The Pillars of Health - What Is A Healthy Diet?

The pillars of health: What is a healthy diet I can’t believe it is already December!  Like most other people, this month is one of the craziest of the year.  The holidays seem to stress us all out to no end, dealing with the best and the worst of humanity at the same time!  Since last month, I was writing about the ways you can stay healthy and sane through the holiday.  I thought that I would take this month and start preparing you for your new years resolutions.  We will be talking about the pillars of health and the things that can make you have an amazingly healthy new year.

No matter the disease or dis-ease or dysfunction a person may be experiencing there are fundamental things that they can change that will help them recover.  Everything from low back pain to seasonal depression and even cancer have a few things in common.  These things are the basic flaw of modern life and the overall human condition, and it is what is a healthy diet.

So, the first pillar that we will talk about will be your diet and what really is a healthy diet.  There aren't many topics that are more contentious than a person's diet.  I speak so often about it not because I like hearing myself talk but because it is probably where most people can get the biggest gains in their health with the least amount of effort.  I know about half of my patients just rolled their eye and snickered yeah right.  But I mean that, you don’t have to apply that much effort to accomplish massive shifts in your health.  The simplest thing you can do is to remove all processed food for 30 days. 

The example I use is basically if it doesn’t resemble something you would find in nature; then you can eat it.  Meaning you shouldn't eat breads (any grain for that matter), pasta cakes, cookies, candies, soda pop, brownies, doughnuts or most things in the package.  In 38 years, I have never seen a loaf of bread, bagel, or scone or any of these other things growing on a tree or a bush.  If a man has adulterated it then, you can't eat it. 

If a man has adulterated it, might be the most useful way to describe a healthy diet or food you choose to eat.  If you are eating beef from your local grocery chain, that has been filled full of growth stimulators and antibiotics not to mention eaten genetically modified foods that cows aren’t designed to eat.  Then you are eating highly adulterated food, and it is no wonder that beef has gotten the bad reputation of leading to heart disease and cancer.  The problem is you're not eating beef; you are eating an industrial byproduct that only slightly resembles beef.  The same could be said for much of the other foods that are found in most grocery stores today.

I can’t tell how often in casual conversations or consultations with patients I get asked “If you don’t eat any of those things, what do you actually EAT?”  And the answer is simple, and if you listen and follow its simple rule, it will change your life and your health forever. 

You and I should eat a human diet, and the human diet is basically a hunter-gatherer based diet.  In today's society, it is significantly easier to hunt and gather than at any time in humanities' existence.  All you have to do is go to your local grocery store (or preferably a local farmers market). 

1. Pick something that used to grow out of the ground and here is the important part it has to look like something that grew out of the ground. 
2. Next, pick a piece of protein that used to walk, fly, or swim AND was fed what that animal would have naturally fed on in the wild.
3. Then you pick a piece of fruit that is in season at that time, near where you live, and you eat that as a snack.  If there isn’t any fruit in season then don’t eat fruit.
4. Repeat daily for every meal!

If you can manage to pull those simple steps off as your new years resolution, you will know what a healthy diet is. And the best part is that you will be amazed at what happens to your health in the new year and in the years to come.