You are what you digest is a bit more accurate than you are what you eat.
Digestion is the key to good health.
When I’m working with someone in the Nutrition Therapy program, one of the first ideas that I want to be sure they understand is the timeline of digestion. I want them to be able to have a visual, in their mind, what happens after consuming an entire meal, then an hour or so later they eat a snack.
Simply stated, the valve at the bottom of the stomach is not going to open until ALL the food is completely digested. So, it doesn’t matter if you say “I only had a small snack” or “it was just a handful of peanuts”- everything stays put until that newly ingested food gets digested.
Dr. Korde M.D. uses a simple metaphor that compares the process of digestion to rice cooking in a saucepan and that eating between meals creates digestive disorders. "It is important to allow rice to cook properly to render it edible for consumption. It is easy to imagine what were to happen if a handful of rice grains were periodically tossed into the pan while the rice is cooking. The end result would be a complete mess, with over-cooked rice, partially cooked rice, under-cooked rice, burnt rice and sticky rice all in the same pot. Similarly, if we keep ingesting mouthfuls of food between meals, the digestive process will go completely awry".
REST & DIGEST
Eat your meals with the intention of not eating again for 3-4 hours. IE. You finish breakfast at 9am- make a mental note that lunch is at 1pm.
This is not going without. This is a gift that you give yourself!
Thank you for reading this post and I would love to hear if you found this informative- please leave a comment. 😊