In a world saturated with dietary dogma and modern conveniences, the only reliable guide to health is your own body. This essay explores how we can reconnect with what has always worked — from traditional diets to self-guided intuition — and reclaim sovereignty over our wellbeing.
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The perfect diet? There isn’t one. Thanks for stopping by.
Every body is different, at a different stage of development, healing, or adaptation, living in a different environment, subject to different energies, external and internal forces, emotional states, spiritual orientations, metaphysical and other beliefs. All of these inform the body every second, every breath, every day.
What’s always true is that the body heals. By default, it moves unquestionably and without prompting toward health and optimal homeostasis, toward resonance with its environment, with the people and animals around us, with the home where we live, the paths we walk, the places we work, and everywhere else we may find ourselves.
If you’re intellectually biased and heavily reliant on cognitive skills, reasoning, logic, and problem-solving, you’ll likely require different minerals and nutrients to support that output. Maybe you’re more sedentary, or far more active, or caught somewhere in between because you “should really be more [pick your poison].” Maybe you work in a high-stress, fast-paced environment. Maybe you’re on your feet 12 to 16 hours a day or more. In every scenario, your work and sleep schedule will differ. Your habits will differ. Your energy requirements and hormonal cycles will differ. You’ll also carry different beliefs and preconceptions about your diet and the foods you choose to eat.
There’s a saying, “A happy salad is healthier than a sad donut,” or something close to it. It’s oversimplified, but there’s something meaningful in the idea. While I’m not as fond of salads as I once was, I do love donuts. I just don’t eat a dozen every day or every chance I get, nor out of habit or to fill a moment of emptiness or idleness. It’s part of a bigger picture, what I’m trying to convey as a holistic approach.
From an energetic standpoint, if we orient or pre-populate the intricate functions of the body around the idea “donut bad,” along with every message and layer of conditioning attached to that thought (carbs bad; going to get fat; this is filler garbage; I should avoid refined sugar; damn, I’m so weak), we’re already poisoning the well. No matter what you eat, your body provides feedback, subtle and overt. Most of us ignore it or default to compensating for or suppressing symptoms.
And many of us worry way too much about what we eat, missing the point entirely.
Instead of adjusting or refining our habits and food choices, or educating ourselves through lived experience, paying attention and heeding the body’s feedback about what, how, when, and how much to eat, we take “digestive enzymes,” “supplements,” or engage in some other complicated ritual because we know there’s going to be hell to pay otherwise. That’s self-sabotage. It’s a victim posture, and it benefits those who profit from prolonged dependency. Stop it, or you’ll fall into the allopathic cascade and become enslaved to an industry hell-bent on extraction.
When we’re infants, breastfeeding establishes a baseline for health and nutritional requirements. The process is remarkable, with mother and baby signaling each other in ways that support the best possible outcome. When this process is disrupted or imposed upon, both can suffer. The interference often begins before and during pregnancy. It’s an unfortunate state of affairs, and I would urge you to question everything and educate yourself before subjecting yourself or your child to paradigms, protocols, and strictly for-profit (or straight-up evil) practices you haven’t examined.
You are unique. Your dietary requirements are as well, and they will likely change throughout your life as your circumstances change, where you live changes, and who you live with changes. Following fads or trends is a mistake. It can cost time, money, and wellbeing, physically, mentally, and emotionally. Many of these movements emerge from aggressive marketing and capital maneuvering, often amplified when institutions, primarily governments, become involved.
Shift the order of operations so you’re not simply going through the motions. Learn to listen to the signals, moods, movements, and adaptations your body offers. Don’t be paranoid. Be empowered. Your vessel is singular, made for you and responsive to you. Everything it produces is data, information, and feedback guiding you toward what to do, what to eat, how to move, and how to live in health.
Imagine you didn’t have easy access to corner stores, grocery stores, or any of the conveniences we’ve become completely dependent on. What would you eat? Where would you live?
In our era, there’s a growing movement toward returning to what worked — a quiet return to first principles, reclaiming a simplicity that functioned long before the messaging began. It extends far beyond diet and nutrition, but food is foundational to the human animal. In my view, the diet most of us can safely lean into is a traditional one: whole foods, single ingredients, preparing our own meals, growing what you can on your own land or in your garden, or supporting those nearby who grow, process, prepare, and package living, nutrient-dense food.
Regardless, you are responsible for your baseline intake, your reasoning, your broader influences, and the beliefs surrounding them. You are responsible for everything that flows from those choices. The feedback arrives live and in real time, whether you label it “good” or “bad.”
Beyond that, there is your training, the ways in which you move your earthbound vessel, fingertip to toe, top to bottom, preparing your body for everything your life will throw at you. But that’s another discussion.
There is no universally precise recommended daily allowance, no static adequate intake that applies to everyone in every context. Every day is new, no matter how tightly we try to control the variables. Support your body in doing what it already does naturally. You have a built-in pharmacy, an energy factory, a detoxification system, and an enduring capacity for rejuvenation, restoration, healing, and adaptation.
If you’re living from the inside out and heeding those signals and intuitions, you’re ahead of the curve. If you defer entirely to external authority, relying on expertise from someone who is not living in your body or your circumstances, you place yourself in a perpetual state of dependency, forever reacting to the world stage and the stories it tells about who you are, worried, anxious, afraid, and forgetting the scope of what you’re capable of.
Solvitur ambulando
Written by Trance Blackman. Originally published on tranceblackman.com on 12 February 2026.