Understanding Intuitive Eating Before we get into discussion about what will go on your plate, let's first go through how to figure that out. Intuitive eating—what even is that? It's not new, but it is somewhat new to popularity. Intuitive eating is the idea that you are the expert of you and that when you let yourself guide yourself to eat what you want and when you want, you'll do your best. It's completely the opposite of traditional diets that tell you what to eat, when to do it, and how to do it. It's revolutionary to think that you know better than professionals, but you do. The Role of Mindfulness So how do you do it? Intuitive eating is based on mindfulness, and mindfulness is something that has been popular for a while now where most people are somewhat familiar with it. It's very simple: mindfulness is just paying attention rather than doing things all the time on autopilot. You instead choose consciously to focus in your presence and just be here for your life and your experiences. And it's much harder than it seems because we're kind of chemically programmed to have those autopilot settings; it's something that our brains do just to help us get through life productively and functionally. So it takes a lot of work, as much as cooking, I would say, to really sit with and figure out what works for you. What intuitive eating is based off of—mindfulness—really can change our eating habits. That's because paying attention is so impactful in your world on every level. The more you pay attention to what's going on, the more you're going to be inspired to make what's going on better for you, for those around you, and for the world. Breaking Away from Dogma Mindfulness, as far as it goes in relationship to eating, takes practice. It does not come immediately, but you can shift focus to start being aware immediately, and over time your instincts will have kicked in and beaten out your dogma and your preconceived notions. And we'll get into what nutritional dogma is and how it has probably had an enormous impact on your life in a little while. But first, we're just going to kind of acknowledge that we don't necessarily think about what we eat all the time when we're doing it. We don't necessarily give it the attention it deserves, but even more so, we don't give food impacts on our body the attention it deserves. We are so caught up in finding these magic bullets that are going to make us feel everything's fixed, so we instead rely on the outside world to help us find those, and then we are disappointed over and over when they don't give us the results that we want. We don't lose the weight we want to lose, or we don't lose the inflammation we want, or we don't get stronger when we work out because we're listening to the outside world telling us what's going to work for us. Shifting Focus So I'm encouraging you to just shift focus dramatically from here on out—hopefully forever—into the idea that you know what's best for you. And what we need to do is not all the research to figure out what will work best for you, but help you get in touch with what all that "best for you" really is.

Let's talk about hunger. There are a lot of ways to experience hunger. Some are physical, and some are mental, and some are emotional. And when we're eating intuitively, we are learning to pay attention to all of them. Physical vs. Taste Hunger Physical hunger is the one we're most familiar with. It's that feeling in your stomach; it's that growling, it's that emptiness. It's your body's way of saying, "I need fuel." It's a biological necessity, and it's something that we should always honor. But then there's taste hunger. Taste hunger is when you're not necessarily physically hungry, but you want to eat something because it sounds good. Maybe you smell something delicious, or you see something that looks really appealing, and you just want to experience the taste of it. This is also a valid form of hunger, and it's something that we can honor as well, as long as we're doing it mindfully. Emotional Hunger And then there's emotional hunger. Emotional hunger is when we eat to cope with our feelings. Maybe we're stressed, or we're bored, or we're sad, and we turn to food for comfort. This is a very common experience, but it's not a form of hunger that food can actually satisfy. When we eat for emotional reasons, we're usually looking for something else—like connection, or relaxation, or excitement. And food can provide a temporary distraction, but it doesn't actually address the underlying emotion. The Hunger Scale So how do we start to tell the difference between these different types of hunger?. One way is to use a hunger scale. A hunger scale is just a simple way to rate your hunger on a scale of one to ten, with one being starving and ten being stuffed. When you're thinking about eating, take a moment to check in with yourself and see where you are on the scale. If you're at a one or a two, you're probably physically hungry and you should definitely eat. If you're at a five or a six, you might just be experiencing taste hunger or emotional hunger, and you might want to take a moment to see what's really going on. The goal of intuitive eating is to eat when you're physically hungry and to stop when you're satisfied—not when you're stuffed. This takes practice, but the more you do it, the more natural it will become.

