I was having an interesting discussion the other day with a client. We were discussing her diet and she was telling me how she had basically been living out of restaurants and vending machines (or their big brothers, also known as convenience stores or kiosks at the airport) for the past 2-3 years because she was always on the go. She was also lamenting about how her health had deteriorated immensely over that same time period. She wasn’t getting the connection until I came up with the following thought.
I said to her “It sounds like you utilize information from a lot of different sources in your job/life. And by necessity, you need good quality information to get your job done correctly. Food is the information your body relies on to do its job correctly. Food is information.”
I stopped for a couple seconds to let this sink in. Once the blank stare transformed into the ‘I think I just saw the light bulb go on’ expression she burst out “I get it. The information (food) I’ve been giving my body is making it slow down, work improperly and less efficiently. That’s why I’m always tired, I’m not sleeping well and I’m gaining weight. In essence, by eating the way that I have been, I’m telling my body to do exactly what it has been doing – breaking down. I’ve been giving my body bad information, and there is no way to run a system well with bad information.”
She got it; and she started to view food differently.
Food is information and it is one of the prime information sources for our bodies. If we give the body good information (food) it at least has a chance to run smoothly. However, if we give the body poor quality information (food), there’s no chance.
The next time you reach to put something in your mouth, stop and ask yourself what information/signal this is sending to your body. What chance does your body have of doing what you want it to do with the information you’ve given it? If you guesstimate that you have less than an 80% chance of getting the outcome you want, you may want to make a different choice.
