Essential Foods – Part 1

Food is made up of two components, nutrition and energy. To lose weight we must consume less energy than we expend. Food is the least essential of what we need to sustain life; minutes without air and days without water and we’re done; kaput! But we can last weeks, or even longer, without food.

In starvation mode our body consumes fat from our fat stores (adipose tissue) for energy. One would expect then that a grossly obese person could last, or live longer, without food than a person who was overweight but not grossly obese. One would expect this to be so because the grossly obese have more fat stored to provide energy to sustain life.

In the 16th and 18th centuries numerous explorers set off to the Indian and Pacific Oceans on their voyages of discovery only to lose more than half their crews to disease which we now know as Scurvy. These sailors were not starving, there was still plenty of food on board their ships, but they were dying because the food was lacking certain nutrients. Now we know that Scurvy is caused by a cocktail of vitamin deficiencies, mainly C and B vitamins.

So who is likely to die first, the overweight or the grossly obese person? Well that will depend on what their diet was before they stopped eating. The person that had the most ESSENTIAL nutrients stored away in their cells and serum is likely to live longer. So to maintain excellent health while we lose weight we need to eat food that contains nutrients that are ESSENTIAL for healthy life.

What are these essential nutrients?

Rewired’s research says that the essential nutrients in food that we need to maintain excellent health while we lose weight are;

Vitamins

Minerals

Amino Acids

Certain essential fatty acids, and

Fibre

How much we need and which foods they are contained in are included in articles restricted to participants in Rewired’s weight loss program.