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Blink 3 of 8 - The 5 AM Club
by Robin Sharma
It Starts With Food summary
Dallas Hartwig and Melissa Hartwig
Discover the WHOLE30 and Change Your Life in Unexpected Ways
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Key idea 1 of 7
3.7 (61 ratings)
15 mins
7 key ideas
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What is It Starts With Food about?
It Starts With Food (2012) gives you the inside scoop on the profound effects food can have on your body and well-being. Importantly, these blinks explain how you can alter your diet to both lose weight and feel better, body and soul.
About the Author
Melissa Hartwig is a sports nutritionist who has been featured in several publications, including The Wall Street Journal. Dallas Hartwig is a physical therapist and sports nutritionist. It Starts With Food is their second bestselling book.
Table of Contents
Key idea 1 of 7
The food you eat has a big impact on your mental state and the health of your immune system.
Have you noticed that certain foods make you feel weak or stressed out? Food can have a profound impact on how people think and feel.
This is why diets don’t work unless they fundamentally change your food cravings. If you find yourself returning to junk food after a phase of dieting, it’s not necessarily because you lack willpower – it’s because certain foods really mess with your brain!
Humans have evolved to appreciate three basic flavor categories: sweet, fatty and salty. Sweet foods give you energy; fatty foods give you calories; and finally, salty foods keep you hydrated.
The fact is that humans are hardwired to like these flavors. Food producers know this and have used this fact to their market advantage.
Processed foods such as the hamburgers and french fries from your favorite fast food outlet, chocolate bars and even frozen meals offer a supernormal stimulus, meaning these foods are either sweeter, saltier or fattier (or all three) than non-processed foods. This extra boost makes us crave such foods even more.
When you eat a chocolate bar, for instance, your brain releases dopamine, a neurotransmitter that gives you feelings of pleasure. The more chocolate you eat, the more your body craves the effect of dopamine; and this feedback loop makes you want to eat more chocolate in the future.
Yet food doesn’t just scramble your brain, convincing you that another cheeseburger can’t be all that bad. It also affects your immune system, potentially causing inflammation.
Inflammation in the body usually happens as a normal response to an injury or illness, but chronic inflammation is different. Chronic inflammation occurs when your immune system gets confused and your body starts attacking itself, as it can’t differentiate between “you” and a foreign invader, such as a virus.
A lot of processed food today contains chemical compounds that can be difficult for your immune system to process. Such chemicals can stress your body, leading to chronic inflammation and even serious illness.
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Who should read It Starts With Food
- People interested in improving their overall health
- Dieters who have tried everything
- Busy executives seeking to eat more healthily
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