I am asked all the time about the right diet for kids to eat - and as parents have heard that I work with entire families, the question morphs to what should my family eat?
Spoiler alert: There’s no such thing as a right way to eat.
You may have heard that there is a right way, perhaps using different words:
We might call it “healthy”.
We might call it a diet.
Or even “clean” eating.
But whatever we call it, there’s a valuation placed upon the food that we eat - that it’s right or wrong, healthy or unhealthy, on-plan or not.
Who determines what’s right?
According to these plans…. I still don’t know.
Because here’s the thing, there are so many diets out there - keto, paleo, WW, WFPB, carnivore, vegetarian, Atkins, whole, sugar-free, fat-free, timed eating, intermittent fasting, high-protein…
If there was a “right” way to eat, I would think that we’d be on to it by now.
Well what if that’s not the full truth?
What if there is a right way to eat…. The right way for you to eat. And it’s what you’re doing now.
This isn't trying to switch words on you, it's actually embracing what we're doing right now - and stopping the elusive hunt for the "right" answer. Make what you're doing right for you!
If it doesn’t feel right to you, if it’s not serving your body, not helping your kids, then you change it.
What’s right for us evolves, it’s not based on what someone else tells us. And as a doctor, I still say that I don’t have THE answer of what is right for you. Even determining what is healthy or unhealthy….
It comes back to those lines that they would say on the cereal commercials: a part of this healthy breakfast.
What we eat is a part of the whole picture. The cereal isn't right or wrong... and it is complete with all the other foods. Breakfast becomes a composite, not just reduced to one food.
Just as health is a composite.
It’s not one diet or one choice.
Healthy is too. It’s not one thing that makes or breaks it.
How can you decide that what you are doing is healthy for you? It’s actually making the decision FIRST that you are doing something that is helpful– and then doing it.
How are you investing, building up, supporting – or, taking away from your body?
But do you know what IS healthy? Deciding that something is for you.
The way that you do it is right.
Ask yourself:
How is what you are eating right now helping you? How is it right for you?
When you have ice cream, How is having that ice cream right for your kids, right now?
Let’s stop dealing in black-and-white to raising our kids, to feeding ourselves, looking at our bodies feeding our bodies – everything is either, yes-or-no, right-or-wrong decisions around food and health.
And let’s start figuring out how we are already making the right step for ourselves, our bodies, our families with every decision that we make.
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