Have you ever wondered why despite healthy eating habits and other good lifestyle habits, you are still not reaching your desired health goals, or regress further and gotten worst over time? Isn’t it mind-boggling why some people lost weight doing keto, while some actually gained weight? The real question again is, are you eating right?

Just recently, I had a referral for a stage 4 breast cancer patient. For most parts of her life, she has led a healthy lifestyle: cooking for herself, eating superfood, walking 20km daily and doing meditation every so often. She suffered from stroke twice, which to her credit, she miraculously recovered on her own. Today, she presented herself as a metastatic (stage 4) breast cancer patient with mutated cells across different areas of her body (advanced stage of cancer when the cancer has spread from its original site to distant parts of the body).

Her friend, who was also my long time patient, asked, why, why did this happen to her friend, despite all these healthy lifestyle attempts?? What can she do to avoid these illnesses?

Genetics aside, there are many factors which can contribute and trigger illnesses. I believe many of us carries the genetic messages of common chronic illnesses, but not everyone in the same family (extended or otherwise) will get the illness. Trigger factors are usually the cause. And what are some of these trigger factors? Environment, food, mental and emotional health. These are the common triggers among others.

While environmental and mental health triggers are difficult to mitigate and should be managed by specialists in these fields, eating right is something that we can all do. However, when we talk about eating right in TCM, it is not eating all the superfoods out there. Oftentimes, I get asked during consultation, what is the “best” food to eat. The truth is, there is no “best” food. Every food has its own nutritional values and you should eat a bit of everything to get the best and broadest nutritional benefits.

That said, what I really want to talk about today, is whether you are eating for your specific body type and eating to repair your organs. In TCM, every major organ corresponds to its specific element. Such as heart is to fire, spleen (gut) is to earth, lungs is to metal, kidney is to water and liver is to wood. And each element has its own colour code. Heart is red, gut is yellow, lungs is white, kidney is black and liver is green. So, if you have let’s say a gut problem, like I had after my Covid-19 infection a few months ago, you should be eating more food that are yellow and orange in colour.

The picture above is my recent dinner. As you can see, I have a variety of yellow and orange food on my plate. This amount is actually a lot more than what I would normally eat at dinner. But, my gut did not feel the burden of eating too much. I did not feel bloated or had any heart burn (which I normally do when I ate above my limits). I actually felt really good. For those of you who know that I have been alternating between diarrhea and constipation after the Covid-19 infection (and yes, that is considered as long Covid) and nothing seemed to help, you would know how miserable it was for me. In the end, I went back to the basics and took to diet with a specific purpose to heal my gut. Guess what? After starting on this diet plan, my gut healed within a week and I feel so much better now. I have regular bowel movements and I have better energy levels. I am also able to go back to exercising. This is testament to the effects diets can have on our health status and a proof that whatever I eat (most are not even superfood to start with) that are in the right colour code, has helped greatly.

If you are reading this, my message to you is, are you eating the right food? Or more specifically, are you eating the right colour food for your health to increase your healthspan and longevity? There is no real value if you live for long but has a short healthspan.

Don’t know your body type and what colour you should be eating? Watch out for this space where I will also talk about other body types and book in a consultation with me to find out more!