DEAR STRAIGHT TALK: I read your column on gray hair in teens (APR 1) and have personally observed the non-stop competitiveness of school, sports, and “always-on” electronics. Everyone is way too stressed. But what is missing in this discussion is the importance of diet in the ability to handle stress. Many factors contribute to a proper diet, but a huge problem today are sugar-laden foods and energy drinks which kids use to chemically make up for the fact that they are on-the-run, underslept, and skipping meals. It’s a vicious cycle because whenever you skip meals or eat poorly, your body actually craves sugar. Sugar is purely destructive. It upsets your body’s ability to burn fuel properly. It creates the perfect environment for yeasts and other bad bacteria to thrive. Then guess what you get? A body bad at metabolizing food and good at storing fat. Sound familiar? I guarantee bodies will die out on a sugary diet — too much sugar is the main problem in bodies everywhere. Add caffeine and things get worse. Please don’t switch to artificial sugar. It only creates a new set of problems. — Joe Rodriguez, National Strength and Conditioning Association
Comments
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Now that I’ve joined the navy, I’m much more conscious of what I eat, my daily intake consists of the following: I have a bowl of oatmeal with raisins for breakfast, a cup of coffee with half and half and sugar. For lunch, I’ll have some sort of meat and a big old heaping bowl of vegetables (bell peppers, garbanzo and kidney beans, spinach, celery, whatever the chow hall has available), and I’ll grab a banana that I eat at some point in the day. For dinner, I usually eat some sort of meat and brown rice. I don’t do a lot of snacking through the day. But the biggest thing for me is I drink OODLES of water. With every meal (except breakfast) I have a 20-oz glass of water. When my coffee cup is empty, I fill that with water and keep it filled throughout the day. It keeps me awake and alert, not thirsty, and I don’t have to worry about getting dehydrated later in the day when I exercise. I also take a multivitamin in the morning. That keeps me running and healthy throughout the day. I don’t really get much sicker than the sniffles every now and then, and I haven’t had to use a sick day since I’ve joined the navy, so I guess I’m doing something right.
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Because of where I live and work, at a farm-based care-facility for people with disabilities, I eat three relatively balanced meals a day, with protein, carbohydrate, and vegetables. A typical day looks like this:
Breakfast: Oatmeal and toast, tea.
“Tea Break” (midmorning): air-popped popcorn, tea.
Lunch: Salad, Rice, Stir-fried greens, chicken, water. (Or a similar variation.)
Snack (not every day): toast or something similar.
Dinner: Light soup or leftovers with bread and jam/cheese/peanut butter/hummus/etc.The food here is all “whole food”: raw milk fresh from the cows on our farm, butter, whole milk yogurt, fresh homemade bread, chicken with skin on, and lots of fresh vegetables grown here. ALL the red meat and pork I was eating was organic and biodynamic and came from the cows and pigs on our farm! Seriously, I knew the pigs, and then they were on my plate. It may seem strange, like one wouldn’t want to eat animals one knew personally, but I felt better about it because I knew they were well-cared-for and loved.
When I am home with my family, or away from here, eating patterns are totally different. I tend not to eat breakfast at all, or I eat it very late and then don’t eat lunch. I tend to drink quite a lot of coffee and thus not be hungry or remember to have meals other than dinner. I also eat much more low-fat, (though I don’t worry about carbs). I am probably five to eight pounds over ideal weight for my height, but would be really happy to be 15 pounds thinner.
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This is a very good question! There are lots of issues with eating the right foods, one, because of all the different diets you see that tell you to not eat certain foods, which is always a bad idea, and two, because the media shows all kinds of anorexic-looking skinny women all over it! My parents always cooked pretty healthy food for dinner and tried to make me eat breakfast too! When I was on my own I didn’t have much money so I ate all kinds of bad packaged/canned foods and gained a bit of weight. However, once I stopped doing that I lost most of it! I do drink a lot of coffee which I know is terrible, but other than that, I eat pretty healthy for the most part now. I am very lucky because all 3 of my roommates are cooks and they mostly make delicious slow-cooked food from scratch! I feel healthier than I have in a long time… Although I would still not say I’m skinny. It just seems like the media causes so many teenagers and young adults have a very distorted view of themselves, so they try all kinds of unhealthy diets such as skipping meals to lose weight. Also energy drinks are bigger than ever. I see people, young and old, buying them to get going. Those were a bad habit for me for a while too but I kicked that and feel unbelievably better! When I quit the energy drinks, I noticed a huge difference! I try to really listen to my body and sometimes I have to because it screams at me! I do still drink coffee and occasionally an energy drink but not like I use to. I actually got headaches from the energy drinks and I don’t get headaches anymore! I feel much better and much more grounded without them.
