In a viral reel, Piers Morgan interrupts an answer to the question “How to lose weight” with the remark “Eat less, do more exercise”, a remark to which the guests, three overweight women, answered, in a funny & slightly panic, “It is mental”…. And indeed it is. Before we are motivated enough to do something, we must want to. Before we want to, we must encounter a need to act upon.
Our health journey
I was not concerned about food healthiness until my fear of death was triggered, making a diamond clear connection in my mind. Five minutes after becoming aware that I will suffer a death in sickness and disease, I decided that whatever food goes in my body, I must first understand what it is, where it comes from, and what will happen during and after digestion. Until that moment, if it tasted good, it was good. Now, if the digestion and the shiting feels good, I am eating again.
The moment of realization was just a beginning, a gift from the Univers, that came after some friends turned to vegetarianism and one of them explained the importance of it. The coming effort of visualizing myself living to a hundred without physical problems was my doing. Still is and will be until my vision comes to reality. Healthier is the goal of this process, meaning whenever I find something that could improve my health, I will try it.
Our health begins with us. It must be a conscious decision and a lifetime journey, in which the first months are crucial for exploration & experimentation. Further improvements and adjustments will come as we keep in touch with our body, listening to its reaction and updating the quality and the volume of what we eat based on our momentary need – an olympian need more precision regarding his food than me, a person that does exercise for fun and a lot of mental work, for which certain foods are better for the brain than the muscles.
Illusion & reality of health
The three or four ladies who had the slight discomfort with Mr. Morgan never had a clue regarding health and well-being, which is one of the greatest problems of humanity today. Most people believe that doctors deal with health, while their purpose is simply to minimize the damage people inflict on their bodies. A doctor can cure a sickness, not prevent it. Our health is our mission.
If today, a magic pill that would cure cancer of any kind goes on the market, people would start eating and drinking like there will always be a tomorrow for them. This unconscious behaviour has roots below our understanding, in our instincts, and unless we become aware of its coming through our bodies, it will always create the illusion of need when we think we want something. The reason people eat more than is needed is a lack of understanding regarding the body in terms of anatomy, the biological processes and a low level of awareness regarding the sensations & emotions coming through. We mostly react to the body rather than influence its behaviour.
“Do we need to eat junk foods?” – certainly not. “Do we need to eat a certain amount of something every day?”- certainly not. “Do we need to eat three meals a day?” – certainly not. With millions or billions of dollars invested in studies, the scientists still struggle to understand what the yogis figured out millennia ago – that we must experiment with food consciously, every time we eat. Through scientific experiments, we can discover what the food is made of and how it interacts with the body, but we are the only ones who can feel what it does; we must do the experimentation & exploration. We are the observers of what goes into the body. But most of us will only care about it when it goes out…
We live longer than our ancestors not because we live healthier, but because we don’t die in infancy, in wars, in famines, and from deadly pandemics. Nowadays, more food than we can eat is around us, yet we find ourselves thinking about food more often than we should – more than the moment of cooking and eating.
My health journey
I used to start thinking about eating at the first sign of hunger, four to five times a day. Two days of fasting solved that, and now I eat in an eight-hour interval, two meals, on a day with an exercise session during which my muscles tense continuously. I eat some fruit in the morning and vegetables in the evening. My eating routine came to me intuitively and has all the similarities with that of Bryan Johnson, who came to the same conclusion with a scientific approach. I can eat just as healthy with what I find around the place I live.
A healthy diet is an idea that often creates more stress regarding the nutritional value of food, carefully printed on the back of every pack we find in the markets. BUT, those values are just intermediary information that offers half of the potential impact after ingestion. If a product has 2 more grams of something per 100 than another, it doesn’t mean it is better. The body doesn’t count proteins. The body can produce proteins. During digestion, the food is shredded into tiny pieces we call amino acids and gets recomposed in whatever shape & form it considers best for its doings. The easier the food is digested, the better and faster it can be recomposed through the chemical interactions within our body.
