What is Eating Healthy?

Posted by Casey Bryan on August 23, 2007 10:36 AM PDT

Recommend this? YES NO

Over the couple my paradigm towards health and health promotion has shifted. I was in the camp of a calorie is a calorie and you need to limit them to lose weight. So when I would do presentations and I would say the same rhetoric that is pervasive through out the industry. You have to "EAT HEALTHY." The more I read and the more I work with people one on one I see that we have to examine what is healthy eating.

So a typical person might say to themselves, "Hey, I am overweight maybe I should eat healthier." So they stop having their bacon and eggs in the morning, chips and their regular soda with lunch, the french fries with dinner and no more ice cream at the end of the day. Just by looking at that we might think they are eating healthier but what is really going on. They are doing all restriction and haven't really changed their behavior towards eating. They become stressed if they fail on their diet and this cycle continues. Always restricting and looking for the next tip or trick to get them through, wedding season, or bikini season. I have seen it my whole life living with people that are constantly consumed by weight and dieting.

My question to you is: Is this eating healthy?

If you are taking something away that is hurting a system don't you look replace it with something better and at all the issues around it. For example, your cars oil, if you haven't changed it in awhile. It is making your car burn up fuel like crazy and your car is running crappy. Do you take it out with out replacing it with better more advanced oil. Do you just replace that old oil or do you take a look at your fuel filter and check for leaks in the system. Would you try to do it yourself if you had no idea what you were doing? No! You take it to a qualified mechanic or your read up on what to do.

We need to start examining these traditional ideas of eating healthy by looking beyond restrictions and healthy choices. We have to break out and look at how we view food and how it effects us.

take a look at this information to look up more (this is not a plug for my website):

To question what healthy eating is.

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2 Comments

Hey Casey,

I hope you will continue to write more about food, hunger and eating. Your posts have been very helpful and I look forward to reading some more. I find that a good number of people often over-generalize what 'eating healthy' really is. This can potentially be problematic for people who are novices, like myself. It also makes it seems as though all people fit into one category so what works for them-- works for everyone. I can't believe this is true. I'd love to hear your thoughts on this.

beth |community coordinator | life coach |seeker of knowledge|

Posted by beth on August 25, 2007 5:43 PM PDT

After years of looking into nutrition (as an amateur), as well as experimenting on myself a lot, I have come to a few conclusions about nutrition:

1. 80/20 rule works well. 80% of the time be extremely healthy, 20% feel free to cut loose
2. There are extremely compelling reasons not to eat any kind of meat but fish
3. Humans are not really meant to ingest dairy products
4. Vegetables are very, very good for you.
5. Don't mix proteins with starches at a meal
6. Bread and sugar (refined whites) are much worse for you than any fat
7. We are need more Omega 3's

In my opinion is this a great way to stay both energized and healthy. The real challenge is to just to know the reason that you want to eat to live, rather than live to eat.