By Dolores Day
“Eat food. Mostly plants.
Not too much.” — Michael Pollan
Talking about food is like opening up a big box with 10,000 ideas crammed inside — all very, very different.
There are so many conflicting ideas, fads, myths, books, and research studies. Every year, I watch how a new string of diets enters into the mainstream, where hopeful consumers get excited that this will be the right diet for them that works. The entire health industry is an explosion of the next promise to take away excess, unwanted fat.
I am so confused. Are you? I love to be educated. I do. And I’m keenly interested in things that make the mind and body balanced and healthy.
However, I’m so tired of the next new thing. Last year it was keto, the year before it was intermittent fasting, and you can continue to go back almost yearly and find a new way of eating that gives hope to the eater that they will drop their cholesterol, shed pounds, and give them the promise of a healthier way of living. I wonder if it’s the conflicting excess of information that keeps us confused.
And let’s face it, we’re still not meeting our goals.
Food is the energy our body needs to meet its ever-demanding obligation to sustain our life, which includes millions of tasks per day. I have never completed a million tasks in one day, by the way! How about you? Thanks body!
Seriously, the human body is a complete universe in and of its own. And, just like the universe has checks and balances that help it sustain life and function, so does our body. It has requirements. And we, like it or not, are consciously responsible for making sure the body gets exactly the energy it needs to use as fuel to complete these tasks.
I believe that most of us don’t look at food as energy. Maybe we even see it as the enemy?
However, when we work to shift our mindset around food and understand that it is good and is energy and we need it for the body to function completely, perhaps it will change how and why we consume it.
I believe that 80% of the way we look and feel is based on how much energy and life comes from each food. I don’t subscribe to calories-in and calories-out.
Why? Because not all food is created equal. What the human body, our personal universe, will do with one food is NOT what it will do with another.
Let’s break it down easily. Food can be placed in two simple categories: Live, living, and full of energy; or dead, denatured, poor quality, and low energy. That’s it, two simple buckets.
Common sense can really help us determine which bucket each food lives in. When we choose to consume more “alive” foods our body has more of the building blocks we need to function, and the by product is that the body feels better with less inflammation. When we consume foods that are processed and have more man-made ingredients, the body has a harder time assimilating it and using the constituents to do its job. It has an inflammatory response.
I am definitely oversimplifying it for sure. But that’s the point — I think when we complicate things in our life and increase information, options and decisions, our minds get confused and we actually become paralyzed as to which diet to subscribe to or what foods to eat or not to eat. We want to make good decisions and our intentions are good but we are confused and overstimulated with choices.
Simply put, do we want the contractor to build our house with straw or with high quality, durable, strong bricks that last though storms and an occasional fox trying to blow the house down?
We can start by simplifying food choices into live foods/eat always, and deader foods/eat
Sometimes. If we apply this rule consistently, we become more balanced. We no longer bounce from one diet to the next and our body begins to trust us again. Then the body will begin to develop its own healthy homeostasis.
Micheal Pollan, whom I cited, is a world’s leading nutritional journalist. His work is profound and incredible as he seeks to understand food and the industry behind it. I highly recommend his work if you want to learn more, or keep it simple with his Food Rules, an Eater’s Manual. Its perfect simplicity will absolutely get one pointed in the right direction.
My whole life I have watched people struggle with emotions and habits of poor eating. So, I will say if this is you, don’t give up hope. There are many different wonderful modalities that can help you heal this in your life, such as personal coaching, hypnotherapy, tapping, or NLP.
Let’s give thanks for our non-stop-working body and make the commitment to give it more of what it requires so we can live a high vibrating, wonderful life!
Yours in health, De Day.
(De Day is an empowerment life coach who specializes in helping women create and live their best-balanced life with mind body soul whole practices. To work with her privately please contact her at info@de-day.com or visit her website at www.de-day.com.)
Author: Dolores Day
- Tags: Dolores Day, Mind Body Soul