There is always a new and latest diet craze sweeping society by storm. Many people react to these diets with curiosity and urgency to give it a try. These diets are often very general and do not advise for specific contexts or behavioral tendencies. It is a common belief that there is a “healthy” way to eat. We spend so much time judging eating habits and underthinking the reasons why we need to eat in the first place. When making choices about what we are eating, we should be asking ourselves, “Does this choice make sense for my activities today, this week or this month?” Instead, we often ask ourselves, “Is this a healthy choice based on — (we can add most recent diet or social media ad that guilted us into feeling we are serving our body and supporting it for its best). We are often motivated by the number on the scale or the size of our waistline. While these are valid indicators of our health, what gives us more information about our health is how we feel day to day and after eating certain foods.
One of the first essential things to think about when choosing food options is your activity level. If you are sitting around all day, you actually need very little food. It is because food, especially carbohydrates, transforms within the body into energy. If you are not expending energy, you do not need to work on storing more. Of course, some bodies use more energy than others in a resting state. Understanding that your body is competing unique and learning about how it feels when it is resting, or fasting is very important. It is more important than eating three meals a day or making sure you get enough milk. In fact, despite what dairy farmers want you to believe, milk is not an essential source of calcium, nor is it a necessary part of the human diet. After terminating breastfeeding, a human does not need milk. It actually creates extra mucus and promotes bloating and poor digestion.
Another important consideration is the variety of food in your life. It is important to get lots of colors into the diet. It means a variety of fruits and vegetables which have all the nutrients we could ever need. That being said, there are powerful benefits to mono-fasts, such as only eating one type of fruit a day or more to give the digestion system a break and the ability to flush out unwanted toxins.
Whether or not we can fit into our workout yoga pants is less important than actually making sure we are using them. We should all be exercising at least sometimes as it helps us tune into our body and what we need in our diet. Pay attention to cravings for sweet and salty foods and check up on potential mineral deficiencies. Get to know YOUR body because it is unique. Get to know YOUR lifestyle because it will dictate what you really need to fuel up.