Eating Well for Disease Prevention, Why You Must Start Now
Published on April 30, 2018 by Dr. Caitlin Gordon
You Can’t Afford to Wait to Start Eating Well
Eating well means something different to everyone. Many people believe their diet is healthy when it’s not ideal, and others don’t think what you eat really matters very much. During most of my 20s I only cared about eating “well” to lose weight. I never considered eating in a way that would help me sleep better, have more energy, or feel less anxious.
What Motivates Diet Changes
Here’s the truth. Through your teens, 20s, and 30s, the only thing that’s going to motivate you to start eating well (healthier) is pure vanity. You want your body to look differently (weight loss, clearer skin, nicer hair, whatever). And that’s because usually, you feel pretty good, or good enough. You’ve gotten away with eating how you eat and not suffering very much up to this point. Now the exception are those of you like me who faced major health issues. If this happened to you, AND you were failed by western medicine (because the vast majority of you are going to look for a quick fix there first and MDs receive no nutrition training in med school), then you start looking at what you’re eating, maybe. The other tiny percentage of people are those who were raised by parents who were very conscious of eating for health and took less conventional routes to treat illness.
For most people, feeling motivated to change how you eat because you want to FEEL differently doesn’t come until you’re much older and suffering the effects of a body that is breaking down. The cumulative effect of decades of poor food and lifestyle choices will finally start catching up.
It’s better to care later than never, but all of you lovely young people are missing this incredible opportunity to PREVENT your body from breaking down and improve how you feel right now. Changing how you eat can relieve your anxiety, treat your depression, improve your focus, your sleep, your energy level, your productivity, your intuition even! Those are damn good reasons that have nothing to do with weight loss.
Start Eating Well Now
The problem is, you think you have time. Care now! Educate yourself now. Do it before you HAVE to. Do it because you want to feel better and looking better is a great bonus. When you are at the point where you have a disease diagnosis, or even when you start to feel consistent symptoms, you are facing an uphill battle. Our bodies are so incredibly skilled at maintaining homeostasis, that it often takes years of cumulative damage to experience noticeable symptoms.
Symptoms are the surface expression of a long-term imbalance. Disease is the result of many years of dysfunction. Disease starts years before symptoms do. This means if you wait to start eating well until you feel poorly, you will be trying to reverse the cumulative effects of many years of toxicity and inflammation. It is much easier to prevent problems than it is to treat them.
So, What do I Eat?
There’s no one magic diet or way to eat healthily. Vegan is not necessarily eating well, paleo is not necessarily eating well, salads every day is not eating well.
Eating well starts by improving the QUALITY of your food. Buy organic. Get food from the farmer’s market and local organic farms. Garden. Source animal protein if you eat it from animals raised on pasture and wild caught salmon. Second most important thing is to eat whole foods. That’s it. Just eat things that aren’t processed.
What does processed mean? It means what you’re eating is many steps from how it grew: cereal, pop tarts, fruit snacks, cookies, pasta, etc. Eat things that only have ingredients you recognize. Simple. Effective. Powerful.
Need more ideas for snacks?
Download the free healthy snack ideas PDF
Tough Love
Stop making excuses. It doesn’t have to be hard. It doesn’t take any more time once you make a habit of reading a label and figure out where to get groceries. It’s far less expensive than cancer, so stop complaining that organic costs too much. If you’re reading this you can afford it. In fact, you can’t afford not to eat whole food high-quality diet. Quit throwing your money away at Starbucks while you’re at it ;)
If you need individual coaching or support around changing your diet, schedule an appointment using the link below.
Ready to Feel Better?
The contents of this site, including text, graphics, images, and other material are for informational purposes only. Nothing contained in this site is or should be considered or used as a substitute for professional medical or mental health advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Please schedule an appointment for personalized health advice.