Now that we've done the work to release the dogma around what foods the world is telling us we should be eating, it's time to talk about how to figure out how food makes you feel. It's simple, but it's something that most of us don't do because we're so caught up in eating the right foods; we don't pay enough attention to what are those foods actually doing for our bodies. I found that the people who pay the most attention to this are the ones who are forced to by illness. It's something that I experienced as a person who spent about half a decade with two different chronic illnesses. You just can't digest a lot when your body's not working well, so you're kind of forced to figure out what you can put in your body and what you can't. For everyone else, we just kind of do our thing and we go about our life and we kind of hope for the best when it comes to how our food is making us feel, but we don't really have any inspiration or need to pay attention to it. The Purpose of a Food Diary So this may be a little bit new for you. How you get in touch is a quicker process than how long it takes for intuitive eating to really take over your life. I'm someone who's very opposed to food diaries at large. Even in my modeling days of an egg and a quarter of an avocado for a meal, I never weighed or measured or counted calories; I just sort of instinctively ate in a way that facilitated my having the size body I needed for the job I had at the time. Beyond that, I think that when you add science to food as far as counting calories, weighing things out, you have zero chance of keeping the joy; I think that it takes the joy out of it. So when I say we're going to talk about keeping track of what we eat and have a food diary briefly, that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about facilitating intuitive eating and facilitating mindfulness around food. I do not at all encourage you to keep track of calories or quantities or anything else because the goal here with intuitive eating is that once you have yourself figured out, you're just going to choose what's best for you. And it doesn't matter whether someone says that's one cup of lean protein or 16 ounces of that; you're gonna figure out what works best for you. Tracking Ingredients and Feelings So I do want you for a period of time to keep track of what you eat; it'll help you discern what's working for you. You want to track more things than you might think because ingredients like spices and additives can very much have an impact on how you feel if they don't work for your body. So with each meal, you want to just jot down what it is you ate and a couple hours later you want to check in and jot down how you feel. If there's just no answer like, "I don't feel anything at all," that's great. That's food that's working well enough for you that there's no response; there's nothing wrong with that. However, quite often we either feel particularly energized and good after a meal, or we feel crappy. We're tired, we're bloated, we're gassy, we're uncomfortable in assorted ways. We may have inflammation. This is where you learn what foods work for your body. The only downside of this is the fact that bodies change over time, so this isn't a forever exercise where once you've done it you know henceforth for the rest of your life what's going to work for you. However, you know for now and you got the process, and once you have it it's way easier to keep hold of. This food diary is something that is in my wellness book, How to Be Well When You're Not, and I go into a lot more obviously than just this little bit. Duration and Consistency But I do believe that this little bit is completely sufficient to help you get started. You don't need—you don't need to do anything beyond this, but you do need to do this faithfully for a short amount of time. I encourage people to keep a food diary for about a week. If you are someone who is already super in touch with how everything affects you and you're the hyper-aware type, three or four days might do it. If you're someone who has a busier life or a more forgetful life and you only manage to check in and jot down ingredients and feelings about half your meals, it might be a better project to do over the course of a couple weeks or even a month. There's no right or wrong here and that's kind of the point. You're the person who's going to decide right and wrong, and you're not even going to do that; you're going to decide better for you or maybe not a fit. Challenging Nutritional Dogma And that's a better way of looking at things because it removes the dogma. And it can be surprising. One thing that I've discovered in working with people who have health ailments is that the foods prescribed for assorted ailments are often the ones that are the hardest to digest when you have those ailments. We're going to get into vegetables later and why they can be so difficult and how you can make them easier on your body, but we think of vegetables as this panacea that's just going to fix everything and that we need to fill our plates with. But if you're experiencing anything—even if you're just experiencing stress when you eat—and you're inhibiting the digestion process, vegetables require so much because they're fiber. It's something that is good for you because it doesn't break down; it just travels and it needs a lot of blood and a lot of help from your body to do that. The actual extraction of nutrients in your intestines is something your body really needs the space for, it really needs the blood for. Building Your "Yes" List So in this process of figuring out what works for you, the most important thing is simply that you're going to pay attention. You're going to eat, write down, "This is what I had," this is the list of it, and then about two hours later—which is long enough that your body has basically moved past having the food in your stomach and it is now in your intestines and has traveled along far enough that you should know how it affects you—you're gonna write down, "This is how I feel." And again, if you feel nothing, that's fine. If you're going to figure out pretty quickly that some things don't necessarily work for you and other things work really well, and once you know that, that becomes your foundation. Your new diet is simply everything on your "yes" list, and your new diet's restrictions are just everything on your "that made me feel not great" list. It's a little bit of a pain to begin with, but I promise you that this short exercise of just a few minutes a day has the ability to completely change your food life and your wellness.

