Good Food is Good Medicine

This is the second guest post on mindful eating for healthy living by Jenny Routledge, Clay’s wife and adventurous cook to him and our two teenage kids. For this blog I am focusing on being mindful when making food choices in the course of your daily living for optimal health and well being.

Hippocrates is famously quoted as saying “Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food.” What does this actually mean in practice in our daily lives? Well, I think about this quote often when I am deciding what foods I should buy when shopping for my family and subsequently preparing healthy meals at home.

I’ll be honest, it can take a considerable amount of time and careful attention to make better food choices when lower quality but easier (quicker!) and often times cheaper alternatives are available. However, we know this is not always best for our bodies. When you actively, mindfully, select whole foods that are minimally processed, you are buying quality building blocks for your body to make it healthy and less susceptible to illness. Quality food equals good fuel and good medicine for your body.

In addition, figuring out and then avoiding foods that trigger adverse affects in your body will certainly make you feel better. I’ll give you an example. I discovered I have a dairy allergy that was causing me to feel bad physically and therefore affecting how I felt emotionally at the end of the day. By avoiding foods that contain dairy, I am amazed at how much better I feel and my mood has also improved. It did take some time to figure out what else I could eat that was non-dairy, but I discovered there are good and healthy alternatives. Small change, but a big impact in my quality of life for sure.

How can you pinpoint which foods make you feel better or worse? The answer is simple, but not always easy. Keep a journal! When Clay and I started an intense workout program a few years ago, we were instructed to keep food journals and count calories. While tedious, this enabled us to see where we were expending a lot of empty or poorer quality calories in the course of a day, and make adjustments to see tangible results alongside our workouts. Thus the program was more effective for both of us.

Likewise, keeping track of your foods in a journal (or using an app is even better and more convenient!) can help you determine which foods make you feel better. It is a very useful tool for seeing whether you have too much of a good thing in you diet, like sugar or salt, and allows you to make more mindful choices about what to eat. For example, when we eat out on occasion, I know food at restaurants is higher in sodium, sugars, and fats, so I adjust my diet for the rest of the day to accommodate for it. When I can, I have noticed the impact of a splurge for one meal is less on my overall well being.

So take it one day or even one meal at a time and you will start to see trends in your eating habits and how it affects you in the immediate and longer terms.