Winter Qi Chats | Week 13

mindfulnessawarenessnutritionwintervagus

Feb 27

How do you eat?

This week we discuss the HOW behind eating rather than the WHAT…

Bless this food….

We’re constantly told to eat “clean” and “healthy.” But what does that even mean anymore? Every week nutrition seems to change its mind. Eat this. Don’t eat that. This plant heals everything. Wait! We now just realized that all plants are toxic. My goodness! It’s exhausting. And while we obsess over what to eat, we almost never talk about how we eat.

Have you ever actually been TRAINED how to eat?

As we age, this question matters more than ever. Because metabolic health isn’t just about calories but rather it’s about how efficiently your body turns food into usable energy without creating chaos in the process. It’s how you fuel your brain steadily. It’s how you recover from movement. It’s how resilient you are to stress and pain. Yes, breathing plays a role but food is fuel too. And how you eat determines whether that fuel supports clarity and strength… or inflammation and fatigue.

Metabolic health is your body’s ability to convert food into energy while keeping blood sugar stable, inflammation controlled, and cells functioning well. When it’s working, you feel steady, clear, and capable. When it’s not, recovery slows, muscle declines, fat accumulates, and pain tolerance drops. What many people call “just getting older” is often declining metabolic efficiency and this pattern is shaped over years by how we’ve eaten, rushed, stressed, and fueled ourselves. Or as I call, survival eating.

Table manners aren’t going to apply…

Perhaps you were taught good table manners when you were young. Manners that became habits like how to hold your fork, where to place your napkin but aside from that, most of us were never trained how to actually digest well. We learned what to eat, but not how to prepare the body to receive it.

Today I want to share a few tips that may look a little unusual. But I’d rather look slightly strange before I eat than have my body act strange after I eat because I rushed, stressed, or ignored how digestion actually works.

Preparing your nervous system before a meal may seem unnecessary but to your gut, it’s everything. And just as important, helping your nervous system settle after you eat is a skill we’ve largely forgotten.

General rule:
👉 Yin movement before you eat.
👉 Yang movement after you eat.