I recently attended a blogging conference and went to a session on “how to pitch to the media.”

One of the number one ways to get media interest is to give them a “pitch with a twist.” This is the opposite of something most consumers know or think they know. For example, most people know that vegetables are healthy. A twist on your pitch could be, “this vegetable is actually making you fat.” Yes, I know it’s crazy but these are the articles that get attention. The more bizarre the better. Here are some popular headlines pitches that recently got picked up by big media.

Coconut Oil Isn’t Healthy, It’s Never Been Healthy! -USA Today

Coconut Oil Is Poison, Says Harvard Professor 

How Healthy Is Oatmeal for Breakfast, Really? -Cleveland Clinic

Stop Wasting Your Money On Wheatgrass! (It’s Toxic!) -Gundry MD

Tearless onions? This can’t be a good thing. Onions naturally contain an enzyme that cleanses the epithelial layer of the eye and actually contributes to better eye health. Onions stimulate tears for a reason. Food should be eaten in the form nature intended.

Yup, it’s always something…check this popular youtube video out.

This is craziness! Can you see why most consumers think healthy living is so confusing? Many people I work with are so lost when it comes to living healthy that they give up completely. I totally understand where these people are coming from and think the media is doing more harm than good when it comes to food and eating. Why can’t we all work together to make life easy for consumers and people struggling to live better?

People try so hard to do the right thing just to find out that’s it’s now the wrong thing. Information is constantly changing and contradicting each other. Some health professionals tell you to follow a high protein diet. Others tell you to follow a high fat diet. Some diets have you only eating during a 2 hour window each day and fasting during your peak waking hours. Most diets have you giving up the things you love without replacing it with something that gives you the same feel good benefits. When consumers are confused, they lose. Why can’t eating just be simple?

I recently went to another conference where some doctors and other health professionals came on stage to talk about healthy living and here’s some of the things they mentioned.

• Coffee is the best source of energy
• Cashews create a poison ivy affect in the body
• Eating fruit is practically the same thing as eating candy
• Champagne cures Alzheimer’s
• Skipping meals is the best thing you can do
• The body should be burning fat versus carbs

Again, this is craziness! Unfortunately, many health professionals are just making our obesity crisis worse. They are missing a huge fundamental step when it comes to teaching consumers about health. Quick fixes or crazy diets will never work hence why there is always a new diet or crazy fad on the market. Plus, who really wants to be on a diet anyway? No thank you.

There is always going to be a new diet on the market or crazy food trend in the media and we need to be able to understand how to eat no matter comes our way.

The answer to living healthy comes down to one simple thing:

Lifestyle.

As consumers, we have to understand that quick fixes won’t work and we have to take more responsibility when it comes to our health. We are a direct result of our life and its outcomes.

The deciding factor to success is not the external conditions and circumstances. It’s how we choose to respond to these situations. We put so much blame on our outcomes and results but never ourselves. If we struggle to lose weight, we blame it on our sluggish metabolism. If we have high cholesterol we blame it on our genetics even though our lifestyle is 90% of the equation. If we play golf, and hit a bad shot, we tend to blame our golf clubs or the hole itself.

Many of these limiting beliefs we learn from the media or other life circumstances. The media has us believing that as long as we don’t eat oats or carbs, we’ll be thin regardless if we are sleeping 8 hours a night, or exercising on a regular basis. Headlines say “whatever you do, don’t eat _____, but keep doing everything else you were doing.”

Unfortunately, living healthy doesn’t work this way. And the reason people follow these crazy food trends is because it’s easier than following an “abstract” way of living healthy that doesn’t have specific rules and requires a little more effort and planning. Consumers tend to eat for flavor and convenience and are always looking for the quick fix even though it’s exhausting, takes a lot of energy, and doesn’t work long-term.

“The basic idea is that every outcome you experience in life (whether it’s success or failure, wealth or poverty, wellness or illness, intimacy or estrangement, joy or frustration) is the result of how you respond,” according to Jack Canfield, Author of Chicken Soup for The Soul.

Successful people take a different approach to events than most people. They simply change their responses to the events until they get the outcomes they want.

“You have to gain control of your thoughts, your images, your dreams, daydreams, and your behavior. Everything you think, say, and do need to become intentional and aligned with your purpose, your values, and your goals. If you don’t like your outcomes, change your responses.” -Jack Canfield

Building A Lifestyle We Can Enjoy, Maintain & Gives Us Results

When we take time to build a sustainable lifestyle that incorporates simple and healthy eating, quality sleep, and daily movement, we can be unstoppable! Whatever behavior we choose, we have to understand that it must be done through pleasure in order for it to be sustainable. It’s not about eating certain foods because you have to or some diet tells you to, it’s about eating certain foods because you want to and because you like the way it makes you feel.

