Eating right to be fit for life is based on the lessons from the famous book by Harvey and Marilyn Diamond Fit for Life. Since implementing just a couple of the core principles I have seen a change in my own energy levels. At its core, eating more fruits and vegetables is almost certain to have a positive impact on your health.
You can watch the video here if you prefer.
Eating Right to Be Fit for Life
Fit for Life discusses proper food combinations and when to eat certain foods throughout the day to optimize your energy. The entire focus is on how can you provide your body with the proper amount of energy and reduce the energy burden on your body’s digestion.
You learn that the body uses most of its energy for digesting food, absorbing nutrients, and eliminating food waste. As you can probably guess the modern American diet causes your body lots of stress during digestion as it does not take into consideration your natural digestive cycle.
Fit for Life Cycles
According to the book, there are three phases of the digestive cycle that occur in sequential 8-hour cycles throughout the day.
The phases are as follows:
- Noon-8pm – Eating & Digestion
- 8pm-4am – Absorption
- 4am-Noon – Elimination
Your body has to have time to cycle through each of these cycles or it will cause problems. The problem with most diets is not optimizing eating to align with these cycles.
Elimination
During the morning elimination phase, you should stick to fruit only. Jesse Itzler, owner of the Atlanta Hawks has been following the fit for life principle of eating only fruits before noon for decades. Jesse regularly runs marathons, ultra-marathons, and extreme endurance races. By sticking to fruit in the morning you give your body energy in the form of fructose to fuel itself. Water & fiber from the fruit juices to aid in the elimination phase.
Eating & Digestion
Next is the eating & digestion phase where you consume lots of vegetables and avoid combining proteins and carbohydrates. Proteins and carbohydrates each produce different enzymes to digest and when eaten together cancel each other out. Proteins breakdown from acidic enzymes while carbohydrates need alkaline enzymes. Thus when you eat these types of foods together your stomach has to work twice as hard and it is likely you never fully digest all of your food.
Vegetables can always be eaten together with either proteins or carbohydrates as they aid the digestion and can breakdown in either an acidic or alkaline environment.
Absorption
If you properly combine foods during the first two phases of the day you will be able to absorb nutrients properly. Your body will not have to work as hard and will nourish your body at night.
Results of eating right to be fit for life
Since picking up Fit for Life, I have been following the morning fruit only intake and upping my vegetable intake. I am more aware of my stomach and digestive process. After a few days, I feel better energy-wise and can tell a difference in terms of digestion.
I haven’t been able to fully implement the eating guidelines yet, but I am slowly but surely adopting them. It’s hard not to believe that eating more fruits and vegetables will have a positive impact on your health. Ultimately, I enjoy the principles because they are mostly common sense.
Give Fit for Life a read and try applying the principles to your life! Also, check out the 30-day 1,000 pushups challenge if you are looking to improve your physical fitness. If you’d like to see the Fit for Life video you can see it here.