It’s an unfortunate truism about Virginia divorce: when you separate from your spouse, your eating and exercise habits often change for the worse.
Sometimes a separation can stimulate people to engage in more healthful behaviors. But more often than not, people wind up responding to the stress, uncertainty, depression and loneliness by indulging in bad eating habits and withdrawing from potentially beneficial physical activity.
The conventional health advice given by nutritionists and doctors is well known: eat less food, exercise more, cut down on fat, eat more fruit and grains, etc. However, a surprisingly compelling new body of scientific research challenges many of these conventional beliefs about what exactly it means to “eat well” and “exercise well” after a divorce.
For instance, did you know that the advent of the U.S. Dietary Guidelines — most famously enshrined in the Food Guide Pyramid, which told the entire American population to eat a low fat, high carbohydrate diet – coincided with the beginning of the obesity and diabetes epidemics? In the 30 plus years since the Food Pyramid became a tool by which our nation judges its eating habits, obesity, diabetes and other metabolic diseases have become tragically commonplace.
Meanwhile, significant clinical research conducted over the past decade suggests that cutting dietary carbohydrate and increasing fat – doing the opposite of what the Food Pyramid instructed – may be highly effective for treating a cluster of metabolic diseases related to insulin resistance.
For instance, in 24 published trials comparing low fat diets and low carb diets, low carb has come out ahead every single time in terms of improving metabolic risk factors.
We’re not advocating for a particular dietary strategy but rather suggesting that sometimes the conventional wisdom about important topics may not be fully based in fact.
On a similar note, you may currently believe certain ideas about how your divorce should go forward that are off base or based on old conventional wisdom. Call the Fairfax Virginia divorce attorneys at DiPietro Law Group, PLLC, for a confidential consultation about your case at (888) 530-4374.