Pay Attention to What You Eat!

Cooking is a lost art among the young. Everyone seems like they’re in a rush to do something, so there’s no time for the basics in life. Things like eating right, exercising, and enjoying leisure are forgotten, much to the detriment of those around them. While paying too much attention to food can lead to overeating, paying too little attention to what goes into your body can also lead to poor health.

The Covid pandemic certainly hasn’t helped. There’s a big obesity surge going on in our country caused by lockdowns. Most of this is caused by a combination of lack of exercise and poor diet. I think the main cause of this is the lockdown interrupting people’s normal schedule. They didn’t know how to make healthier food, and that, combined with being unable to go outside, caused them to eat more.

There’s no better time to try new recipes. When I was younger, I was very, very picky when it came to my diet. I would hardly eat anything. I can’t believe how much I was missing out on! Things like guacamole, fish, and chicken are so delicious. Over the years, I’ve come to appreciate online recipes for creative dishes as well as just overall experimentation with food. This morning, for example, I had a fish and spinach omelet that tasted so good. If you don’t believe me, then why don’t you try it?

After my latest physical, my doctor recommended that I change my diet to lose weight and become healthier. I had been eating too much sugar and carbohydrates, which can have the same effects as sugar – it can make you gain more weight and even raise your cholesterol to unhealthy levels. Since then, I’ve been on a low-carb, high-protein diet. It’s allowed me to lose some weight. Being on this diet made me realize how many carbs I was eating before. Bread, pastries, biscuits, crackers, chips, tortillas, rice, pizza… all of those carbs add up to something rather unhealthy. I’ve cut the majority of that stuff from my diet, and I’ve already seen improvements in my weight, how I exercise, and how I sleep.

This is part of what makes a low-carb, high-protein diet so good. It turns out that eating too few vegetables or too many carbohydrates makes sleeping harder. Think of how sugar causes kids who eat too much of it to become hyper in the short term before becoming drowsy later. Lack of sleep leads to an overall lack of energy during the day and makes you less productive during the day.

Am I saying that abandoning carbs and sugars is a winning solution to our obesity crisis? Well, kind of. But it requires a lot more commitment than you might expect. In particular, it requires a great deal of willpower to not eat all the chips in the pantry. That’s why you need to find substitutes. I recommend eating cold, crunchy vegetables like celery or carrots and dipping them in a little peanut butter. While peanut butter is high in calories, it’s a good example of low-carb, high protein food. Because of its high calories, just a spoonful of it with some carrots goes a long way to curbing my appetite, allowing me to hold out until dinner without breaking and eating my mom’s Cheetos.