Nutritional Gaps and Deficiencies

by Caroline Lewis-Jones

Hi, my dancing friends and colleagues. I hope that you all are staying healthy, safe, and as positive as possible during these times. My family is spending lots of time together, making yummy food, and being outdoors a lot. I do miss teaching on convention and seeing so many of you. You don’t realize how awesome your life is until something super special is taken away. On the flip side of that, I also realize how much I love being home with my boys and husband and the importance of this short time we have here on Earth. Overall, this experience has been teaching me about true patience, true love, and hard work in times that seem dreary.

Today I wanted to touch on nutritional gaps and deficiencies. I have had many conversations lately about how many calories a person should have each day and where should they come from. For the systems of the body to function on a daily basis, meaning hormonal, endocrine, reproductive, cardiovascular, neurological, etc, we need about 1500 calories. This, however, does not include what we are consuming on a daily basis calorie-wise. Also. remember you are an athlete and because you are burning so many calories each day you need much more than the person that is not moving their bodies. When we restrict calories as an athlete, our performance decreases, we lose muscle mass, lose power/strength and fatigue takes over. The total opposite of what you really want to happen happens. You want to build a strong machine that is capable of withstanding long training sessions and combats internal oxidative stress. 

So what kind of calories should we be eating? I get most of my calories from plant sources: fruits, veggies, beans, grains, seeds, legumes, and nuts. The key though is REAL food. We don’t want our calories coming from processed, junky food. Yes, they are calories, but they are EMPTY calories. These foods do not give us the vitamins, minerals, and enzymes are body needs to work the way we want it to. Also, many of us lack vital minerals like iron, magnesium, sodium, potassium, calcium that our body needs to work. The cool thing is that we know these minerals are more readily absorbed into the body when we have strong gut health and are eating a wide variety of colors. So…DIVERSITY of the plants you eat is so very important.

I eat very colorful plates of food all day long, but I also need my GAPS to be filled. For 16 years I have used plant powders or whole food concentrates to help me fill the gaps for what I want to get every day, but don’t always get. Each day, myself and my family get over 50 extra plants into our bodies because of this encapsulated produce. If you want to learn more about these plant powders, reach out to me on Instagram, FB, or at clinelewisjones@gmail.com and I am happy to educate your family further.

I love each of you, I support you, and I hope after reading this message you will all focus more on the REAL FOOD you are eating each day. Eat colorfully, chew your food well, drink lots of water, get outdoors, get quality sleep, and de-stress as much as possible. You got this!

Much love, plants, prevention, people, and health

Caroline Lewis-Jones