Similar Posts
Food is Dead
Let me start by saying something controversial: there is no such thing as a “healthy meal,” not really. I guess you could eat a very healthy live animal and that would be a healthy meal. But I don’t see that happening often. Food is not “healthy.” Food is more or less nutritious, food is more or less calorie-dense, and food is more or less tasty. But let’s be real: most of the food we eat is dead or dying. In the best case, the food you eat was alive moments ago, (oysters anyone?) however in most cases your food has passed through several industrial processes that stripped its original glorious biology -think Pop Tarts. This might seem like an annoying linguistic distinction that only a nerd cares about. And it most definitely is, but hey! hold on, there is a useful point to be made: the thing that is healthy or unhealthy is you, not your food. Your health is your responsibility, and yours alone. A snickers bar after lunch is not going to make you unhealthy. But a daily Snickers bar after lunch might. A Snickers bar on Monday and then a Coke on Tuesday, plus those delicious donuts Janice from accounting brought to the meeting on Wednesday (because she does not give a fuck), that bag of chips that somehow made its way down your gullet on Thursday afternoon while you were rushing to meet that deadline, and finally that half of a pizza Friday night, plus the tortilla chips and pork belly tacos you ate after you got drunk on Saturday--all this combined WILL make you unhealthy. Repeated actions are what makes you unhealthy; it is your habitual behaviors that improve or harm your health. But ice cream is not “unhealthy” or “healthy.” As matter of fact, that Saturday ice cream you always have with your kids might be the best habit you have. If that Saturday ice cream is what allows you to eat more nutritious and balanced meals consistently the rest of the week, if it allows you to avoid all that junk that Janice keeps bringing to Wednesday’s meetings and the Friday pizza and beer binge, and if it allows you to spend some quality time with your kids, that Saturday ice cream (despite being full of sugar) is totally making you better and healthier in the long term. Enjoy!
Study yourself
This story made me realize that when it comes to nutrition it’s not that we cannot see reality, it is that we have NO IDEA. We were never taught how to evaluate whether our eating habits are actually good or not. We have beliefs about nutrition, but we have no way to test those beliefs and, to be honest, most don’t even feel the need to test them. To make things worse, the internet is full of the next best shiny diet: ketogenic, veganism, vegetarianism, low carb, high carb, carnivore diet, paleo diet, whole 30, weight watchers, organic free-range home-schooled turduckens, etc. Combine genuine ignorance with media telling us that there is such a thing as Good Eating that is independent of our genetics, our socio-economic context, our cultural background, and our present state, that there exists a one-size-fits-all nutritional approach that will guarantee you results, and you are clusterfucked, my friend.
Stay Active
No matter what. I could drop the mic there and leave. But I will not. Get this. Your brain does not function as well when you are inactive. You are not as productive and your thinking is not as sharp. I am not talking about being super fit and lifting all the weights and doing...
Food and Flow
Let's talk food today! In my years of helping people change their eating habits, I have learned so much about human behavior. Nothing really comes close to it. Running and Olympic lifting are fantastic, don't get me wrong, but changing the way we eat is another beast. One of the most exciting things I have learned is that switching the attention to why and how to eat often solves the problem of what to eat. This is a very counter-culture concept, I know. We are always worried about meal-plans, macro-nutrients, keto, paleo, no diary, supplements, and whatnot. However, we never stop to consider our eating habits from a more significant and more meaningful perspective. I get it. Our lives are busy, thinking is hard --I am not being sarcastic, and having a critical approach to our behavioral habits, it is exhausting.
Eating in the car
My job as a fitness coach is to help people create the habits necessary to achieve their goals. Most of the time those habits go very much against traditional cultural practices, sometimes they go against my trainee’s very identity. This means there can be a great deal of resistance involved in changing habits. When I ask people to eat veggies for breakfast they usually look at me as if I were completely insane.
