*Food as Fuel - Part 1*

The concept of "food as fuel" is something that I don't feel I can sum up in only one post so for now I will detail how I have finally realised what the concept is all about

I never really latched onto the idea of "food as fuel" at the end of the day I always believed that no matter what I ate it was always going to "fuel" my body so that it functioned. I have read book after book, website after website, been to meeting after meeting and seen show after show about how energy or sugar levels can affect our choice of food, our mood and our overall thought processes. I believed myself to be somewhat of an expert on what should be eaten. After all the majority of us know what should be eaten but its the doing it that makes the difference but its also about what works for us. We are all unique. Our bodies function differently to our friends and families and thrive off of things that some people may not.

Finding what works for me is a step towards the realisation that this isn't a diet, this is a lifestyle change and something that I will have to continue for the rest of my life. Understanding that it is a lifestyle change could and should be a topic of its own but I feel its the one thing that connects all the little things (realisations, doing's,) together. As knowing what works for me is inevitably going to make my journey to goal and through maintenance better, as well as fueling my body so it functions to its peak.

The concept of "food as fuel" has been mentioned time and time again but I finally realised what it was about. A great example of this was during my workout's this week. For breakfast I normally eat cereal with soya milk or soya yogurt with fruit, however one particular day I ate toast for breakfast. No big deal right. Wrong! I waited for my food to settle and got ready for my workout. By about ten minutes into my workout I felt light headed and as if I was going to pass out. I literally had no energy. I decided to stop, take a breather and collect my thoughts. I couldn't work out what had changed. I had done everything like I normally did and yet I felt so weak. The only thing that I had changed was my breakfast, I had eaten toast rather than cereal or yogurt and fruit. I ate my lunch and went back to my workout of which I managed to complete. Thinking that it could have been the toast I decided to try it out again.

The next day I tried the same thing. Again I felt really weak and lightheaded. Believing it was the toast that was making me feel the way I did and affecting my workouts so much I decided to see how I would feel the next day if I ate my normal breakfast. I did this and had an amazing workout. I didn't change anything apart from the food that I consumed and I had totally different results. Since then I've stuck to my normal breakfast and I have never felt weak or lightheaded.

Now this may seem really small and insignificant to some but for me this is a huge deal. I finally got my head around the idea of eating to fuel my body. I can see that my body functions better on certain types of food than others. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that I'm going to stop eating bread altogether because I'm not but what I will say is toast is not something that I could eat on its own, it doesn't fuel my body in the way in which I need it to and I have found better "fuel" for my body to help it function to what and how I currently want it to function.

Like I mentioned previously, "food as fuel" is a topic that is more than what I have written in this post and so have decided to spread it across a number of posts. Food as fuel isn't just about picking cereal and fruit over toast in the morning, but it is defiantly a start!

Roo xoxo