The best part of intuitive eating after the food journal ties back into what makes you the least stressed when it comes to food. It's getting in touch with your body just like the food diary where you're figuring out what works for you. But it's getting in touch in relation to everything outside of your digestion: what your mind, body, and spirit need. Now, this isn't something that you'd have to worry about if we were just talking about most other daily functions—I don't have to encourage you to get in touch with your larger spiritual needs to go to the bathroom, for example. But as I've mentioned, food is this joyful—or at least food has the ability to be this joyful, wonderful, rewarding, fabulous part of our lives. So I'm here to help you figure out how to make it that the most. And I want to encourage you, when you're looking to plan your meals and you're looking to plan what you eat, to have a two-part focus. Two-Part Focus for Meal Planning One of them is on—one of your focuses is on—what foods are working best for my body right now? You know that based on the food diary that you kept, and you use that as your main inspiration and basis for the meals that you decide. Also, though, you want to think about nourishment on a deeper level because that's part of the satiation; that's part of the experience. We can't remove food from and our eating habits from all of the things that we associate with them culturally, so we might as well instead just lean into it and say, "Okay, how can I make this the best experience for me and my body and my mind and my spirit?" And that again ties back to what makes you the happiest—where if you prefer to eat with a friend and one isn't accessible, you can go ahead and FaceTime them. Understanding Preferences But it's also about the stimulation factors. Some people—of all the dietary choices and preferences I've come across—some people and their aversion to gooey foods would be the top one: yogurt, Jell-O, pudding. That's like the number one thing that when I ask people what they like and what they don't like, they tell me they don't like that texture. It's important to know what we like and what we don't like, and it's important to keep focus on that and to really delve into the experiences of what we like. I am someone—and I bring that up specifically because that's one of my favorite things, yogurts and puddings—I love soft, spoonable food. Other people want everything crunchy and rock hard. If I'm going to eat bread, I want it fresh and soft; other people want a dry piece of toast that's crunchy. Everyone has their innate preferences. So you really want to remember what yours are and you want to think about how you can satisfy them seasonally. Seasonal Instincts and Cultural Life And I'm someone who lives in Los Angeles where we marginally barely have seasons; I still, regardless of the fact that it might be 80 degrees out in January, will get requests from clients for hearty soups and stews because body memory says, "January, let's eat warming foods". Our instincts are so powerful and our preferences are so powerful, and I want to encourage you not to keep denying them like we're trained to do, but to delve into them and to really think about: what are the tastes you enjoy? What are the textures you enjoy? What are the emotional elements of food that you find the most satisfying? For me, a love for puddings and yogurts and that sort of thing—I just make a point of having those as my snacks sometimes. It doesn't have to be complicated. For people who like dry and crunchy, you might want to have crackers on hand more often, or nuts; either of which may be the thing that works for your body or doesn't. That's for you. Choosing Joy Over Guilt But because food is such a huge part of our cultural life, it only can serve us the best to make it the most joyful part of our own lives. So when you think about what you want and you're making that grocery list, don't just think about, "Oh, this vegetable for this thing" and "This is an easy one to cook," but let yourself really have a more childlike sense of what will bring me joy. Whether that's a super nutritious thing or a non-nutritious thing, all of it has a place. Eating something with joy produces joyful chemicals in your brain; therefore, it was a success. There's no reason to eat something that's non-nutritive and joy-based without that joy. You're not accomplishing anything at all if you're just like, "Oh no, I'm craving this thing. I broke down; I ate it. Now I have to feel guilty". You're not serving anyone. When I first started eating meat, I didn't want to eat it out because I wanted it to be as well sourced as possible. So I purchased it and I cooked it, and I didn't let myself season it because I didn't want to be able to enjoy it. It was my body that was suddenly craving it, so for the first month or so I just cooked chicken or beef plain, baked in the oven, because my body wanted it but I didn't want to enjoy it because I had so much guilt around eating animal products. All of my friends very quickly told me that I was being completely insane and cruel to myself, and they were right. And ever since, I season protein just like I season everything else and I make wonderful, delicious food that my body deserves to eat and my brain deserves to eat. We take things from ourselves because we have this weird martyr complex that it's going to make us a better person to suffer for our nutrition. But I'm here to tell you that's not the case. You're going to be the best version of you you can be by eating the foods that you choose with the most amount of joy.  

I'm so happy that we've come this far together and that you are clearly this invested in feeling good food can very much help you feel good, and you've learned a lot about how to help it do that for you. I chose this as the final lesson because once I inundate people with a whole lot of information and they walk away and they digest it and they absorb it. It's very natural to wonder, okay, then what next? How do I actually live this? We have so many tools and utensils and all these great resources that tell us, here's all the stuff. Here are all the things, but we have a whole lot less that actually breaks it down for us and says, here's how day to day you can make sure to incorporate everything you've learned. So I wanna go over the ways that you can do that, the daily wellness element of this. How to incorporate this into your life, everything you've learned and all the different ways that you've learned.  Now I have mentioned, I come from a fortunate background where. This wasn't a cause for concern for me, and it definitely, of course, is never a cause for concern if someone's hiring me As a private chef, if you have money for a private chef, you have money for any ingredients they want to use. But that's not the case. Most people in the world at large. And because I wanted to help more people, I shifted focus a number of years ago now from. Um, cooking just for people in their homes or in my home and having it sent to them to writing. And I write many, many articles monthly that are completely free and I write about a lot of different things, but one of them is easy and inexpensive recipes. So. If you're looking for free recipes, I encourage you to go to my website, which is just my name, arianne resnick.com, and click on the article section. And then there's a section of recipes. So that's one way to make sure that you have access to free and easy recipes that are focused on accessible ingredients and not taking up a ton of time. I don't like to do things that take up a ton of time. I don't encourage other people to spend their lives cooking, even as someone who absolutely could not love to cook more. The last thing I wanna do is spend the day in the kitchen for myself. Budgeting is hugely important. I can say with confidence that the more simple whole foods you buy, the less expensive your grocery bill is going to be. I encourage you to stock up on the things that are going to make fresh whole foods taste their best, and that's seasonings, oils, vinegars, spices, and herbs, dried herbs. Not totally separate from the fresh herb conversation. I just wanna make sure it's clear. I don't expect people to have a lot of fresh herbs on hand unless I'm cooking for someone. I rarely do. Having those things that gives you an arsenal. Of ways to make the simple fresh foods you buy taste good. It's hugely beneficial to making sure that you're actually going to be motivated to cook. I love having different vinegars on hand. That's because they keep for years and they add each a completely unique flavor. A sherry vinegar mixed with some oil and a little bit of mustard to emulsify is going to have an entirely different taste as a dressing. Then a red wine vinegar, or then an apple cider. Vinegar and vinegars are digestive because they're acidic and oils are necessary for our bodies. There's so many things just talking about oils, vinegars, spices, and herbs that you can keep on hand that will make simple foods taste great. If you have the time, I encourage you to do things like buy dried beans. They're much cheaper than buying them canned. However, they're still really cheap if you buy them canned or in uh, tetra pack, which is a little bit better than canned and you don't have to spend overnight soaking them and then two hours cooking them and that's great. I very much in recent years found myself becoming someone who, when I just needed a small quantity of beans, would just buy a can of beans. Because the amount of effort is not necessarily worth it. Time is valuable, and that's one way that I encourage you to look at your budgeting for your food is not just on what you spend on ingredients. But also what you spend on time and what your time is worth and how much of it you can spare.

Spending Your Food Money Wisely Next, I'd like to go over what foods you should be spending more of your food money on and what foods are totally okay to spend less of your food money on. Not all food is created equal, even when we're talking simple whole foods. Some things are really worth spending more and other things not so much. There are a lot of different studies that come out at different times about whether organic food is actually any healthier, and it's something that you can imagine I used to just say, "It doesn't matter if it's healthier, it's better because it's got less pesticides; always buy it no matter what". Obviously, the average person can't afford to do that, and I've learned in recent years that that's definitely not the way to think because it's just not true. There are very much foods that do matter what you spend on them, and there are very much foods that matter a whole lot less, if at all. Animal Products Animal products are typically what I encourage people to spend more money on. That's because they are literally more nutritious when they are well sourced. Additionally, I believe a lot in the energy around everything we do, and I think that if you have the option and you can afford to eat somebody who had a better life over somebody who had a worse life, then that's better energy that you're consuming. And that's purely personal, but when it comes to actual nutrients, there are—there are myriad ways that well-sourced animal products are more nutritive and dense than poorly sourced animal products. One example of that is grass-fed meat. It has more omega-3, which your body needs, and less omega-6, which your body doesn't need. There is one form of omega-6 that grasps that—there is one form of omega-6 that is very healthful and your body does need, and it is actually found in grass-fed meat more, and that's conjugated linoleic acid. And it is something that is good for your body for fat burning. Animal products are the number one thing—so dairy, eggs, and meat—I very much encourage you to spend more money on. Produce Priorities Another one is greens. That's really straightforward. It's because greens require pesticides. They are thin; even if they're thick like kale or chard, they're still relatively thin as a food. They're a flat thing, so it's very easy for bugs to get to them and to eat them. So they tend to be very heavily pesticided and they have no protection. There's nothing of—there's no skin, there's no shell, there's nothing to protect them from pesticides. So a lot of pesticides are used and, in turn, there's a lot of pesticide residue on them. Organic food doesn't mean that it contains no pesticides; it just means that it contains specific pesticides that have been deemed more healthy for your body and for the planet. They're considered more ecologically sound and they're also employed, put on the produce, in more ecologically sound ways than conventional foods—the pesticide process for those. So greens, I very much encourage you to purchase organic. I also encourage you to under buy versus overbuy because they don't keep, no matter how you get them. Whether it's a fresh head of lettuce or lettuce in a bag or lettuce in a plastic box, that lettuce is not going to last you terribly long. I really think it's important for people to be realistic about what they're going to eat because otherwise you're just buying food for the trash, and food waste is a huge situation in this country. I believe it's at least [a portion] of the food we buy that gets directly thrown in the trash. Thin-Skinned vs. Thick-Skinned Lastly, when it comes to foods you should spend more money on: fruit that has thin skin. And this is for the exact same reason as greens. Fruit is sugary and sweet smelling, so it naturally attracts pests and predators, and it tastes great because of that. It requires a lot of pesticides. If you have a fruit that has a very thin skin, such as an apple or a berry—which really has no skin at all—all of those pesticides are going to land on and stay in the fruit. Strawberries alone, I believe, have an average of about 50 pounds of pesticides added per acre. That's a lot. So you can just imagine, even if you're getting a gram or two per strawberry, you don't want that. Pesticides at large are endocrine disrupting, meaning they can give you a lot of health issues from your endocrine system, which is your hormonal system and specifically your thyroid, and they can cause an assortment of health problems including cancer. Then there are the foods that really don't matter that much, and some of these surprised me initially when I learned about them. Avocados for one. I worked with an avocado company; I had an endorsement deal with them for a while and I got to go to avocado groves and see the fruit being grown, and it was very fun. Avocados only receive pesticides, whether conventional or organic, once every seven years on average. Do you