It’s been a long time since I went back to the basics, but a letter this week from a reader in Missouri prompted me to think again about the basics. He asked specifically about fat, carbohydrate, and protein. I will get to what he said in a minute, but before I talk about food I would first like to talk about wellness.

When I think about being healthy I think about three intersecting spheres: 1) eating patterns (notice that I did not call it dieting), 2) activity patterns (not exercise), and 3) rest and relaxation. Each of these spheres plays an essential role not just in and of itself, but also in the way it affects the other two. For example, everyone enjoys being the recipient of homegrown tomatoes from a few tomato plants that were planted in the ground back in the spring (eating and activity). People tend to sleep better after having gone for a long hike (activity and rest & relaxation). I reap joy from seeing my family lie around together like a pile of puppies on the couches and floors after Thanksgiving dinner (rest & relaxation and eating).

I do not care for the words “diet” and “exercise.” These terms carry a lot of baggage, and they are things we feel we’re supposed to do instead of things we choose to do. Instead, try calling them eating patterns, activity patterns, and rest & relaxation patterns. Let’s discuss them one at a time.

Activity patterns
Walking instead of driving, taking the stairs instead of the elevator, brushing your teeth on one foot, stretching out your lower back for a minute after your shower, standing at your desk, or walking while meeting with a co-worker are different ways to increase activity without signing up for an exercise class. According to the research, wearing a pedometer increases your daily steps by 1,000 simply by wearing one. Sometimes, sitting behind the wheel of my car feels to me like I’m driving around town on my living room couch. Mobile couch potato. Powering my own engine by walking on my own two legs feels a lot different. Whereas exercise seems like a major investment, activity is just another word for movement. It’s exercise with a little less fanfare.

Eating patterns
Where do I even start with “diets”? First, they don’t work. Secondly, they don’t work. It diets worked, we would already be eating that way. Not only is it unreasonable to ask someone to overhaul their entire food pattern starting tomorrow, it’s crazy to imagine that they could keep it up for the rest of their life. Not just that, but that feeling of failure (it was inevitable) chips away at your sense of self respect and makes it even harder to be kind to yourself. Changing the way you eat is a big nut to crack. Better is to consider more concete recommendations. Like identifying and then replacing stripped carbs (corn starch/syrup, white flour, white rice, sugar) with intact carbs such as vegetables, beans, fruits, and whole grains. And skipping trans fats, cottonseed oil, and other ultraprocessed oils in favor of nourishing oils like avocados, olives, fish, nuts and nut butters. And eating more whole foods instead of processed treats with whole foods. It’s not that you can’t have them; it’s just that they don’t go in the plus column. Edible entertainment may be fun, but it’s not food.

My reader from Missouri, Mike, asked about a piechart I shared at a talk I gave in Big Sky, Montana, in the year before the pandemic. The chart was divided into six sections: stripped vs intact carbs, low-quality vs high-quality protein, manufactured vs nourishing fats. In each case, the goal of my presentation was to show that virtually every popular diet, from Atkins to Zone and everywhere in between, is some version of a strategy for encouraging adherents to shift their food choices from the first option (stripped, low-quality, manufactured) to the second (intact carbs, high-quality protein, nourishing fats). That’s what I mean when I say eating patterns. It’s not a diet; it’s a way of eating.

Rest & relaxation patterns
Rest & relaxation means something different to each of us. Think of a regular bedtime with an adequate number of hours of sleep. Easy to say, and not so easy to accomplish. Ask yourself how you could recharge your batteries. Besides sleep, what else transports you and makes the minutes and hours disappear? It might be photography, soccer, cooking, book club, training a dog, knitting, painting, hiking or backpacking, You might say gardening, being with friends, writing, editing, holding a kitten, dancing, playing piano, meditating, yoga, pedicures, classical music, woodworking. Maybe it’s LEGOS, reading, a regular afternoon nap on the weekend, seeing a play, hearing a concert, or listening to wind chimes.

While each of these spheres plays an essential role in its own right, there is a special kind of synergy where they intersect. A hike to a picnic grounds, a special dish to share with friends, a yoga class that incorporates both movement and relaxation, scheduling your mammogram appointment along with a friend and then going out for lunch afterward, gardening with grandchildren — all of these are examples.

Make it a goal to be kinder to yourself, and to pick choices that make you content, happy, peaceful, or satisfied. Those are the choices to which you are more likely to return over and over. Those are the choices to which you will return as you make your life.