Your future really boils down to how you treat your body now.

Treat your body right now and you’ll ease onto your senior years with dignity and grace.

Treat it badly and you’ll be lucky to stumble in or roll in in a wheelchair.

Truth is, we must quit dismissing our bodies as something that doesn’t belong to us. We have both spiritual and physical sides to our nature and we must own this body and take responsibility for it just as we try and do for our spiritual natures.

Our bodies are fine-tuned engines, and like any engine they take fuel to run. They get this fuel from the foods we eat. However – and this is key…not all fuels are created equal.

All foods provide energy and go to helping maintain your target weight if you eat the correct amount of them. But only nutrient dense foods contribute to helping your body function as it should.

Unfortunately, some people are still under the erroneous belief that counting calories is the sure and quickest way to weight loss. But counting calories is like putting the poorest grade fuel in your car.

If you want your body to run at super peak performance then you must provide it with high performance fuel its really that simple.

Give it low grade fuel and guess what? That’s the kind of performance you’ll get back – low grade.

For example:

Both jelly beans and broccoli contain calories and provide energy. They can both be consideref fuel. Additionally both of these items contain carbohydrates. However, the broccoli contains a wealth of other nutrients as well as our warrior antioxidants – vitamin K, folate, vitamin A, manganese, fiber, potassium , vitamin, B2, vitamin B6, and on and on.

The jelly beans on the other hand contain sugar which contains – nothing. You’ll get a short burst of energy from that sugar intake. But, that’s it. No nutrients at all to assist in the body’s functioning. That means your body is getting nothing in return for the energy that it is expending to eat those jelly beans while the broccoli gives the body back a wealth of nutrients in exchange for the energy used to consume it.

Similar to your bank account if you beep making withdrawals without depositing anything back, you will eventually run out of reserves. Your body works the same exact way. Keep taking energy reserves from it without giving it quality nutrients back to replace that energy and eventually your body runs out of reserves.

Your body relies on micro-nutrients – the vitamins and minerals from the foods you eat to perform the many tasks successfully that it does on a day to day basis. Without those micro-nutrients, health is impacted in negative ways. Keep it up long enough and you’ve opened the door to malnutrition with its accompanying health problems.

Additionally, counting calories is a dangerous practice also because it causes you to start fearing and eliminating foods that contain a higher number of calories  (even though they may be super healthy for you)  and you begin making poor choices based on that. You start avoiding some high calorie foods altogether…denying your body a wealth of nutrients.

Almonds for example provide your body with fiber, healthy fats, protein, vitamin E, magnesium and other important nutrients. As long as portion sizes are controlled these foods need to be a part of any healthy balanced diet. Another benefit of almonds is that they provide healthy fats in almonds that help to reduce hunger pains which in turn prevent you from eating more.

The minute we are told we cannot have it, it seems we suddenly crave it 24/7. It is these types of actions that eventually cause obsessions with foods and setting yourself up for eating disorders.

Those with eating disorders have a distorted perception of food and no longer see food as nutritious fuel for the body but rather something that will cause them to gain excess body fat. They have completely lost touch with the fact that they must eat to stay healthy. For them eating has turned into a dangerous emotional activity. Unfortunately these people have set themselves up for all kinds of serious health problems that can last a lifetime.

Focusing on proper nutrition – on eating foods that help decrease the aging process and concentrating on those that have more purpose for your body than simply weight control is the way to avoid falling prey to dangerous life threatening eating disorders.

For more extensive information and to discover a list of 100 foods that are actually good for you and a list of those that are bad for you  check out: “The Anti-Aging Foods Compendium.” It’s time to discover the difference between low nutrient foods and high nutrient foods and foods that are downright dangerous.