Category: Inspiration

Affirmations have been my absolute life saver for many years.
It is my number one recommendation to anyone who is starting on the journey of self awareness.
They can be extremely helpful when dealing with difficult and stressful situations in life.
They set our energy field in the higher frequency that matches the high energy of the affirmation. If repeated daily, it becomes our reality. It can counteract all our tendencies of self doubt, self sabotage and self criticism. We all have to deal with them in a different degree, on a daily basis. What we believe is what we have been telling ourselves or what we have been told by others for years. This creates strong patterns of our belief system. Most of the time they are really difficult to break, resulting in sabotaging every wholesome intention we try to undertake. For our intentions to become actions and materialise, we need to believe in our abilities.
That is where the affirmations play a crucial role. They shift, change and redesign our belief system. And the best thing about it is that we can program it the way we want.

In yogic philosophy our belief system is ruled by Svadisthana chakra – energy center located around the upper pelvis space in our physical body. Through the power of that chakra we can co-create ourselves anew over and over again by chosing and reaffirming our beliefs.

Repeating your chosen affirmations daily will make them become your new reality.
These are just a few of my favourite general affirmations from Louise Hay you could use daily:

All is well in my world, my life supports me.
Life brings me only good experiences.
I am open to new and wonderful changes.
All that I seek is already within me.
I handle my own life with joy and ease.
I love myself just the way I am.
I am grateful for my healthy body.
I love my life.
I am unlimited in my wealth.
All areas of my life are abundant and fulfilling.
I flow easily with new experiences, new challenges and new people who enter my life.
My heart is open, I speak with loving words.
I now free myself from destructive fears and doubts.
I am safe.
I am in perfect health.
As I forgive myself it is easier to forgive others.

You can choose any of the above if it resonated with you or you can customise your affirmations.

Practice:
How to customise affirmations for yourself?

Sit down and close your eyes. Think about your biggest fear or doubt you have about yourself. What tends to be the most common narration about yourself in your head?
Then open your eyes and note it down one by one.

Now change each doubt into a positive sentence. For example if your usual belief about yourself is “I am not good enough” change it into “I succeed in everything I set my mind on.”

Create your list of affirmations in this way, using your negative beliefs and changing them to the empowering affirmations. Reading it out loud daily has the best effects.
Then just watch the change in your consciousness and in your life over a short time.

If you would like to chat more about your limiting beliefs and affirmations you could use to shift them, schedule a free consultation call with me at calendly.com/boostbykasiagendis.

Is “a too busy mind for a meditation practice” a thing?

We all know meditation practice is challenging, especially when we are starting out.
I so often hear that ‘a too busy mind’ is a reason why you give up at a very early stage or you do not even attempt to try the practices.

Let’s see if there is such a thing as “a too busy mind for meditation” .
The ancient teachings say that our mind (manas) is chanchala – always moving around and asthiram – never steady.
So even from that description we can see that it is the nature of the mind to wonder.
All minds wonder, some less other more, but they all do.
And that is something we need to acknowledge at the start of our journey with meditation. The mind will wonder.

But a not trained or cleanse mind, as we like to call it in yogic language, will have control over us. It will be constantly taking us to places, people, situations and stories often against our will.

Is overthinking, constant worries, fears of the future, reminiscing especially sad, emotional events over and over something that you notice is happening to you a lot?
Instead of being here and living your life in this moment you are mostly spending time in the past or in the future? It is said that over 90 % of our thoughts are the same every day. So we keep going over and over the same things. It sounds tiring even reading about it.

On the other hand it is actually a great thing that the mind can travel in time to the past and to the future, we can remember beautiful events or plan great things for the future. We just need to have more control over where our “manas” (mind) is going.

All of us have a capacity to get out of our head more. We can gradually get more in control of our thoughts with a regular practice. We can train our mind to become more still and focused through different tools and techniques.
Similarly as we cleanse our body daily taking a shower, brushing our teeth etc we should take care of our mind daily to keep it clean and spacious. Then, all the energy gained from overthinking can be directed towards more practices, contemplations and reflexions. Regular practices will allow us to improve and extend mind’s concentration capacities, freeing us from constant inner chatter, connecting us to more joy and purpose and helping coping with stress and overwhelm in life. It will help us think more positively and that in turn will attract even more positive outcomes to our life.
The more busy your mind seems the faster you should start your concentration practices.

If you would like to give it a try I will share the simplest technique we can use to bring ourselves into the moment, by making space in our mind.
Deep, even breaths. In Manasa Yoga we call it tanu 3. Let’s do a short practice now.

