Food

Food is obviously of paramount importance to us! Anything we consume provides (good or bad) nutritional support for the body. It contains nutrients (carbohydrates, proteins, fats, vitamins & minerals) which are assimilated by the body’s cells to produce energy, stimulate growth and maintain us.

Unfortunately in our modern society, most food consumed is sourced through the ever-growing and complexly (and dubiously) regulated food industry. Foods are increasingly coming pre-packaged, pre-prepared and full of preservatives and artificial additives to keep them on the shelf for longer. During the ‘processing’ of many whole food ingredients, their nutritional value is lost! Many artificial sweeteners actually contain much worse nutritional value that the very thing they are there to replace!

Without breaking down the science here, just thinking about this fact is surely enough to warrant avoiding pre-packed foods and instead putting a little bit of effort and planning into simply buying fresh natural ingredients, and preparing our own food for consumption. We’re sure you’ve heard to old saying “you are what you eat”. Its worth remembering… Would you rather eat naturally grown or reared food stuffs, or pre-packed foods full of man-made chemical flavourings & preservatives?

As a modern society we are also ‘fighting’ the government-led food industry marketing machine! We are so busy, we often excuse ourselves of any effort when it comes to the simple things in life, like feeding ourselves (which we must do every day). However we seem to forget that this is what builds us, fuels us, makes for a good or bad day, and even affects our mood & happiness! Being lazy with food choices, or simply not caring what we put in our body is a big problem. Our lifestyles are being changed so dramatically because we have everything we could ever want at our fingertips. Imagine the state most of us would be in if we had to fend for ourselves in the wild, live off the land, or hunt & forage for food? We feel that the supermarkets and big players in the food industry, who also set the ‘standards’ and tell us to eat our 5-a-day, or how many calories we should consume each day are all driven by money. They produce misleading information to place on packaging and in their adverts, which our lazy society is all to happy to lap up and take as fact… There are more television programs these days about the food industry and how some popular foods are produced, but we still feel that in some way the wool is being pulled over our eyes in favour of great profits.

Both of us have tried various ‘diets’ over the years, and can categorically speak from experience when telling you that ‘going on a diet’ simply won’t work! Invariably you will come back ‘off of that diet’ at some point and roll back to the old eating plan. Simply put, your diet has to be changed permanently (along with making the right lifestyle choices), to see any marked change in long-term weight management. You can still treat yourself, but you need to be brutally honest with yourself and really think about everything you eat in order to make it work. How many people do you know that are in a seemingly constant state of dieting and managing their yo-yoing weight year on year?

Part of what TeamPI is doing is learning about different food types; how best to prepare them for consumption, how the body uses it as a fuel for exercise, and how they affect our general health & wellbeing. We have always been ‘conscious’ of the foods we eat, but have always ‘excused’ ourselves to let it slip in our busy lifestyles… Since we have recently began training harder with a view to more endurance events and trying to increase our muscular strength, we have been noticing the negative effects that these ‘bad’ foods are having on our body, minds and overall performance. By making small positive changes, we can easily improve the performance & energy of the body and mind, which has a great positive effect on our whole life!

To help us reach our goals, we will be concentrating on learning about food and how best to use it. We want to show you that even with a busy lifestyle and limited budget, it can be possible to enjoy a varied, healthy diet which will boost the body’s immune system, aid growth & development, and fuel an active lifestyle. We will be sharing what we learn about the science behind food and what affects it has on the our bodies, and posting our recipes and thoughts as we learn. We will essentially be experimenting on ourselves, to prove the point!

We hope some of this will spark thinking & change in you and maybe you’ll enjoy trying some of our recipes yourselves…

Paul & Irina. 🙂

 

Read TeamPI’s Blogs about:
Health & Wellbeing
Recipes & Nutrition
Super Foods