How to choose the food that is really good for us? Whether you have already started a journey towards healthy eating, or you feel the need but have not yet managed to do so, I draw your attention to our innate ability of our formidable body , to know what is the best food that is good for us . Perhaps it is a forgotten ability, perhaps it is dormant, but we can reactivate it.
How to recognize good food
To reclaim this gift of ours, however, we must be ready to question our old beliefs, the convictions that we have breathed and made our own, the alibis that we have created for ourselves so as not to change.
Choosing “our” food: what to eat?
The choice of what to eat is often determined by practical problems, by the time available, or by deep-rooted beliefs that lead us to think of food in terms of types of molecules (proteins, fats, carbohydrates) or, worse, calories, and that do not take into account in any way other much more important factors such as
- quality,
- freshness,
- naturalness of food.
If you think about it, the choice is usually made with rational criteria , based on old and often erroneous beliefs, or habitual criteria and almost never based on our real needs, or rather the needs of our body-mind-spirit system.
Influenced by haste (the mantra of many is “I don’t have time”), by the food trends of the moment, by the experiences of friends and relatives, by the advice we hear here and there from experts – sometimes in good faith, sometimes not – the choice of food, one of the pillars of our psychophysical well-being, is guided by dynamics that distance us from what we really need .
Calories, proteins, food combinations… but what about quality?
The evaluation of calories, or of basic “components” such as proteins, carbohydrates, fats, or even vitamins, minerals and micronutrients, or food combinations, can also be taken into consideration, but certainly it is NOT only on these that the choice of food for our diet should depend.
Every individual is a world unto himself and each of us has specific needs at any given moment or period of life. It is necessary to learn to listen and recognize these needs.
Decide what to eat: breathe, close your eyes, free your mind
To decide what to eat and choose the food that is good for us, today we make a clean slate .
We forget what we know and what we have learned.
Let’s forget about industrial products, mixes of industrially processed ingredients that have nothing to do with their natural origin. Let’s visualize nature and choose its gifts of the season: fruit and vegetables… natural, fresh, colorful, alive foods… For many it will be a new experience, but over time we will begin to perceive something. The desires and needs of our body in terms of nutrition.
What prevents us from knowing and feeling what to eat
It’s not easy, especially at the beginning. And if we don’t feel , we don’t perceive? Something doesn’t work, let’s hypothesize why:
We are afraid
Our fear of making mistakes, of getting fat, prevents us from listening to ourselves and brings back old erroneous beliefs. Perhaps a Bach flower can help us at work.
We haven’t really freed our minds, let’s try again
Maybe we are still thinking the old way. We haven’t really abandoned our old patterns.
We are guided by our emotions
We try to control our emotions by venting with food, which becomes a means of rewarding or punishing ourselves.
We are looking for alibis
I can’t do without that food, that food is really good for you and I “have to” consume it, and where do I get the proteins? Oh yeah, but if I don’t have time, what do I do?
We have too many ingrained habits
We often eat the same foods, cooked the same way, and bought in the same store or supermarket. The best way to start feeling better is to vary , vary as much as possible, expanding the number and type of foods in our diet. There are people who go into crisis if they are advised not to eat meat, or milk and dairy products, for just two or three weeks.
We are not open to new perspectives
Try to think about choosing the food by combining the colors to put on the plate, it will be an interesting experience.
Advice: Get in tune with nature
As always my advice is to start from nature. What does this mean?
For example, that nature knows better than us what we need and when.
So if you are wondering how to do it, here are some ideas. Let’s try to make these criteria our own before choosing the food to put on our plate:
- fresh foods (not preserved)
- seasonal fruit and vegetables
- vegetables from organic farming crops
- If you can’t give up meat, eat little of it (1 or 2 times a week) and choose meat from organic farms.
- food from our territory, from our region (with some exceptions)
- vary your food (not the same salad all year round, not the same type of cabbage, not the same quality of apples, etc.)
- space every day also for legumes , oil seeds, whole grains
- quality and organic food. But it is more expensive! Maybe, however, we can choose to buy and eat less but better
- eliminate (or drastically reduce) the consumption of ready-made , packaged and long-life foods
- NO to packaged snacks , whether sweet or salty
- raw or cooked food with gentle cooking methods (steam)
Finally, it is strongly recommended to reduce the consumption of sugar and salt to really enjoy our food: let’s rediscover its true , natural flavor . It will be like taking a trip , discovering something you had forgotten, or perhaps you never knew.