There is a voice inside every living being. It doesn’t make a sound or use words to communicate, but it is speaking to us all the time. This is our gut’s voice. Don’t we often use the phrase “my gut feeling”? Trust your gut, because these voiceless instincts are here to guide, protect, and help us make the right choices. But for some reason, we don’t know how to listen to it, which has been one of our greatest shortcomings as human beings. We no longer do anything that our gut recommends. The gut is the most intelligent part of our body, but we are so deeply influenced by what society and the world teach us, including what to eat, what to wear, how to behave, etc. So much so that we have diminished our true selves, and that’s why we’re all left with the question, “Who am I?”
How do I start trusting my gut?
My journey to reconnect with my gut instinct started with my search for the right food for my body. Because everything I was consuming was culminating in illnesses and diseases. Deep down, I knew that nature intended for us to live healthy lives and not be plagued by suffering and sickness. So, what then is real food for humans? Animals eat whatever nature intended for them to eat. Tigers and lions eat meat, not fruits and vegetables; cows, horses, and monkeys eat plants, fruits, veggies, grains, etc. Who instructed them on what they should eat? How do they know this? We know because they instinctively reach for their natural food above others.
Here’s a simple exercise that will help you listen to your gut:
1. Imagine you are in a field and you see hens and lambs playing around. What is your first reaction? Most of us will exclaim, “So cute”, and human children will try to play with them. I’ve never heard anyone proclaim, “Oh, so delicious.” Only carnivorous animals’ mouths will water at the sight.
2. Let’s imagine being in the field again, where grains like wheat, bajra, corn, and ragi grow. Does our mouth water? No. Then whose mouth does water? Herbivorous animals, of course. To eat grains, humans need to process and cook them first.
3. We are in the field again, we are hungry, and there are vegetables like potatoes, brinjal, bottle gourd, bitter gourd, etc. We need to cook these first, then consume them.
4. Now, when we see carrots, cucumbers, tomatoes, onions, cabbage, peas, etc., all of these are vegetables we can have without cooking. That’s why salads are very important.
5. Any fruit growing on a tree gets us so excited. We plan visits to orchards and want to pluck and eat the fruits we chance upon. But when we have them in our fridges or on our tables, it feels like a lot of effort to eat them.
What natural foods must we eat?
Fruits and vegetables are easy to grow and can be digested without any hassle. They are also found on the streets and in supermarkets. We need to reverse our thoughts and shift our choices based on what nature has designed us to eat the most. Our largest meal has to be fruits, then salads and leafy green vegetables. Next come nuts and seeds, fewer grains, more beans, and preferably avoiding meat.
We, humans, want to eat everything under the sun, preferring factory-made foods to those provided by nature. However, everything our body needs is provided by nature, and we shouldn’t presume otherwise. This quote resonates so much with me because we have pulled away from nature and from our instincts, and therefore from our natural, healing food, too.
We believe in whatever is marketed and that humans know better than nature regarding what the human body needs. Unfortunately, nobody markets nature’s products, because they don’t make highly profitable businesses. After all, our bodies don’t crave carrots or become unhealthily addicted to natural foods. That’s nature’s way of preventing us from overeating, but when food is packaged in a stylish glass, turned into cold-pressed juice with sugar and preservatives, and labelled with its benefits, we readily reach for it, over and over again.
What is defined as real food?
Food, real food, not only helps our body heal physically but also helps us prevent mood disorders like depression. Because after all, a clean body resides in a clean mind. Even if they come, they will be easily flushed out. The power of nature’s food is abundant because the earth was created for us to live and thrive in.
Everything we need to live comes from the earth, and when we move away from that, we are moving away from our instincts, too. That’s when the complications begin. When we deprive our bodies of these gifts of nature, what we ultimately invite is disease. Listening to our bodies and honouring their signals is one of the best ways to be in touch with our instincts.