MONDAY MINDSET: YOU ARE WHAT YOU EAT

WEEK OF 6.3.24

 

“You are what you eat.”

Pretty much everyone has heard that phrase a number of times throughout their life, and it’s pretty straight forward: your body uses the food you eat to repair and rebuild your body.

If you eat junk, you become junk. If you eat healthy, you become healthy. Et cetera.

A few weeks ago I had a student ask me how important their diet is to their overall health and progress, and my answer was the same answer I got when I asked that same question over a decade ago: “It’s everything.”

Barring insane outliers like Michael Phelps (who consumes 10k calories per day, or so the legend goes), most of us don’t need any special fads or approaches – just healthy food, in healthy amounts.

I find this kind of diet to be pretty simple, as you could put a plate of french fries to my left, and a plate of steamed broccoli to my right, and I’d intuitively know which one is better for me.

But there are other types of nourishment that affect our makeup, too.

What we read, what we think, and what we feel (or, if you want to get a little out there, “what we feel about what we feel”) also are consumed, and absorbed, by us.

Many businesses, people, and organizations are incentivized to convince you that you are lacking something, that you are not good enough, that you need whatever it is they are selling.

Sometimes these products are easy to identify (for example, a watch or a pair of jeans). But other types of products are more insidious – things like ideology, world view, and so on. These can fundamentally change how you see the world (for better or for worse), so it’s incredibly important to understand exactly what these things are, and how they work.

It’s not as simple as choosing between french fries and broccoli, now.

We have to ask hard questions of ourselves, and make honest decisions about what ideas, theories, and feelings we allow to become part of us.

Creating a healthy mind-body balance involves regulating what we eat, what we read, and what we think.

Martial Arts training is an excellent, and proven, vehicle for building the strength of character and discipline to make the right choices.

Our training doesn’t end when we step on the mats. It’s something we practice in every aspect of our life!

Be strong, be smart, be healthy.