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Wellness

A new way of healthy eating: Food Combining

This article is written by a student writer from the Her Campus at Howard chapter.

Many people try different diets to lose weight and often end up going back to their old ways once the diet is over. Instead of looking at healthy eating as a diet, it should be looked at as a lifestyle. The recent trend that has changed many people’s lives is called food combining. This practice has been around for ages, starting with the Indian practice Ayurvedic medicine which is a holistic way of healing the body. Nutritionist Kenzie Burke has inspired women to reevaluate the way they eat by using food combining. 

Food combining is the way of combining the foods you eat to best suit your digestive system. The rules are not complicated, but it takes discipline. The first rule is to start your day by eating fruit and eating it alone. Fruit takes 30 minutes to digest which is the shortest of any food group. Therefore, if the fruit is combined with another food group it takes longer to digest, it will get stuck in your stomach waiting for the other food group to digest causing bloating, discomfort and possible weight gain. It is common to eat two small breakfasts in this way, fruit first and something else shortly after. 

The second rule of food combining is to never pair a protein with a starch. Starches take 3-4 hours to digest and proteins take 4-5 hours. For lunch and dinner, you can choose either a protein or starch and pair it with a vegetable and eat the other for dinner. This can be difficult for people because it means you cannot eat foods like hamburgers or many sandwiches. Food combining can often lead to a more plant-based diet as you center your meals around plants and what it will be paired with. 

In many cases, people who eat healthy and workout regularly, sometimes do not see their preferred results.  This could be from the bloating in your stomach causing extra weight making it harder for you to feel your best. The foods we put in our bodies have the ability to affect our mood. Eating clean foods and properly pairing them can lead to a happier you and give you more energy. Your digestive system breaks down macronutrients at different rates, therefore you should only eat foods that take the same amount of time to digest per sitting. While it may be difficult to adjust to this new way of eating, give it a try, your body will thank you. 

Source: Scootsy.com https://scootsy.com/blog/11-places-in-mumbai-to-order-organic-food-from/

 

Kendall Lanier is a Freshman broadcast journalism major from Kansas City, MO.
Deni Dedmon is a sophomore speech-language pathology major from Albany, GA. Her first love was writing but her second love was helping others, which led to her choosing a career in speech pathology. When it comes to her writing, she loves to write about everything, from entertainment (she’s an avid Kehlani fan) to book reviews (she’s been reading since the age of one) to controversial topics and current events (ya know, your average angry black girl things). Being the oldest of five girls, she is also passionate about young black girls, their self-esteem, and making sure that they’re proud of being who they are. At the age of seventeen, she became a contributor for MTV Founders and a spring writer for Affinity Magazine.