What is Healthy Eating?
Updated: Aug 29, 2019
Depending on the advice and diet you follow what it means to eat healthy can vastly vary. There are so many variations of healthy eating, dos and don’ts, good and bad, programs, meal plans and more that I could literally devote an entire blog lifetime writing about each one. It can be maddening finding the one diet-food plan right for you and it can be frustrating, demotivating and just plain costly to do this by trial and error.
Is there however a common base of what it means to eat healthy or even common approach to getting healthy through food that despite the path you take the result can be good health? Can we get pass the back and forth debate on what is good for you and what is not so the general dieter can actually makes sense of what is right for them?
The “Diet” Trap
A diet simply means what we eat. The geniuses that do marketing realized a long time ago that they could use diet and turn it into a way to sell products and services. Check out this podcast on the marketing of diets:
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2018/01/the-ancient-origins-of-dieting/551828/
While the idea of dieting is centuries old the base idea is still the same. The purpose of dieting is to use food in a way that we can optimize our body’s use of it for energy and not have it stored as fat. It is the achievement of the balance between what you taken in and what you burn as energy in your day. For those of us using a diet to lose weight that can also mean increasing what is burned to include stored fat. Hello, Stairmaster you ugly beast!
How that is accomplished forms what has been marketed to us as a diet and unfortunately has also lost some of the benefits that we can realize from dieting. For some that can mean severely limited calories, cutting out carbs and sugars, limiting certain foods, or host of other means that fall under the label of “diet.”
A lot of us have tried several diets in our life. Most of us know of a diet that has worked for ourselves or others we know. Most of us can say we are trying to start a diet, changing our diet or are currently looking for a diet to try next. It’s sort of like dating to find the perfect partner but instead seeing there are a lot of not so right out there.
Sometimes there are success stories. We see them on television. Someone drank this shake for 6 months and lost over 100 pounds. Another person ate a certain meal plan they purchased and lost significant weight. Marketers have destroyed the basic principles of what is means to diet. We have foods, meal plans and recipes labeled as “diet” that have nothing to do with an actual diet and that is quite disturbing.
Permission to Eat
I think it’s entirely possible and necessary if we are working on our physical health to improve and address what we put into our mouths. We can’t continue to eat potato chips and chocolate and then wonder why our jeans are not fitting or if they fit why we don’t feel well.
For diet improvements to work though does that mean we have to be miserable or feel deprived? In my humble opinion no. If the diet is miserable, we feel constantly hungry or deprived then long term how likely are you to keep up with it? It also though isn’t a cake walk, (pardon the pun) because if that were the case we wouldn’t have the obesity problem we have in today’s world.
I think we need to turn off the noise and marketing around dieting and get back to the basics of diet. We need to control it and that’s something a lot of dieters will admit to not being good at. This is why meal plans and other marketed diets became popular because they took the control but that’s also why these diets fail.
What are we putting into our mouths?
Does it fulfill us physically and emotionally?
Is what we’re eating serving our energy and needs of food or is it covering up another need we are not dealing with in our life?
We should feel good when we eat. We should be happy and excited about food. We should love food! I think however, over time we’ve replaced these feelings and our relationship with real food with fake versions of food and what constitutes “treats” and deserving them rather than needing them.
Today, we eat because it’s our scheduled time to regularly eat or it’s what we have at hand to eat because we’ve had to skip meals all day. We eat what’s there rather than what we crave and need. We eat because we’re stressed, tired, bored, dehydrated or ignoring something. We eat because everyone else is eating. We eat because someone told us to.
Here’s your challenge and true basis of a diet – Give yourself permission to eat when, where and what you want. Don’t judge yourself for what those decisions are but make them yourself.
Support on the Diet Journey
An amazing thing happens when we give ourselves permission, we feel empowered. That empowerment naturally lends to us making decisions that are right for us. We can then honestly figure out what right for us means and what our diet consists of every day. We can even listen to our body for what it needs help with and give it natural ingredients to accomplish that.
There are natural supporters we can rely on as we learn to give ourselves permission and start building our own confidence on dieting. Our bodies are smart and know what to do but sometimes they need a little help along the way.
Slim & Sassy
This oil blend consists of grapefruit, lemon, peppermint, ginger and cinnamon. We know the citruses help us with water weight and appetite. Peppermint and ginger help with digestion and cinnamon helps with metabolism and appetite. Together we have a powerhouse support that we can add to our water, yogurt, cereal or other to help with diet needs including:
Appetite control
Sugar and salt cravings
Metabolism
Cholesterol
Inflammation
Detoxification and cleansing
Cellulite
Grapefruit Oil
Grapefruit essential oil is like the super hero of citrus. It helps with supporting emotions, hormones and diet needs. It’s helps in our diet by helping breakdown fat cells and give us the hormonal support we need to not be derailed on a diet.
Fennel
Chocolate and sugar fans rejoice. This oil is incredible at reducing the cravings we get for the sweets. It also helps with hunger so we can manage what we are eating and when to naturally support dieting goals.
Interested in more?
You can take control of your diet and make your own food decisions. I promise that it feels good when you are in control of this basic every day need. Just taking those controls makes you feel more alive and able to make selections for what you really want and need. Add in some natural support through the oils described in this post and you have your personal diet custom made for you and by you.
If you have questions about the oils described in this post or are interested in getting them to support your diet, please reach out. I’m happy to answer any questions and help you find the products right for your needs.
amyk@dragonspitapothecary.com
My customers save at least 25% off all their purchases with never any obligation to purchase more than they want. Get an account today and find out how you too can save while enjoying natural health.
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