Peggy is a pescatarian. Wild salmon, halibut, sardines, leafy greens, avocados, berries. She feels light, clear, and energetic eating that way.
I’m a carnivore. Five to ten eggs a day, plenty of red meat, some dairy. My energy stays steady, my blood sugar is stable, and I feel better than I did twenty years ago. Changing how I ate was a big part of reversing my type 2 diabetes and getting my health back.
We’ve been married a long time. We eat completely different meals at the same table almost every day.
And that’s perfectly fine.
Neither of us is trying to convince the other to change. Peggy doesn’t need to eat a hamburger to make me happy, and I don’t need a plate of kale to prove I love her.
We’ve figured out what works for us.
Which is apparently a rather difficult concept for the diet industry to understand.
Everybody wants to be right
Carnivore. Vegan. Keto. Mediterranean. Low-fat. Low-carb. Plant-based.
Pick a camp, and somebody will be happy to explain why everybody else is wrong.
Buy the book. Follow the protocol. Eat exactly like them or you’re doing it wrong.
That’s not nutrition. That’s marketing.
I’ve spent years experimenting with food, and Peggy has done the same. We’ve also spent decades teaching people, listening to their experiences, and watching what happens when they start making changes.
One thing has become pretty obvious to us.
There isn’t one perfect diet for everybody.
I know people who feel wonderful eating mostly plants. I know others who do much better with animal foods. And plenty of people are perfectly happy somewhere in the middle.
Why would I argue with somebody who’s feeling better, moving better, sleeping well, and enjoying life simply because their dinner looks different from mine?
That would be ridiculous.
Where we agree
Despite our different menus, Peggy and I have some pretty strong opinions about food.
We avoid highly processed foods. We stay away from industrial seed oils like soybean, canola, corn, and sunflower oil. And we keep added sugar to a minimum.
Those are choices we’ve made based on years of reading, experimenting, and paying attention to how we feel.
We didn’t arrive at them because somebody handed us a list of rules.
We arrived at them because we kept changing things and noticing what happened.
Years ago, we ate much more of what was being promoted as a healthy diet. Whole grains, low-fat products, and packaged foods with reassuring claims printed all over the boxes.
We weren’t doing anything particularly unusual. We were following the advice that was everywhere.
But neither of us felt as good as we do now.
We had less energy, more aches and pains, and didn’t feel particularly satisfied with the results.
So we started changing things.
We removed most of the processed food, cut back dramatically on sugar, and became much more selective about what we ate.
Then something interesting happened.
We didn’t end up eating the same way.
Peggy found that fish, vegetables, berries, and other foods she enjoys worked beautifully for her. I gradually moved toward eating mostly animal foods.
Same kitchen. Same philosophy. Different plates.
And we’re both happy with the arrangement.
Your body gets a vote
One of the things that bothers me about nutritional advice is how often people are told what they should be experiencing instead of being encouraged to notice what they actually experience.
Somebody says a particular food is supposed to give you energy.
Fine. Does it?
Somebody tells you a certain way of eating is supposed to make you feel wonderful.
Okay. Do you?
What happens after you eat? Are you satisfied, or are you hunting for something else an hour later? How’s your energy in the afternoon? How are you sleeping? Do you wake up feeling good, or does everything complain when you get out of bed?
Those are useful things to notice.
They’re not the only things that matter. Blood work and other measurements can tell us things we can’t necessarily feel. But I don’t understand why we would ignore our everyday experience when making decisions about how to live.
Your body is the best experiment you’ll ever run.
And you get to keep learning from it.
Dinner at our house
I suppose Peggy and I could make life simpler by eating exactly the same things.
But why?
She’s happy with her salmon. I’m happy with my steal. We both enjoy our meals, and neither of us spends dinner lecturing the other about nutrition.
We’ve got much more interesting things to talk about.
After all these years, I think we’ve learned something worth keeping.
You don’t have to agree about everything to agree about what matters.
And when it comes to food, what matters to us is pretty simple.
Eat food you enjoy. Pay attention to what it does for you. Be willing to change when something isn’t working.
And don’t let somebody selling a diet convince you that the person sitting across the table has to eat exactly like you do.
Peggy would probably get tired of steal anyway.