Physical Wellness: You Are What You Eat
YOU ARE WHAT YOU EAT
I've heard this statement my whole life, but it never meant anything to me until I actually began to learn about nutrition as an adult. As a product of the '80s, '90s, and 2000s in America, I was used to food being accessible, convenient, and completely misbranded. After a childhood full of Kellogg's, Kraft, Entenmann's, and Hostess, my teenage years were full of "health food" fads that ranged from fat-free to carb-free to sugar-free, and everything in between. It is truly dizzying to recall all of the things I thought were "healthy," especially as a mind-warped model where being healthy was actually a code word for being skinny.
My motivations have changed over the years, and my understanding of nutrition has grown, partly because I was passionate about the subject matter, but mainly out of necessity to get my hormones in check after years of abuse. I wanted children...badly...and that took precedence over all other motivations when it came to food.
“Nutrients from the foods we eat provide the foundation of the structure, function, and wholeness of every little cell in our body, from the skin and hair to the muscles, bones, digestive and immune systems. We may not feel it, but we’re constantly repairing, healing and rebuilding our body.
Every cell in our body has a “shelf life” – a stomach cell lives about a day or two, a skin cell about a month, and a red blood cell about four months. So, every day, our body is busy making new cells to replace those that have “expired.” And how healthy those new cells are is directly determined by how well we’ve been eating. A diet filled with highly processed food that’s low on nutrients doesn’t give our body much to work with. But a clean, nutrient-rich, whole foods eating plan can help us build cells that work better and are less susceptible to premature aging and disease.”
FAD DIETS
I went through a recent (within the last two years) obsessive trial of many of the current trends: whole-food plant-based, paleo, keto, fasting, circadian rhythm, and the Bulletproof Diet. Where I have come out is not the point. I'm sticking to nature and what I believe God created for us to eat, and I find true freedom in not trying to put that into a marketed man-made box…aka a “diet.”
CLOSE TO NATURE
Coming full circle, knowledge has proven what only seems obvious when exercising first-principles thinking. Eat as close to nature as possible. This means organic produce, more fruits, more vegetables, more whole grains, fewer animal products, pastured animal products, seeds, good natural fats...you get the picture.
Clean foods are minimally processed and come directly from nature. We should be aiming for whole foods that are free of additives, colorings, flavorings, sweeteners, and hormones. One simple trick: look for one-word ingredients as much as possible. It should concern us when the ingredient list is as long as a novel and has more unrecognizable and unpronounceable words than not. There is also strong evidence that the closer to nature you eat, the fewer calories it will take for you to feel satisfied.
The point is YOU ARE WHAT YOU EAT. Literally. So, eat what you think will care for the only permanent house you'll have as long as you're here on Earth. Your body is a vessel.
Eat well and be well.