It’s not about the calories! It is about the components of the food
Food is medicine, so said Hippocrates, and this still holds.
Perhaps less well-known is the Hippocrates quote, “All disease begins in your gut.”
While modern medicine portrays that not all ill health starts this way, we now know factors like environment and stress can and often do affect your gut health. Whilst some elements of gut health are beyond your control (genetics, chronic stress, medications and more), there is one area of gut health over which you have total control: the type of foods you eat.
Good nutrition is a fundamental and worthy investment in everybody’s short- and long-term health. On the flip side, lack of good nutrition affects every aspect of our being and our daily life, including our ability to focus during the day, handle stress and achieve adequate, effective, restful and rejuvenating sleep, which is vital to maintaining all aspects of health, including hormonal balance.
While life has its hiccups, and we cannot get it perfect, with a few tweaks to meals and a little planning, a healthy diet is one of the best investments you can make in your short- and long-term health and ability to cope.
Ideally, meals will combine good quality protein, fats and vegetables. Unprocessed carbohydrates provide both energy and vital nutrients, but too many will leave both your gut function – and your brain – somewhat sluggish. Proteins, as are fats, are essential to brain and gut function because they provide stable energy and are vital for transmitting signals along neurons to your brain and are fundamental building blocks of hormone production.
To optimize your ability to handle stress (help your adrenals) and achieve your best health outcomes, include foods such as Nuts and Seeds, Eggs, Avocado, Green leafy Vegetables, Almonds, Oily fish, Turkey, Grass-fed Meat, Chicken, Seafood, Olives and good oils such as Cold pressed Olive Oil, Avocado, coconut or nut oils.
In summary, the best option is getting back to the basics and keeping it simple. Your body knows what to do with “real” “unprocessed” food and does not have to work as hard to break it down and utilize it.
Using the guide of:
- If it walks, swims or grows in the Earth.
- Predominantly plant food based.
- Predominantly unprocessed
- Based on your genetic/cultural diet going back four generations
- Adequate good quality water.
These key criteria will get you well on the way to good nutrition and enable your body to maintain its best homeostasis.
