Fit Photographer | Eating
To read the following blog post you need to know 2 things...1. Erik, the health wizard, will be writing in this font.2. Marissa, thinking about how this helps us during a wedding day, will be writing in this font.
(Pictured above is only about 1/4 of the food we bought this week, but it IS a little of everything we bought.)Let's get one thing straight, humans function by eating food. Real food, things that have been around forever! Meat, eggs, fruit, veggies, water, nuts. You've heard this all before. Many names are thrown around like Paleo, primal, caveman eating. People get riled up with this topic. Food is somewhat broad yet it's so simple. Food heals, fuels, keeps you calm, keeps you energized. Food can keep you around and functioning longer.I totally get this one. When I go too long without eating my blood sugar gets out of whack and I get really moody (Erik can attest to this). To ensure that this does NOT happen on a wedding day (who wants a moody photographer?) we pack lots of snacks and water!Yet why do we take food for granted? Because we have an abundance of choices. Food is now made for convenience. Convenience isn't always the best. Food is processed, packaged, or made on a conveyor belt and is easy or cheap for companies to produce. Your food is where you should draw the line on "easy" and "cheap".In fact, we buy the opposite of easy & cheap protein bars and organic apples for snacks to take to work a wedding, but it's totally worth it. After repeated tests our ideal snack bags have the following: 2 protein bars for Marissa + 1 apple + bottle of water; 3 protein bars for Erik + 1 apple + nuts + bottle of water (+ possibly some carrot sticks)Going to the grocery once, maybe twice a week is a lot for people. Spending $100-$200 a week seems like a lot too...well, it is a lot. It's a lot of work and a lot of planning. It takes time, energy, effort, and money. Welcome to living a healthy lifestyle. It isn't a sexy sell. Can you imagine an article in People magazine that sounds something like this. "Benefits to eating real food. Are you ready to spend more money than you're used to? Plan your grocery trips? Purchase nothing that can last longer than 6 days without being frozen? Be able to understand every ingredient that's on the food label?" This is the reality, but it won't get you a spread in a magazine.You know when you're so hungry that you'll just about eat a cow or a whole cake? Well, that's not how we want to feel at a wedding when there's wedding cake, rolls and butter, and all sorts of decadent foods. In order to stay away from shoving our starving faces we have to plan, grocery shop, and keep food around that we know will make us feel good and will allow us to work hard.Yes, the human body can process beans, grains, soda, and candy, but at what cost? We have incredibly intelligent bodies. They figure out a way to process and digest what we put in our mouths. Think about this, we are actually living longer but are more obese than ever and sicker than every before. By a lot. Take a quick moment and think about that. Our lives are longer, but we're sicker and fatter.Sicker and fatter…yuck. Anyway, another tip we use for eating on a wedding day is eating every 2-3 hours to help regulate blood sugar levels, which in turn helps energy (and mood) levels! For us, it is of utmost importance that we feel our best on a wedding day. Sometimes we're working 10 hours, on our feet, in the heat of summer, probably wearing black…so to combat all of that we must plan, eat, and drink healthy. This includes snacks, water, and downing a huge breakfast before we leave for a wedding. Our wedding day breakfasts usually consist of eggs (6), bacon (an entire pack), sweet potatoes (1 or 2) or a vegetable sauté and sometimes pumpkin pancakes. We don't mess around with food folks. There are tons of diets out there. But that's what they all are: diets. They start then stop. Hearing the word diet for most people gives them a mild heart attack. When you can mentally change to thinking of food as a lifestyle it becomes easier and easier. My best advice when it comes to change, especially food related, is give it a try. Stick with it for 3-4 weeks. Monitor how you sleep, how you feel, how you look.The moment we started taking 2 minute breaks to hydrate, eat a protein bar, or actually sit down and eat dinner (no one likes pictures of themselves eating anyway) changed our wedding days drastically! Photographers, friends, family, anyone out there (no matter what job) remember that what you put in is what you get out so eat, eat often, and make good choices.Thanks for eating…we mean reading,Erik & Marissa