Hi Friends,
I can’t tell you how many times I have been criticized for promoting “90% or More,” as the percentage of plant-based, nutrient-rich, whole foods you’ll want to be eating, if you’re going to have the level of health everyone is talking about, but so few actually experience.
Everyone seems to agree that we need to be eating “more plant-based nutrient-rich” foods, but when they discover they need to be eating up to 90% or more of these health-promoting foods, even most fitness and health professionals are like, “What? That much?”
Of course, the worry is that they won’t enjoy eating “healthy” as much as they are enjoying eating “relatively healthy” or “healthier” than most people, (so they think), which underscores a point–if you don’t understand what it means to eat nutrient rich, you may think you are eating healthy–when you’re not!
And, many diet professionals are just as food-addicted as the clients they serve; it’s often the blind leading the blind, no matter how well-intentioned. And, we wonder why people stay stuck in a vicious cycle of eating nutrient poor, unable to get to those healthy success results they’ve been promised.
They are either learning what is still a nutrient-poor way to eat, or just not taking it far enough even if they are eating a plant-based diet!
Look, I don’t make rules when it comes to health, I just unearth them, and then call it the way it is. The rules are based on years and years of reviewing the evidence, with the help of the leading high nutrient density nutritional researchers, reflecting on decades of personal and client experiences to further reveal the patterns, trusting common sense, and the reality that the longest-lived populations all consume less than 10% of those foods considered to be nutrient poor, if they eat them at all.
Eating “Healthy,” by it’s very definition, means eating “nutrient-rich,” so why the lobby to tone it down– especially, when you can be eating nutrient rich in as many great-tasting ways as you may be eating in nutrient-poor unhealthy ways? Does My permission, or someone Else’s permission, and weaker definition for what is healthy make a difference?
As it is, every step, every percentage of movement toward a nutrient-rich healthy eating style is applauded, but does that mean we should set the bar low? No, not at all. After all, we each need something to strive for–don’t we?
Are you fighting to maintain the status quo? If so, you might want to examine why–because it’s an irrational, and addictive story playing in your head. We all have some irrational thinking in us, and that’s OK, as long as we are not doubling down on it with more irrationality. What’s your intention?
The reasons why you want to be eating nutrient rich are not so much about just eating “healthy” itself. Really, we shouldn’t even have to talk about eating “healthy.” That’s a given. What’s not a given is your capacity to function and perform well, which is what we all depend on every day.
When you tune in to that, you will naturally gravitate toward eating in a whole-food, plant-based, nutrient-rich way that you also enjoy, so that you can function and perform at the level you want.
The trap is the confusion over what is making us feel good in the short term, and giving us the perception of enhanced function and performance, when it’s not.
You want to be eating in a way that improves the way you feel because genuinely improved health results in better personal performance.
How do you know you are eating nutrient rich?
You are eating healthy when:
- You know what true hunger is and enjoy “getting hungry–actually earning it.
- You don’t have cravings–only desires to eat less often.
- You can go 4-6 hours with no headache or symptoms.
- You don’t feel deprived at all, not one bit.
- You see food “primarily” as fuel, and nourishment–as a means to a greater end, not as an end itself.
- You don’t have weight loss goals, but rather have daily objectives to eat in a way that keeps your body clean, fueled right, healthy, and functioning and performing at a high level. When you do that, as part of a whole lifestyle, which supports you, you will live at or near your ideal weight, all the time.
- You are confident about how you eat, and know beyond the shadow of doubt that you have comprehensive micro-nutrient adequacy. If you aren’t yet eating plant-based, nutrient rich, or you have been doing so for a long time, and now want to optimize the way you eat for nutrient density, food volume, variety and great taste, so that you don’t consume more calories than you need, click here to learn about the Nutrient Rich® Superfood Nutrition System.
- You are not taking in calories, in any significant amounts, that contain what you don’t need.
- You are eating food in as close to its natural and original state, as possible.
- You are enjoying the way you eat!