To prepare sit comfortably on the chair or on the floor, keep your spine straight, chest open, head centred and eyes closed. Then shift your awareness to your breath. Exhale completely and then inhale long counting to 4 and exhale long counting to 4 (both are done through the nose). If you are comfortable with this pace you can try to elongate the breath even more, so inhale in a count of 5, exhale in a count of 5. Repeat elongated breaths 5 times…and then sit for a moment in silence…
Reflect on the effect the breaths had on your mind. Does it feel a bit calmer, slower, more spacious?

You can contact me for a free consultation here if you need more guidance with starting your practices.

We know for sure that we can’t change the external life stressors that affect our mind on a daily basis. Life goes on and there is not much we can do about what is happening around us.

But fortunately, we can have control over our own mind. Here lays our POWER.

Commonly an external stressor triggers an immediate, spontaneous reaction in our mind.

That reaction comes from our emotional brain called amygdala.The prefrontal cortex (logical brain) is still turned off, as it usually needs more time to log back into the system. So when we encounter a stressor an immediate, often emotional reaction happens.

The good news is that we can influence this mechanism.

We can create SPACE between the stressor and the response to it – it will no longer be a reaction then.
There are many ways of creating this space that I usually work with my clients on. It should include mindset shift and a daily practice, as when introduced collectively they can produce a much greater effect.

One of the most important mindset shifts is: “Let go of what you cannot control”
I know it’s easy to say, but let’s explore this for a moment…
Your life consist of 2 elements in this respect:

• what you can influence and
• what you cannot control.

No matter what we do, nothing will change it. That’s how it is.
That is why it is so important to realise and accept it.

The rule, that I personally apply in all life situations, that seem to look like a challenge in the future (future emotion are those giving us most fear and anxiety) is:
“I will worry when I have this problem” or “I will cross this bridge when I get to it” .
We so often worry even before there is a problem.
This approach, of course, will not change the future stressor, but it will allow us to operate from a space of calm and focus, which may change our response and way of acting.

We must remember that life, in the general sense of the word, is beyond our control. So it is good to learn to let go and trust in what awaits us. That all will be good for us.

So how do you let go?

Focus on what you can influence.
Stick to your routine.
Move forward in small steps, without looking too far into the future.
Have faith and trust.
I know that faith, trust and hope are less tangible concepts, but very important.

It’s a bit like breathing, when we exhale completely, we have full faith that the next inhalation will come soon, but are we sure of this? NO! We don’t think about it, we trust that it will happen, so we don’t even stress with each exhalation… and that’s exactly the kind of trust we need in life 🙂 it changes a lot what comes to us, believe me…

So, in moments of challenge, remember to ground your attention in your body, feel your feet on the floor, open your chest, notice your breathing and take a few longer breaths that will help create that inner space from which you can respond rather than react and trust the Universe, in the highest and best outcome for you.

I am attaching a short 5-min practice of extended exhalations that can help you create that inner space.

Seems like mindfulness has become a really hot topic in recent times. We hear about it from almost everywhere. 

We mostly understand it as a focus on being intensely aware of what we are sensing, feeling and  experiencing in the moment.

But why it is so important and why should we practice it.

Typically we spend most of our time in the past or in the future. Only a small percentage of our life is spent in the present moment. 

And that IS ACTUALLY WHERE OUR LIFE IS HAPPENING. Here and now.

Our mind has this amazing ability of shifting between the past, present and future but our body and our breath exist only here.  It is a great ability for the mind to be able to travel in time, but a downside is that it takes us for uncontrolled rollercoaster rides of thoughts. Oftentimes we are finding ourselves in places we were not even intending to be in. It leaves us with restless mind, lack of attention, lack of sleep and complete exhaustion, as we entirely lose control over what is happening in our head.

That is why practising anchoring the mind into the present moment, into the experiences that are happening now is so important. Over time it will give us more control over what we tend to focus on. We will be able to use the mind to remember or plan things when we need to, but also we will be able to easily chose to be present to all that life is revealing to us right now.

