| Energy Boost or Bust? |
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Most people look for a quick pick-me-up at some point during their day. Perhaps you’re out running errands and you eat a candy bar to keep you going. You’re at the office and have a couple cups of coffee to get you started in the morning. Or maybe you’re like me and sneak cookies before meals to tide you over. Living such hectic lifestyles as we do today, it is often difficult to maintain energy throughout the day. Roger Snow, Owner and Operator of Rocky Mountain Grain Products explains, “The way it works is that people tend to run around and keep going after those quick energy fixes, like coffee, sugar, and pop, so that they have enough energy to make it through the day. Other times when they eat, they eat carbohydrates which burn quickly so they get a burst of energy, but they are getting more energy than they can burn so it’s converted to fat.” Roger goes on to explain how most people fail to recognize food as fuel for the body. One eats food so that they can get the energy released from the food. Carbohydrates, such as breads, pasta, potatoes, rice, and sugars release their energy quickly. This gives people an immediate burst of energy, but will leave the sluggish and hungry soon after seeking the next energy fix. “People want those energy boosters when their energy levels are going up and down, up and down, up and down, when they’re on that energy roller coaster that they get from eating sugar and carbohydrates. If you have an even flow of energy all day, then you don’t need those things,” says Snow. Energy boosters are also problematic if the individual is not active enough to use all of the energy released by the carbohydrate fuel they have eaten. Energy not consumed by activity is stored by the body for future use. Roger illustrates, “If you are climbing Mount Everest or something and you were eating carbohydrates, you’d burn them all up and there’d be no problem, but in our society if we eat sugar and carbohydrates, we get more energy than we can use and so the body starts storing it as fat.” So what’s the solution for someone looking to get off the energy roller coaster?Start your day with at least 5 tablespoons of hemp hearts with your breakfast. Speaking from personal experience, Roger said, “Because hemp is really high in protein, I tell people that they won’t even be hungry at lunch time …[and] there’s enough fat in it that they’ll have an even flow of energy all day, even if they don’t eat anything else. [Especially as a person begins to naturally shed weight], he notices that now he has enough energy that he doesn’t need the sweets and soft drinks and coffee that he used as an energy boosters. He doesn’t have to plan his life from coffee pot to coffee pot anymore.” |
