Welcome to the first edition of the new “Get Happy With…” series!

In these articles, we’ll analyze a bunch of ideas, both new and old, to see what kind of positive impact they can have on your life. Each of these happiness ideas and methods have cumulative effects, meaning that if done only once, you probably won’t get much benefit out of it. BUT if you do it on a regular basis and get into the habit of doing it, then you will see a huge overall positive surge of benefits! By putting these articles into action, you will see a large cumulative increase in your baseline happiness level (explained below). In this post, we are talking about Happy Food! Enjoy 🙂

What is this ‘Happy Food’ I keep mentioning?

Happy food is food that you can eat to help you have a higher baseline happiness level every day. Your baseline happiness level is determined by your typical daily mood. Answer this:

How happy do you usually feel from day to day on a scale of 1-10 (ten being the highest mood)?

Whatever number you chose, that is your baseline happiness level – the mood that you operate in most of the time. Now, it may not be where you want it to be and I’m sure that everybody would like it to be higher :). But how? This is where Happy Food comes in! When you eat Happy Food, each ingredient works hard to promote physical and mental health in your body, which in turn boosts your mood. When this type of food is eaten on a daily basis, your mood is also boosted daily, raising your baseline happiness level to new heights!

Here’s an excerpt from my upcoming book, The Truth About High School, about Happy Food:

 You’ve heard the saying, “You are what you eat.” According to Deadly Vibe (issue 205), “Every day an average adult loses – wait for it – 300 billion cells and the body has to replace them from the nutrients we receive. So, yes, in a sense, we are quite literally what we eat”. By eating better, you can live better.

It turns out that the food you put into your body directly affects your mood. This is big. It is such a simple fact that everyone seems to overlook because of all the hype with diets. What people should really be doing is eating for happiness and overall health. The next time you are trying to decide what to eat, rather than ask yourself, “What do I feel like eating?”, instead ask, “how do I want to feel after this meal?”.  This is a much better and easier way to go about eating food that is good for you and that you will also enjoy. Life is too short to be on awful diets and to eat awful-tasting ‘health’ foods… but it is also too short to always be eating junk food too. Eating junk food is exactly that: putting junk into your body. If you put junk into your body, do you think that you are going to feel great after eating it? Probably not. Why? Because you can’t get quality out of something that is junk. Eating tons of junk food all the time will literally shorten your life and you will very likely become sick in your (somewhat) old age because your body needs real, quality, and healthy food to function at its best. If the body can’t be at its best, then you can’t either and as a result, you will have more health and happiness problems. So eat happy food and ask yourself the right question before eating: “How do I want to feel after this meal?”. Of course, the food you eat isn’t the only thing that affects your mood, but it is a big one and it is constantly overlooked.

So all of this lofty non-actionable stuff I’ve written so far is nice, but I’m sure you’re wondering what the actual food behind this ‘Happy Food’ phenomenon is. Well, you have come to the right place! While I am not going to go into detail YET about why these foods are considered ‘happy food’ (these explanations will come in future posts), I will name some. Ok here it goes: Meat and fish, vegetables and legumes, and fruits and nuts/seeds. BUT The meat must be quality, organic, grass-fed, and local (I’ll explain why in another post soon but this is really important!). The vegetables, nuts, and fruit must be organic as well or from your own garden. The fish is best if it was wild, or caught by you. Why do I say all this? Am I some kind of health freak?

Nope!

But I have done my research. I could care less about organic except that in general, in non-organic meat and other produce, there are a lot of bad things done to the food to make it grow faster, bigger, and cheaper (understandably for higher profit margins). In organic produce, they do this as well, but they do it more naturally and they use healthier products to achieve these results. It is pretty obvious that pesticides, antibiotics, and growth hormones are not good for you to consume on a regular basis like this, even though many people do. Even though we eat small amounts of them, eating these damaging things does add up and it ultimately has a negative cumulative effect on the body and mind.

But just because a lot of people do it doesn’t mean that it is right, healthy, or the best for you personally. Do you remember being a kid trying to use the ‘but everyone else is doing/did it’ and your parents responding to you with, “Well, if everyone else jumped off a bridge would you do it too?”. Same thing here. Of course the correct response is, “Well how high is the bridge?” :). And that is something you have to ask yourself here as well. How high are the stakes I’m up against? How much risk is involved if I continue to do what everyone else is doing? What evidence do I have to change my ways and is the alternative worth it to me?

These answers only come with careful consideration and research. Your own research. It all really just comes down to your own values. Just because something is right for someone else doesn’t mean it is right for you. Happy Food is right for me and so I like to promote it because I think that it can help others as well… especially because many people don’t really know what is going on behind the scenes in much of the food industry, or they intentionally ignore it because they would just rather not know and continue eating the same things. The problem is that there are bad consequences for people who aren’t careful, such as inflammation in the body, health problems later on in life, high blood pressure, cardiovascular disease, etc. Many health problems are linked directly to diet – so the type of food and the quality of the food you are consuming is of utmost importance. Your first wealth is health.

I’ll be posting more detailed articles in the future about specific foods and why they are considered ‘Happy Food’, along with information about the food industry that they don’t want us to know. It is time to get healthy! It is time to face what we all have been ignoring to some degree as a society… real, quality, healthy, food. By eating Happy Food, we can not only ignite our passion for optimal lifestyle health, but we will also find ourselves at a higher baseline happiness level as well. It really is a win-win! Stay tuned for future info…

🙂

To living your healthiest life,

-Alex

ps: If you liked this post, share it with someone who would find value in it! Let’s help each other become our happiest, healthiest, and wealthiest. 🙂

pps: If you want to learn more about real, healthy, and quality food, then here are some options:

• Read Real Food by Nina Planck – She talks all about the benefits of real food and the dangers of industrial foods, all of which she backs by valid scientific research, history, and and experience.
• Watch Food Inc. – This is a great documentary about the food industry and a little peak into what is really going on behind the grocery shelves.
• Research on Google Scholar – Google Scholar is a place to find scientific studies and research done for any topic. Just type “google scholar” into Google and then search for what you want. BUT A WARNING: Be careful to check who sponsors each study. Many large organizations, such as big companies, the government, political parties, etc. sponsor studies and make sure that the studies get specific results in their favor. Yep, that’s a thing.
• Follow @lifetools_official on Instagram – I post a lot of information about healthy food on there and it is another resource that I know you will find value in.