Spending more time in the present moment initially requires a regular practice of concentration techniques, that will help us ground into now. Here we use breath and body awareness practices to keep strengthening our attention in the present moment. The more we are able to stay here, the more we start connecting into the deeper layers of our existence. Only from that space of the auspiciousness of the present moment the inner wisdom can start rising. We start connecting to the knowledge we all have within us. We start feeling ourselves not merely as a mass of flesh in a certain shape but also as a spiralling energy, similar to everything else is in the Universe (even quantum physics confirms us to be exactly that). Being more present will help us notice different, positive and less positive, tendencies in us, set powerful intentions in life to change what does not serve us anymore, let us connect to strong beliefs about ourselves and our unique capacities, help us create deep and caring connections with others and give us an opportunity to connect to our true essence. In daily life, we will be able to make more wholesome choices and appreciate more the beauty of the world around us. It will help us to be more in charge of our life process.

Ready to start the practice?

Most of us have really busy lives. Our daily routine is usually fully packed and it is hard for us to find time to chill. Am I right?

That is why Summer time is such an amazing time to slow down a bit, and maybe spend some time away to recharge our batteries.

But even if we can not escape town to a relaxing, peaceful and sunny place we can still enjoy more active time, barbecues with friends, bike excursions, and just being outside more, in a warmer weather.

And if in that chilled and relaxed environment we can find space in the mind to stop for a while and appreciate our blessings that is the best thing we can do for our well being’s lasting effect.

I can only speak for myself though and how taking a break, slowing down and appreciating simple moments, relationships, touch, warmth, laughter helped me refill my energy over and over again.

I believe that we do not give enough appreciation to what we already have in our lives, on daily basis.
We spend most of our time chasing things we do not have yet or complaining about things we don’t want, forgetting to just look around us.

Noticing what is, gives us an enormous power to tap into the present moment, appreciate it and from there step with much more ease into the stream of all abundance. And then everything in life just starts happening as we would desire it to be or even beyond what we ever dreamt of.

That is why it is so important to take breaks to rest, relax, reconnect with ourselves and with our close ones, appreciate what we have, and really enjoy the gifts of the moment. Summer is a perfect time for that.

How often do you take breaks to fill yourself up again?

Any change seems difficult. We generally do not like changes. We prefer staying in our comfort zone and just repeating old patterns over and over again. For a lot of us it seems easier. 

We live on an automatic pilot. The patterns are engraved in our bodies and also in our minds.

Any tweak needs energy to be invested. But it is not as difficult as it seems, if we have a set out system for it.

 I will use a simple example from my life of the set patterns being changed. 

When I first moved back to four seasons, after living in tropics for 15 years, my body did not handle it very well. For the first few months of the cold season I was freezing all the time, no matter what I wore. My body craved totally different things or different quantities to what I was used to eating in a hot weather. A funny one was extra virgin olive oil, when I would see the bottle of it I felt like literally just downing all of it in one go :)) That was a sign for me. The body needed a change in the diet. More warming foods, more healthy fat, more spices. I did just that.

I also went to see my Tibetan Medicine doctor and he told me that my body forgot its warming function, as it was not using it for so many years. Now I needed to give it time to readjust. And it sure did, after a few months. 

But what I struggled with for longer was my head, that is the mental pattern. Each year, around the same time, I would just totally resist the change of seasons. Just denying it. Funny right, as it is not really possible to avoid, yet my head for a long time was struggling. I even would refuse to buy Autumn flowers. When I would see them in the shops it would create panic and sadness. I know it sounds quite dramatic.

Then, one sunny day as I was looking at the beautiful, colourful autumn leaves waving to me in the wind when it suddenly hit me. The beauty of the nature’s cycle. How the flora blooms in the Spring, is totally out there throughout the Summer, till Autumn comes. Then it slowly starts closing up again. Getting into a winter rest. A reflective and restoring vibe. 

It is needed for us too. After the Summer and all its craziness it is time to go within, reflect and restore. 

So I focused on all the positives of that change. The cosiness of the couch, the softness of the blanket, the warmth and flavours of tea, the taste of all the colder season spiced foods, the pleasantness of the candle lights and last but not least the luxury of more time to go within. The Danish call this cosiness hygge. So that is what I gave in to.

Suddenly it all seemed so amazing and highly needed. It was just at that time when I felt a shift. The resistance in my head started to melt away, exactly the same way it happened earlier in my body, naturally, with no objection.

So based on my experience I would like to share with you the process of the change. It can be used to initiate any change in your life that you set yourself up for.

Step 1 – Identify the Resistance

So for example, if your change would be to eat healthier, just pause and see what is stopping you from it? Is it lack of time, lack of knowledge, lack of interest in cooking. Find that exact obstacle.

