Here are a few Nutrition myths debunked

"Only eat when you’re hungry.” When you skip meals, your body’s metabolism slows down, and at some point, overeating is likely to occur. When we are “starving” or really hungry, food choices tend to be less nutritional. If you’ve waited too long to eat, your blood sugar drops, and it’s common to experience irritability, shakiness, headache and difficulty concentrating. Eating regularly helps maintain blood sugar control and speeds up metabolic functioning.

“Avoid eating anything past 7pm.” While not eating past 7pm may work for you, that same schedule may not work for an individual waking up at 11am. The reason 7pm was promoted as the sticker time to stop eating is because of the recommendation not to go to sleep on a full stomach, especially when your metabolism is at it’s slowest. The recommendation for meal timing is to eat within 1-2 hours of waking, don’t go for more than 4-6 hours without eating and don’t eat 2 hours before bedtime for adequate digestion. So, if you wake up at 6am, eat breakfast at 7-8am, lunch around 12-1pm and dinner around 6-7pm.

“Consuming egg yolks will raise your cholesterol.” Research shows that dietary cholesterol (in egg yolks) has no impact on serum cholesterol. In fact, in one study, consuming eggs daily showed that total caloric intake decreased throughout the day. If you do have high cholesterol, >200, keep in mind that the recommendations for cholesterol are 300mg per day, one egg contains 186mg cholesterol, or 62% of your daily need.

“Brown sugar is better than white sugar.” The “brown” tint of sugar is actually molasses, which is a thick by product of refined sugar cane. All sugars – white, raw and brown are generally considered equal when considering caloric intake. Raw sugar is less processed than white, and brown. It’s a good idea overall to use less sugar in your diet. Current recommendations are no more than 10% of our daily intake should come from sugar.

“Detoxing with juicing will help you lose weight.” Juice only detox diets or cleanses will most likely cause weight gain and irritability. These diets are often low in calories, so once normal calorie intake is consumed, weight gain most always follows. Your lungs, liver, kidneys and digestive tract do a fabulous job of eliminating and detoxing the waste from your body. Eat a well balanced diet with a variety of nutrient dense foods, and your body will detox very well on it’s own.