Podcast: Nutrition Made Simple: Unlocking the Power of Fruit and Vegetables
Transcription of Podcast.
Hello, hello, hello. Welcome to Fit and Fabulous with me, Dr. Orlena. I hope that you are feeling amazing, amazing, amazing today. Hey, swimming season has started and I am swimming in the sea every single day. I'm totally loving it. I'm feeling like, oh my goodness. I get up quarter past six. At six 30. I'm out the door.
Hooray for Summer and Exercise that Lights You Up
I'm cycling when nobody else is up in my pajamas. I jump into the sea, I swim and I come back and it is amazing. I totally, totally love it. So just to reinforce, if you can find your exercise, your movement, that really lights you up because you want to do it because you enjoy doing it, then I recommend that you go and do it.
Okay? Today I want to talk to you about fruit and vegetables. Why I like to keep my nutritional advice really, really simple. Why it doesn't have to be complicated and just bust a few myths. So the reason this came to mind was because yesterday I was talking to a client, and this is a conversation that I have with a lot of people.
How to Stop Late Night Snacking
A similar conversation talking about snacking late at night basically having dessert. So you know, you have your dinner at whatever time it is, you have your dinner, say 5, 6, 7 o'clock, and then later on in the evening, you find yourself eating something, which is a sweet treat. Now what I recommend people to do is to have your dinner to make sure that you have a 12 to 14 hour gap between your dinner and your breakfast.
So if you stop eating dinner, If you stop eating after dinner, this is a really, really easy thing to do, and this is intermittent fasting. Essentially, this is giving your body a break to do all the things that your body needs to do. So your body needs to clean itself, it needs to, your gut needs to clean itself, and it can't do it when it's full of food.
Intermittent Fasting for 12-14 hours allows Your Body to Relax, Rest and do Important Maintenance Jobs
So it needs time. It needs a period of time to relax and rest and do the sort of maintenance jobs that it needs to do. And normally it does that when we're asleep, but it also needs time. So if you eat right before you go to sleep, your gut is gonna be full of of food.
And so this is another point as well, is that really you want to be eating a period of time before you go to sleep. So here in Spain people are crazy, crazy. They stay up to really, really late. I can't understand why, because it gets really hot in the daytime. So actually the evening, the nighttime is a much more pleasant temperature.
And they eat late and then they go to sleep. Now, the problem with that is your, your body doesn't want to be doing the digesting whilst it's sleeping, so it's much better to eat earlier, allow your body to digest the food, and then your body can do the, the cleaning, the maintenance, all those things that it needs to do.
So intermittent fasting is good, and people often ask me about intermittent fasting, do I recommend it? And the answer is yes, I do recommend it. I, I recommend finding what works for you. And I recommend a minimum of 12 to 14 hours. And some people do more and some people just do 12 to 14 hours, and that's fine.
Stopping Eating after Dinner is an Easy Way to Start Intermittent Fasting
So if you, for example, Eat your dinner at six o'clock and then you have your breakfast at eight o'clock. That's super easy. You have now done 14 hours of intermittent fasting and you haven't really exerted yourself. So going back to this idea of eating later on at night, which may be. Anything. Cookies, candy, chocolate.
I used to eat chocolate myself. I remember years ago I used to work, I used to have a blog. Oh my goodness, my blog. That was not fun to do. And so I didn't really like having to sit down and write in the evening cause I had young kids and it was really the only time that I had available to do it. And so in order to reward myself, I used to have dinner, put the kids to bed, sit down, get some chocolate out, eat the chocolate, and do some work.
Until I realized that basically what I was doing was giving myself an extra spike of in, of glucose, of insulin and that I would be much better off eating the chocolate with dinner and doing the 14 hours intermittent fasting cuz I was breaking my fast, basically. So the conversation goes like this, instead of eating something a few hours, eat it with dinner.
Eat Your Snack as Dessert at Dinner Time
So eat your dessert, whatever your snack is, eat it with dinner and then stop and have this hard stop and it's gonna take you a few weeks to really. Train your body that you are not going to eat. That desire to eat is gonna come up because we have like a rhythm that we have all the time, and your body needs a little bit of time to get over that.
Have a Healthy Fruit Based Dessert
Now, better still, what I recommend you do is have a healthy dessert. So instead of eating a packaged dessert, you have something healthy. So fruit, fruit springs to mind. There's so much fruit is so versatile. And you can do so many things with fruit. You can just eat it as it is. You can make it into something like frozen yogurt, so you can cook fruit if you want to.
Fruit is amazing. I'm always cooking peaches. It's peach season now. Oh, I love peaches. I buy so many peaches that we can't really get through them. Honestly. I buy loads and loads of peaches and so what I do when they're getting a little bit soft and squishy cuz soft fruit doesn't last very long, is I throw them in the oven.
Perhaps put a little bit of vanilla in if I feel like it, but you don't really need to just throw it in and that's it. And they keep, and you can freeze them. You can turn them into frozen yogurt. You can do all kinds of things. So I know that it's hot for people in the southern hemisphere depending on where you live.