know what that means in terms of the likelihood that the avocado you're eating containing pesticides? It's so minimal. They don't have much pests—they don't have many pests—because they are very, very hard and they have a thick skin and they don't give off much odor at all. So avocados that you buy conventional, they're not certified organic because when pesticides are used, they're conventional, not organic pesticides, and they're put on in conventional, not organic methods. But the chances of that happening when you buy one? Very small. So avocados, there's just no need to purchase them organic. The remaining ones are of the next foods that it's not necessary to spend more money on: onions, pineapple, and asparagus all have a very minimal amount of pesticide residue at all. Onions are the lowest. They don't have many natural predators; they grow underground. It's just not something that you need to be spending twice the price on. Same with pineapple; it's very thick skinned. Other thick thin—other thick skinned fruit also falls under this label. Something like a grapefruit: even if it's been pet—even if it's had pesticides applied, that grapefruit skin is that thick, you're not getting any of them. When they test actual grapefruit pulp, it does not tend to contain much if any pesticide residue at all. Summary So those are the foods that I encourage you to let loose a little bit. And if you're wondering what else, as far as all the other foods go, research takes just a moment. All you have to google is, "Is this food necessary to buy organic?" and the internet will tell you very quickly. I really encourage you to just prioritize: start with meat and animal products and make sure that you spend the most on those, and then greens and thin sinks—and then greens and thin skinned fruit—and then just work your way down and spend less on things that matter less.

Next up, we have talked so much about specific foods and how to eat and how they make you feel, and we have not yet touched on the fact that sometimes you want to eat out in the world and you don't want to cook. It's okay. It's fine. It's not that big a deal. Restaurant food is definitely unlikely to be as high quality as the food that you're eating at home that you would cook for yourself. And if it is as high quality, for one, it's gonna cost you a fortune, and for another, it probably still has more sugar, salt, and fat than you could ever bring yourself to add to food. The Reality of Restaurant Cooking Having worked in restaurants, I've never stopped being shocked at the quantity of things that go into food. One example would be time I spent in a corporate role this past year where I spent a week in a steakhouse watching and learning. The average meal at that steakhouse—which was undoubtedly delicious, wonderful food—the average meal, if you factor in people eating a portion of an appetizer, an entree, and a portion of a dessert, was about a stick of butter that each restaurant patron was likely to eat. That is more butter than you could probably bring yourself to put in your food for a number of meals, let alone a single meal. So it's very good to know that restaurant food tastes as good as it does because they are putting in more sugar, more salt, and more fat than you could or would ever put in your own food. So that's good to know. Prioritizing Joy and Digestion And now what? We need joy. If you don't let yourself have things that you love—whether that is just the break from cooking or specific foods themselves that are wonderful—you're going to eat with stress. And what happens when you eat with stress? You're not going to digest your food; you're going to be unhappy and you're going to be less healthy. In that vein, yeah, takeout is awesome. In times when we can eat in restaurants, I cannot tell you how much I am looking forward to someone bringing me food, my eating it, and them taking a plate away and my not having to wash it. There is something really magical about being served, and especially when you're nice to the people doing it for you so that they want you to be there too. It's a beautiful relationship and I encourage you to take part in it. Mindful Choices and Planning Just be mindful. Make a point of eating in places and eating food from places that you want, that you're craving, that you enjoy the taste of, and that doesn't make you feel lousy afterwards. What I encourage you to stay away from is just that last-in-the-moment, "Oh no, I'm too hungry, I don't want to cook, I'm just going to grab something," and I'm not even going to really enjoy it and I'm going to feel badly after that. There's no point to [it] because that, too, is just a bunch of stress. The way to mitigate that is simply to decide in advance how your time will be dedicated week by week or even few days by few days. You don't necessarily have to meal prep in that you don't have to spend your Sunday making food for an entire