Back in the fall I purchased access to Real Food Con. It was a live webinar being put on by Underground Wellness that featured twenty-nine of the world’s leading authorities and health gurus on the ‘Real Food Movement.’
What a great purchase. There was so much information. Information that is recent and exciting to health nerds like me, as well as useful to anybody and everybody. The series covers topics from thyroid dysfunction to inflammation, habit change, weight loss and feeding families real food.
The reason I am bringing this up is because it excites me to be able to say that, “There is a Real Food Movement!”
Thousands of people are waking up to the reality of our food culture and taking a stand to educate themselves and feed themselves and their families better. So many people want this that there is a twenty-nine-person panel of presenters with information on this stuff!
The more people there are out there asking for grass fed, hormone and antibiotic free meat, pastured poultry, unpasteurized fermented foods and chemical free products, the easier these items will be to find and the less expensive they will be to purchase.
Along with that will come even more awareness of this ‘real food’ thing. It is my sincere hope that in coming years, my children or grandchildren will not be the weird kids with the health nut parents. Fingers crossed.
I know that social acceptance is not everything. I like standing out and going against the grain (pun intended). But how great would it be to not have to be constantly explaining and defending every dietary choice you make in a public setting?
There have been far too many times that I have had conversations that started with “Everyone knows whole grains are good for you” or “But how can you eat so much fat and not die of a heart attack?” The tough reality is that most people just accept common knowledge. Unfortunately, when it comes to our health, common knowledge is leading to sickness and disease.
Most people do not turn to ‘other options’ until they or someone they love is sick or experiencing a symptom. Once they have found that their disease goes away from eating grain free or dairy free or gluten free, then that diet is the cure.
This is a problem.
The common way to live is, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” and then to lead lives that are perpetually breaking our bodies down. We ignore the little cracks, the little signals that the body is breaking, because we ‘feel fine.’ We wait until we are so shattered that we cannot ignore it any longer. At which point, it may be too late.
Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, a cracked window is a broken window, whether you notice the crack or not. It is much easier to fix than a shattered window.
It hurts my brain every time I hear a variation of this familiar story (I hear it all the time):
He had skin problems, then he started eating the Paleo Diet and his skin problems were fixed.
She fixed her thyroid by following the Whole9.
Eating By Design helped his ADD.
Great. I am genuinely thrilled that these individuals were able to achieve greater health and happiness through normalizing their dietary habits.
What hurts my brain is the ‘miracle cure’ nature of the story.
Can I take a moment to flip this around a little?
Instead of ‘fixing’ your thyroid, hormones, pancreas, digestive tract or brain by eating real food… How about you stopped breaking these things when you stopped eating foods that are not congruent with your body’s function.
If you have something in your body that is not functioning properly, it is not a matter of needing fixing. You need to stop breaking. Once you stop breaking, your body heals. Every time (unless you are part of an extremely small percentage of the population that was born with a very rare genetic condition and have had this system failure since birth.)
If we keep framing eating real food as a cure for disease, people who ‘feel fine’ write it off as not applying to them. Every single person should be eating By Design. Eliminating toxins and consuming only foods that support their body’s function is essential to your health.
If you do not eat real food, you are eating food that is slowly but surely breaking your body. Little by little, meal by meal.
Every piece of bread counts. Every cracker, every slice of cake, every bowl of pasta.
Just because you do not feel it, does not mean it is not slowly chipping away at your body.
The only way to stop the breaking is to stop doing things that cause you to break.
Eating grain free does not fix you, it stops breaking you. Then your body heals.
Now it's your turn. Please leave your questions and comments below.