Step 2 – Soften Around that Resistance

Focus on all the positives of the change. In our example focus on how would you feel after you make your dietary changes. Maybe feeling more energy, maybe sleeping better or maybe just finally stopping to worry about your weight, as it will be all taken care of by your body, working super efficiently. Just dwell on those for a moment. Imagine that you already have it, feel it, be in that energy of success.

Step 3 – Write down 1-2 Small Steps towards your goal, that you can start right now

Maybe you could focus on adding more healthy foods first, before you start cutting out what does not serve you. For example adding more vegetables to each of your meals. Or focusing daily on drinking more water. It is that simple.

The above steps will work for initiating any change. Just take a moment, sit down, rect on what would you like to change and go through the steps.

If you need support you can always book a free chat with me here

And remember “Great things never come from comfort zone”

Step out of it! You can do it!

1. Make a list of dinners for the week. They should be easy and ones that you cook often so it is not overwhelming.

2. Pick dishes with ingredients that you can prepare once and use multiple times. For example, mushrooms cooked once can be used again for scramble eggs, tofu, salads, sandwiches, veggie patties etc.

3. Invest in good quality containers. Start with whatever you have and gradually invest in changing them into glass.

4. Organise your spice cabinet. Have lots of different spices available on hand. You can gradually build that up, getting 1-2 each time you shop. Arrange them in your drawer in groups for different meal themes like Asian, Herbs, your local cuisine etc.

5. Cook in batches! Either schedule 1-2 hours at the beginning of the week, ideally after shopping, or you can do it once you cook your first dinner of the week (that is what I end up doing very often). You can use all your prepped produce to assemble quick meals like salads, soups, bowls, vegetables, tofu, scrambled eggs, omelettes and much more.

• When you’re waiting for a pan to heat up or water to boil, chop extra veggies and either fry them lightly or bake them (almost any vegetable can be done in this way).
• Cook more grains than you would use for one meal, for example brown rice, black rice quinoa, buckwheat, millet, etc. and store them for later use.
• Pre-fry or just chop and marinate your meats or tofu and store ready in the fridge. 
• Cut your fresh veggies for salads and snacking like carrot, celery or cucumber sticks (it can easily last a couple of days).
• Roast chickpeas in the oven (drain, cover with olive oil add any spices and put into the oven till lightly browned).
• Make egg or tuna salad that you could use as a snack on top of cucumber slices for example.
• Make sweet snacks to have on hand like chia pudding and protein balls.
• Pre- cook broth, bone or veggie, to have it on hand when you want to assemble a quick soup with veggies, tofu, or chicken (you can use the prepped, fried, that you have already in the fridge:), pre-cooked grains or anything else.
• Boil eggs and store them ready to use in the fridge.

6. Use a pressure cooker to make your stock, soups or curries. You just put everything together and let it cook. You do not have to attend to it much.

7. Prep your smoothies. If you are like me, a Summer smoothie lover, portion your smoothie ingredients, like vegetables and fruit and freeze them. When you need it, just take out the daily portion, add liquid and any powders or seeds (hemp protein, chia, flax seed, maca, baobab, spirulina, chlorella and anything else you like to add) blitz it, and you are ready to go.

8. Sheet pan dinner. I love this concept. Put any chopped and sectioned veggies, meat, fish, tofu combination on a tray and bake in the oven. If different ingredients need different baking time keep adding whatever requires less time later.

9. Make meal prepping fun.

• involve family members to prep with you, smaller kids love it, not so sure about teenagers hahah
• use this as your quiet time, focus on the action of chopping and arranging, be present with it. It will be like meditation for you if you focus just on that. Chopping can be very therapeutic, relaxing, and cleansing for the mind
• play your favourite songs dance and sing as you chop

10. If all else fails, make sure to keep some ready meals in your freezer (if I cook too much and I know we won’t eat it the next day I just transfer it to the freezer for one of those emergency days). 

For years we were told by food industries and our doctors that fat is bad for us. We were advised to avoid fat as it could block our arteries and lead to heart attacks in the long term. So, that’s what we did. We avoided most fats, especially saturated fat, like butter. Instead, we were using vegetable oils that were supposed to be healthier for our heart health. Were they?

After many years of research, studies, as well as observing our society’s lack of health improvement, finally it is agreed that it wasn’t such a good advice after all. 

So, what should we do now?

First, let us look into what fat is. It is a main building block of our body. 15-30% of our bodies are made up of fat. Each of our 10 trillion cells needs fat to function. Our brain is built of about 60% of fat. Our brain cells need DHA fatty acids to communicate between each other. So, it’s very important to supply the body with healthy fats which improve our memory, learning abilities and overall happiness. 

But, not all fats are equal. 

The simplest division is into inflammatory and anti-inflammatory fats. As you probably know, inflammation in the body is a breeding ground for diseases, like diabetes, high blood pressure, dementia or cancer. We definitely should know which fats are anti-inflammatory hence, good for us.

We have all kinds of fats: saturated fats, unsaturated fats- monounsaturated, polyunsaturated, trans fats.

We will not take much time to talk about trans fats. There is no doubt that they are bad for you and you should avoid them at all costs. These are artificial fats, made by hydrogenation (hardening process) that gives them a very long shelf life. An example would be margarine.

Other fats that are not good for us are inflammatory vegetable oils. They are still very popular and are often used for frying like canola, safflower, sunflower, soybean oil. These fats oxidise very easily. 

What is the biggest problem with fats these days?

Our body needs to be supplied regularly with two main fatty acids, omega 3 and omega 6. They also need to balance each other with a specific ratio. In the olden days, people’s diet supplied them with an equal ratio of omega 3 and omega 6. They were getting their omega 3 from wild game, fish and wild plants and their omega 6 from some seeds and nuts.

These days, this ratio is totally thrown out of balance. 

Omega 3 intake drastically went down. We do not eat so many wild animals, fish and plants anymore. Industrially grown meat has almost no omega 3. Instead, we increased our omega 6 intake by consuming excess amounts of vegetable oils and processed products which are made using them.

Our bodies are affected by inflammation and therefore, prone to diseases.

We need much more omega 3 in our diet (lots of people have a deficiency) and much less omega 6 compared to what we consume now. 

Omitting healthy fats is bad for our health but also for our weight.

There is an entire industry of low fat products that was created around the idea that fat is not good for us. 

Those products are made by taking fat out of them (fat that is not at all bad for us and could be easily used by the body) and  balancing the taste by adding carbohydrates from sugar or starch. 

We already know from previous blogs how sugar acts in the body. Blood sugar goes up, more insulin is released (leading to insulin resistance in the long term), too much sugar is not needed by the body for energy, it also can’t be stored in excess, so it is converted into body fat!

Low fat products essentially make you gain more weight because they have added sugar that triggers the process of

storing excess sugar as body fat. 

Our body needs good fat to function. Our cell walls, which are made out of good quality fats, metabolise insulin much better, which means that the balancing of blood sugar is more efficient. And, that also means that we don’t store as much sugar as body fat.

Body fat comes from sugar, not from fat. 

We need healthy fats to burn body fat. 

We also need it to prevent many diseases, improve our mood, our skin, our nails and our hair.  Anti-inflammatory fat will make you feel full longer, cutting hunger. 

When we try to restrict calories (also from good fats), our body goes into starvation mode, meaning that the metabolism slows down. This is an ancient mechanism built into our body. It was supposed to protect us from dying from starvation when there was no food. It still works the same way. If we restrict the calories and stop eating enough, the body will not lose any weight.  Our willpower will not help us for a very long time, as it can’t win over our body’s biology.

Instead of restricting ourselves and watching how much we eat, we should look at what we eat. The quality of food is important as well as the composition of our meals : fibre, healthy fat and protein. 

Which fats are anti-inflammatory?

The list is long: avocado, seeds: flax seed, chia, hemp, sunflower, pumpkin, nuts: walnuts, cashews, macadamia, Brazil nut, sea vegetables, extra virgin cold pressed olive oil, small fatty fish:  mackerel, sardines, or wild salmon, grass fed or sustainably raised animal products, extra virgin cold pressed coconut oil or butter. 

There are a lot of sources of really good fats for us. We should’t be scared of good, anti-inflammatory fats. Then, we don’t have to worry about weight loss. The body will adjust it all for us.

There is a lot of misconception around calorie counting. 

It is actually an outdated method that has been scientifically disproven.

It doesn’t really work, especially when hoping to achieve sustainable and healthy weight loss. 

However, it is still being used by a lot of industries who try to push the concept onto us. Let’s see why it doesn’t work.

Calories are not equal. 

Foods with the same amount of calories can be processed by our body completely differently, resulting in very different biological effects. This is due to completely different ratios of macronutrients (carbohydrates, protein, fat), as well as micronutrients (vitamins and minerals). 

It’s very important to know, especially when we’re trying to lose weight.

To show you what I mean, I will use my usual example of an avocado (average size) versus a donut (basic donut).

They roughly have the same amount of calories – around 300.

