[Here’s the next post in the series of guest posts on healthy diet and lifestyle from Dave Banko.]
One of the interesting experiments performed on ‘What’s the Right Diet for You?‘ assessed the effect of being tired on the decisions you make about what to eat.
The participants were divided into 2 groups: one group was given a good night’s rest and the other was forced to stay up until early in the morning. The next morning, both were sent shopping and given identical lists of types of things to purchase, but not given specific items.
When the groups finished shopping, their shopping baskets were compared and the results were astounding! The well rested group made excellent choices: lots of fresh fruits and veg, whole foods, and lean meats. The tired group purchased a lot of sugary and high fat items with a calorie content more than double the amount of the rested group!
Why is this?
When we are tired and drained of energy, our natural preservation mechanism is to quickly boost our energy levels, so we crave sugary and fatty foods.
Making good choices in this state will take every ounce of will power to overcome this fundamental self-preservation instinct.
This also relates to the discussion in my previous blog post about how when we are drained after exercise we crave sugary and fatty foods, but eating them would wipe out the positive weight loss effects of the exercise.
How do we counteract this? First and foremost is to get enough rest. I’ll be writing another post about the additional benefits of a good night’s sleep, and this is certainly one of them.
We live busy lifestyles though, and can’t always get enough rest or do things when well rested. In this case, the best thing to do is make a plan while rested. If grocery shopping, make your list in advance while rested, then stick to it when shopping!
In the end, knowledge is power. Just knowing what our bodies want helps us to make better, healthy lifestyle decisions!
As always, please contact me at daveb.uk@hotmail.com if you have any questions or comments. 🙂 [Crew Dog: Or comment below.]