Metabolic Supporting Food Swaps
Our metabolism supports many of our very important processes, such as proper digestion, detoxification, immunity, repair, and more. Often, the lifestyle we lead that aligns with what society says is "good" doesn't always promote good support of our metabolism.
Vegetables + Anti-nutrients:
Most vegetables that are grown above the ground contain higher anti-nutrients. Anti-nutrients are released as a defense mechanism to keep animals from eating them. Over-consuming these anti-nutrients can really affect our health. An example of this would be oxalates, which are often found in leafy greens, nuts, and grains. They affect our body by inhibiting calcium absorption. Lectins (found in seeds, legumes, nuts, and grains) can cause intestinal distress and interfere with mucus repair in our gut lining.
Rather than focusing on leafy greens, such as spinach, kale, lettuce, and cruciferous vegetables (like cauliflower, brussel sprouts, bok choy, broccoli, cabbage), we need to focus on eating daily servings of root vegetables. Root vegetables, such as carrots, potatoes, sweet potatoes, yams, beets, and turnips are easy to digest, and contain more nutrients than other veggies, such as cauliflower and kale. It’s also great to focus on fruit-like vegetables, such as pumpkin, squash, zucchini, and tomatoes.
When consuming starchy root vegetables and fruit-like vegetables as noted above, make sure to thoroughly cook them in a saturated fat (like butter or coconut oil). Also, please be sure not to eat these alone - eat them with fat and protein to ensure stable blood sugar.
Fruit:
Rather than eating fruit alone, pair it with a fat (such as cheese), or cook in a saturated fat (like butter or coconut oil).
Protein:
Fish Shellfish and low fat fish (such as clams, oysters, mussels, crab, lobster, shrimp, and scallops) are going to be better to consume than high fat, cold water fish (like salmon). The fat content in salmon can lower your rate of metabolism. Shellfish is ideal because it contains a pretty good source of B12, which is needed for every metabolism process that we touched on earlier.
Organic Dairy Swap out conventional eggs and dairy for pasture-raised eggs and raw dairy. Pasture-raised eggs and raw dairy contain many more vitamins, minerals, and saturated fats needed to support the metabolism
Muscle Meats We often hear that chicken and turkey are "healthier" because of lower saturated fat content, but they contain higher amounts of inflammatory amino acids and can have a skewed phosphorus to calcium ratio. They also contain higher amounts of metabolic suppressing fats. Try to stick with grass-fed, pasture-raised animals, which tend to contain lower levels of metabolic suppressing fats and higher amounts of vitamins, minerals, and saturated fats. Another great tip is that when you do consume muscle meats, try to drink a cup of bone broth or a tablespoon of gelatin to offset the high amino acid profile of the muscle meat.
Salt:
Salt is important to keep our metabolic rate up, and can also reduce inflammation. Swap out conventional salt for a white sea salt, like Maldon's - nothing colored. Colored salts can have higher amounts of heavy metals, as we now see with the toxicology report for pink Himalayan salt.
