Beyond “Eating Healthy”: How to Understand What Your Body Really Needs
Using Functional Principles to Make Nutrition Simple, Sustainable, and Effective
If We Treated Fitness Like Nutrition
Imagine for a moment that we taught kids fitness the way we teach them nutrition.
Every few years, scientists would create guidelines that teachers would share with their students: “10 push-ups, 15 squats, and a 20 minute run per day is optimal. 3 HIIT workouts per week are recommended. A few minutes of slouching is acceptable.” A few years later, they would meet to re-arrange the “good” exercises and debate the merits of slouching.
In reality, many teenagers and adults enter fitness with sports goals: strength, endurance, mobility, or flexibility. They learn the basic physiology they’re trying to impact, a few basic exercises to help them move forward, and the metrics to track.
Young athletes create programs for themselves and fine tune them to reach their goals. Most importantly, they learn to check in with their bodies and use feedback from their results to refine their plans.
In a nutshell, this approach to fitness is functional.
Yet most of us approach food passively: We eat three meals a day, hoping for energy, health, or radiant skin, without understanding how it impacts our bodies.
Let me show you a better way.
Thinking Like a Holistic Nutritionist
In my mid-twenties, gut issues, chronic inflammation, and Lyme arthritis taught me that food could heal or hurt me. I trained as a holistic nutritionist through the Nutritional Therapy Association (NTA) and learned to shift my focus from food itself to function, or how foods can support energy, hormones, and well-being.
Nutrient-Rich, Whole Foods
When I was 25, I spent a month on a German farm. I woke up at 5 am and cleaned up pig manure, took care of birds, planted and weeded pumpkins, and collected honey from bees. And every moment I wasn’t working, I was eating ungodly amounts of bread, cream, and honey.
While these foods normally made me bloated back home, when I ate them fresh, I felt energized and healthy. I learned that many of the problems we attribute to food come from how it’s processed.
The further we get from how our food is made, the more information we have to seek out. We have to question how the animals were treated, what they were fed, if they were caged.
While few of us have time to take a summer vacation on a farm, we can all get one step closer to eating a whole food diet. If you’re looking for one small step to take, try the following:
Buy from a trusted farmer’s market vendor.
Choose supermarket items with ingredients your grandparents would recognize.
Ask your butcher or farmer for tips on quality indicators.
Energy Balance: Fuel Your Body Right
One of the most basic tasks of the human body is to keep your energy stable. Your body manages this by breaking down the food you eat and either burning it for fuel or storing it away as either glycogen or fat.
It sounds simple. Yet many women I meet struggle with energy imbalances that manifest as:
Energy swings and “hanger” between meals
Hormonal imbalances
Acne or other skin issues
Stubborn weight gain
Despite eating healthy foods, many of them are unaware of the principles that support stable blood sugar and metabolism:
Starting the day with a savoury breakfast and protein to stabilize their blood sugar
Aiming for 20-30 g of protein with each meal and enough fat to keep them fueled
Moving and discharging energy after carb-heavy, to avoid the fuel getting stored away
By balancing the carbs in your diet with protein and fat and timing your meals so you’re fueled for the day ahead, you’ll find that effortless energy that lasts until the end of the day becomes the norm and not the exception.
Digestion: The Art of Slowing Down
When I lived in Manhattan, I always spent my 30 minute lunch break as follows: I dashed across the street to Sweetgreen to buy a Harvest Chicken Salad, which I then forked into my mouth as quickly as possible while planning my next presentation.
After about 6 months of rushing through meals, I developed persistent bloating and digestive issues. Now I realize that the problem wasn’t in what I was eating, but how.
Think of your digestive system like an assembly line: Before work begins, high quality parts must be brought to the front of the belt and workers need to understand what they’re making. Then the parts need to be put together, painted, and arranged into a final product. If one step fails, the entire process breaks down.
Digestion works the same way - just in reverse.
For your body to break down food, you first need to be relaxed. Then you need to chew food into small pieces; you need stomach acid to digest protein and kill pathogens; and finally, you need enzymes to break down what’s left so you can absorb it.
I’ve found in my experience that often those with digestive problems don’t have a problem with a particular food; they have a problem slowing down at meal times, chewing enough, or ensuring their body has what it needs (e.g. enzymes) to break down what they’re eating.
Healthy Fats: Quality and Balance
Because of faulty and incomplete research, fats became public enemy number one for decades. Supermarkets started selling margarine as a “healthy alternative” for butter, seed oils became popular, and many women switched to “low-fat” (but high sugar!) snacks.
The truth is, your body needs fats. Your cell membranes, hormones, signaling molecules, and so much more are made of fatty acids. On a personal level, fats are what keep your skin dewy and glowing and your hormones vibrant.
What matters is the quality and balance of fats.
While many Westerners consume enough butter and French fries, they are often deficient in omega-3 fatty acids, which are less common in our diet.
For many in the modern world, the easiest way to ensure the right balance of fatty acids daily is by supplementing with high quality fish oil or flax-based supplements. And in the long run, restoring natural fats - such as fatty fish, seeds, unprocessed oils, and full-fat dairy - to our diets is critical for optimal health.
Minerals: A Delicate Balance
While there are times when individual supplements can make a huge difference, most of us load up on a collection of Magnesium, vitamin C, D, K (and so on) and get minerals all wrong.
Minerals are interdependent. When we flood our body with one, such as supplementing with iron or vitamin D without vitamin K, we often throw our system out of balance.
We also miss the fact that very often when our minerals are depleted, it’s because we’re missing the co-factors we need to absorb them. Take calcium for example, which 33% of American women supplement in their diets. Almost all of us get enough calcium through our diets but can’t absorb it.
To absorb calcium, you also need:
Proper hormone function (e.g. thyroid, sex, and adrenal hormones)
Hydration
Vitamins (e.g. vitamin D)
Proper digestion
Fatty acids
Other minerals (e.g. potassium and trace minerals)
So here’s the takeaway: If you have reason to suspect you need more of a certain mineral in your body, get tested. Sometimes, medications (e.g. birth control pills), vegan or vegetarian diets, or environmental stresses leave you depleted from a vitamin or mineral.
But for the rest of us? Focus on balance and eat the rainbow. Trust that if you eat and live in balance, you are most likely getting the minerals you need.
Hydration: Feed the Body Electric
Finally, we come to the last and simplest point: for many people, the missing key to feeling their best is hydration.
Water is essential for almost every process in the body: it delivers oxygen and nutrients to cells, removes wastes and toxins, enables digestion, cushions joints, hydrates and composes cells, and maintains the electrical properties of cells.
Water and the electrolytes dissolved in it not only support our structure but allow us to function as electrical beings.
By simply putting a water bottle on our desks or setting reminders, we can ensure that our bodies are bathed in the fluid they need.
Conclusion
When planning your meals or considering a diet change, ask:
“With these six principles in mind, will this serve my body?”
Focus on quality whole foods, functional balance, and listening to your body. Small, consistent choices, rather than trends, lead to sustained energy, vitality, and freedom around food.
Curious what your body needs right now?
If you want to see how balanced your foundations are, take the Mind-Body Breakthrough Quiz and discover what your body is asking for. In just a few questions, you’ll get three personalized tips you can start using today to support your energy, digestion, and overall well-being!
