Base How You Feel Today on What You Ate 3 Weeks Ago

I encourage all my nutritional counseling clients to start a Food Diary the day we first speak. Why? Because how you feel today is in large part based on what you ate three weeks ago.

When I say “how you feel today” I mean: How are you feeling in your body? Comfortable? How’s your skin? Clear? How do your eyes look? Bright? Do your joints ache? Any rumbles in the belly? Back pain? Are you experiencing brain fog? Do you feel happy & energetic or like crawling back into bed? Are you pleasant to be around or are others avoiding you? Having headaches or mid-afternoon slumps? Bad breath? Are you looking forward to moving your body, having some sex (alone or with a buddy) and getting a good night’s sleep? Feeling positive, optimistic, hopeful & creative? Or are you just pushing yourself along with pure will power?

These are all indicators of health & wellbeing and they are in large part determined by your inner chemistry created by food.

If you’re feeling unusually fantastic today, you can look back in your Food Diary and see what changes you made about three weeks ago. You can barely remember what you ate three DAYS ago, so it’s useful to take daily notes. Conversely, if you’re feeling unusually bad, check your Food Diary. Perhaps you ate out, were at a party or celebration, were on vacation or in some other way deviated from your usual standard of food and drink.

Of course, if you’ve had a particularly emotional day, slept poorly, worked too much or had an exceptionally anxious or stressful day, this will impact how you’re feeling more so that whatever you’ve eaten. I’m not talking about these kinds of days. Rather, I’m talking about regular-life kind of days. (I’m hoping all your days are not pure chaos…if so, you need more help than a nutrition coach. Please seek help from a therapist or coach to establish balance.)

According to Deepak Chopra:

“In just the last 3 weeks, a quadrillion (that’s 10 to the power of 15!!) atoms have gone through your body that have gone through the body of every other species on this planet [through constant inhaling and exhaling by everyone]. And if you do radioactive isotope studies which have been done very elegantly, you can prove beyond a shadow of doubt that you replace 98% of all the atoms in your body in less than one year.

You make a new liver every 6 weeks, a new skin once a month, a new stomach lining every 5 days, a new skeleton – it seems so hard and solid, but the skeleton you have now you didn’t have three months ago.

Even the brain cells that you think with as carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen and oxygen, as those basic element, they weren’t there one year ago. And the DNA that holds memories of millions of years of evolutionary time, in fact hundreds of millions of years; the actual raw material of it comes and goes every six weeks. Those atoms drift in a out like migratory birds every six weeks.

And if you want to be a real stickler about it and account for the last atom and every little sinew and collagen and cartilage, then in less then two and a half years you replace every atom in your body down to the last single atom.”

Your body is in constant creation and re-creation. Besides whatever (and whomever!) you’re breathing in – essentially your air food – the building blocks for these new body atoms is your food. The quality of your food determines the quality of your raw material for your tomorrow body.

For a vibrant and slow-aging tomorrow body you want food that is:

• full of life (indicative of active enzymes)

• full of color (indicative of vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, anthocyanins, carotenoids, and other phytochemicals) and

• high in fuel (indicative of natural sugar)

A diet consisting of raw plant food meets these criteria. Cooked plant food is next best and then a diet of mixed raw and/or cooked plant & animal foods is last.  My free 8 First Steps to a HAPPY™ Kitchen guide and my free 9th HAPPY™ Step 21 day online food course will help you make the methodical changes to slowly move into a plant-based diet.

The Healers Diet will convince you to give a low-fat, high-fruit diet a try. It could quite possibly alter the course of your life and make your chakras spin like ecstatic internal whirling dervishes. (If you’re not aware of chakras, they are, according to ancient tradition, energy centers along the body that govern life force.)

Start a Food Diary today. It can be pen and paper or digital, it makes no difference. All that matters is that you have access to it 24 hours a day so that you can easily take notes after each meal. The extra bonus to keeping a Food Diary is that you will get very honest & clear with yourself about your food intake. If you’ve ever written down your dreams, goals, wishes or plans, you know the power inherent in the process of making visible and tangible (notes in a Food Diary) from the invisible and intangible (eating habits and patterns).

When keeping a Food Diary there is no need to be specific and no need to measure. You can write a bowl of this, a plate of that, two servings of this, a 1/2 bag of that. Eyeball it, yet keep it real & honest. No one ever needs to see your Food Diary unless you decide to share it. Record all food, drinks, desserts, and snacks, including water, alcohol and coffee/tea intake. My Food Diary is here if you’d like to see an example.

I can already hear some of you saying: look at these people! They’re exercising! Their diet didn’t improve their body condition, their exercising did. The fact is, most people who feel great in their body crave body movement. It is a natural urge and one that comes from having ample energy. It’s very hard to move your body when you’re not feeling well in your body. When you feel great, you want to move and express the natural freedom, strength & endurance you crave. Food first, exercise second.

And you say, Carla these people look tan! They’ve been on vacation or in the tanning booth. I say, nope, they’ve been outside in the healthful rays of the sun exercising and playing AND their plant-based diet not only helps them to safely receive the sun, but also all those vitamins, minerals and phytochemicals in the plant food give their skin a natural tan from the inside out. If what you eat is colorful, you will be full of color!

A Food Diary is also a great place to state your wellness goals, to track how you’re feeling daily and to rate your days. I don’t recommend weighing yourself. How you feel inside your body is most important regardless of some number.

Eating well, as smartly as you can, every single day is a commitment of love to yourself. If you’re satisfied with how you have been feeling, keep up what you’ve been doing. If you’d like to feel better, start a Food Diary today and make some calculated improvements to your diet. My free guide and food course can help you. If you need more customized assistance, contact me and we’ll set an appointment.

You can start feeling significant changes in just three weeks! Remember, it takes 21 days to establish a new habit. When you start reaping the benefits of tracking your food and drink intake, it’ll seem like old-hand to be writing it down.

Photo Credits
Sal, courtesy of Rich Lysloff
All others, courtesy of Forks Over Knives