“Healthy” no longer holds meaning in my world. On the surface people can appear healthy yet, even former athletes can fall victim to a heart attack. All we can do in that situation is to use the CPR training taught at Coast2Coast in Brampton. We are all taught to make healthy food choices to avoid situations like this, but does “healthy” really hold meaning? How can it when it’s thrown around haphazardly like a hacky sack? It’s been hard for me to break up with it. Everyday I get asked: “But is it healthy? Can I eat it all the time? What about just a tiny portion? What about just for breakfast? Or for dinner? Four hours before dinner? What if I eat it in secret, does it count? What about only on my cheat day? Can I have a cheat day?”

Navigate the modern grocery store with caution, because you’re stepping into a black hole of healthy confusion. We think that if the word is slapped on a product it’s automatically fair game to eat. Because food manufacturers know us and live inside of our bodies, right? Right. They know what’s best for us. They have no other hidden agendas. They’re not making any money off of us. Nope.

I used to be obsessed with cereal because it was “healthy”. I’m not religious, but cereal was my religion. I’m talking Jerry Seinfeld level of love here. Cereal for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Cereal was magic. If I didn’t feel like cooking? Cereal to the rescue! If I couldn’t wait until dinner? Cereal! If I was hungry? Cereal! If I was full? Cereal! While I used to love munching on froot loops or O’s or apple jacks , because they had “healthy whole grains”, I couldn’t figure out why I would pour myself bowl, after bowl, after bowl, of little sparkly nuggets of sugar coated in more sugar and never really feel satisfied. The crunch of some of those cereals are like fruity fireworks, but they left me ravenous, tired, dazed, and uncomfortable. But it’s healthy! And it’s kind of like crack.

Then I moved to oatmeal. I was like the oatmeal aficionado. Oatmeal girl, it makes me sound so Laura Ingalls Wilder Little House on the Prairie. I would even wake up an hour early to stir the steel-cut oat variety for half an hour. Boyfriends would want to make me a romantic breakfast of eggs and bacon and the control freak in me would be like NOPE, and I’d make them treck with me to the grocery store to buy oatmeal, bananas, raisins, brown sugar, and maple syrup, because it was “healthy”. Delicious carbs on sugar on sugar on sugar on sugar. I was always at a loss when two hours later, hunger lions filled my entire body.

I could go on and on about supposed “healthy” foods that I used to consume thinking they were healthy based off of what society told me, but we’d be here for seventeen years and no one on this earth spends that long reading a blog post.

My definition of healthy has evolved over my lifetime, and all I know for sure is that health is purely individualistic. That’s it. What’s healthy for me might not be healthy for you. Since I am limited in my food choices, I can gander that what’s healthy for you might not be healthy for me. These days, I try to adhere to a strict Paleo diet (don’t know what the Paleo diet is? Check out my thorough post about it here). Not because it’s super popular, or cool, or any other annoying reason. I stick to it because it’s the only way my body works. It’s the only way that I don’t walk around looking like a kangaroo. Eating Paleo is healthy for ME.

Now, it’s unrealistic to think that I’ll never veer from my Paleo lifestyle. It would be UNHEALTHY to stick to it always and forever and amen. I LOVE cheese (I lived on a cheese farm, people), wine, sweet craft cocktails, chocolate, dulce de leche, and ice cream. I’ll be honest, these foods make me feel like complete shit for a while, in my body and in my brain. But to miss out on certain moments of life that are adorned with food or a seductive glass of wine proves to be more destructive sometimes.

Like when I’m sharing freshly made arepas de choclo (sweet corn) with two of my best girlfriends in Colombia, followed by dollops of dulce de leche and guava, and swallowed down with a warmed, cinnamony cocktail that has ½ cup brown sugar. Seriously. Or when I’m eating lunch with my mom and pseudo-mom and we share a few bites of sheep’s milk yogurt that I had been dreaming about for MONTHS. Or when I eat nitrogen ice cream smothered with dulce de leche and nutella, because it is THAT GOOD. Or when I make my homemade peanut butter balls that make everyone swoon, and eat a few too many. Or when I’m getting to know someone, and the wine flows like Old Yeller. When I’m sad and I want to have an entire chocolate bar.

There is a choice, and a consequence. And I make a deliberate choice when I feel that it is worth it. Sometimes it’s really not, like when it’s a slice of processed cheese or a $3 bottle of wine or waxy chocolate. Yawn. Next! But when I open up an expensive Napa Cab, you best believe that I am drinking that shit with bites of Parmigiano Reggiano. It’s gonna give me a stomachache and a hangover, but WHATEVER.

