Nutrition, Health, and Sleep

Note: I'm going to try and promise to keep my blogs short and sweet - like amuse bouche, they will be just enough to feed your mind but not so long you get overloaded! At the end, I'll try to include more links for your edification if you are still hungry. Also, some online tools and sometimes other aids to help you on this journey to health!

So, I promised I'd write about nutrition this weekend, so my first post is going to be about general knowledge you need to know about food and your brain and body.

First off, your body needs fuel to move - even sitting around the house, your body is burning energy just to live. The more you move, the more fuel your body needs - ya'll know that already. But, how does the body use all that fuel? Well, think of what you eat like a chain: fat, protein, and then carbs. Your body burns them in that order, unless there's a problem (like if you drink alcohol - but that's another post!).

So, what does it do with all that food? First, if you work out even moderately to build muscle and work some cardio, then your body takes the fat and uses that for power. Then it uptakes the protein and converts it to muscle. THEN, the carbs kick in and get spent to power through to the next meal. This is why it's important to get enough of each of those items depending on your degree of energy output each day.

So, depriving yourself of carbs is not good on a long term basis, or if you are a moderate to high worker-outer because you NEED them to make insulin, which helps the process. Now, the cool thing about all this is that the complex carbs have a double plus - some contain tryptophan (an essential amino acid the body cannot make itself) which then converts to seratonin, which THEN converts to melatonin - and I don't have to tell you that seratonin is the neurotransmitter that helps you feel *cool* and the melatonin aids in sleep. In the right amounts, they DO NOT MAKE YOU FAT! In the wrong amounts, they mess with your ability to burn fat, which then gets stored. They also mess with your basic body function that is the MOST important one you do: SLEEP!

When you sleep, you should hit REM. When you hit REM, your body is in deepest sleep and - catch this - BECAUSE it's an /organic/ machine, it can HEAL ITSELF to a degree! So, the better sleep you get, the better you can function.

First tip, then, for brain/body health: SLEEP! And sleep well. Second tip is to eat the right amounts of "golden ratio" of fat/protein/carb. Replacing one meal of the day with a protein shake can help with this! BeachBody has a great one called Shakeology - the best one I've found on the market, and I've done a LOT of recent personal research on this very thing. If you are interested in more info on Shakeology, you can go to: www.myshakeology.com/jonnikhat

Some good links for further reading:
http://caloriecount.about.com/forums/maintaining/golden-ratio-carbs-protein-fat
http://frank.mtsu.edu/~studskl/food.html
http://www.livestrong.com/article/267111-tryptophan-l-tryptophan-to-help-aid-sleep/

Some tools:
http://www.freedieting.com/tools/nutrient_calculator.htm