What Does Eating Well Mean?

In my last blog post, I wrote about how important it is to eat well. While the benefits of keeping your diet clean are valuable for all of us, what the specifics look like can vary from person to person.

I’ve come to a place now where I know what works pretty well for me, but it took a lot of trial and error to get here. It also took some open-mindedness to realize that just because I’d heard that eating a certain way was best for someone else, that doesn’t mean it’s necessarily right for me.

Here are a few thinking points to guide you as you’re working your way towards eating the way that allows you to feel best:

Do you have energy throughout your days? Energy doesn’t have to mean a highly-caffeinated buzz, but it should mean that you’re not dragging yourself through every waking moment of your day. If you notice defined spikes in your alertness throughout the day, I would be willing to bet that a lot of what you’re dealing with comes from the food you’re putting into your body.

Does the doc tell you that what you’re doing is working? If you’ve been “eating healthy” but have received less-than-amazing reports back after your last check-ups, it’s time to start making some changes.

Are you happy with how you look? This sounds vain, but feeling good about your body is something that instills confidence and happiness in many other aspects of our lives. Usually looking fit is just a happy side effect of our body being happy with what we’re putting in it. Yes, there are plenty of ridiculous exceptions to this, but you’re smarter than falling for the next quick fix.

A couple years ago, I heard Robb Wolf (one of the main proponents of the paleo diet) give a talk where he opened up with something along the lines of “If everything I’ve told you eventually comes back as wrong, we can’t be afraid to burn the house down.” I’ve carried this with me ever since.

It’s a worth-while endeavor to take a step back every once in a while and examine where you are: is the way you’re eating/living really allowing you to feel your best? It’s not the end of the world if what we’re going isn’t prefect, but we cannot be so dogmatic about our approach that we’re afraid to make changes. At the end of the day if what we’re doing is broken, we need to be willing to fix it.