The Only Health-related New Year's Resolution You Need
The one that rules them all
I have thought a lot over the last few days about what to write to you as 2024 draws to a close and 2025 rings in later this week.
I thought about doing a ‘best of’ roll up of TNH posts, especially because there has been a jump in new readers in the last two months. To those new faces I want to say, “Thanks!” for the vote of confidence, and for your attention, and most of all: “Welcome!”
I also thought about sharing the best books I read in 2024. There is always so much to learn and so much to share!
But then yesterday, as I was cooking up a sofrito to enrich my pasta sauce (welcome to my world
), it came to me.What I truly want to share with you is focused on the future. Not where we’ve been in 2024, but where we are going in 2025.
If there is just one thing to focus on for 2025, one primary objective that will make the difference in all your health and wellness endeavors for the year, then my choice would be this:
Make the connection between what you eat and how you feel
It doesn’t matter if your goal is to lose 10 pounds or 100.
It doesn’t matter if you are trying to get control of a devastating health diagnosis or you are looking to further enhance your wonderful health and longevity.
It doesn’t matter if you are 22 or 82.
What matters the most to every fitness, wellness or health goal that you can set is dialing into your mind-body-food connection.
THIS is the starting point of health and wellness.
What are you eating? How is that making you feel?
I’ve outlined 6 broad steps that can help turn this idea into a powerhouse resolution for change in 2025. Let’s dive in.
Getting started
(1) Awareness
Awareness is the most critical first element that allows us to change anything. You cannot change what you are not even aware of.
This means paying attention to what your body is telling you.
That muscle cramp, stomach upset, headache, fatigue, brain fog - they are tied to your mind-body dynamic and what fuel you just put into your preverbal tank.
If you don’t like how you feel physically or how you feel mentally, then the first whistle stop on the way to feeling better is becoming aware of what is connected to those feelings of dis-ease.
(2) Data
Get the facts straight.
No two people are the same. What keeps me awake at night (coffee in the afternoon or evening!) may not bother you. What gives me sustained energy might be your worst allergen.
The way to understand the signals from your mind and body is to collect some facts about what YOU eat and how YOU feel.
Keep a food diary for a week, or a month. But not just what you eat and drink - also how it makes you feel. When did you eat vs when did the headache start? But remember it could take days (not simply hours) to build an understanding of your mind-body-food connections.
Is your overall diet lacking something critical? In 2024, blood tests revealed I was critically short of both Magnesium and Iron. As I improved my diet and took supplements to influence this, my blood pressure dropped, fatigue improved and muscle cramps ended . . .. . go figure.
The signs and symptoms your body and mind are throwing at you are not the result of a drug-shortage. You are not overweight because you lack Ozempic or anxious because you have a chronic shortage of benzodiazepines.
The more we know about the mind-body-food connection, the more we understand that gut health affects brain health, what you think can become what your body feels, and your food choices can shape your wellness future.
(3) Drop ultra-processed foods
The simple biological reality for each one of us is that we are ancient humans living in a modern world.
Foods created - literally manufactured into existence since the early 1900’s like high-fructose corn syrup - have no biological analogue in our evolutionary history. Our bodies did not evolve in a world where high quality sugar was easy to access. Nor did we evolve on a steady diet of chemical preservatives, hydrogenated fats, and nutrient-stripped grains.
Dropping ultra-processed foods doesn’t have to be a sudden and dramatic change either.
I started with just one change in 2023 - I dropped potato chips. That was a hard change for me. I was addicted to chips! I tried to stop eating them as often. But the reality for me was if they were in the cupboard, sooner or later I opened that bag and gobbled it up.
So I stopped buying chips altogether. And it was hard at first to break the go-to habit of chips as a snack. But without them at hand, I learned to eat some nuts instead. My first better decision.
Then I switched out soda for flavored bubbly water, and eventually just plain bubbly water.
Then I started asking myself which things in the cupboard I could make myself. Like seriously - how hard is it to make tomato sauce? Not hard at all.
Then I swapped out granola bars for real cheese melted on a whole grain cracker.
And so on, and so on. One sustainable shift at a time.
Until now, I’ve just started to make my own sourdough bread and OMG WHY didn’t I start there???
But it was too much for me a year or two ago to start there. And today it is the obvious next step to change.
Shifting our food habits is a journey. As our minds and bodies celebrate the higher quality food, it gets easier and easier to make the next change, and then the next.
Drop ultra-processed foods. The journey will surprise you.
(4) Heal your traumas
Whether you have suffered from big T or little t (T)trauma, the reality is that each one of us bears the scars of a life lived. Some of those wounds affect us so deeply that they impact our ability to achieve health and wellness.
