Healthy eating
Looking for YOUR Optimal Diet? Start Here.
Healthy eating isn’t complicated.
With all the wellness hype, finding your optimal eating plan can feel overwhelming or even impossible.
This is true whether you’re trying to lose weight, gain weight, eat healthy, eat for brain health, eat for healthy skin, go low carb or keto, boost your immune system, heal autoimmune disease, recover from adrenal fatigue…or just feel lighter and at home in your body.
There’s so much information out there, and you can find research and opinions that support just about anything! I get how confusing it is.
Know what though? It doesn’t have to be complicated.
Simple, real-food parameters and mindful self-exploration remain the gold standard for finding the best way to eat for you.
When working with clients or crafting my own diet, this is the foundation — always. I then fine tune and adjust according to individual goals, health conditions, and Chinese Medicine food therapy.
Still, the foundation alone will go far in helping you eat and feel better. So, next time you’re overwhelmed by what you “should” be eating, try these…
4 Guidelines for Crafting Your Best Diet
1. Guiding Principles
- The mind, body, and spirit are a system. When there’s balance in that system, wellness results.
- Finding balance is a process. Eating and living patterns are part of this process and how we manifest ourselves.
- There is no one best diet or lifestyle. Optimal patterns are individual, responsive, and relational.
- Real food is a powerful starting point. Eating simple, nutrient-dense meals is a solid foundation.
- Food is more than just food. It’s connected to our identity, history, social context, stories, and beliefs.
- Being healthy doesn’t have to be complicated. You only have to let your body be your ally.
2. Real Food Parameters
- Eat real, whole food as close to its “natural state” as possible. This can include high-quality meat, fish, and eggs; healthy fats and oils; plenty of veggies; and moderate amounts of fruit, nuts, and seeds (unless you’re sensitive to nuts and seeds). For some people, organic, full-fat dairy is okay too, as are “occasional, sensible indulgences,” such as dark chocolate with minimal sugar.
- Avoid processed food, added and artificial sweeteners, highly refined seed and vegetable oils, grains, and legumes (unless vegan, when legumes may be necessary).
- When possible, choose foods that are organic, local, fresh, and in season. Generally, local produce is better than that shipped from far-off destinations (even if it’s organic).
- Consider the impact that food choices have on our planet and its oceans, peoples, and other beings. When possible, choose foods that are produced in sustainable, ethical ways. Avoid plastic and other packaging as much as possible.
3. Self-Exploration Essentials
- Get curious. Investigate. Be a scientist in an ongoing self-experiment. Be an explorer in the exciting, interesting, ever-changing terrain that is you.
- Be mindful. Bring mindful attention to what you eat and drink as you’re eating and drinking it and afterwards— immediately, the next hour, the next day, the coming week. Bring that same level of attention to patterns, routines, habits, relationships, and feelings around food and eating. The more you expand your sphere of awareness, the more you expand your sphere of choice.
- Be honest. Clarity and change come from being straightforward with yourself. This is sometimes raw and sometimes painful. But without honesty and authenticity, you’re wasting your effort and time.
- Be gentle. Your job on this journey is to bring curiosity, mindfulness, and honesty to an ongoing process. There are no “right” answers or set endpoints. There’s also no shame, no guilt, no judgement. Just notice, act, notice, and act again.
- Act. Don’t just read and plan — do. Sometimes it’ll be exciting and easy. Others, it’ll be tedious and hard. Sometimes it’ll fill you with rage. Others, with joy or sadness. Sometimes things will move quickly. Sometimes change will be interspersed with set-backs. Don’t let the latter derail you. Just keep looking and moving in the direction you want to go, all the while being present where you are right now. Moment-by-moment, step-by-step.
- Have faith. You’ve already done the hard part — made the difficult choice to step out of easy and into a shaken-up status quo. Seek support and guidance while remembering that you are your Number 1 caretaker. Trust in the process and trust that there’s great power in mindfulness, persistence, patience, and time.
4. Support & Backup
It takes years to get where we are with eating and lifestyle, and change is a process. Even when you know “what” to eat to feel your best and most confident, sustained follow-through can be really hard.
It’s not just about following “food rules,” but the very root of lifestyle patterns and how we show up in this body and form. That’s why support and accountability make a world of difference.
This can mean working with a doctor, therapist, coach, or other healing professional, yes. But it can also mean seeking support from friends and loved ones.
Explain, with sincerity and honesty, why how you eat and feel is important to you. Request backup. Be as specific as possible and make clear this is about you and what you need (not a judgement against others or their choices).
You can do this if you choose, and so much support is available. Lean into that. Also, know I’m rooting for you.
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Thank you for reading. I’m a doctor of Chinese Medicine and write about sobriety and soulful living. Find all my links here:
