In our current age of scientific discovery and industrialized food production and supplementation, it's easy to follow the thinking that we can "figure out" what to eat to be healthy.

We have the glycemic index for guidelines to keep our blood sugar in a healthy range and calorie counting to prevent unhealthy weight gain. And there are many other parameters and nutrient levels with target numbers related to good health. But when we look to numbers associated with the food we eat to choose what is healthy, we can lose sight of how these numbers are a narrow picture of the overall nourishment the foods provide given an entire meal.

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The glycemic index is a wonderful tool to understand how quickly sugar goes into our blood because when blood sugar levels spike, our bodies need to produce insulin and the body goes into fat storage, which takes extra energy and results in weight gain.

Similarly, if we eat more calories than we need, we're going to end up gaining weight. And the very process of storing fat, which served a good purpose as we were evolving in an environment of feast and famine, in today's environment, devoid of the famine phase and rich on the feast phase, it serves to tax the body and create chronic health conditions.

Connie and I have both gone through phases where we paid attention to the glycemic value of foods and the calories they contained. But, for both of us, it wasn't any fun. It added time and extra mental work to decide what to eat and didn't provide real lasting change.

What we both found when we shifted to a Whole Food Plant Based (WFPB) diet was that change happened naturally and our health was restored without needing to add up any numbers and adjust our meals based on those.

When we changed to a WFPB diet, by following the simple rule of a wide variety of organic, high nutrient-dense whole plant foods, our health took care of itself. And this continues to work for us today.

The wide variety ensures that we don't overdo any food that can lead to an imbalance or health concern. For example, we eat a few Brazil nuts a week and the selenium they provide is valuable and helps keeps us healthy. But if we were to eat several handfuls each week, we'd probably develop an excess of selenium which can cause problems. So a wide variety is a simple way to avoid excess in our diet without having to keep track of glycemic numbers, total calories or amounts of a particular nutrient in a given food.

Organic is important to us too, because conventional farming methods often include toxic herbicides and pesticides. And even though they're (usually) just minor amounts, they're still toxins that require our liver, kidneys and spleen to deal with and eliminate. This uses our vital energy to detox the harmful elements when that energy could be used to regenerate and maintain a high level of health.

Whole foods naturally have the highest nutrient density of any foods on the planet. Although different foods have higher levels of nutrient density, in their whole form it's the highest level of nutrient density for that food. Processing a food always removes nutrients in some form, it never adds to it.

And in the case of "fortifying" a food by adding a particular nutrient like iron or a vitamin, the processed food becomes high in that nutrient, but it's overall nutrient density is less because of the nutrients removed or lost in the processing.

The other safety factor that is built into food when eaten in its whole form is that plants are full of fiber and the carbohydrates are typically complex. By their nature, the fiber and complex carbohydrates eliminate spikes in blood sugar, so no need to worry about the glycemic numbers when eaten with a variety of whole plant foods in the meal.

And the calorie density of whole plant foods is very low (400-600 cal/lb) compared to animal products (1200-3000 cal/lb) or processed foods like olive oil (4,000 cal/lb), conventional baked goods (1200-2400 cal/lb) and refined sweeteners (1300-1700 cal/lb).

The average calorie density of a WFPB meal is 500-600 cal/lb. The average calorie density of the Standard American Diet (SAD), consisting of processed meats, cheeses, oils, refined grains and sugars, fast food, baked goods, snacks and sugary beverages is 1200-1500 calories/lb. With this perspective alone, it's easy to see why shifting to a WFPB diet makes such a difference in our weight and health.

So, again, not much need to worry about the glycemic numbers or even counting the calories in each food if we eat a wide variety of whole plant foods.

One other consideration of course is how much we eat. As I think we've all learned, there can be too much of a good thing too. So along with the wide variety of whole plant foods is the importance of eating to 80% fullness. Stopping at 80% fullness also contributes to not getting an excess of anything that would lead to an imbalance that could result in a health condition or weight gain.

We love that we've been able to let go of counting numbers to try to achieve great health. It's worked for us and hundreds of people we've worked with. We think it can work for you too. If you would like to explore this more with us, leave a comment in the comment section below and we'll get in touch for a free consultation.

And if you're already eating this way and would like to join a like-minded community, we offer a free 60-minute Zoom meeting each week for WFPB eaters to come together, learn more and share. Let us know if you'd like to join us.

The recipe this week is Connie's Salad. Connie makes a full-meal salad every day for dinner, or sometimes for lunch. It's amazing and is in full keeping with everything we've discussed today to stay healthy, vital and clear.

To your Amazing Health,
Connie and Bill

Connie’s Salad

• 3 cups mixed lettuce or any lettuce
• 1 cup of arugula
• ½ red pepper, diced
• 4 slices of raw onion
• 7 or 8 cooked Spicy mushrooms from our website recipe
• 1 cup frozen peas
• ½ cup drained black beans or any bean
• 3 cherry tomatoes
• 1 tablespoon pumpkin seeds
• 1 apple cut in slices
• ½ avocado, diced
• 1 lime, juiced over top of salad

Layer all ingredients in a large salad bowl. Mine is 11 inches across.

Squeeze lime juice over salad and serve. So delicious.