Another amazing fruit is watermelon. Watermelon is mostly water. It's quite low in carbohydrates, and it's really refreshing. It's amazing, and you can freeze it as well. So again, if I find my watermelon is getting a little bit soft, I chop it into pieces, I freeze it, and the kids will eat it as like ice cubes, or you can whizz it up and turn it into Granada.
Fruit is a Healthy Alternative to Packaged Desserts
So fruit is amazing. Fruit is your friend. Now people say to me, yeah, but fruit has got sugar in it, right? And the answer is yes, it does have sugar in it. It has. Different depending on the fruit, but fructose and sucroses and different sugars in it. So can you eat too much fruit? Well, I guess in theory you can.
I personally eat loads and loads of fruit, partly because I buy the fruit for my kids. I wouldn't, I think if I didn't have kids, I wouldn't buy quite so much fruit. I would buy more vegetables. But I buy loads of fruit because the kids eat fruit and I eat a lot of fruit during the day and I don't put on weight.
So people say, yes you can, but I think you have to be eating really, really, really loads. And I think, here's the question. What are you eating now? Are you eating packaged fruits, packaged foods? If so, in comparison, the fruit is going to be better for you. And one of the things about fruit is, yes, it contains sugar, but it doesn't contain as much sugar as any packaged food and any packaged food.
So take an ice cream, for example. Who doesn't love ice cream? We all love ice cream. It is delicious. But the reality is it contains an awful lot of sugar in various forms. So high fructose corn syrup, glucose syrup, all of those things that are not, they're worse than regular table sugar. And they also put in things like emulsifiers to make them smooth and delicious.
And those emulsifiers are not good for us. They're not good for your gut, they're not good for your biome. They're just generally much better avoided. So if you can have a homemade fruit dessert, even if you put a little bit of sugar in it, it is gonna be better for you than the shop produced packaged foods.
So I could go on and on and on about why I love fruit and vegetables. But I am gonna give you a few tips as to why I think vegetables are. The thing. The thing, and I see fruit as sort of a step away from vegetables. So if you've got kids and they're eating lots of fruit, I personally see fruit as a stepping stone to vegetables.
Fruit is a Stepping Stone to Vegetables for Kids
If our kids grow up eating fruit and a little bit of vegetables, it's not that much farther to go as they get older. More vegetables with some fruit. Whereas if they're eating packaged foods all the time, what are these strange fruit and vegetable things that I've never come across? So my advice, if I could tell you how to eat in a nutshell, I would just sum it up like this, eat more vegetables and fruit and less packaged food.
Fruit Doesn’t Contain Emulsifiers or Other Chemicals
Now I can talk to you about nutrition for hours and hours and hours if you want, but that is such simple advice. It doesn't need to be complicated. Fruit and vegetables. I'm gonna give you a list of why I love fruit and vegetables. Packaged food full of nasty chemicals. That we can't pronounce. Like you look at the packages sometimes and you're like, oh my goodness, I don't even know what that means.
The Sugars in Fruit are Absorbed More Slowly the Sugars in Packaged Foods: You Get a Slower Glucose Spike
The other thing about processed food is the more processing is done outside of your body, the less your body has to do. So for example, I remember having a conversation with my father-in-law once and saying that pasta was processed food, and he's like, No, it's not, it's not processed. Now, there are highly processed food and less processed foods, but it is still processed.
I've never seen a pasta tree in my life. So there are, there is a grade and yes, okay, it doesn't mean you can't ever eat pasta, but it is still slightly processed and it goes like this. The more you, the more work somebody has done. The less your body has to do and the more work somebody has done, your body ha doesn't have to do any work.
So what happens is it pushes up for your glucose levels more quickly. And that is the problem with modern eating, is that our glucose levels, you know, rocket sky high really, really quickly. And if you eat fruit and vegetables, they may contain sugar, fruit and vegetables. Vegetables are mostly carbohydrates, but your body needs to break it down so it's wrapped up in fiber and you need to break down that fiber.
You need to chew and. Digested in your stomach and it gets released over a slower period of time, so your glucose levels does not go up so much. So number one, here's my long list of why I love vegetables. Number one, it doesn't affect your blood sugar levels so quickly as eating processed foods. Number two, they are full of antioxidants.
Fruits and Vegetables Contain Antioxidants that Protect Your Body from Oxidative Damage
Antioxidants are great things that help us go round. Fixing the damage basically. So oxidative damage is like firing little bullets in your, into your gut or into your body, and this is not great. And the antioxidants, they go around sort of mopping up these little things that are damaging our body. So these are helpful things, and particularly in the colorful fruits and vegetables.
Eat a Rainbow to Increase the Antioxidants you Eat
So, you know, they talk about eating a rainbow. Well, in those colored bits is where we get a lot of the antioxidant. Goodness. So eating a rainbow is really, really good advice full of fiber, fruit and vegetables are full of fiber. Our body needs fiber. We want our gut to be full of fiber. And you may have talked, heard me talk about the biome, what other people talk about, the biome and having a healthy biome, and that's basically all the.
