The ABC’s Of Super Foods!

“The ABC’s of Super Foods” Calie Shackleford

Super foods seems to be one of the themes of my life since I have an auto-immune disorder, chronic illness, and having good nutrition is a foundation that will aide me in living a healthy life. I found “The ABC’s Of Super Foods” on a free download from Amazon and it sparked my interest. Learning about nutrition and what I can do to boost my body is something that I enjoy learning about.

What is a super food? Super food according to Shackleford is “any REAL food that is so nutrient dense that it does more good for the body than any alternatives.” Do you see that I capitalized the word REAL? Just be to be clear, I am well aware that eating correctly is not a cure for my auto-immune disorder/chronic illness, but it is a tool or an aide to help me be the healthiest I can be. Just because I am ill does not give me license to run off the deep end eating ice cream, chips, cookies, cakes, frosting, and chocolate’s galore. I am still responsible for the choices I make and if I fuel my body with junk, well then my body is going to run like a junky car. That being said, I do eat junk, more than I would like to.

Real food not processed fake food crap that we buy in boxes, cans, or any other way seems to be running rapid in our society. The convenience it takes to pop a TV dinner into the microwave or to drive through a pick up is a lot easier than it is to cut up and cook something. I feel exhausted a lot of the time. I even enjoy cooking and I still have those days when I do not want to cut up anything or do anything but order take out or put something in the microwave. And having an auto-immune disease that is temperamental and unpredictable when it hits is a challenge that I face daily. So going back to nature where it is grown in the ground does not always get done. Real food that takes planning, cooking, and decision making to chew and fuel my body so that I can run at my ultimate best goes by the way side a lot of the time because of my flare ups. I love to cook, I love healthy food, I even crave it, but exhaustion wins a lot of the time. I love tools and ideas that I can implement in those cases. Yes, I have a wonderful crockpot, but I don’t always think about it or put it to the best use. I am working on changing that. And thank God for water bottles that have numbers on the side to let me know how much water I actually do drink a day.

Shacklefood starts with A and goes through the alphabet letting us know about what REAL food is and even given us helpful ideas in how to incorporate it into our daily eating habits and even how to explain it to our children. I don’t have children, but I know many people do and have a hard time getting them to eat something nutritionally dense. Especially when TV commercials play about candy, chips, TV dinner, cereals, and other fun things. I have to admit something here. I am a junk food junky. I love chips. I love candy. I love process mac and cheese. I crave those things, even if they make me sick. Even if my body doesn’t digest them well and it makes my auto-immune disease worse than it already is. I still eat them, am I a glutton for punishment or what? Inflammation becomes worse with junk food; it does not take a rocket scientist to figure that out. When I eat REAL food the inflammation goes down, it does not go away, but it does make it a bit better. Yet, I still keep stuffing my face with the bad for you crap. Is it laziness? Or is it something else? All questions I do ask myself.

Good questions I am going to ponder as I am a lover of good food, nutrition, and putting into practice what I am learning. My journal is chalk full of my ramblings of why I abuse my body even if I do know what it needs to be fully fueled.

At the end of Shacklefords book she gives some good tips, for me they are reminders. Such as drinking plenty of water, I know that I need 3 liters of water a day in order to not feel so dehydrated, especially after surgery and after the infusion treatments that I am under. She also suggests getting plenty of sleep, though at this moment, due to the infusions sleep is one of those challenges I am battling. Having a good sleep schedule is vital for anyone, not just me with a chronic illness and auto-immune disease. Everyone needs good sleep in order to think clearly and make healthy decisions. It is the foundation of a healthy life style.

The one thing that I have stopped doing since I was in the hospital, due to it was difficult to do while there is keeping a food journal to help me be mindful of what I am putting into my mouth. My food journal was just a regular journal that I wrote my blood sugars down, the amount of water I drank daily, and what I put into my mouth, and my oxygen levels and heart beats. Seems a bit obsessive, but I have found it is important for me to keep track of all these vital numbers in order to keep myself and my team of doctors informed of my progress. Life is not passive, it is active. Being mindful about choices you make in order to be healthy is something that God wants us all to do. Joyce Meyer coined “The Wilderness Mentality” will keep one wondering for forty years to illustrate the concept of not being mindful of choices and decisions in the mind. The mind is a battlefield and Satan and his realm does use it to keep me and others perpetually stuck in unhealthy life styles and patterns so that we are not functioning at our ultimate best to do what our assignments are. God has given us tools to fight it and I am so blessed to have this information. I am blessed to have the tools and the right frame of mind because of the choices I made to follow His plan for my life.

What are your favorite REAL foods? How often do you eat them? How much water do you drink daily? Do you get enough sleep? How many times do you stop throughout the day and feel the air moving through your throat to your lungs?