There’s so much buzz about gluten, and gluten is something that is 100% UNHEALTHY FOR ME ALWAYS. I don’t care if the Virgin Mary made a cupcake that was then slathered with an icing made from the saliva of angels, gluten fucks me up bigtime. I’m talking five days of flu-like symptoms where I’m super depressed and I don’t fit in my jeans. Gluten makes me miss out on life, and that is never worth it, ever. It makes it difficult that I’m a baker at heart, that I can never eat my cakes or pies or pastries again. Or pizza. Or a Misha’s cupcake. But again, those things are. not. worth. it. Unhealthy, always.

Most people I know take gluten down like nobody’s business, and maybe it’s fine for them. My best friend and boyfriend both eat toast for breakfast every single day, and they are fully functioning, intelligent, very attractive, and quite funny members of society. People eat pizza and cake and bread at all times. It’s happening right now. No one is dead. I really don’t know. Some people’s stomachs can take it, and some can’t. 90% of citizens in a certain mediterranean country eat pasta every single day and they’re healthy. You know who.

What about grains? I know that grains and I don’t mesh, I don’t care if they’re gluten free or not. The other day I was at Trader Joe’s and spotted some gluten free chocolate cupcakes and got excited, but when I compared them to the normal ones they had DOUBLE the calories and sugar. What a horrible shitshow. People are buying these thinking they are “healthy” because they’re gluten free. Nothing could be further from the truth. Grains are staples in certain cultures (my own Latin culture – hello, rice!). Japanese people are healthy and they eat white rice every single day. Vegans and vegetarians subsist on grains and they look pretty fine to me. I guess? I don’t know. Most people I know eat grains and they’re cool with them. That’s awesome, it’s healthy for them. I guess? Supposedly grains mess up your digestion.

What about dairy? Dairy is a tricky mofo because I feel its effects not one but up to THREE days afterwards. My stomach will pop out two days later and stay like that for two days. But my aunt and mom and dad and grandmother and best friend eat Greek Yogurt every single day, and they feel healthy and satisfied from it. People put cheese on everything that cheese is able to be put upon and they are super happy. Dairy is cool for them.

What about legumes? While touted as healthy and a good protein source (especially for vegetarians and vegans) they are not a complete protein source. And as humans, we need complete animal protein. For our brains to function. To think. To move. PLUS. Um, beans make you bloated as shit and then make you fart for long periods of time. End of story. I miss hummus, but I make it with butternut squash. I also miss black beans from time to time, and eat them when my mom makes them for Christmas. It’s special. It’s worth it.

What about foods within the paleo diet? Nuts/starches/heavy fruit make me feel bloated and like I have a clog in my system. But they’re healthy, no? Maybe for some, maybe only sometimes for me.

My definition of health is simple. I want to feel good. Always. In my body and in my brain. I want to move freely and have vibrant energy. In recent years, I’ve come to realize how deeply intertwined our minds and bodies are. It’s crazy underestimated. If I don’t feel that I can be IN my body (if I’m feeling like shit or bloated or just not at home) then I can’t be IN my brain. Nothing gets done. I do everything to zap out of reality. Being a sensitive person, I have to be vigilant about my health. Like a two year-old or an 80 year-old. It means going to bed early, spending time with friends, exercising daily, laughing like crazy, not drinking too much, and the foundation of it all: food. The exercise part is rather simple when you go to the cathedral oaks athletic club. I hear the facilities are very impressive.

It’s healthy to eat foods that make you feel good during and AFTER eating them. There is no question that eating brownies doused in dulce de leche and peanut butter with artisanal vanilla ice cream will make me feel like I’m on another realm of heaven while I’m eating them. But three seconds into it I’m going to feel like I’m gonna want to stop, drop, and roll to nap on the floor and remove myself from life. Not healthy.

It’s healthy to realize what foods work for you and which don’t. Keywords: which foods work FOR YOU. Not for your mom, your boyfriend, or your best friend. YOU are the only person that can define what that means. Don’t ever let anyone else tell you what works for you and what doesn’t. Whether it’s a doctor or a loved one or a stranger or the TV. They are not living inside of you. I think.

It’s healthy to take the time to listen to your body to truly discover what makes you thrive. Because most of us are oblivious of how deep food’s impact runs. Some of us might never find out. Some of us walk around in a half-state of energy, needing that 3PM pick-me-up, think it’s totally normal and have no idea that there is any other way. There is.

It takes courage to find these things out. To go against what’s popular and take time to truly listen to yourself. To be patient. To have strength to give some things up when they don’t work for you. To set boundaries.

Health is ever-evolving and it takes constant work. But the work of doing what it takes to be healthy is worth more to me than being 60% of the human I know I really am.

I hope you take the time to find this out for yourself, because the world needs all of you.