Just to recap from my previous emails, when I started The Clean Cook it was my goal to help people eat healthy food that tasted great and made them feel good. During the last 11 years this has continued to be my mission and I have constantly read, listened and researched to understand better how the food we eat can improve our health and well being and make us feel better.
During this time it has given me some simple practices that have helped me initially lose almost 3 stone and for 11 years keep it off, even whilst having a baby in the middle.
Five years ago I set up The Clean Cook Club which gave my members these principles and the knowledge behind it and they also saw the benefits so now I wanted to share them with you.
As regular customers, choosing to buy our food, I know you are consciously trying to make the right choices to be healthier and, in some cases lose a bit of weight and do it in a healthy and sustained way, so I wanted to share these simple practices with you and give you some simple tweaks to change in your eating habits that we know will make you feel even better and that your body will thank you for.
This is the third of the emails that we have put together, (A small tweak every week) that we know is really achievable for all and hope you find of benefit. If you are finding these emails useful and you are giving it a go its always great to have feedback as improving peoples health and well being is what drives me the most.
It would be great to know if you tried, or plan to try, week ones Eat More Veg and week twos Drink More Water, suggestion and if you've felt them to be beneficial, keep it going, these tweaks are aimed for you to build on habit by habit as I share them.
One feedback is from my husband Jon who has refocused and been also actively drinking 2 litres a day and reducing his coffee intake. He wears a Garmin which tells him his body battery which has been showing low for the past few weeks but since changing his habit he has been waking up with his levels showing high and has been feeling better for it.
He knows that sometimes we all need a little reminder and reset.
Thanks
Michelle
The Third behaviour tweak for you to try this week
Week 3 - Give Your Body and Digestive System 'A Break'!
What we are aiming to achieve this and every week moving forward
To be kinder to our body and give it at least a 12 hour break from eating per day to allow it to do all the other amazing things it needs to do.
Why this as our weekly mission?
Digesting Food takes a lot of effort and In simple terms, just like after exercise, the body needs time to rest and recover and time off from constantly having to digest the food we eat, otherwise it cant deliver on all it's other important functions and tasks. The busy lives we lead and 24 hour availability of food has meant we now often eat from morning through to night and that means our bodies just aren't being allowed the time it needs away from digestion to rest and recover properly, being forced to digest food as we sleep, rather than renewing, and this is contributing to the rise in health issues for people.
Tips to help you achieve this weekly goal
Choose a 12 hour window that suits you
Your body likes rhythm and routine so try and keep a ‘norm’ even at weekends
Allow the window to be flexible if you need it to be
Outside your window stick to water, herbal tea and if you need caffeine (morning only) choose black
Involve the family and your work colleagues, this will benefit them too you are being kind and creating an environment to be thrive
Be kind to yourself - if you miss a day don’t beat yourself up just start again- Remember progress not perfection
When you are feeling comfortable try a couple of days only eating for 10 hours, 9 hours or even 8 hours and pay attention to how this makes you feel.
Remember wine (alcohol) and milk (in your hot drinks) are also food
Allow yourself 1 hour in the morning before you eat food
Find alternative behaviours to fill that time you’d usually eat outside the window
So why as a Rule should you only spend at least 12 of the 24 hours in a day Eating?
What are the Reasons and Benefits to doing this daily?
12 hours is a good starting point for your body to get done all it's other house keeping jobs without having to focus on the timely, difficult task of digestion.
This house keeping is called 'Autophagy' and it is a natural process that occurs when the body clears out and replaces damaged cell parts with new ones. It's linked to a long list of potential health benefits. Giving the body’s autopilot response to keeping an orderly house means giving it time off digesting food. All is ok, as long as we give our body chance to keep its house in order by giving it the time it needs and giving it 12 hours enhances this and assists the repair process.
Only eating for a minimum of 12 hours of the day is manageable, sensible and sustainable think 6am to 6pm, 8am to 8pm, 11am to 11pm, really that is enough time to get your fuel in.
After 6 to 8 hours the liver will have used all the internal food stores in the form of glycogen and soon after this the body will start to eat its own fat stores.
The liver stops secreting glucose into the blood steam and instead uses it to repair cell damage
The liver is simultaneously stimulated to release enzymes that break down stored fat and cholesterol, thus repairs itself and burns fat
The body puts on less fat and gains a larger muscle mass when fed over a shorter period due to the positive impact on the metabolism
Giving your body 12 hours off eating is proven to lower levels of inflammation, improve blood sugar control, improved mitochondrial function, which is the energy factory of the body, the body’s ability to convert food and oxygen into energy and ensure optimal health. Which in turn means significant reduction in brain fog, slumps in energy, pain, poor memory and premature aging.
Your body has an improved immune function, Enhanced detoxification function, increase production of our gut bugs to improve our gut health and Improved appetite signalling.
We all need more rest and recuperation time not more time under stress and our body is the same and eating continually is not allowing our body time it needs.
If you work with your body it repays you ten fold, with improved, health, well being and energy.
Hormonal Benefits of Fasting deserve their own blog too but lets just summarise by saying female hormone come in waves and need understanding and nurturing. Something so beautiful and complex as the female body certainly does not need any more stress, it needs support! Digestion is a big stress on the body, as are Ultra Processed Foods, a lack of Fibre through not eating enough Veg and Fruit in whole Food Forms and being dehydrated- Women need to be even more conscious, because we are more complex and there are more things to consider. We and our bodies do not need be weighed down and continually placed under threat by food for most of the hours we are awake- it certainly needs 12 hours off.
We know that planning, preparing and cooking takes time and this contributes to our longer days and this is a common reason for our customers choosing our meals. They know that within ten minutes they can microwave one of our delicious meals and steam or boil some veg and mealtime is done, all with the added benefit of knowing they're putting plenty of goodness back in their bodies after a busy day.
Other points to consider
The Earlier you stop eating the better you will sleep and the more energised you will feel, this is due to the body working to circadian rhythms. For this reason, your first meal is more important than your last (Remember the saying breakfast like a king, supper like a poor man). This is due to certain body functions shutting down and not functioning properly in the evening.
Dr Rupy Auiila has 'bringing your dinner forward' as one of his key 4 tips to weight loss and can be heard here talking to Dr Chattergee just this week.
Melatonin makes you drowsy and the pancreas stops working and producing insulin as we are going to bed. It also takes time to come around in the morning, so we shouldn’t be asking it to eat as soon as it wakes up or as we are going to bed.
Cortisol wakes you up, so you have a natural stimulant doing the work so you shouldn’t need any others if you work with your body, it will repay you big style.
There is so much exciting research in this area and if you’d like to check out Dr Satchidananda Panda and professor Dale Bredesen you can see results of their work/research, Dr Panda even argues simply trying to restrict calories and unhealthy food has proved an unsuccessful strategy to the current health crisis of the main killers of the western world and eating in a window would be more successful. Professor Bredesen has even managed to reverse memory loss in early-Alzheimer patients, with a multipronged approach that includes eating in a 12hour window.
If you'd like to listen to the scientific research on this here's some links but think about this, everyone functions better with rest factored in, why would your body not be the same.
This isn't extreme, its just sensible and makes sense, we did not evolve to eat from the first moment we opened our eyes to the moment we shut them- we'd have to catch our breakfast first! And who could cook food with no natural light to do so!
In those days 'Nature' made it easier, we need to place back guard rails where modern technology has tried to take over, for monetary gain and our health and well being has been the collateral damage.
Take back control and make this little tweak to do just that and of course we are here to help you as much or as little as you need us to, just reach out.
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