Avocado – 300 calories, around 30 g of fat, 17 g carbs (mostly fiber, almost no sugar), 4 g of protein, potassium, magnesium, Vit C, Vit E, Vit K, smaller amounts of Vit B5, B6.

Donut – 300 calories, around 15 g of fat (different fat though), 30 g of carbs (mainly in a form of sugar) and 3 g of protein.

Now, on to the digestive process.

Let’s first look into the donut.

As you can see above, it has lots of sugar and fat, most probably refined fat, which isn’t going to serve our body very much, but we will talk about fats another time.

Let’s focus on the sugar part because that’s what the donut is mostly composed of (simple carbs – you can find more on that in my blog about carbohydrates). When we put simple carbs into our body, it gets absorbed quickly by the intestines and travels straight into our bloodstream. It spikes our blood sugar and then of course, soon after, it causes sugar/energy crash. 

Additionally, with such a high blood sugar levels, insulin rises to counter balance the sugar levels (it helps the glucose, in the sugar, enter the cells for energy use). But, if there is a lot of sugar at once in your bloodstream, a lot of insulin needs to be released. Insulin is often called a fat hormone. Constant high spikes of insulin results in belly fat, body inflammation, high blood pressure and even, in some cases, infertility in women. 

So much sugar at once increases your appetite. High levels of insulin tend to block the “feeling full” hormone, called leptin. Essentially, this means that we don’t actually feel full but instead, we continue to feel hungry and further crave sugar(referring here not only to pure sugar but any form of carb that consists of sugar). This is because your pleasure based reward centre is triggered, leading to an increase in your sugar addiction. 

Sugar consists of glucose and fructose. What we described above shows how glucose is processed by the body. Fructose is processed a little bit differently by the liver. Whatever excess that can’t be stored in the liver is stored as fat. That fat causes even bigger rises of insulin levels, that long term result in insulin resistance. If you get to that stage, whatever you eat will be turned mostly into belly fat. 

Now, let’s look at what happens when you eat an avocado. 

Also being around 300 calories, there is almost no sugar so, that whole process that I’ve just described above is not going to be triggered in this case. It will have no effect on your blood sugar levels and it has a low glycemic index, essentially meaning that it can be safely eaten even by people who have diabetes. 

Then, there is quite a lot of fat in avocado. 

I hear from clients, especially in my weight loss program, “Oh, you know, I can’t possibly eat an avocado, it has so much fat and I am trying to lose weight.” 

I agree, it does have a lot of fat, but it is good fat. Monounsaturated fatty acid. It can be used by the body. Every cell needs good fat to function, your brain needs good fat to perform properly, your whole system needs good fat to lose body fat! This kind of fat will help you prevent cardiovascular diseases, lower your bad cholesterol LDL and increase your HDL – good cholesterol. It also helps reduce overall inflammation in the body and supports cancer prevention. 

Avocado has a lot of carbohydrates found in the form of fibre. We need fibre. It makes us feel full for longer, its very important for our regular bowel movement, and it will help control blood sugar spikes, which is crucial if you are trying to lose weight or improve your metabolism. Avocado also has vitamins and minerals, for example, potassium that helps lowering the blood pressure. 

So, as you can see, 2 different types of food with exactly the same amount of calories have a totally different way of being processed by the body and have very different effects on the organism as a whole.

The avocado will be completely used by the body to function effectively, whereas the donut will mostly cause a lot of havoc in your body and will be stored as fat. 

I am not saying that you shouldn’t eat a donut. Please do, but be aware of the process and how you feel after. It is all about your choice.

I love what one of my teachers at the nutrition school said:” Food is not calories. It is coded information for our cells telling it what to do. It is information that our metabolism can use to either run efficiently or sluggishly.” -Dr. Mark Hyman

It’s not the calories, it’s the type and the quality of food that is important. 

The calorie counting approach does not take into account digestion, metabolism, absorption, hormone balance, or storage. 

We can actually be overfed, but still be undernourished. 

Lacking nutrients in the body. 

The quality of food we eat influences our metabolism, the rate at which we burn fat, your mood, your sleep, your energy, your mental clarity, and your longevity. That is why it is very important to look at it from that perspective rather than just as a calorie count.

Another aspect is that whole, real foods take longer to be processed by the body and will use more energy to do so, while processed foods don’t require the body to work as much, thus not using much energy and further contributing to the storage of fat.

Nourishing the body and not restricting is the way to lose weight in a healthy and sustainable way.