Everybody knows they should be eating their fruits, at least, some fruit every day, but when to eat fruits?

What people do not know is that strawberry ice cream, canned pineapple or orange juice is not considered to be A FRUIT. Yes, they might have some fruit in it, but this kind of fruit is not the healthy option you would like for your body!

I see this a lot with the people that come to work with me. Everyone is telling me that they know what they should be eating and they think they are eating healthy, but for some reason they are not losing weight or they are not feeling okay in their body, even suffer from different types of diseases.

Indeed, we all know have some of the right information embedded in our brains, about what to eat and how to eat it, but most of the time, due to perfectionism and the misleading information you find everywhere on the web, people just give up. People give up doing the things they think are right OR they do not do enough research, in order to get the right facts.

Whenever you read something, make sure the person that wrote it has some experience in the field. Just because you read it from a journalist who is not backed up by a doctor, health coach, nutritionist, it does not necessarily mean that he/she has any nutritional or health degree. Information is a volatile thing that can get easily lose its meaning.

This #AskYourCoach video is all about how and when to eat fruits because this is something we do daily and my goal is to make sure as many people eat fruits in a healthy way and get the best out of it.

How And When To Eat Fruits?

Instead of buying something that contains “SOME FRUIT”, why not buy the fruit itself?

You feel like eating strawberries?

Go get yourself a cup of fresh strawberries (if in season) or frozen ones (sometimes they are better than the “fresh” ones bought outside the season, because they have lesser chemicals added, cause they do not need to be kept fresh, all they need is cold).

All the canned fruits have loads of sugar added and you will be fooling yourself saying “but it is real fruit”, when in fact besides the real fruit you get more sugar that you should be having in one day. You want to eat fruits without the “benefits”.

When it comes to fruit juices, even if you do it at home, freshly squeezed by you, it still does not have the same benefits as eating a whole fruit. When you juice, all the fibers in the fruits are left out and what you end up drinking is sweet vitamins. They go straight into your blood stream and get your insulin up, providing you with temporary energy. You most probably will feel hungry and tired and you will be looking for things to snack on, after 30 minutes of drinking orange juice.

When you eat the whole fruit, you get the good fiber that takes a while to be processed, which means it will take longer for the fruit to be fully digested and it will release small amounts of sugar into your blood stream, which will not raise your insulin level and will not put pressure on your heart.

You see, when you eat sweet things or highly processed ones (white pasta, white bread, and all the prepacked stuff) drink caffeine or alcohol, your insulin level rises, which puts your body in a state of alertness. If you also live in a stressful environment and do not exercise to release the tension from your body, in time, your heart will get weak. You will be in a constant state of “danger” and your body will react like you are being chased by a lion when in fact you are just enjoying your mocha cappuccino with extra cream.

All I have been saying here was HOW NOT TO eat your fruits, the question still remain, how should you eat the fruits?

We all thrive if we follow the season and the climate’s rules from the country/area we live in. If you eat the fruits that are in season in your area, your body will get exactly what it needs. You do not need to eat pineapple regularly if you do not live in an area where they grow pineapples. Stick to the fruits that live naturally in your area and that you have grown with.

Of course, there are some exceptions, like bananas or oranges, but if you try sticking to eating fruits in their season, you will be in good hands.

Also, if you have a crave for some fruits that are not in season, get the frozen version, but read the label carefully. It would be ideal to get organic frozen fruits, to be safe from all the chemicals added in the growth process.

When to eat fruits?

My advice, after hundreds of hours of studying this matter, is to eat the fruits in the morning or at least until 1 pm. Also, do not combine fruit with a meal, but enjoy it as a snack or as a meal itself.

If you eat fruits past 1 pm since your body functions slow down, it will be a bigger load on your digestive system and liver to fully digest it and you might get bloated.

Next time you say “Oh, but I cannot help it, cause I love eating fruits, does not matter if I get bloated” think about your body. For you might only be a mild discomfort, but for your organs it is a great stress and in time, things stop working the way they should.