Boy, having this head and chest cold the past few days, I’ve learned some things:

I can go down for the count in a heartbeat.
It takes a lot of energy to simply sit up, stand and move around.
The better my health is, in general, the quicker I bounce back if a bug gets me down.

The less food I have moving through my body on a daily basis, the quicker any bug can move through my system.
When I use food like I use firewood – adding to the fire only the amount of wood that is needed when it is needed – the more easily it is converted to fuel for me, and the more efficiently it burns.  This fuel is what I use to feed ALL of my biological processes – everything, for all organs and body parts, so it’s important.   At the campfire, you don’t pile all the firewood on at once, you add each log as the fire burns down and makes room for it. You can make 8 logs last 8 hours or you can start the fire with all 8 logs. If you stack it all up at one time, you get a big smoky mess that has no air to breathe.  That makes it burn unevenly and then it’s gone in just a few hours.  Same as big meals.  They just clog you up and don’t leave you energy to do the long term work.  The long term work of fueling the cells of your body properly, so you metabolize properly and stay healthy.  Digestion isn’t just about digestion.  Healthy cells also look younger.  Duh.

If I have a cold and I have been eating heavily – meaning, say, more than 2,000 calories a day, or more than two servings of bread/pasta/potatoes/dairy a day – I can count on feeling under the weather an extra week, and it can hit me much harder as well.

This year I weathered a tummy bug and it was by far the easiest one I’d ever had.  I attribute that to the simple fact that my system had not been overloaded for years beforehand with a lot of heavy, meaty, starchy and greasy foods. The same with this head and chest cold.  That in itself is incentive for me to continue to eat light and to eat healthy.

But also incentive is that when I lose even 3-5 pounds by cutting my intake, I can fit into my skinny jeans.  And being healthy and looking younger in them?

Priceless.

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