and still functions on some level! You can go without food for over a month, and still survive, (not that you should try it), but these bodies will keep functioning under the most extreme of circumstances. That's how we evolved to this point. Our bodies were made to survive and produce offspring, regardless of circumstances.

With the good, comes the bad. With our current unlimited access to calorie dense foods, the body uses less energy to process its fuel. You slam down a couple of doughnuts, and the body realizes, "Hey, here are 400 calories worth of energy, and it's already sugar, so virtually no work required to break it down!" It goes virtually directly to your bloodstream, which gives you a short energy burst. Sugar burns off quickly, however, and the body has adjusted your insulin to regulate the now high blood sugar level, so you are left with the "crash". We all know the feeling, the sleepy, lethargic malaise that sets in an hour after a high sugar snack or meal.

Our ancestor, to whom we will henceforth refer to as "Ogg", (I don't know why, it just seems like he/she should be "Ogg) never had access to doughnuts. The closest he came was, maybe overripe fruit, which still falls short of the refined sugar rush of modern sweets.

Our bodies simply don't need, nor do they do well with this type of input. It's a pleasant taste, a quick sugar rush, so we do it. Your body starts to get used to not having to do much to process fuel. Bad cycle. You need to break it, to get you body back to doing what it does best, that is dealing with natural foods that Ogg could get his grubby hands on. Fruit, nuts, meat, etc.

A piece of fruit may not give you the fun sugar rush of a chocolate chip cookie, but it gives you something the cookie doesn't ...............real nutrients! You will feel strangely satisfied on a gut level if you can make the switch. Try it for a few days and see.