Diet
Food
Most of us priviliged ones, we eat everyday, often multiple times a day.
Our physiological need for food is undeniable but what we often don't spend enough time thinking about is what it is we enter our bodies and what consequences different eating habits have on the whole of our lives. In today's post I want to share with you my approach on dieting, clarify the importance of it and lasty hand you practical tipps I use to improve my eating choices and most importantly stay consistant with it.
Why care?
What we eat is what our bodies must sustain themselves on. It is quite literally the building material we give our physical existence to keep itself going. Provide bad material and the construction will be fragile and weak. Instead feed quality material and it will be strong, resilient and capable of withstanding a lot more weight. I admit, this might not be the most scientfical explanation as to why nutrition is an important matter but I guess it would be equally hard to argue against it. After all, eating is one of the most fundamental parts of our daily lives and is crucial to our survival. Being such a big chunk of all our individual lifestyles, it quickly becomes clear: Disregarding its influence on the quality of our lives would be nothing short of dellusional.
The food you eat can be either the safest and most powerful form of medicine or the slowest form of poison.
Ann Wigmore
Not as easy as black and white
Of course I could give you a specific list of what I myself eat and what I don't. But there wouldn't be much of a point in this. The first thing you will need to do, when wanting to improve your eating culture, is to leave the black and white thinking behind. For some reason society has taught us, there were certain bad foods and opposite to that certain good foods. Eat the bad ones and you will damage your health, eat the good ones and you will become fit and healthy. Sure about that? Unfortunately, it is not that simple! Nutrition is a deeply complex topic just like our physiological reaction to it is. We all have different bodies, react differently to specific foods and have our individual lifestyles in which our diet is practically applied. The key is to avoid the illusion of shallow surface level knowledge and accepting that it either takes time spent educating yourself or simply trying things out to identify what acutally works.
Understanding the trade off system
Being a general rule for life the following is particularly true for nutrition: The eating choices we make are always a trade off. For many, eating is a passion. It brings them joy. The art is understanding what price you pay for that joy and then evaluating honestly whether it is worth paying or not. This brings us to the important bit: I am not stating there was anything wrong with enjoying a cullinary cheat. Instead what I am saying is that we tend to only see the minor short term consequences. This lack of vision for the future outcome of an action causes us to overvalue the instant stimulation of indulging in some pleasurable meal. Understanding the trade off system means watching out for this trap and keeping it real. For me personally, it is mostly when I am out with friends that going against the rules of my diet actually becomes worth it. In my day to day life though this system helps me realize that feeding my body what it needs instead of what it wants is usually the better choice.
From the bitterness of disease man learns the sweetness of health.
Catalan Proverb
Recalibrating
The thing I consider being the biggest problem with our average approach to eating is the following: Eating healthily has become special. Whilst eating crap has evolved into being the norm. This creates the illusion that when we do put in the effort to cook fresh and clean food, we think we are these nutrition godesses. Whilst the greater part of what we eat still sucks. Understand this, nutrition is not a zero sum game. Eating a bowl of salad after munching on that donut at the train station doesn't make the donut any less bad for you. So keep it real, make concious and health oriented eating the standard again and then intentionally choose moments in which you lay the restrictions aside to enjoy whatever you feel like. In other words, recalibrate the system.
General step by step guide
- Communicate with your peers that you want to take your diet more seriously. This way you create a sense of accountability and thus commit further to the journey.
- Identify what foods are good FOR YOU and what foods are not by experimenting with different categories and trying them out a few weeks at a time.
- Identify what eating routines work best FOR YOU. Some people thrive on fasting in the morning, some need more regular intervals.
- Invest some deep thought into how you could actually implement your new system and how you can prevent it from failing. In other words, identify the situations in which you would be most likely to not be able to uphold your structure.
- And lastly, don't stop experimenting! Not only would that be incredibly boring but it would also make eating healthfully unsustainable longterm.
Sorry, there´s no magic bullet. You gotta eat healthy and live healthy to be healthy and look healthy. End of story.
Morgan Spurlock
Practical tipps to help stay consistant
- As one general rule of thumb, the better something tastes the more sceptic you should be of whether it is actually good for you.
- Ask yourself: "Was this made by god?" Whilst this phrase is not about believing in god, it can greatly help in trying to eat mostly organic foods in their natural form which tend to be a lot better for you than the empty processed foods the market wants us to consume.
- Ask yourself: "Does the joy I will get from eating this exceed the step it will take me towards a less healthier life?"
- Tell yourself that tomorrow you can have a cheat. The twist: Keep saying it everyday forth. You will recognize only off-putting something for a day is a lot easier than saying: "I won't eat x for the rest of my life".
- Don't overdo it. Do allow occasional cheats so your system remains sustainable. In other words, don't make yourself a slave to your own system.
Conclusion
We all eat, like a lot. Following the teachings of James Clear from his book Atomic Habits all things done regularly have massive effects on our lives if we take time into consideration. In consequence, developping and strengthening bad eating habits will inevitably cause fundamental damage at some point down the line. The truth is, what, when and how much we eat influences everything we do. After all, it is our bodies from which we operate our lives. With sleep and exercise our diet forms what I call the triangle of life. It is what I consider the foundation to an enjoyable life and which perfectionising means signing up for a life of limitless potential.
It is health that is real wealth and not pieces of gold and silver.
Mahatma Ghandi