A Real Man Eats Correctly

THE THING

Here’s the Thing! I was going to call this one, a real man eats healthily but that would be a lie and an almost impossible task. The truth is that Real Men strive to eat healthily and it is a priority for them.

Real Men are realists. You are not going to eat healthy food for the rest of your life because … well you just aren’t. Some men who are obsessed with their bodies or who have made their bodies their hobby, do eat healthy their whole lives. Most guys can’t and don’t choose to do that, so Real Men can and do eat “less than healthily” on occasion. You have one very short life to live – so you can’t spend it avoiding all of the tasty food available to you. Knowing this, Real Men find balance in their diet. Do you get that? They have a balanced diet. It is perfectly okay to have the occasional “bad – fun meal” as long as it is balanced with healthy meals most of the time.

For most Real Men, the old 80/20 rule applies. Eat healthily and correctly for 80% of your week and you can eat whatever you want the other 20%. This means that you really never have to deprive yourself of the treats you enjoy.

ARM gets that life is all about being responsible and having fun, so you need to find the balance for you. When it comes to diets and nutrition, the one thing I have learnt, as with exercise, is that no one diet or eating system fits everyone.

At the time of writing this eggs are now back in fashion and nutritionists are talking about good cholesterol, and that you cannot have enough of them and blah, blah. Do you remember how just a few years ago they were telling us to avoid eggs?

What about how we should carbo-load and eat less meat? Then stay away from fats. Then let’s all go Banting and eat all the meat and fats. (Because now there are good fats and bad fats and food combinations.) It’s enough to make you just want to have a cheeseburger. I had a food allergy assessment done on me and how my body works, and I found that I was/am allergic to eggs; very allergic apparently, so I have to feed my body what works for me. You have a different metabolism to other guys, so follow one that works for you, but make sure you follow one.

THE REWARD

You are what you eat. All of the energy you have, comes from the food you eat, so it follows that if you eat low energy, crap food you are going to be a low energy, crap- feeling person.

Someone said, what you eat in private – you wear in public and to the hospital.

Losing weight and being healthy starts and ends in the kitchen.

THE HOW TO

Okay so here is where I have to draw the line. You all know how to eat healthily. No one has to tell you the difference between a carrot and a cube of sugar. You know if you eat a hamburger you probably didn’t eat as healthily as if you had a salad.
Stop being a child and grow up. You have to take a few hits when you decide to eat healthily. It is always tough and it takes commitment and effort, and you have to have tremendous will power to stick to it, but if it’s important enough to you, you’ll do it.
It’s not about the food, it’s about the power food has over you. If you are out of shape and overweight – food has power over you. You can’t help but eat junk and it has become your drug. For many people, food is a feel-good drug. We eat to feel better about our lives and ourselves. Many people don’t even realise that they ‘comfort food eat’ because it is done as an unconscious instinct.
Wake up to the addiction and take back your power.
So, let me repeat this again, because it fits here. When you decide to take back your power, the day you decide is the day you will be invited to a party or restaurant. How else can you take back your power, unless you are placed into temptation?
Let’s face it, it’s easy to eat healthily – stranded on a deserted island with very little food, and only coconuts to eat. But, as soon as you are back home, you become an addict again. Truth be told – you never stopped being an addict. Real Man power comes from being tempted and saying no, owning the decision and walking through the withdrawals. It’s not as a euphemism I use the example of food being a drug and people being addicts. Food and especially fast, quick, unhealthy food, is a drug, treat it and see it as one.
Have you ever looked at a drug addict or alcoholic and just been amazed at how weak they are and how they should just say no and stop?
I used to judge these people as weak and I had no patience with them, until I substituted their alcohol for my addiction to sugar, more specifically chocolate. I was a sugar addict and as soon as I called myself that word, I changed.
Food may be your addiction, or porn, or some un-serving bad habit. How easy is it for you to say no?
When you can control what you put in your mouth, every day, you have beaten addiction – for today! Because the temptations all start again tomorrow, and you know the saying, “once an addict, always an addict.” It takes only seconds to slip.

TROUBLE SHOOTING

But shouldn’t you just be happy with who you are?
You should, until it starts to affect your health, your relationships and how you feel. When you live a life constantly in pain and uncomfortable; when you can’t breathe when you tie your shoe laces; when you have constant heart burn or you are too embarrassed to swim because you have to wear a costume; when you have no energy to go to work or play with your kids – then my friend, and I hope it’s not too late, then you will be forced to make the changes.Diabetes hardly ever just appears in the body; in most cases, it is a lifestyle disease. My Dad smoked a pack a day, drank a few liters of Coke every week and never broke a sweat in the name of exercise; big surprise when he was diagnosed as a diabetic and a few years later with stage 4 lung cancer. “But George Burns drank and smoked…”

There is another take to this whole exercising and eating correctly argument. As I have already stated, my dad never exercised a day in his life, drank so much alcohol that he got pancreatitis, (so bad that the doctors said if he had one more drink he would die), he smoked a pack a day from the age of 17. My best friend’s father was a health freak and a former Mr. Universe. He treated his body as a temple, ate healthily, was up at 4 AM every day and trained in his home gym. Some mornings he used to run up the hill behind his house to get a “good leg pump”. Both of these men died at the age of 73. They both died of different types of cancer. So, what’s the point I hear you ask? Something is probably going to kill you, you say; and you are correct, but that’s not the point. I knew both of these men and I can tell you unequivocally that my friend’s father had a better quality of life, physically, than my dad ever did. My dad was in and out of hospitals his whole life and we couldn’t even count the number of doctor’s visits he had, or the number of drugs he took every day, just to make it through the day. I hope this helps.

WISDOM

“Every time you eat or drink you are either feeding disease or fighting it.” – Heather Morgan