Nutrition Through the Lifespan
Was there a time in your life when you could eat whatever you wanted, whenever you wanted, without consequence? Can you look back through your life and see the changing tide of your diet and your health? The food we eat and when we eat it throughout our lifespan can have a significant impact on our health and wellbeing. In this article, we filter down what we believe are fundamental truths of nutrition with the caveat that we must discover our individual optimal nutrition for our age and stage in life.
Eating whatever, whenever may have been a teenage phase for you. It certainly was for us, seemingly without consequence. You know the phase. When you were young you may have had your share of fast food burgers and fries, cafeteria pizza or poutine (for those fellow Canadians), and the buffet of movie theater soda, popcorn, and sweet treats. As you got older, into your 20’s, you may remember the moment you could no longer get away with eating that type of food as often. It either gave you an upset stomach or you gained weight much easier. To account for this, you made some reasonable changes, taking out some of the junk and adding salad to your diet. When you start to build a family and have children of your own, you find yourself planning and preparing food in advance to ensure everyone is getting a balanced meal. At some stage or other you begin to notice digestive issues or skin or joint issues only to then be diagnosed with some sort of auto-immune disease or Irritable Bowel Disease. The diagnosis requires a complete overhaul of your diet to a FODMAPS, Gluten Free, Vegan, or Paleo plan. And perhaps one works and another doesn’t, or you’ve tried them all to no avail. This might not be YOUR story, but the story of someone you know.
Our diets change throughout our life, but more importantly, our nutritional needs change through the course of our life too. There is no ONE way or ONE diet for everyone, all of the time, but rather a long dance of changes and shifts to meet our body where it’s at, throughout our lifespan.
The challenge in 2024 and for the last few decades is that there is a vast amount of conflicting information out there. One, well educated, credible nutritionist or scientist will spend their life cheerleading for a plant based diet, while the next will show you clear research and evidence that plant foods are disruptive to the human body and should not be consumed. “Eat plants”, “no eat only animal products”. “Avoid lectins, gluten and dairy”, “actually you can eat gluten, but only in Europe”. “Raw, vegan is the only way”. “Carnivore is the only way”. And so on.
To be perfectly frank, and from our perspective, the nutrition and wellness world is an absolute crap shoot when it comes to solid, sound, and clear advice. The disheartening piece to this is that marketing companies and large food corporations want you to be confused. If you’re confused and don’t know your up from down, you are left in a vulnerable position that will be taken advantage of and you’re likely to go with what’s hot and trending, just to realize it doesn't work for you or isn't sustainable or you have to change again in another 6 months to the next best thing. When this happens, we are completely bypassing our inner compass, hushing the wise whispers from our own body, and relinquishing our power to the powers that be - large corporations making a lot of money off of this very scenario, who simply cannot account for our individual health needs.
As health practitioners working in the wellness field for the last 20 years, we ourselves have shared and recommended specific advice around what to eat, how to eat, and what not to eat, but what we advised to clients 5 or 10 years ago is not what we would advise now. This is because we’ve both gained personal experience in our own diet changes and we have been immersed in the mixed messaging, research and discoveries from many of the nutrition experts out there in the world. We’re often as confused as the next person.
There are of course fundamental truths and advice that most all nutrition scientists across the board can agree on. There are those things that move you towards good health and those that move you away from good health, full stop. We’ve filtered them down to these main points:
Drink water (ideally filtered) throughout the day.
Choose healthy and wholesome sources of Protein, Fat, and Carbohydrates in the plant and animal kingdom. Depending on who we are and how our individual body functions in different stages of our lives, these food groups will sustain and optimize our health.
Eating whole foods is far superior to processed foods. Processed and packaged foods, consumed regularly, will have negative effects on our health at some point in time.
Sugar disrupts every system in the body. Sugar is found in most packaged and processed foods, along with cookies, cakes, most baked goods, and alcohol.
We’d like to add a final point here that we believe is a fundamental truth about nutrition that is not really about food at all. There are many contributing factors that affect our overall health and contribute to our ability to digest and absorb nutrition from our food and expel waste and toxins.
Our stress level, mental and emotional state, sleep hygiene, social, economic and living environments, and the season of life in which we are living, all play as much of a role on our health as the foods we eat. Just as rancid oils, high fructose corn syrup, or glyphosate (found in high and trace amounts in our commercial foods) all negatively impact our health, so does the “graveyard shift”, the high stress, high pressure careers, financial stresses, restless or sleepless nights, pregnancy, new motherhood, social media addiction, mold in the home, toxic air quality at work. The list goes on, but I think you get the idea. This is why, when someone asks, “should I be eating this?” or “I always eat this. Is that bad?”, the answer should most always be “IT DEPENDS”. That can be annoying to hear, but it’s the truth when looking at bio individual health and taking a truly holistic approach.
There is a guiding halo to all of this. An umbrella that governs all the things. The foundational belief and value that has been the mainstay throughout our own health journey and the very slogan of our brand, KYN - Know Your Nature. It starts by listening to your body and trusting the messaging. It is indeed the simplest and the most complex solution to uncovering our bodies' needs.
How do we do this? How do we begin to listen to our bodies? This example, from Lindsay, as she edits this article, helps to explain what it’s like to listen to the body:
I’m editing this article while drinking coffee with a little too much honey and a giant spoon of whipped cream on top, a special treat for the morning of computer work ahead. As I edit, I can feel the rush of sugar and caffeine in my body, but I ignore the feeling. I feel my shoulders and stomach tense as I type, something my body does when I’m under the pressure of completing a task. I ignore the feeling and continue working away. As I get to the last paragraph of the article, the one about ‘listening to the body’, I stop. I realize I’ve been ignoring my body completely, doing the very opposite of listening. As I stop and listen, I can feel the effects of having too much sugar - a cool wave over my skin and a light headedness. I notice I am holding in my stomach tightly and breathing short shallow breaths, if at all. A slight headache in the top right of my head starts gently pulsing and I notice my mouth is dry. Then, I sit back, drop my shoulders, soften my stomach, close my eyes and take a few deep slow breaths, down into my belly. They feel good so I take a few more. Then I pour a tall glass of water and drink it.
Lindsay had to STOP for a moment so she could really FEEL what was happening in her body. She chose not to ignore the symptoms she was noticing, and instead LISTEN to them. To do this most accurately, closing the eyes helps to focus attention inward, and deep breathing helps to settle the mind and nervous system and anchor you in the present experience. Lindsay knew she was dehydrated, that she’d had too much sugar and needed to take steps to settle and soothe her nervous system. She knew she was also unnecessarily tensing her body. Deep breathing and hydration, relaxing the muscles of her stomach and shoulders brought her back to a more comfortable state. She could take it a step further and decide not to add honey or whipped cream to her morning coffee in future, to avoid the sugar spike, and drink a tall glass of water before her work begins. This last step takes consistent discipline, to form a new habit and let go of an old one.
Listening to your body will bring you closer to good health more than any diet trend or nutritional science claim out there. It’s a practice and a discipline, it costs nothing and requires nothing but a few moments of your time. It starts simply by taking a few deep breaths.