Eating for wellness is simple, but it does take some determination and planning. A large portion of our society is sabotaging their health with their dietary habits. Skipped meals, binge eating and poor food choices are at the root of the matter. Avoid skipping meals, especially breakfast. Your first meal of the day breaks the overnight fast and should be packed with nutrients to set the stage for the rest of the day. Increase your frequency of meals from 2 to 3 per day to five or six per day. These meals should be smaller to avoid huge surges in blood sugar and caloric excess.

Begin every meal with fresh fiber. Fruit is an excellent choice for breakfast. The rest of your meals should be started with vegetables. This is a key component to eating for wellness and it is essential you follow it without fail. This is where pre-planning and determination come into play.

Now is the part where I ruffle some feathers. Foods to avoid include sweets (obviously), artificial sweeteners, grains, and dairy. Some exceptions and guidelines apply here. Most assume whole grains are good for you and consume a great deal of them. My suggestion is to consume no more that what you can hold in your cupped hand per day. Grains cause surges in your blood sugar, which over the long term leads to insulin resistance. Grain consumption also stimulates your stress feedback loop, which I will explain shortly. As far as dairy: cow's milk is designed for baby cows. There is some nutritional value to certain milk products, but even these must be taken in small quantities. The dairy products are best consumed raw (which can be dangerous these days) and lactofermented (i.e. yoghurt). Pasteurization kills off detrimental bacteria but it also changes nutrient structure of the milk rendering it nearly devoid of useable nutrients. Lactofermentation allows healthy bacteria to partially digest the dairy product and thus you get more nutrients from it. Unfortunately dairy has some allergic considerations and over consumption also stimulates the stress feedback loop.

For the main course you may choose from several lean meats. Poultry is a good choice, especially free range and organic. Red meats are fine as long as they are grass fed. Fish is a good choice, however consumption must be limited due to the high levels of contamination in all fish. Lightly cooked vegetables are also a great choice to include in the main course. Broccoli is your gold standard. The more like broccoli a vegetable is (richly colored and dense) the better; the less the resemblance (white potatoes, for example), the lower the nutritional value.

Now for the stress feedback loop. The easiest way to understand it is to imagine you are being attacked by a tiger. Your body recognizes a life threat and this stimulates certain parts of your brain causing it to secrete chemicals (adrenaline, noradrenaline, and cortisol). Your heart rate increases, blood pressure rises and levels of blood cholesterol rise (does this sound like any particular disease?). These chemicals also re-stimulate the stress areas of the brain causing the loop. Additionally, certain systems and activities are down-regulated. Digestion, growth, hormone production, sex gland activity, and cell mediated immunity are all pushed aside. When you are trying to survive a tiger attack your body is not concerned with these activities. Emotion memory is dominant at this time (so you remember to look for the tiger the next time you are out for a walk). Factual learning, working memory and ability to focus attention (ADD maybe?) are all compromised as they are also not needed for survival at this point. Obviously being attacked by a tiger is an extreme example of a huge stressor over a short period of time. Our bodies are subjected to lower levels of stress over a long period of time.

The best way to implement eating for wellness is to start with a large serving of fresh fiber first (fruits and vegetables) that I wrote about above and master it. Then move on to making better food choices in other areas. Under no circumstances should you deprive yourself of food. When you are hungry, eat something, particularly something high in nutritional value. Eating for wellness is process and it takes practice.