What Does it Mean to Eat Well?

I am back and hope to be posting more regularly, but I thought I would start with this review of my approach to food.

What does it mean to eat well?

What does it mean to have a healthy diet?

It means to eat food in as close to its natural state as possible.

And it means to eat food – not chemicals that mimic food.

“Eat food, not too much, mostly plants.” One of the most prolific food writers and one of the most profound, Michael Pollan, coined this simple, yet obvious phrase. It sounds so obvious, but if you look at the Standard American Diet (commonly referred to as SAD), itis anything but this.

We dine off things that come in boxes – breakfast cereal, mac & cheese, crackers and cookies, things that come in cans (soups) and things that come in plastic containers (juices, sodas, sports drinks).

We eat food that has been raised or processed with chemicals we know to be hazardous to our health. Even when we pride ourselves on home cooked dinners with high quality food, those dinners will represent only ¼ to 1/3 of what we actually eat in a day. And we wonder how to get through the day if we want to avoid packaged foods. What do wesnack on? How do we eat in a hurry? How do we eat when we are not at home and in a hurry?

Once we readjust our brains, it is really not difficult to eat well most of the time – remember, perfection is overrated. Someone in my wellness class once said, and I quote him often, that he had figured out that “it is not what I eat 10% of the time that matters, it is what I eat 90% of the time.” If you take this to heart, you can relax and enjoy, which is another one of the keys to eating well.

So, in a nutshell, here are some ideas for eating well.

1. Eat mindfully – be present at your meals and snacks so you can taste and feel your food and chew it well.

2. Make your snacks look a lot like your meals – fruits or vegetables, nuts and seeds, whole grains, legumes, soups, salads, spreads, leftovers. Consider the occasional crackers or chips as vehicles for your healthy food.

3. Eat to your schedule – some people thrive on a big breakfast while others don’t eat until mid-day. Just be sure to stop at least 2 hours before bed, unless you have a condition that requires you to do otherwise.

4. Buy organic when you can – go to www.ewg.org for a list of the dirty dozen – the fruits and vegetables with the highest levels of pesticide residue – and avoid the dirty dozen.

5. Buy local and grass-fed or pastured, when you are able, knowing it is better to eat enough protein than not.

6. Pay attention to your body and what it tells you about what you are eating. Do you feel good after eating? Do you have energy all day long? Are your bowels regular? If the answer is no to any of these, you need to rethink what and how you are eating.