Food for comfort...no more!

There are a lot of people that do not like reading books, but I bet that there is one book that everybody has read- The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery. There are a couple quotes from that book that are always alive in my mind. Today I was walking and thinking about something when this quote from the book popped up in my mind:

'What are you doing here?' he said to the drunkard whom he found sitting silently in front of a collection of bottles, some empty and some full.
'I am drinking,' answered the drunkard lugubriously.
'Why are you drinking?' the little prince asked.
'In order to forget,' replied the drunkard.
'To forget what?' enquired the little prince, who was already feeling sorry for him.
'To forget that I am ashamed,' the drunkard confesed, hanging his head.
'Ashamed of what?' asked the little prince who wanted to help him.
'Ashamed of drinking!' concluded the drunkard, withdrawing into total silence.
And the little prince went away, puzzled.
'Grown-ups really are very, very odd,' he said to himself as he continued his journey.'

And what this has to do with proper food choices you'd ask? Well, have you noticed most people that are extremely overweighed. What do you see about them? Just how big they look on the outside? Is that all you can say? Haven't you noticed the saddness in their eyes? The pain? Sometimes the way we look can be misleading. You'd think they are so big, because they indulge to all of their food cravings...but is it really that way? Just like the drunkard that the Little Prince met, people often try to bury their pain,fears and insecurity somewhere deep inside, masking them with something else...either it will be drinking alchohol,coffee, eating or something else. It is just a try to run away from what scares us....what overwhelms us...

Sometimes when our pain and fears oppress us...when we try to avoid them, keeping them hidden somewhere deep...they just eat us from the inside...and we desperately try to feel the holes with something...and most often we turn to stuffing ourselves with food...

But is this really the solution to our problems. Does this solve them? Or it just adds up to them? You are feeling overwhelmed and you rеаch for that pizza or the cookies...you feel a moment of pleasure and then go back to reality where you feel twice more depressed than you were before... now you have one more problem-your addicion to food... your expectation that food will be your best buddy...that it will carry you through the hardships... but that is not what happens! Friends give you comfort, without leading to slavory. And food brings a momentum of comfort,just to spin you in an enchanted circle of regret and self-pitty.

Next time when you feel sad...when something offends you...instead of going to the supermarket and grabbing all the food you can carry, just to end up eating it...hoping that you will feel better...STOP burying your hopes and dreams under layers of fat! Just face the problems. Ask yourself what makes you happy. Leave your doubts and just dash at your dreams...fulfill your aspirations...and you won't need food for comfort on the path! All you'll need is your heart, motivation and the vision of what you truely want to become.

How taste buds change with healthy eating

Junk food versus healthy food

I was watching a Tv show about cooking. The chef is bulgarian but now lives in the USA. He was complaining how at the beginning of his cooking career in the USA,people complained of te taste of the food. He said that people overseas enjoy stronger flavors and more spicy food than in Bulgaria. It makes sense about every nation and different culture to enjoy different food flavors...and that got me thinking about something that has nothing to do with different national dishes and tastes...

Before I knew anything about nutrition, I used to fuel my body with tons of junk food, fried foods and the more it was bad for my body, the more I liked it and the more I ate it. Oh, I loved donuts! I could eat them all the time. Cakes, pancakes, croissants, sugar...you name it, I loved it!

Then I started searching through fitness forums, I got more interested in nutrition and started educating myself on the topic. One day I decided I was gonna give healthy eating a try. And it was a pain in the ass! I remember how I could hardly wait for my cheat day, to stuff myself with all the sugar I could. Healthy food was on my eating menu, just because I knew it was right for me. I did not like it that much. And vegetables...spinach, zucchini, broccoli...oh, even if you pointed a gun in my head, I'd still resist eating them.

Then as time went on, and I kept eating healthy, my cheat days started disappearing, i did no longer need eating sugar and I actually started enjoying healthy foods. Now green vegetables are my favorite. I do not think there is a vegetable out there that I do not love. I eat plenty of them everyday.

Since I started eating good foods n general, I have a heightened sense of taste. Now if I occasionally taste some candy, it tastes disgusting. It takes like pure sugar to me and it is way too sweet. I even wonder at times how I could eat so much of them in my past.Sugar now tastes overwhelmingly sweet, sometimes unpleasantly so.

