Eat, Drink, and Go Veggie

Nutrition Counts, Not Calories

This is the way we count our calories, but it isn’t necessary. Nutrition counts.

Nutrition counts. Calories just measure the potential for converted energy. If you’re still counting calories, good for you; however, newer science will help you maintain your weight where you want and stay healthy at the same time. Nutrition inside the calorie counts more than the calorie. In other words, the quality of nutrition in the calorie will mean more to your body than just keeping up with the number of calories.

Here’s a bit of truth, if you have a persistent health issue, you can likely overcome it with a well-selected nutrition plan. Likewise, if your weight for your body style seems to be too much or too little, you can likely control it with a well-selected nutrition plan. When you understand the role of nutrition, you will dump the calorie counting. You won’t need it.

Here’s the news for you to consider. You don’t need a diet, you need a lifestyle change. Are you up for it? Change can be hard, but it also has rewards. What value do you place on good health? Regardless of your age, you may have developed negative health conditions already. Many believe that aging is inevitable. That’s true. We all age; however, disease-free aging with a better quality of life seems certainly more desirable than what many people experience.

And, then there’s the medicine. If a doctor has prescribed some kind of “maintenance” treatment to keep your conditions under control, you will also experience the side effects that come with the meds. We always insist that you live life with a doctor as a partner. Each of us occasionally needs diagnostics to let us know how our body is reacting to our lifestyle choices. Here’s the rub. Most doctors are trained to provide intervention when one or more of our systems respond poorly, or even break down. Radical intervention has a place, but much of what we call medical treatment actually runs counter to nature.

Unfortunately, for several decades, doctors have NOT been trained in nutrition and natural responses. They have little chance to understand how to get us through life without interceptive treatments. They rely on substances, most of which are manufactured, that supposedly target symptoms but never provide a cure. Recent research shows beyond doubt that adequate nutrition alone will provide more prevention and long term relief than medicines.

Nutrition Counts

Let’s get back to the point about counting or not counting calories. There’s more to the science, but to keep it simple, nutrition is measured by the number of live enzymes, natural minerals, and the mixture of vitamins that come from the food we eat. God designed the human body for survival and it has marvelous self-healing mechanisms that work continuously at the cellular level. We can survive with little nutrition, but when we feed the body what it is designed to process internally, we thrive.

Counting calories never gives you a clue into how many live enzymes your food contains. Enzymes provide the regulatory triggers that make ingestion and digestion effective. Enzymes bring the best out of the combinations of vitamins and minerals in what we choose to eat. These live enzymes occur naturally in whole plant-based foods. Once a plant food goes through processing, especially cooking and refining, almost all of the enzymes die. Without them, the nutrition the body is looking for will not be delivered. Without the natural nutrition of live foods, you’re most likely to stay hungry most of the time.

counting Calories? Count the number of fruits and fresh veggies instead. Eat all you want.

So, how do you count nutrition rather than calories? It’s simple. All you need do is count the number of fresh fruits that you eat each day. Four or five will never be too many. And then, you want to count the number of raw veggies you eat each day. If you get up to about eight, you will be in the right range, especially if at least half of them are dark green and leafy.

Transitions can be difficult. Your brain has networks of neurons that need to be rewired. That’s what we call HABIT. Your mom got your habits started at infancy, and then refined those as you developed into the adolescent you became. Brain training is nothing more than exercising your will to behave differently. Will power works, but it’s like any muscle in the body. It needs repetitive activity to become trained differently. Your will power needs a new workout routine.

You’ve been exercising some will power by counting calories and trying to keep your food choices in what someone told you is an acceptable range. They’re keeping you on the fence. You hope they’re leading you to control bad choices to keep your weight or health under control. Once you take the next step, counting nutrition instead of calories, you can retrain your brain away from bad choices—dead food—and begin to thrive on live foods. You’ll find it easy enough. Once you make the change to live, whole, plant-based foods, you can eat all you want. You’ll quickly learn that nutrition counts, calories just add up and really don’t mean much.

You may have done this already. You know what it means and we’d like to hear your story. If not, we ask this, how free will it feel to be counting sheep or something else and not being a slave to the calories? What do you think?

Be well!