Personal Philosophy of Healthy Eating: Eat to Live, Don’t Live to Eat

Danielle Flesher

NUTR 401

Jennifer Zuercher

January 20, 2022

 Food is something we need in order to properly function and stay alive. We obtain

nutrients through food that provide us with energy to go about our day and accomplish our goals.

It plays such a vital role in our lives, but if we let it rule our minds, it gets in the way of other

important life experiences, like achieving goals. That’s why I think it’s important to distinguish

between eating to live and living to eat. There are important factors to consider in accomplishing

this mindset, like eating in moderation and individualization of a diet.

Eating in moderation is a simple yet overlooked method to healthy eating. Sometimes we

can get so caught up with the diets that celebrities and our relatives are on, we forget that food is

not the enemy. Foods are not inherently good or bad for you. It’s usually the quantity that can

negatively impact our health, so eating a slice of cake once a month is not going to give you

diabetes in the same way one salad will not make you lose five pounds. Keeping moderation in

mind, you won’t have to restrict your favorite foods that cause cravings you eventually give into

and feel guilt for doing so.

The next part important to healthy eating is knowing that your body is different than

everyone else’s. There are many ways a person can live a healthy lifestyle, so there is not one set

in stone method to maintaining a diet that promotes health. That’s why individualization of one’s

diet is key in achieving healthy eating. Back to the diets that celebrities and our crazy relatives

are on, we think because it works for them, it must work for us. Celebrities also advertise these

diets and say, “If you do exactly what I did, you can look like me!”. This is completely deceitful!

Whether or not the diet they may or not have been on worked for them, doesn’t mean it will

work for another person. We all have different preferences of foods based on experiences and

culture, which is why following someone else’s diet, or a fad diet never persists. We should

honor those preferences from our experiences and culture by implementing them in our diet.
 The phrase, living to eat means constantly thinking about food to an unhealthy standard.

Society sets a food focused mentality: young girls, constantly worried about what foods will

make them gain weight and fast food companies, globalizing their products with manipulative

advertising and making it so you can’t go 10 miles without seeing their logo. We are bombarded

with thoughts about what foods to eat or not eat and where to eat them, so it’s hard to silence this

part our brains and focus on other, more meaningful parts of our life. The phrase, eating to live

means to fuel the body while keeping the mind at peace. Eating foods that make you feel good as

well as those that will advance you in your goals is a valuable part of healthy eating.

Eating is an inevitable part of life that, sadly becomes more complicated than it needs to

be. I think that a reminder of the basics every once in a while, like eating in moderation, relieves

some of the complication. Another reminder that everybody’s body is different promotes the

individualization of diets that makes for healthy eating. These components ease the mind around

the confusion one can feel about how to eat healthy and allows one to eat to live and not live to

eat.