Now I love the taste of fruit, and before fruits could stay in my house for days till they started getting rotten and I wa sforced to throw them away. Now blueberries, cherries, strawberries taste like desserts and I really enjoy them. Actually when I started eating healthy I wondered how the veterans in healthy eating, said they did not enjoy candies, and how they could resist them. I thought that was impossible to happen with me.

Come on! It is not such a hard choice!

But now I see it. I do not need to resist junk food, because it does not taste good anymore. It is not a temptation. Now the thought of a homemade steak and steamed broccoli makes me hungry and the thought of ice cream makes me sick.

Everything listed above shows how tastes buds can change depending on our food choices. And if you think I am just an exception, you are wrong! That happens with everybody that sticks with good food for long enough. If you just give it a try, and give yourself some time, you will find out how tasty healthy food can be. You will start enjoying natural flavors, and you will be disgusted by artificial sweeteners and sugar.

Nikolai's cookies

shWhoever thinks that cooking healthy meals can't turn out in anything delicious, either can't cook or haven't tried! :) There are countless websites about healthy cooking and there are some recepies that are really good. If you try and make some of them, you won't taste another candy to the end of your life, and eating healthy will become a lifestyle, and you will for sure feel happy and not deprived. One really easy and good recepie for cookies that a friend of mine-Nadia- gave me is the following:

6whole eggs


3 table spoons flax flour


1pinch cinnamon


1table spoon shredded coconut


150grams oatmeal


2 table spoon honey

2vanillas

Put everything listed above in a bowl, then stir it till you have homogeneous blend. Then divide the blend in two, and add some cocoa to one of the parts. After that take from the blend(either with spoon or hands) and form the shapes of the cookies. Put them on the baking paper, and  put them in the oven. Bake them and after that enjoy your healthy sweets! :)

Why fats are better than carbs

I am really keen on nutrition, and I spend a lot of time reading about it from different resources. Eventhough I know a lot about it, I can easily get confused by all the inconsistency and differences in theories out there. Some preach eat high-carb diets, others preach high-protein...high-fat, low-fat and so on. If you do not believe me that it is that hard to find out which one is good for you, just by reading...try it yourself. Pick up a diet and start reading about it. You will find tons of information and reasearches backing it up and as much inoformation that claims it to be unhealthy.

I am pretty much convinced that just by reading and trusting some health guru, you couldn't pick the right nutritional plan. I know it from experience, and I'd reccomend you try and find out which one works best for you. But from my experience( and I've tried all the high-something and low-something diets), the best one is the high fat diet, with your fats coming from meat,nuts, coconut oil, olives, fish, egss, avocado and so on; your carbs coming from some fruit and lot's of different vegetables and the protein...just eat your meat and eggs :).

Because I do not want it to sound bareness I will back up my theory. I am not the best at explaining something with biologycal terms, though I understand it for myself...so I will make it easier. I found an article that sums up everything and provides it in a simple way so it could be understood by everybody. Here it is.

I will just add up something to all that, by saying to everybody that thinks carbs are vital for our survival...Let's go back to our ancestors and think about how they lived. Because our evolution is due to their way of living. They had to go long periods without food, followed by some feasts. DUring the time of starvation our body needed a way to provide the essntial body parts with the needed nutrition. So it developed mechanisms to cope with the different circumstances. The liver, the main back-up glycogen;glucose storage can only store about 100 grams of glycogen. Less than a day’s worth. Your muscles can only hold another 350-500 grams and that glycogen isn’t even available to provide fuel for the brain. Meanwhile, we have a virtually unlimited storage capacity for fat-about 100,000 grams or close to a million calories . The reason glycogen storage wasn’t necessary is because, between our copious fat storage capability, easy access to fats as fuel, gluconeogenesis and ketones, we just didn’t need much. Evolution tends not to reward structures or functions that take up unnecessary space or waste energy.

Also let's make it simple and think why do we tend to get ona diet? Because we store the excess calories we eat as fat. Why do we store them as fat? Because that is what the body keeps,so in case you made it endure long periods without food, it will make sure that it will have enough fuel to provide in order to survive.