I was suffering from my own version of PTSD in 2021/22. It was so bad that I wasn’t even sleeping 2 hours a night for days at a time, week after week. Lack of sleep is a deadly force in our lives. But I wasn’t connecting the dots between what was going on in my head, and showing up in my life.
Getting help, learning various ways to deal with my thoughts, developing meditation skills, and understanding how to listen to what my body was asking for and doing that thing - all of this changed me from a trainwreck I had become back into my happy, centered functioning self again. That healing journey let me re-start myself, and led me here to start writing The Naturalized Human to share what I am learning.
Our brains are exquisitely designed to keep us safe. That’s why humans have survived in a challenging world filled with poisons and predators for thousands of years.
Our brains are still learning to navigate a world where the “dangers” we perceive are largely in our heads. . . . thinking about the overdue report, or the upcoming presentation, or the missed car payment isn’t actually going to kill us, but our brains think it can. We are living in a state of constant stress.
Getting rid of the noise in your head, especially if it is largely just keeping you safe from ghosts, can be critical to finding peace and joy and creating stable improvements in your life.
(5) Move more
Just like switching out one ultra-processed food at a time, move more is a simple mantra.
Just move your body. . . . . MORE.
If you’re sitting, stand up. If you’re standing, try balancing on one leg. If you’re out shopping, park on the far side of the lot. If you already walk for 20 min, walk for 25.
I have the advantage of living on a small farm, which means no matter what the weather, 365 days a year, the animals need tending. I walk back and forth, carry buckets, fix fences, haul firewood. . . . It is a life that readily provides me with daily movement.
If that’s not your life, finding things you enjoy that get your body moving is a must.
You are a human. You are made to move and bend and run and jump.
Move it or lose it is very real, especially as we age.
(6) Build relationships
One of the greatest gifts of writing on Substack is the amazing community of writers and readers that live here. I am so grateful to all those I am meeting and sharing ideas with.
The bonds that tie us together help us live longer and live better.
Building community, support, love, and empathy strengthen each one of us.
And that goes for our animal companion bonds as well!
As I am sitting here typing, my dog Hiro came over and demanded a hug. He is the huggiest dog I have ever lived with. He will literally jam his head under my arm and pretzel around until I physically stop what I am doing, acknowledge him, and hug him. I haven’t figured out what triggers these episodes - he can be happily sleeping when suddenly the urge for a hug has him seeking me out- but something sends him to me and I am grateful (most of the time!).
It’s all connected
The journey to better health and wellness begins with the simplest of ideas: It’s all connected.
We’ve been brain-washed by decades of reductionist Western science into thinking we can solve any problem by looking at its parts. But that is literally only a part of the story!
We get caught in nonsense arguments like a calorie is a calorie. Well, yes, in the laboratory 100 calories of Coke and 100 calories of broccoli release the same energy.
But in the body - in YOUR body - 100 calories of Coke are going to spike your blood sugar and 100 calorie of broccoli will not.
Because our bodies are not a set of isolated mechanisms.
Because the energy count in foods is not the only metric that matters.
Because food quality is as (or more) important than food energy.
As 2025 quickly approaches, and may already be here by the time you read this, I wish you health and happiness!
And I encourage you to make the only resolution that really counts this year:
Make the connection between what you eat and how you feel!
Happy New Year!
Top Posts
My top 3 most popular posts of 2024:
Top Books
My top 4 mind-body-food related books of 2024 [with Amazon affiliate links to find them faster if you so choose]:
Pathological: The True Story of Six Misdiagnoses - by
[Pathological link]Medicine Wheel for the Planet: A Journey toward Personal and Ecological Healing - by Jennifer Grenz [Medicine Wheel link]
The Forever Dog: Surprising New Science To Help Your Canine Companion Live Younger, Healthier, And Longer - by Rodney Habib and Karen Shaw Becker [Because our dogs need to get off ultra-processed foods too! . . . Forever Dog link]
Growing Figs In Cold Climates: A Complete Guide - by Lee Reich [Fig link]
The Naturalized Human brings together the science and human experience of the mind-body-food connection. I hope you stick around and become part of this community seeking to understand how the food we eat, and the environments we live in, impact everything about our minds and bodies.
Wow this is such a meaty post - it could be 5 or 6 posts!!!
I really feel that love of chips too. My only solution has been to only bring them home on special occasions, like company coming over. Otherwise I’ll demolish an entire family-size bag alone.
I appreciate your section on the food diary and how each food makes a person feel. It’s work, but that information is well worth the time spent and helps make us aware of what we are doing to create or hurt our health.
After logging my own eating habits I’ve come to the unfortunate conclusion that any combination of ultra-processed food and hot peppers throws my whole intestinal tract in an uproar that lasts a couple days. Yet, spicy whole foods don’t do that to me. The food journal helped me figure that out, just one more reason to ditch processed food lol!