Nutrition Treats People, Not Diseases

Your doctor, at least your MD kind of doctor, treats diseases (usually signs or symptoms and not actual diseases) and not people. Do you understand the distinction? You thrive as an individual with particular and wonderfully unique needs. You come from global and diverse expressions of one human race. Medicines treat everyone as a disease with an attached person with an annoying habit of expressing that individual variability, which “science” willfully neglects in search of the “magic bullet”.

For decades, I have witnessed people search for authorities to tell them how to eat. “Magic Bullet” nutrition has a zero chance of working collectively; but just like magic bullet medicine, there will be some success individually. Occasionally a person must give over their authority regarding their health to a doctor who can make a life-saving intervention that that human needs.

However, you, the person, can't give over your authority on how to eat to anyone, least of all physicians with almost no training in nutrition. Furthermore the medical industry has a vested interest in you having diseases for them to treat. If you follow the AMA- recommended diets, skewed by misinformation from Big Pharma and Big Ag, low fat high carbohydrate diets have become the singular greatest source of disease in the Western world. These so-called authorities are who you look to for further advice?

My last note on why to not look to science for anything other than orienting generalizations (those items with a general consensus that they hold true), remains that looking for someone else to tell you how to eat is simply a dangerous endeavor. Giving away your authority, your locus of control, disempowers you and can only take you away from your personal truth.

So let’s work as your coach on what dietary “truths” you might try on to see if they fit. This will take you through the divine process that takes you from Belief, to Understanding, and on to Experiential Knowingness. 

• Belief: You read or hear about a study or listen to a podcast that sparks your attention, and think, “I want to try that.” Belief is a key starting point that filters in or out what you can learn. Witness your filters.

• Understanding: Please find other resources that confirm the information and help you practically apply it. Ninety percent of the people who tell me they are doing a keto diet have no true grasp of what a keto diet is, let alone how to do it. Before taking on major changes, educate yourself.

• Experiential Knowingness: Try the system fully and for at least three weeks, unless you have some serious adverse reaction or allergy of course. How do you feel? Have you journaled to assess a certain goal like weight or blood sugar, sleep quality, symptom relief? Can you stick with this system forever? Are you happy/happier? How you feel is by far the most important parameter as to whether this system works for you alone. If you have a functional medicine doctor, get a full round of labs to assess physiologic parameters to see that your signs (labs) match your symptoms.

Whatever dietary “fact” that you read will not become a fact for you until you follow this process. This process also applies to anything else you wish to tackle in your life.

Some definitions:

• Locus of Control: How much that you feel that you determine your own fate. Developing a healthy ego and an Internal Locus of Control when it comes to nutrition is so important, otherwise you follow every dietary fad and “fall” for the belief systems of the day. Having an External Locus of Control leaves you disempowered. Going from belief to understanding to experiential knowingness allows us to regain an Internal Locus of Control, important for all health care decisions.

• Orienting Generalizations: What accumulated knowledge to date agrees upon. The dogma held by Western medicine to follow a “low fat” diet was opposed by almost all of nutritional science. You cannot get nutritional advice from Western medicine only. You must expand your search, or learn to trust those outside of the establishment.

• Fight or Flight: Sympathetic activation, your body diverts blood flow away from the digestive tract to your muscles and brain. Meaning you turn off your digestive tract, not wise if you wish to digest your food.

• Rest and Digest: Parasympathetic activation, relaxation. Allows us to digest food properly.  Turn off all distractions, TVs, cell-phones, etc. as they all favor fight or flight responses. Sit down to eat at a designated place to eat such as a dining table. Candlelight, calm music can help. Turning on your digestion might be the single most important way to improve your health and well-being. Eating a rushed meal while watching news kills digestive capacity and causes disease , even if you are eating “good food”

• Eating Awareness: Expanding on Rest and Digest, I have copied and pasted this from an old article as it still holds true today;

1. Agree to sit down while eating, bringing full attention to your food.
2. Utilize your dining table, or simply have a set location to eat.
3. Turn off all distractions, phones, tablets, TVs, etc. Soothing music in the background is fine. Keep conversation to non-controversial subjects.
4. Take a moment of silence, prayer, blessing of your food, capture this moment.
5. Notice the colors, aromas, the attractiveness of the meal, how is your hunger level? Have you waited too long? Are you actually hungry? 
6. With each bite notice the attention; has it remained with the eating process? As well notice your intention; is it on enjoyment and energizing you, or possibly on just “getting through” your meal and onto something else?
7. As each bite comes to your mouth, notice the chewing, slowly, of your food, and the swallowing of each food bolus, “watching” it travel to your stomach before going after the next bite.
8. With each continued bite, does the meal satisfy the six flavors: sweet, sour, salt, bitter, pungent, and astringent?
9. Does your hunger tell you when to stop, or do you continue eating because there are children starving in America? You paid for this and you’re not wasting it!? You cooked this and somebody’s gonna eat it!? Or some other reason not directly related to that moment.
10. Take a moment also at the end of the meal. Evaluate your hunger vs your desires. Are you comfortable, overstuffed, or possibly still hungry? Wait at least five minutes before getting seconds or desserts, letting hunger reign over desire!

How you feel before, during, and after a meal helps delineate how well you fueled yourself. This should hone whether what you ate was based on instincts versus the choices made via the subconscious manipulation of marketing that affects most people’s food selection. I sincerely believe a consciously experienced chocolate chip cookie, savored and relished, will serve a person far better than a hastily devoured organic salad eaten unconsciously!

Eating well takes time: preparing food lists, shopping more frequently, food preparation, and of course in conscious eating. Even spending a few meals per week eating as described above can transform your relationship with food in such a positive way. Most importantly you will find your food “talks” to you, yes, viscerally! But it also communicates at the level of the nucleus of each cell. The more we tune in to our food, the more harmonious we become with nature, as it is us!

Your health, your vibrancy depends on healthy, conscious eating habits while consuming real, whole foods that jibe with your organism. Your partners and lovers and friends might need something different than you. Allow others to eat as they choose. Regain the joy of eating by restoring the art of eating that matches the science as well.

Your Journey to Health and Healing,

Gary E Foresman MD

PS: Revisit Dr. Foresman’s   Resolving Difficulties post if you have any GI upsets.