In Memory of my Dad. 🕊️

1963-2025

You wonderful, stubborn man.

I miss you so damn much.

•••

I’ve always found it strange when someone says they hate/avoid water.

It’s water. 🤨

The thing that makes up 60% of the human body and 71% of the earth.

For a long time, I thought it was about taste.

Or habit.

Or stubbornness.

But the older I get, the more knowledge I accumulate about diet’s role in the human body, and the more patterns I’ve watched play out in real bodies, the less I believe that’s the whole story.

I think water asks something of us that not everyone can tolerate.

Water is quiet.

It doesn’t distract.

It doesn’t overwhelm the senses.

It doesn’t numb you or spike dopamine or give you something to chew on emotionally.

Water brings you back into your body.

And for some people, being fully present in their body isn’t comforting — it’s unbearable.

Soda is loud.

Sugar distracts.

Salt overwhelms.

Highly processed food fills every corner with noise.

Water leaves s p a c e . 💧

I grew up watching someone I loved slowly replace water with soda — until water wasn’t just avoided, it was reviled.

He joked about it.

Made it part of his personality.

“I don’t do water anymore, can’t stand it,” he’d say proudly, as if hydration were a moral stance.

He also joked about not eating a single fruit or vegetable for decades.

Forty years.

No exaggeration.

It was said like a punchline. Even on his deathbed at just 61 years young.

God, I miss him.

By the end of his life, he was surviving almost entirely on soda, highly processed white bread, and red meat.

No water.

No plants.

No softness.

No nourishment.

Empty chemicals fed to an ailing body day in and day out.

I don’t say this to shame him.

I say it because I loved him.

So damn much.

And because I’ve seen the same pattern echoed in others since.

When someone says they hate water, or hates vegetables, or avoids fruit as if it’s suspicious or pointless, I don’t hear pickiness anymore.

I hear a nervous system that learned to survive through constant stimulation.

Fruits and vegetables are like water in that way — they’re subtle.

They don’t hit hard.

They don’t overwhelm.

They don’t shout.

They ask you to notice.

Texture.

Freshness.

Bitterness.

Sweetness that isn’t engineered.

The way food actually feels in your body afterward.

And if you’ve spent a lifetime disconnecting from bodily signals — hunger, fullness, discomfort, emotion — those foods can feel strangely confronting.

Processed food doesn’t ask you to listen.

It tells you what to feel.

It’s always the same.

Predictable.

Loud.

Designed to override subtlety.

Whole foods — food made by the same earth we were made from — leave room for sensation.

And sensation means awareness.

This isn’t about willpower.

It’s not about convenience.

And it’s not about intelligence.

I’ve watched smart, loving, capable people actively resist the very things that would support and heal them — not because they didn’t know better, but because knowing wasn’t the issue.

Listening was.

Changing was.

Discomfort is all around us, we’ve learned to avoid it when we have the power to do so.

Water asks you to feel thirst.

Vegetables ask you to feel nourishment.

Fruit asks you to experience sweetness without punishment or excess.

And if your life has taught you that tuning out was safer than tuning in, those things can feel like threats.

This is where it gets complicated — especially when children are involved.

Because kids don’t learn from what we tell them.

They learn from what we model.

They learn what “normal” looks like by watching.

What we drink.

What we avoid.

What we joke about.

What we dismiss.

What we treat as optional.

They notice when soda replaces water.

When vegetables are treated like chores.

When fruit is framed as unnecessary or indulgent.

When the adults choose to stock the house with comfort over nourishment.

When health is something talked about abstractly but never embodied.

And I say this gently, not accusingly — because most people are doing the best they can with the nervous systems they have — including myself.

But our bodies don’t differentiate between intention and pattern.

I don’t believe people who avoid water, fruits, and vegetables are lazy or weak.

I think many of them are tired. Overstimulated.

Disconnected.

Numbed by necessity.

Programmed by habit they conveniently frame as “genetics.”

And I don’t think change ever starts with lectures, rules, or shaming — especially not from the people who love them most.

You can’t love someone into listening to their body.

I learned that the hard way… over the course of four+ decades.

You can’t argue someone into presence.

Sometimes the most loving thing you can do is stop pushing — and start quietly choosing differently for yourself.

Not as a protest.

Not as a performance.

But as an act of care.

Because choosing water is not about hydration alone.

Choosing fruits and vegetables isn’t about virtue.

It’s about choosing to stay in conversation with your body.

It’s about showing our children — and ourselves — that presence is survivable.

That quiet isn’t dangerous.

That nourishment doesn’t have to shout to be real.

If you “hate” water, I’m not here to tell you you’re wrong.

If you avoid fruits and vegetables, I’m not here to shame you.

I’m just here to gently ask a question that changed everything for me:

• What does this food ask me to feel that something else helps me avoid?

You don’t have to answer it today.

You don’t even have to answer it consciously.

But the question itself might be worth holding.

Because sometimes healing doesn’t begin with doing better.

Sometimes it begins with listening — just long enough to notice what we’ve been drowning out.

•

For the record, I’m not saying adopt a strict whole food, plant-based diet today.

That’s ridiculous and completely unsustainable for most — but unfortunately that’s what many hear when told they need to consider their dietary choices and their effect on their own ailing body.

Most would rather take a pill than change their source of comfort in any way. 💊

Slap a bandaid on it for now.

Accumulate damage inside while it’s hushed enough to tolerate.

Deal with the consequences later.

Blame it on genetics.

Blame it on bad luck.

Blame it on anything other than your own choices.

Balance.

That’s all.

• Eat a handful of good before the not-so-good.

• Down a full glass of water before pouring that glass of soda.

• Hell, pop some high quality supplements every once in a while to give your body the tools it needs to repair the damage… if you’re feeling extra giving.

Respect your body and its needs.

Even if it’s the bare minimum one week and all-in the next.

That’s all.

It’s all so very basic, if you think about it.

You wouldn’t deprive your car of oil and expect it to function properly or live forever… why treat your body any different?

Both are machines: one mechanical, one biomechanical.

Both require adequate care in order to function properly both short and long term.

That’s it.

That’s all.

What are you doing for your body today?

•••