Connect to your body and what makes you human; life-giving essential nutrients from food… 80% of the time. Balanced with joy and pleasure.
Chapter 1 of Your Vitality Guide explores the importance of balance, not only in what you eat but in your mindset and relationship with food. By creating a balanced connection to nourishment, you can enjoy food without guilt and thrive. Balance your diet with 80% mindful choices and 20% indulgence, all of it 100% enjoyable.
This chapter serves as a foundation for rethinking nourishment, starting with how your body works and how it communicates with you. Have you normalized symptoms like headaches, fatigue, or indigestion? Are you coexisting with anxiety or poor sleep? Do you brush off your indigestion as part of life? These discomforts are signals of imbalance. By focusing on nutrient-dense and clean foods, you can elevate your cellular health and discover your unique, ideal diet.
Here are some key takeaways from Chapter 1, designed to guide you toward intuitive nourishment:
What is the 80/20 rule for your diet?
The 80/20 rule is a practical approach to eating:
- 80% intentional: Prioritize foods that nourish your body with essential nutrients.
- 20% carefree: Reserve space for indulgent foods without guilt or restriction.
While discipline is important at first, your body will learn to crave nutrient-dense foods over time. This makes indulgent moments fun and enjoyable rather than a “reward.” Remember: nourishment is a right, not a reward.
The 80/20 rule is flexible and can evolve daily or weekly, guided by your intuitive cravings and needs.
The Importance of Pleasurable Food and Eating Experiences
The goal is to eat well and nourish your body with what makes you human (we’re getting to that part) but there’s literal science behind the fact that you must enjoy your food for optimal nourishment.
In an article by the Institute for the Psychology of Eating, Marc David summarizes:
- In a Texas study, pleasure mitigated the cholesterol-raising effect of ham sandwiches and milkshakes. Eating healthy foods felt stressful to the study participants. Eating indulgent foods felt calming, which may be why the high-fat foods did not spike blood cholesterol.
- In a study conducted between Swedish and Thai locals, the two groups were fed their most pleasurable, traditional foods and a typical meal from the opposing culture. Though each meal had the same amount of iron, more iron was absorbed when each group enjoyed their local cuisine, finding the opposing meal unpalatable.
- Pleasure was further proven helpful in nutrient absorption when the groups were fed their traditional meal blended up to mush and absorbed less iron because they enjoyed the experience much less.
Pleasure in food isn’t just about enjoyment, it’s a physiological key to nourishment. So, ditch those hard-to-swallow superfood smoothies if they don’t spark joy!
Your Body is Made of Nutrients
Somewhere along the food technology way, we have become disconnected from the organic nature of our bodies. We are made of the same materials as the natural world. When you eat, your body detoxifies things like food colouring and preservatives and absorbs molecules of water, fat, protein, and starch to create your physical body with the help of vitamins and minerals. We are nature.
Your mother assembled you in her belly with the tiniest pieces of nature her body derived from eating and digesting. We’re not made of our indulgences like powdered fluorescent cheese coating, we are made of the amino acids and chains of fats our body absorbs as the end result of a nacho.
When you take some time to sit, reflect, and think about this fact and read about the nutrient-dense food items that help build your body best, it becomes more and more clear why you might not feel amazing every day. Your cells could be constantly asking for nourishment. And you can easily provide it through intentional choices.
In the Chapter 1 workbook, you’ll find a list of the most nourishing foods you can centre your diet around and a list of over 70 symptoms and associated nutrient deficiencies they may be associated with.
Mindfully enjoying more simple, clean foods is a straightforward and accessible starting point for feeling better and regaining your inherent vitality.
You’re here to learn, so take it easy on yourself, make manageable and trackable goals, and enjoy the process of becoming your ideal, healthy, energized self.
The 80/20 Balance Rule and Ingredients
The 80% portion of your diet doesn’t have to be complicated or boring. It’s about becoming more aware of what you’re eating and choosing products with cleaner, simpler ingredients.
At this stage of Your Vitality journey, the goal is awareness, self-observation, and education. Increase your level of awareness about what goes into your body by reading ingredient labels. Learn the skill of choosing products with clean, simple ingredient lists. Later in the journey, we do a deep dive on flavour, but you might find (as most people do) that as you improve your health, your tastes change. Eventually, processed foods like neon orange chips might feel less satisfying compared to real, flavorful alternatives.
You’re guided in the workbook not to change too much too fast, but to start a lifelong habit of being more mindfully aware of what goes into your body.
As you follow the principles of Chapter 1, symptoms that you’ve normalized start to fade, replaced by energy, clarity, and vitality.
