I was giving a workshop not too long ago and one of the young moms there had this question for me:

“Why do I need to eat healthy if I exercise regularly, I’m not trying to lose weight and I and my family have no chronic illnesses? “

I actually had to pause for a second to think about this. I’m so caught up in this “healthy eating mindset” that I forget that a LOT of people don’t eat healthy for the same reasons that I do now (because I didn’t always eat the way I do for these reasons).

There is a lot of confusion in the media and the medical profession about why we should eat healthy. Many of us believe that the only reason we should ever let green veggies cross our lips is so that we can lose some weight or “get fit”.

I personally think that a huge crock of the brown stinky stuff! Now of course I’m not a nutritionist but I’ll give you my 2 cents on why I think we all should be eating healthier!

There are two really important points I want to make about this healthy eating argument:

#1 While we absolutely can eat healthy as a way to help us lose weight the MAIN reason for sticking with a healthy diet is so that we can BE…..healthy!

It’s really simple. Humans eat fruits, veggies and some of us eat meat. That’s our natural human diet. The one that has sustained us, since we existed and continues to sustain the health of our bodies even in the 21^st century.

Just because we now have access to fast food restaurants and “food products” with colorful packaging and health claims does not mean that we should change the traditional diets that have always worked.

Think about it this way. Somehow our ancestors, who had no formal scientific information about nutrition, managed to eat in a way that sustained their health and enabled them to produce offspring.

They didn’t need anybody to tell them how to be skinny. And they didn’t need a professional to tell them what was nutritious.

They were able to be healthy and robust, (and we know they were robust/hardy folks if they could live through the unsanitary and environmentally harsh circumstances that they did,) without consuming diet shakes, nutrition bars and protein powders!

They ate what was available to them and poof, kept on living to tell the story!

#2 We are looking at eating all wrong?

The fact of the matter is we eat for energy AND nutrition.

If you’re like me, you probably grew up thinking that food was to humans as gasoline was to cars. I truly believed for a long time, that the only reason I was suppose to eat was so that I could have the energy I needed to do the things I wanted to do.

Of course it is true that we eat for energy! But it’s NOT completely true!

The second main reason that we eat is for nutrients. Things like, calcium, vitamin A and iron. These are the substances that literally keep our cells functioning and keep them making more cells.

The bottom line is that if our cells aren’t healthy then WE aren’t healthy either!

Eating things like fresh (organic) fruits and veggies gives our cells the nutrients they need. Eating things that have been refined and processed (like those food-like substances we get from fast food joints) are not so good at giving our bodies the nutrients its needs.

To wrap up. Why do we need to eat healthy even if we already LOOK great in our skinny jeans?

Because health a healthy body is more than just the way we look in the mirror or fit in our clothes. It’s about how well our bodies function on a daily basis. Eating healthy ensures that we nourish our bodies (all the way down to our cells) so that we can be wholey healthy people.

What do you think? What is your motivation for eating “healthy?” Let us know in the comments below!