Diet and health methods that everyone knows, but are wrong

Over our lives, we have heard many things about how to eat healthy, what is good for us, and what is bad for us. Almost every day we see newspaper articles or things on the television, they tell us what we can and cannot do to maintain health. Unfortunately, not all of these things are true. Things you may have heard for most of your life may have no actual basis in fact, it might actually be worse for you than you think. Let’s give a couple of good examples.

Drinking eight glasses or more of water a day

There are no actual studies that verify this. We remember many years ago people saying to drink as much water as you can, even if you’re not thirsty. While hydration is very important, and in certain circumstances, you should drink more water than you normally would, such as extremely hot weather, or during physical exertion, drinking water for no reason can actually be detrimental. If you drink too much water it can actually flush out a lot of the minerals and other nutrients that you might need in your system. So the best thing you can do is drink when you’re thirsty. Your body is a pretty amazing thing and will tell you what you need, and when you need it.

Breakfast is the most important meal of the day

While technically this is true, as your breakfast is the first meal you eat after a fast, the standard breakfast of eating right when you wake up is not necessarily the best advice. We believe that this statement was probably generated by the cereal companies many years ago, to sell more cereal. The reality is that most people, especially in the United States, eat way too much food. There have been some studies that have shown that delaying your first meal of the day until noon, and eating in a time-restricted manner such as only eight hours in a 24 hour period, with nothing else during the other 16, is much healthier on the body. Don’t just eat when you’re hungry, eat when you need to. Learn to recognize the difference between want and need.

Eggs are bad for the heart and cause cholesterol

There are no studies that show that eggs have any direct correlation with high cholesterol. Eggs are one of the healthiest foods that you can consume and has a large variety of essential nutrients, as well as a good source of protein that most people seem to lack. The body produces cholesterol, and if you cut out 100% of all the cholesterol that you eat in your diet, your cholesterol probably will only drop about 10%. The ones you have to worry about for heart disease are triglycerides, they have a direct relationship, unlike cholesterol. We do not know quite how cholesterol became the scary measurement for heart disease, but it’s the triglycerides you need to worry about.

You need to detoxify your body to be healthy

We see it all the time, special diets, fruit juice only periods, smoothies, etc. etc. all these things claim to detoxify your body. The reality is your body is an amazing tool, an amazing machine. It is quite adept at detoxifying itself every single day. If it didn’t detoxify itself you would be dead in a week. The reality is, if you eat healthily, your body will take care of all of the toxins in your system quite fine. The problem comes when people do not eat healthily, and their bodies cannot keep up with all the bad, unhealthy foods that they feed it with. If you don’t feed your body clean, it will eventually break down in one way or another. You don’t have to detoxify, just eat better.

Brown sugar, honey, or maple syrup are healthier than sugar

Let’s cut straight to the chase, they ARE sugar. There is very little difference between them and white sugar. They may have a few more nutrients, but overall, the sugar is just the same. Still, sugar is better than high fructose corn syrup or other such things. The best thing you can do is cut down the amount of sugar that you’re consuming, instead of just replacing it with something that makes you feel like you are eating better sweets. Diabetes and kidney disease are becoming an epidemic worldwide, and we believe this is mostly because of the quantity of sugar people consume, and the damage caused by it to your system. Insulin resistance is a serious thing. As we said before, if you feed your body correctly, your body has the time to repair itself. As much as you love sugar, perhaps it would be a good idea to try cutting it out of your diet or replacing it with such things as Stevia, which is not sugar at all

Your body is an amazing machine, but it will only work well if you treat it correctly. If you are on a diet, don’t think about what you’re putting in your body, think more about what you need to not put in your body. If you need to lose weight, and your body is healthy, the weight will come off naturally. Being obese is not a natural state. Even if you’re not diabetic, we suggest buying a glucose meter and test strips and testing your blood sugar after you eat. Anything that spikes your blood sugar, you should remove it from your meal. You might be surprised how close you are to being prediabetic. Don’t listen to the myths that you hear all the time, actually do a bit of research and look for the truth. The truth is out there.