Fruit and Vegetables are Good for Your Biome (which has lots of Benefits)
Microbiome, microbacteria and different organisms that are contained inside your gut. You've got trillions and trillions of these things inside your gut. You are, when you go to the toilet, you tip over into being more yourself than. Than microbiome. So you know, half of you is microbiome. And your microbiome can make the difference between being a thin person and not being a thin person.
So if you have a healthy biome, you're gonna find it easier to maintain a healthy weight, to have more energy. It's amazing what we know about the biome now, but in the nutshell, you want to have a healthy biome. What does your body need to have a healthy biome? It needs fiber. It needs basically lots of fiber.
It needs other things as well. But if I could say to you, okay, do one thing, it would be eat fruits and vegetables and get that amazing fiber, which is going to help you have a good place for, for the good bacteria and the good microbiomes to be so health. If you Google. What? What are vegetables? Why is vegetables?
Fruit and Vegetables are Good for your Health
Are vegetables good for my health? You get a long list of all the bits. They're good for keeping your blood pressure down, your skin, your brain, all of these things. I'm just gonna add it up to health. Health vegetables are good for your health. If you look at the research, essentially, if you eat more vegetables, you are going to live longer.
Fruit and Vegetables Contain Fibre which is Good for your Health
If you eat more fiber, you're going to live more longer. More longer. Where do you get the fiber from? You get it from vegetables and things like whole grains and also lentils and legumes. Okay. Vegetables are super versatile. They really are. You can do anything with vegetables. You can take whatever flavors you want and use the vegetables, so whatever recipe you want, whatever flavors, curry, Italian, Thai, put some vegetables in and you don't have to stick to the exact vegetables.
Vegetables are Really Versatile to Cook with
So I just make a meal stir fry with whatever vegetables I have. So vegetables are super, super versatile. And you can cook them or you can eat them raw or you can shred them, or you can do this, or you can do that. You can turn them into a salad. So amazingly versatile, I would say. What else have I written here?
Vegetables are Naturally Low in Calories. They Fill you Up and Help You Lose Weight
Oh, they're naturally low in calories. Amazing. Amazing. If you want to lose weight, you want to be eating foods that are naturally low in calories, vegetables, hello, vegetables and for example, obba genes. Eggplants really low in calories compared to. Other foods. So I use them quite often as bread, not as bread obviously, but in place of bread.
So I buy lots of eggplants, obje, cook them up. Sometimes I just throw them in the oven in half and then use that half an obje, like a slice of bread. I might put. Some peanut butter on it. I might put some cheese on it. I might put something else on it. I might just eat it as is. I often eat obs just as they are, but they are naturally low in calories, so they are going to keep you full.
You are going to feel satisfied eating them, and then you are eating far less than you would be in terms of energy consumption. On a side note, energy consumption is a little bit tricky to measure and it's not quite as simple as calories in calories out, but it is a good. Way of trying to understand what's going on and essentially the lower calories you can eat.
Now, I'm not suggesting you go and eat cardboard, but eating things that are naturally low in calories gonna keep you full up, gonna keep you satisfied, and then you're not gonna want to eat anything else. So they keep you full. They really help you lose weight. This is really one of the keys to losing weight.
Eating Fruit and Vegetables is Better for the Planet that Eating Meat
So a few reasons why I totally love vegetables. On a side note, they're much better for the planet as well. We have a drought here in Spain at the moment, and one big area of water consumption is meat and cattle and things like. That so anybody who eats just vegetables is actually using far less water and far less of the world's resources in terms of carbon dioxide consumption as well.
So what is not to love about vegetables? Vegetables are your friends and vegetables are really, really going to help you. Lose weight in a way that is natural sustainable that you can enjoy. And it's about finding the joy of healthy eating. And it doesn't mean that you can't ever eat the other treats that you want, but it's understanding that eating those treats in moderation is really the key.
So I hope that you have found this helpful if you're feeling a bit stuck and thinking, okay, I like the idea, but really how do I. Eat vegetables. How do I prepare vegetables? What do I do to these things called vegetables? Number one, turn on your positive brain and come from a place of exploring and thinking, oh wow, this is interesting.
This is a new area of my life that I'm going to find out about. Number two, sign up for my healthy recipes right now as I record this, it's the 27th of June. I think I have my May recipe, so if you sign up now, you can get the May recipes next week. I'm going to update them so that they will be July recipes, but if you want some recipes, Reach out, sign up for those or message me and I will show you how to find recipes so that you can try them and just try introducing more vegetables.
Here's one amazing tip. If you just increase the vegetables that you eat with any meal, you have made a shift towards being more healthy and it's so simple, so easy. Just serve an extra portion of vegetables at each meal time, and yes, okay, fruit at breakfast time. Okay, my friends, I hope that has been helpful.
I look forward to seeing you next week. Have an amazing week. Take care. Bye-bye.
