We hear so much about food these days. Eat this! No, eat that! Yesterday’s poison is today’s health food and vice versa. How do you sort through all of this to try and figure out what’s the best way to eat to achieve and maintain wellness?
There is so much hoopla around this diet and that diet. Each is “the answer”. Each promises you’ll lose weight, but they don’t promise that you won’t suffer from inflammation-based conditions such as arthritis, psoriasis, heart disease, diabetes and more.
As far as I’m concerned, diet is a four-letter word. Diets are full of restrictions and limitations and typically have, as the goal, weight loss and not wellness. When I diet, I feel like I have to reward myself with some forbidden treat and I’ve never been able to sustain a diet for more than a few months at a time.
What’s more, diets assume that health is a one-size fits all solution. But that’s not true. Each of us is a distinctive blend of our genes, our experiences, how we think and react to our experiences, stress, the food we eat now, the food we were fed in utero and as infants and through our lives. There are myriad factors that influence our physical bodies and each of us is just a bit different from the next person.
In the Blue Zones, the places round the world in which people have the longest, healthiest lifespans, there are no ‘diets’. There is only a way of living that respects the body and has an innate understanding of the importance of moving the body and eating whole, clean food.
When I think about making lifestyle changes, I feel empowered. I don’t diet. I have a lifestyle that I can take with me anywhere I go. The day I chose to focus my food choices on clean, whole foods, my health began to change. The dark circles under my eyes went away, the crippling pain in my hand went away as did the chronic pain I had in my lower back since I was 16. This isn’t a diet. It’s a way of life that supports my organs, brain, bones, muscles and skin.
Be a Savvy Senior. Live the lessons of the Blue Zones. Move your body throughout the day, choose unprocessed, whole fruits, vegetables, 100% grass-fed beef, wild fish and pastured chickens and eggs. Choose organic whenever possible.