When it comes to food, most of live too healthy or too unhealthy and not somewhere in between. Either we follow a strict diet that has us restricting something for health reasons, taking the fun out of eating, or we live super unhealthy because we believe the latter is too hard, confusing, or boring.

What we need is to find balance when it comes to food and eating. Life is not about giving anything up, it’s about making everything better and eating for a mixture of pleasure and purpose. 

We need to eat in a way that makes us feel healthy and happy and use our common sense to make choices even if science says otherwise.

Oats are not making us fat. Energy does not come in a can. Adding butter to our coffee is not the magic formula for weight loss. Drinking wine is not the same as eating grapes. Calories are not created equal. Fruit is not candy. You don’t have to diet to live your best self.

High protein diets are acid. Proteins=amino acids. Acid= inflammation. Inflammation is the root cause of all disease and digestive disorders. Nothing is off limits when you make it homemade.

What Makes Science True Anyway? 

The definition of science is the pursuit of truth or the state of knowing. Scientific method is the systematic pursuit of knowledge, the collection of data through observation and experience, and the formulation and testing of hypotheses or an assumption. So what makes science true? After all, it’s always changing.For example, trans fats were once claimed to be healthy and labeled GRAS (generally recognized as safe) by the FDA. They were then used to replace all “harmful saturated fats” in the marketplace. Saturated fats are now shown to have amazing health benefits and are actually needed to survive (they make up the integrity of every cell in the body).

Trans fats are now banned from our entire food supply because of their harmful and even deadly affects on the body. According to the National Institutes of Health (NIH), trans fats raise your LDL or “bad” cholesterol; levels and lower your HDL or good cholesterol levels. The Mayo Clinic says this combined effect increases your risk of heart disease, the number-one killer of men and women.If we would have used our common sense from the very start of introducing trans fats into your food supply, we would have been able to identify that this foreign substance as harmful. The definition of trans fat is: an oil that has been chemically changed from a room temperature liquid state into a solid. Um yuck and weird right?

GMOS (genetically modified organisms) are plants or animals created through gene-splicing techniques. This technology combines DNA from different species, creating combinations of plant and animal genes that do not naturally occur in nature. Bottom line is we simply don’t know what these foods will do to us 20 years from now and we already seeing harmful side effects when it comes to consuming GMO foods including issues with digestion, allergies, absorption, and so much more.

The Success Formula for Eating

Want to know a simple formula for eating healthy that will give you results and will never change?

Common Sense + The Source

Use your common sense to make choices and eat foods closest to the source. 

This means that you are eating in a way that makes you feel healthy and happy and avoiding items that you intuitively know aren’t good for you. If you can’t recognize or pronounce an ingredient on the back of a package, it’s probably not real food. If you can’t feed it to your kids, it’s probably not something you should put in your body.

Real, whole foods closest to their most natural source will always be healthier than a bar, gel, drink, pill, or supplement. Keep in mind that we don’t eat nutrients, we eat food and it’s important to chew and enjoy our foods. Foods from the ground will always be healthy. Most foods that contain one ingredient will also be healthy (ancient grains, fruits, vegetables, lean meats, nuts, seeds, etc) Nothing is off limits when you know the source. Plus, the body knows what to do when you give it real food.

If you can’t follow a diet when you are pregnant, a time when you should be getting the best quality nutrition, it’s probably not a good thing. If a diet has you giving up a macronutrient (carb, protein, or fat) you will have a “macro problem.” Macronutrients are the building blocks for the body. Carbohydrates are the body’s number one fuel source, not fat. Ancient grains like oats, millet, farro, wheatberries, and quinoa contain essential b vitamins and magnesium needed for energy and sleep. Fruit cleans the body and water is life. Coconut oil has been used as medicine for thousands of years and is one of the healthiest foods you can consume.

Eating should be simple. As babies, we were born knowing what to eat. We weren’t born craving junk. Who really thought their first beer or sip of coffee was delicious? Gross right? Just as we train ourselves to like unhealthy good, we can train our taste buds to crave healthy foods. After all, flavor comes from nutrients.

When it comes to diets, we know they will never work because a life of restriction will never provide us long-term pleasure. And in order to make a healthy lifestyle stick, we have to understand how to eat for a balance of nourishment and pleasure. Take time to build a healthy lifestyle that never goes out of style by taking small steps.

Learn how to build your healthy lifestyle with these best practices.