« For a Strong, Healthy Heart: Enjoy Real Food Again | Main | Three Easy Principles for a Healthy Heart and Appropriate Weight Management »
August 29, 2005
For a Healthy Heart, Eat From the Real Food Groups
Remember those four basic food groups from grade school health class? If you've forgotten them, don't worry about it, they don't tell you anything about your natural diet. They were a nutritionist’s attempt to make sense of a very contrived artificial diet based on grains and other processed foods.
It’s simpler and much more consequential to think about your food according to the macronutrients it contains. A macronutrient is a nutrient that you burn for energy. There are three basic types: Proteins, fats, and carbohydrates. This is true if you are talking about the diet of modern Americans, ancient cave dwellers, or space station astronauts.
Macronutrients are different chemically and structurally, and each has a different function and a different hormonal response. The type of macronutrients you eat affects your metabolism, regardless of the number of calories you consume.
When you eat protein, your body produces growth hormones that build muscles. When you eat carbohydrates, your body secretes insulin to digest carbohydrates and build fat. (Eating fat has little effect on hormone balance.) The effect of eating protein and carbohydrate has a “compounding effect” over time.
The body muscle or body fat that you build in response to protein or carbohydrate in your diet then further affects your metabolism. For instance, muscle stimulates testosterone and energy use, while fat stimulates estrogen and energy conservation.
Creating a lean physique at the same time you sidestep this modern epidemic of heart disease is easier than you may think. You create both a lean body and a healthy heart by choosing the right quantity and quality of proteins and carbohydrates. For those of us who eat the typical American diet, this means increasing protein, decreasing carbohydrates, and replacing bad fats with healthy fats.
Simply return to the mix of these macronutrients in your natural diet. This approach will lay the foundation for you to establish the weight and health you were born to enjoy. You also will enhance your energy and strength while losing body fat. Once you try this approach to eating, you’ll agree that it’s more enjoyable and easier to follow than the American Heart Association’s low-fat approach.
To read more about this topic order Al Sears MD’s The Doctor’s Heart Cure today
Posted by james at August 29, 2005 9:17 AM