week. I don't ever do that and I don't particularly encourage other people to do that because I think that it takes up so much time and often creates a lot of food you don't even want later. Realistic Meal Prep I do encourage people to find dishes they want to make that sound exciting, that they'll want to eat leftovers for. So for example, if you want a lasagna, make a lasagna, but add in a layer of eggplant and a layer of zucchini so there's a bunch of vegetables in there. Or if you don't like that, just make a lasagna with a big salad that will keep where you mix the ingredients and they're on the firmer side, or you just make a dressing and you have a bag of greens, and that way you're fed for days. So when you get home or you finish your work day and you're hungry, you're all set. It's no big deal; you've got food made. I very much encourage that type of meal prep. If you plan ahead—even just mentally, not necessarily physically—and you have dedicated time and space for restaurant food, then when you do that you can enjoy it and you can feel good about it. I already know that based on election results, I will be having sushi tonight because it feels celebratory to me. I've decided that in advance. There's nothing wrong with that. I'm celebrating what feels like a joyful occasion with food that feels joyful and that makes me feel good. I encourage you to do the same.

Reading Labels and Trusting Your Body We’ve come to the final part of this lesson, and that is how, in your quest for daily wellness, you can keep the dogma out in the future. Undoubtedly, in addition to purchasing simple whole foods, you will purchase food that has a label; it's inevitable. And in fact, I encourage you to. Why is that? Because snacking is joyful. I have made it through a lot of difficult time in the last year thanks to organic Barbara's Cheese Puffs. They're one thing that my mother purchased when I was a child; they're hugely nostalgic to me, and they have provided me a sense of childhood comfort that I could not otherwise have. I don't generally eat them, but I've eaten about a bag a week for the last—since last March. The Importance of Joy and Moderation There's nothing wrong with that. There's nothing wrong with any of it. Moderation is what matters; eating with joy is what matters, and making sure that you're eating quantities of foods that don't make you feel bad. So let's acknowledge that you're going to buy things that have labels, and you're going to read those labels. And when you read those labels, you're going to have feelings and you're going to make choices, the main choice being: "Do I put this in my cart or do I put it back on the shelf?" I encourage you to read labels through the lens of everything you've learned. Specifically, through the lens of everything you've learned about what foods make you feel good. Obviously, there's no health value in buying something that has a list of artificial colors, artificial flavors, and additives, but if occasionally you eat those foods and they don't make you feel bad, then there's not really anything to stress about. Daily consumption is probably not a good goal and probably not going to serve you well long term, but something occasional—occasionally most anything is pretty okay. Personalizing Your Choices So when you're looking at ingredients, I encourage you to look for specifically foods in labels that you know make your body feel good, regardless of what you've heard about them. And I encourage you to avoid foods and ingredients on labels that make you feel bad, regardless of what you've heard about them. Personally, we've discussed prebiotics. When I see inulin as an ingredient, I don't care that I'm adding to the fiber of a processed food, and I don't care that it makes that processed food better for me; it's going to make me bloated and it's going to give me a stomachache. So I put it back, even though it's a good ingredient. It's an ingredient that my body wants nothing to do with. A Final Word on Trust So when you're looking at labels, when you're deciding—even through recipes that you see online—what you want to cook, what you want to make for dinner, what you want to have for a treat that you might want to make, stop looking through the lens of what the world has told you you should be eating and start looking through the lens of what your unique body knows it should be eating. Again, I'm so happy that you went through this with me and that we have taken a journey together to discover how food can make you feel as well and whole as possible, and how foods can be healing for your body. I don't have anything more than that. I leave you with trust; I leave you with the trust that you're going to figure out, or you already have figured out, what works for you and you're going to eat accordingly and you're going to feel better. And there is nothing I could give you that is tastier or more delicious or more healthful than that.