Humans are the only species not knowing what and how to eat. Animals eat by understanding their bodies’ instincts and needs at different times of the day and year. They don’t have food app trackers or count how many macros they have daily. Animals do not weigh their food, use terminology like breakfast, snack, lunch, or dinner, or do a calculated fast. They eat and drink at different times and amounts based on what their bodies need nutritionally. Ideally, this is how humans operate physiologically as well. Each day should have a different time when you eat and the types of food you eat throughout the day. Diet plans and objective eating ideas can be a great start to a person’s program, but the goal for everyone is to read their bodies’ instincts and eat off their needs.
People joke that their bodies need a piece of chocolate cake, which is more of an emotional, psychological, or even addictive fix than a physiological need. Chocolate cake is a drug made up of humans that has become a staple in many Americans’ diets, but it’s not a food. Please make no mistake: Having a piece of cake is okay now and again, but your body physiologically never needs it. What you want your body to do with cake is process it for energy and detoxify and disperse the rest out of your body as soon as possible so it does not get addicted.
Your body wants to, give or take, have good quality food such as vegetables, fruits, meats, fish, nuts, legumes, lentils, beans, grains, and more. We have created diets that our bodies genuinely do not like but have adapted to function as Americans in 2024. For example, your body never wants an Extra-Large Coffee with massive amounts of sugar from Starbucks; if it does, it does once a year. We are so disconnected from eating proper food that we have lost our instinct for what our bodies and brains want.
Gaining nutrition and health instincts is very hard if you have never had them, but that does not make it impossible if you allow yourself to learn. Too often, we eat for comfort or to try to lose weight, which is not what we need to consider when eating for energy. Eating is for our brains and bodies to be efficient. It is always hard to see someone detoxify from lousy food, but once they do, their perspective of food changes instantly. For instance, most people wake up and try to gain energy from sugar and coffee, where they should look for hydration and good quality food. You don’t know what feeling this is if you never had clean energy. Depending on how addicted you are to caffeine and sugar, sometimes you have to go backward to go forward to obtain that authentic quality energy.
Once you learn to eat correctly and collectively, you will notice when your body needs various things like fish, vegetables, red beets, fruit, or other food sources. You have created a connection with these foods and seen what they do for you. Some foods may give you different clean energy, whereas others help you go to the bathroom. Various foods may provide good satiety, whereas others offer a different focus. You do not notice these reactions until you start creating awareness of what food does for us.
Once you learn to eat correctly, you will also know that your body’s need for carbohydrates, protein, and fat fluctuates daily. One day, you will need more carbs. The next day, you may need less protein. You will also realize all of the substances you ate before, which your brain thought was good, do not taste the same anymore because your body now reads them as poison, such as refined sugar, processed food, etc.
Each day has different experiences, stresses, nutritional needs, brain and body desires, and more. As we do not live in a world where we can pick and graze whatever we want, it doesn’t change the fact we should. We respect and understand people with different schedules, budgets, family implications, educational understanding, cooking knowledge, and other factors. But it does not change our bodies’ physiological nutritional needs. Most people are dehydrated and malnourished in terms of their bodies from macro and micronutrient standpoints.
No one is perfect in their eating, so it’s essential to learn how efficient your body, brain, and life can be by understanding what your body truly wants to eat internally. If you never learned how to eat right, you are missing a whole different feeling you probably never thought you could feel. You will also be surprised what good quality eating can do for us, such as putting us in a better mood, better sleep, less pain, and much more.
