How to Eat

I’d love to write a book called “How to Eat.” The challenge is, every book on food, nutrition, and diet essentially has that same title, but it’s simply hidden and invisible. It fascinates me how so many of us have such clear and good and truly useful ideas on what and how to eat. It’s one of the more popular topics of our times, yet I wonder, where has it gotten us? Are we better off with all the nutrition and food facts that are hurled back and forth across cyberspace?

Are we happier, or more confident and content around the subject of how to eat?

It seems to me that the conversation around food and nutrition follows some very consistent patterns – find a system and a set of nutrition rules that you feel certain of or even passionate about. Follow that system. Convert others with your enthusiasm. Bump up against people who have completely different nutrition rules that seem to work for them. Argue vigorously, then avoid these nutritional adversaries. Consider writing a best selling diet book that will surely change the world. Then, get hungry again, and eat…

I find that the field of nutrition symbolizes and encapsulates all that Life is – chaotic, contradictory, unpredictable. What if instead of merely telling people how to eat, we also spoke to them about how to live. That is, how to live with gusto, with passion, with presence, how to love, to forgive, to celebrate the body, to listen to our intuition, to eat with beauty, to radiate health, to recognize that natural means powerful, to remember that we’re on a journey, to feel the sacredness of the body, to breathe…

Yes, so many out there need to be educated about the do’s and don’ts of nutrition. But don’t be fooled. Facts are seldom enough to transform our eating and health concerns. Hit someone over the head with a nutrition fact that they should be doing, and they’ll tend to hit you right back. Make nutritional love, not war. Speak about food in a way that your voice can truly be heard. Meet people where they are at.

Assume that everyone’s journey with food and health is beautifully different from yours. And remember that sometimes, the best nutritional favor you can do for another is to give them some of your fresh, warm, all-natural humanity.

What has surprised you most about your own food journey?