A banana is just as healthy as an avocado. Sunflower seeds, just as good as chia or other super-expensive seeds. The nutritional value of fruits and seeds plays little importance for the well-functioning of the body. The important aspects are diversity, consistency, and moderation. Eating fresh local foods as they come to market, eating them as meals, and eating them at a certain moment in the day.
Health Problems
I still eat sweets, junk food, and other unnecessary distractions, but 97% of the time, my diet consists of the healthiest food available.
The difficulties people with unhealthy diets have their roots in distress that all the time goes back to their childhood. Eating compulsively, as described, is an unconscious behaviour based on our body’s reaction. It comes in a sudden desire for a reward after an hour of hard work, or a night craving, or just because a picture of delicious food passed our sight. It is difficult to resist the thought stream that comes along, and we know, resisting will just prolong our fate. I know, and I know you know it too.
We can feel the body reactions, we can influence those reactions. A person who was never aware of the control of the body, who lives in identification with the body, the stream of thoughts coming from food craving is irresistible. The cause of irresistibility has roots in the unconscious part of their lives, when either they were offered all the food they desired, or had rare moments of pleasure in eating, causing them to live in craving now that the food is cheaply available. The compulsive reason that triggers the false need for food is for each one to discover and understand, while I can only point in the direction through this piece of writing. If we contemplate five minutes on the emotions & thoughts that appear whenever we feel hunger or craving, we can discover the precise why we want to eat that specific food, and further how to influence that desire into something better!
Our immune system is the barrier against sickness and disease and does a fantastic job at keeping the body healthy. When we eat more than we need or foods that contain unfamiliar chemicals, our bloodstream is flooded with unnecessary substances, which the immune cells have to remove. Whenever it happens, the real problems, like bacteria & viruses, can flow more freely through the body, causing damage. Cancer cells, which are normal cells that were not destroyed by the immune system, form and multiply, literally forming death within the body. Unnecessary burden on the immune system is like calling the cops, the firefighter, and the ambulance with a false alarm, or for a miscellaneous cause.
When a human begins their awareness journey with the body, new possibilities arise in their life, as a healthier body is interconnected with a healthier mind and a healthier soul. When we find the emotions related to compulsive eating, we can influence the thought process that makes us react unconsciously and eat compulsively. Our sensations, thoughts, and emotions flow in the same dimensions, which we call our personal experience. We can manifest new emotions, which create new thoughts, therefore new sensations through our body.
The fate of what we are or were, the moment of realization that we are in control of the body, is the result of our destiny our ancestors chose for us. The freedom of choice we have today is the consequence of their actions, and more importantly, their sacrifice. We have the mission to learn how to make better, in this case, healthier choices, and more importantly, live more peacefully, thinking about our future as a result of thinking about our memories. Comfort and entertainment will kill us all if we do not act, from individual choices towards a better humanity!
Visualization of Health
Regarding the visualization of our health, we must consider death a factor, as it will always activate the survival instinct, which will create a sensation of desperation, of running from something, running from sickness and disease. Another aspect during visualization must be a continuous striving for better health, as this will activate the flourishing instinct, of going in a certain direction for the better. Furthermore, we must become aware of those instincts until they become intuition.
Having those two in mind during short contemplation sessions shortly will create a natural connection between our behaviour and the food we encounter in this wilderless* life. The seed of the vision of health will be planted. Further, it must be nurtured every day. Our health evolution happens at its best when we consider a continuous journey of choices and variation. Food, being available everywhere, will not be a concern for our thoughts only when we understand where and how it got in the shape, form, and color it presents to us, or is presented for us.
After we make the effort to understand the fundamentals of food and health, we will be free from compulsiveness. Getting information from various sources helps to become aware of possibilities. Further, we must create our knowledge map of it and then experiment as much as we can based on what we want to do with our future excess of health.
Our understanding of health is a unique journey that we all have to consider, and the sooner in life, the better for us. Two to three months used to explore, discover, and understand the potential of health for our body will return in decades of flourishing after.
We are the gateway between fooding and shitting – whenever we eat, we must be aware of the reason that causes it and the consequences of it.
