Today, I’d like to write about the way I eat—the diet I eventually arrived at after years of trial and error.
There are so many different approaches to eating out there.
And it makes sense.
Everyone has a different constitution, gender, age, place of residence, lifestyle, and so on.
With so much information available, finding an approach that works for you can be quite challenging.
I, too, have spent years figuring things out by listening to my own body and testing things one by one.
And before I knew it, more than ten years had passed…
The way of eating I eventually arrived at was actually very simple.
- Rice and whole grains as the staple foods (I believe that your staple foods determine about 80% of your overall diet.)
- Traditional Japanese meals centered around seasonal vegetables and fish (I choose organic vegetables and smaller fish.)
- Using traditional, high-quality seasonings (such as natural salt and naturally brewed soy sauce and miso)
- Including fermented foods (such as natto, pickled vegetables, and traditional seasonings)
- Avoiding processed foods as much as possible (The benefits of cutting things out tend to show relatively quickly.)
- Eating deliciously and joyfully while being grateful for the lives that became our food (This is the most important one!)
It’s essentially the traditional Japanese way of eating.
But… it’s not as easy as it sounds!
I still find myself craving the bread, sweets, noodles, and foods that I’ve loved since I was a child.
So, while trying different ways to give myself a break without putting too much stress on my body, I’ve continued experimenting and figuring out what works for me.
And I’ve made plenty of mistakes along the way, too. (And I still do!)
At some point, I realized something important:
It takes practice.
It’s just like sports, learning a language, or playing a musical instrument.
You can’t expect to be good at it from the very beginning.
It took me quite a long time to realize this.
Little by little, I’ve been “practicing” listening to my body and choosing ways of eating that work for me.
I still make mistakes from time to time, but compared with when I first started rethinking my diet, I’ve really improved.
These days, I do many of these things without even thinking about them, so when I try to write them down, I sometimes can’t immediately remember what they are.
I’d like to keep writing about them little by little as I remember them!