HH351: Food As Energy

Welcome back to another episode of health hack. I am continuing my talk about energy. And in my last episode, I talked about the fact that the simple act of digestion uses energy. And food, of course, is one of our main sources of energy. The other is sleep, which I will be talking about in the next episode. But not all food offers equal energy. And we want to be eating nutrient dense foods that leave us feeling satiated, so that we only need to be eating every three and a half to four hours. If we are eating well and fueling our body in this way, it means that we are getting good energy from that food. And we are not eating so often that we're digesting all the time. And that can be the case for many people that we're just always putting food in our mouth, the last meal hasn't even fully been digested yet, and we're putting more food in. And so our body never gets out of that digestion process, which is using energy. So how do we want to fuel our body? Well, well, we want to make sure that every meal has some good quality, fat, some protein, some carbohydrates. And in that process of getting all three of those macros, you are then allowing your digestion to actually slow down and take longer, and that makes you feel satiated for longer. So getting those good quality fats in, they serve a purpose your body needs them, your brain is largely made up of fat, but we want them to be good quality fats, olive oil, avocado oil, coconut oil. And that slows down the digestive process, which leaves you feeling satiated for longer protein, another great source of energy that you don't want to have too much or too little love. But having protein in every meal allows your body to have sustained energy through the day. So think about these things. How are you eating? What are you eating? Are you making deliberate choices around the food that you're putting in your mouth at each meal and do you have some protein, some carbs, and some good quality fat, one to two tablespoons per meal is a good amount of fat to have. And you can just pour olive oil over the top of some salad, you can sprinkle it over some roasted veggies, the veggies don't even have to be cooked in the olive oil, you can just pour the olive oil over afterwards to have the benefits of that good quality fat that will then slow down digestion and help you feel satiated. And that gives you the energy that you need to go from one meal to the next every three and a half to four hours apart so that you're not constantly eating all day and never getting out of digestion mode. And that's how you can be using food to give you the energy that you need. Rather than having digestion draining all the energy from the food that you're eating