What I Focus On Each Week to Fuel My Journey

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I confess: I have a snacking habit. I walk through my kitchen and automatically grab a Triscuit with some chicken salad on it. Or one of Anna’s homemade oatmeal peanut butter balls. Or a handful of nuts.

It’s a habit that I admit I need to break, and after years of research into improving my healthspan and avoiding dementia, I’d like to share with you what I focus my attention on the most while fueling my journey.

Avoid snacking is just one small part of much more important daily habits.

Everyone, every body, has different nutritional needs. I spend about $500 a year on copays and the Function app to test over 100 biomarkers; many of them show me exactly where I’m personally deficient. I encourage you to do the same.

Why would you supplement Vitamin D, for example, if your levels are already optimal? On the other hand, you absolutely should be taking a supplement if your levels are below what’s healthy. See where YOU are starting from, and go from there with precise food and supplement choices.

Obviously I’m far from a perfect eater. Besides, there is no “perfect.” What you put into your body is your decision based on what your body needs. But I will say this: What you eat fuels your body and is as powerful as medicine. This we know. Junk in = junk out. Treat your body well by giving it the best food you can feed yourself within your ability.

YOU ARE WORTH IT.

Breakfast

Breakfast is my favorite meal. I tend to delay it until about 10 or 11 a.m., mainly because I’m not usually hungry when I first wake up, but also to help lengthen that natural fast between the end of supper and the morning.

When I’m ready for breakfast, however, I’m all into the savory choices:

• An egg on sourdough toast topped with avocado slices and a wee touch of Dukes, pinch of salt and pepper

• Leftover veggies warmed up with an egg

• Cooked oatmeal with chopped apples and cinnamon with a tiny drizzle of maple syrup (so easy to do in a rice cooker, by the way)

• Greek yogurt with blueberries, walnut, and a small scoop of protein powder stirred in (not so savory, but still a favorite)

• Onigiri (rice ball) with salmon, seaweed, and sesame seeds (I’m shifting to brown rice, and I also add in quinoa)

YUM.

Unless I’m meeting a friend for a special lunch out, breakfast is really more like brunch, so I often don’t have a lunch. If so, however, I try to make a giant chopped salad filled with greens and veggies.

My favorite short cut is the bagged chopped salads from Fresh Market. I only use 1/3 of their dressing, by the way. It’s much too generous. At any rate, homemade is better if you have the time.

Researchers in both the longevity field and brain health field agree that a massive salad is most likely our best option for lunch. Needless to say, if I must eat at a fast-food restaurant, I’ll go for a Chick-fil-A salad and 50/50 iced tea.

I’ll insert one of my favorite Chick-fil-A stories here.

I love their peach milkshakes in the summer and the mint one in the winter; however, I avoid sugar and processed foods. Nevertheless, I find them hard to resist, so I made a deal with myself I few years ago: I’ll drink only one a year, a peach one in the summer, and mint one in the winter.

Well, if you’ve been to a CFA, you know they print your name, similarly to Starbucks, on a label on your bag. As I was collecting my one peach shake one evening this past summer, an older gentleman, likely retired yet still working in the drive-thru, handed me my salad and my highly anticipated, once-a-year shake.

Because I’ve never met a stranger that I don’t end up inviting to my children’s future weddings, I shared with him that I was so excited because this was my one and only peach milkshake of the entire year.

He leaned way down into my window as he handed me the cup and said: “Miss Laura, drink it real slow.”

Just like I make a personal decision to splurge on a couple of processed sugar milkshakes every year, your exact specifics with your nutrition are also personal and won’t always be based on facts or logic.

Based on current research (I have a long list of transformational books), and from everything I’ve learned from a wide-range of experts across the healthspan field, I’ll try to summarize the guidelines for nutritional wellness that I personally follow.

Here are what I believe to be solid, research-backed food guidelines that are likely to be more helpful than harmful.

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✔️ Eat mainly plants.

