What REALLY is healthy?

HEALTHY!

The word we hear and gets us all excited. It’s as if we hear that word and immediately think it is a safe food, acceptable food and nourishing food.

But truth is, almost anyone can label food as healthy… there are not many qualifications to it.

The FDA outlines that a food can be labeled healthy if, “it is not low in total fat, but have a fat profile makeup of predominantly mono and polyunsaturated fats; or  contain at least ten percent of the Daily Value (DV) per reference amount customarily consumed (RACC) of potassium or vitamin D.”

In simpler terms, this means that a food can be labeled healthy if it is made up of certain types of fats known as monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats OR if it contains 10% of the daily value of potassium or vitamin D.

Woah, it’s much simpler than we thought, right? Did you expect that “healthy” would just be based on the type of fat or content of vitamin D and potassium? Probably not!

In the Instagram world, healthy is depicted as over exercising, achieving a smaller body size, eating only whole foods, fruits, vegetables, no processed foods and eliminating a lot of food groups. 

Let me tell you something, that is not healthy! That is disordered and it is creating a world of disordered eating and disordered relationships with our body and exercises!

We have become so obsessed with health that it in turn has made us afraid of food and afraid of accepting and learning to love our body.

So, what is healthy? In my professional opinion, healthy is having a healthy relationship with food and your body where you can nourish your body with all different types of foods (carbohydrates, fat, protein, and fun foods), eat without stress and guilt, feel confident in your body, be able to get ready without having a meltdown, and exercise for joyful movement and not for the calorie burning factor.

I mean think about it, what could get healthier than that? 

The point of this blog post is to remind you to ask questions, to not jump on the next health train until you know more and to think about what is truly healthy for you.

And as always, I am here to answer any of your questions, so please feel free to reach out when you have a question or want to learn how to create a healthy relationship with food and your body because trust me, that is the HEALTHIEST thing you could achieve!