A Living Diet

Before You Read Any Further

Let's be honest: nobody likes being told what to eat. Food is personal. It's tied to comfort, to memory, to how we cope with a world that can feel overwhelming. We eat to celebrate, to grieve, to numb, to feel alive. Changing what's on your plate can feel like someone asking you to change who you are.

We get it. And we're not asking you to do anything.

What you'll find on these pages is simply what we've learned—from nature, from our ancestors, from science, and from our own bodies. Some of it may challenge what you believe. Some of it may confirm what you've always suspected. None of it is meant as judgment. This isn't dogma. It's observation. It's what works.

Here is what no diet book tells you: the hardest part isn't the food. It's the life around the food. Going from a standard modern diet to a living diet means encountering ingredients you've never seen before, learning to cook in ways you were never taught, finding sources for food that isn't on supermarket shelves, and carving out time in an already full life to make it all happen. It means your kitchen will look different, your shopping will take longer, and some meals will fail spectacularly. This is the reality, and pretending otherwise would be dishonest.

So be easy on yourself. Treat this as an adventure, not an assignment. Add one new food to your cart each week. Try one unfamiliar recipe when you feel inspired. Don't overhaul everything at once—that's how people burn out and quit. The secret is this: don't try to demolish your current habits. You cannot willpower your way out of patterns the brain has spent years reinforcing. It is far easier to build a new habit that gradually displaces an old one than to fight the old habit head-on. Add before you subtract. Put something new on the plate next to the familiar. Over time, the new displaces the old—not through deprivation, but through discovery. The taste buds actually change. The cravings genuinely shift. But it takes patience that this culture has not taught us to have.

You will slip. You will have entire weeks where nothing changes. That is not failure—that is being human. Neuroscience tells us the brain learns in cycles—progress, plateau, regression, then a leap. Guilt is the enemy of change, not its motivator. Self-compassion after a setback actually makes people more likely to try again, while shame makes them give up entirely. The people who succeed are not the ones who never fall back; they are the ones who stop treating setbacks as proof they can't do it. One day you'll catch yourself reaching for something alive and realize you didn't have to think about it.

The fact that you're here, reading this, says something about you. It says you're curious enough to look, honest enough to question, and brave enough to consider that there might be a better way. That already sets you apart. Explore freely. There is no test at the end.

A Living Diet

We are recognizing once again that our health and well-being is not only based on what food we consume, but includes having a healthy mindset, within a healthy lifestyle and environment; and that to realign ourselves with the natural world and it's cycles can lead to sustainable good health into a great age.

At the foundation of health, and the root of most disease is the soil-food web/gut-body connection, our connection with the Earth. The microbes that are in the soil, are in us and on us, even within our cells. Most of the genetic material found within our bodies are microbes (90% of our matter), and we function best if we eat for them. It is this inner-connected relationship that helps us digest our food, regulate our immune systems, control our moods, alertness, receptivity, and so much more.

To find out what exactly A Living Diet consists of, it is really simple. One just has to go outside feeling a little hungry, walk about and see what is easiest to harvest, and in abundance all around you. What you find will be very similar food items to what we ate until recently. Found most abundant in nature are always a huge variety plants – dark leafy greens/vegetables and mushrooms in season. While we were looking for meat and honey, we were munching on anything edible. There are small game animals, poultry/eggs, fish, (and fresh sea-food if you are lucky!) and reptiles, bugs everywhere. Roots are harder to dig, so eaten less often, nuts & seeds (grains), fruit, legumes, are fewer and often seasonal, so are eaten in smaller amounts, and less often. Large game animals "red meat" are difficult and risky to obtain, so are eaten less often, and the kill more planned, ritualized, and the animal revered in the past, and present, all over the Earth.

It is important to realize that our natural world can no longer withstand everyone eating only wild foods, we have lost that right, but we can mimic this diet using foods well cultivated and raised instead of harvesting foods that are sometimes endangered, and/or by rights still belongs to the Aboriginal populations of countries.

IF WILD-CRAFTING — KNOW YOUR WILD FOOD AND REGION — ESPECIALLY YOUR TOXIC PLANTS AND POISONOUS MUSHROOMS. IF PLANING, OR NEEDING TO TRY IT OUT LIKE OUR ANCESTORS DID, PLEASE START WITH SHALL AMOUNTS AND CARRY CHARCOAL/CLAY AND WATER TO CONSUME IF AN ILL EFFECT IS FELT.

"Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food."