✔️ Eat healthy fats like from olive oil, avocados, nuts, seeds, and coconut oil. I find this guidance pretty easy to follow. Yummy avocado on sourdough toast topped with some arugula and an egg. Yes, please.

I avoid processed seed oils as much as possible, which is incredibly hard to do since they are ubiquitous, but I give it a go. The key here is keeping your Omega-3 levels above your Omega-6 levels. Read why this is important.

I supplement Omega-3, but I also monitor my blood levels twice a year so I know that I should; it’s not a random decision on my part.

✔️ Avoid white bread, white rice, white potatoes, white noodles, white flour and added sugar. This one’s tough, isn’t it? Sugar tops my list as the hardest to avoid hands down.

I will share this: the less sugar you eat, the less you want, the better your mood, the better food choices your gut biome helps you make. This sugar-driven cycle is research-backed science.

✔️ Eat fruits in season. Eat the rainbow. Eat the fiber-rich skins. Avoid fruit juices; they’re just straight up sugar water.

✔️ Add beans to your diet throughout your week.

✔️ If you must eat animals, oily fish like salmon and sardines, and organic, humanely raised chicken are likely the most healthy choices. Read more about becoming a vegetarian or vegan. It’s a personal decision, and while I still eat fish and chicken, I greatly respect and highly honor the people (about 20 percent of the world population) who choose not to eat animals.

You can spare the lives of animals, get all of the protein that you need, and reduce your cancer risks by 14%, not to mention reducing the heavy toll that raising animals and fishing adds to the world’s environmental problems.

✔️ Avoid red meat, deli meats, hotdogs, and sausages.

✔️ Your body needs downtime when it’s not processing food. The research is strong that not eating for at least 12 hours a day, and up to 18, is beneficial. It’s fairly easy to have dinner at 6 p.m. nightly and then not eat again until after 7 a.m.

I particularly enjoyed this Diary of a CEO podcast (watch or listen on YouTube) from cardiologist, Dr. Pradip Jamnadas, who expertly explains why fasting is so important. Keep in mind that women probably shouldn’t fast as long as men. You can dig into that research with Dr. Vonda Wright.

✔️ There’s really no safe amount of alcohol. It’s toxic no matter how much resveratrol you receive from red wine. However, that said, I think celebrations in life often do come with a champagne toast or a clink of a glass. There’s a fine line between healthy boundaries and obsessively restricting yourself, isn’t there?

Enjoy the celebrations in your life, but keep in mind what it is that you ultimately want. If what you want is a long, healthy life, then avoiding alcohol except for celebratory toasts here and there is your most healthy path. Take a look at the WHO statement.

✔️ Finally, if you take ONLY ONE THING AWAY from the Fuel Your Journey section, I would encourage you to avoid highly processed foods at all cost.

Image by Gemini @pouncetothrive

As I’ve said in my disclaimer, and y’all know, I’m not a doctor or a nutritionist. I’m a writer with a strong background in research, a strong curiosity for knowledge, and a personal commitment to maintaining my wellbeing and brain health.

I believe it all boils down to this:

Sit down for each meal with a full acknowledgement that what you are eating and drinking is as potent as or more powerful than medicine. You are fully in control of what you put into your body based on your beliefs, how it makes you feel mentally and physically after you eat it, and what life goals you have.

Adopt a simple gratitude at each meal for the lives of the farmers, the plants, and the animals who are sustaining you.

I hope the Pounce Pot Protocol can play a small part in helping you make wise decisions. First comes knowledge. Wisdom will follow once you know how to apply that knowledge to your body’s needs.

My personal nutritional decisions are not always the best ones. And guidelines get updated and revised frequently. But like you, I’m doing the best that I can day to day with what I know right now. I practice gratitude. I hope I can encourage you to do the same.

What are your ideas? Do you find avoiding the Standard American Diet difficult? Do you follow specific guidelines? Do you think I have anything wrong? What have I left out? Let’s have a conversation.