25 contrarian health principles

We are exposed to hundreds of “health narratives”, each competing to convince you how to live your life. Some have wedged themselves deep into culture, like the food pyramid you probably saw at school. Some come from internet “experts” (like the perfect morning routine); others, like global longevity studies, from supposedly “real” experts.

While these narratives may have some truth in them, what’s notable is that the mainstream narrative keeps on changing. Humans have stayed pretty similar for thousands and thousands of years - why is “what’s most healthy for us?” a question we can’t seem to figure out?

Like with everything, I’m trying to dismiss external mandates and come up with my own set of principles. I’m publishing them - as note-like and obscure as they may be - with the hope that these help you find your answer to one of the big life questions: “what’s most healthy for me?”

Poison is sold in grocery stores, but only when the effects are not immediate 

1. Assume anything marketed as healthy to be unhealthy. 
   
   • Antioxidants, vegetable oils, green smoothies, low-fat, non-dairy, beyond meat & plant-based products… If it really was healthy, you wouldn’t need to shout about it.
2. Be suspicious of branded food categories
   
   • If the category has room for a big brand, that’s telling of the category. Flour is flour, milk is milk, tomatoes are tomatoes. There are quality differences, but you can usually swap brands without much impact on the nutritional value.
   • In more complex categories like ketchup, biscuits and oat drinks, we have big brands because there’s more room to engineer the food.
   • Hence, as a rough rule of thumb, if you eat branded food, you eat a lot of ingredients you have no clue you’re eating. To avoid complexities and overengineering – to keep your diet simple and transparent – stay wary of brands.
3. Avoid all foods marketed as substitutes. 
   
   • Margarine vs butter; Plant-based meat vs real meat; Oat / almond milk vs real milk. Chicken vs beef. Meal substitutes & any shakes or drinks that you’re supposed to replace a meal with. Cooking cream (with additives and lower fat content vs heavy cream (just cream).
4. Be suspicious when a product calls itself healthy, and extra suspicious if the product calls itself virtuous.
   
   • Slogans like “Eat like you give a damn” and “Post milk generation” distract you from the A4-length ingredient list. Products that essentially say: “someone should self-sacrifice to save this planet – we’re hoping it’s you”.
5. The more they insist that something is unhealthy, the healthier it is. Truly unhealthy things don’t require insisting.
   
   • Beef, fat, butter, cheese, for example.
   • By the same logic, the more they insist that small amounts of wine or chocolate are healthy…
6. Anything homemade is better than store-bought.
   
   • The biggest difference between homemade and bought food is the number of ingredients, particularly preservatives. Apart from seeing what’s actually going in you and your family, there are other meaningful differences:
     
     • You don’t need to optimize for costs, like food producers do. You can optimize for nutrition. For example, homemade pasta is healthier because you can use eggs (instead of water like most pasta brands do). 
     • The immense psychological & spiritual health benefits from making food for yourself, and others.
     • Knowledge and skill acquisition, sensibility to food & experimenting, and a whole host of other intangible benefits that you can pass on to your children
7. The real battle isn’t between meat vs vegetarian diets, it’s between processed vs unprocessed diets.
   
   • “Eating green” doesn’t automatically mean you’re healthy. At least in Finland, Beyond Meat -type of products are a huge business: plant-based cream, sausage, meatballs etc. Products that require huge processing to resemble (often poorly) the original product you probably should be eating instead. If you’re vegan, eat veggies! Don’t eat ultra-processed crap and preach to others how they should ditch meat.
   • I’d guess that as long as you eat elemental food that is prepared in a way that you maximize the nutrients you need and minimize toxins, you are good. Probably this is easier if you follow an animal-based diet than a vegetarian diet - simply because vegetables are less nutrient-dense and have more toxins! - but you can probably be healthy either way.

If you presume you can outsmart nature, you cannot be healthy

8. You can stay in great shape without a gym. 
   
   • The need for a gym suggests your day-to-day is sedentary and unvaried. Do you think you can keep up your twice-a-week gym hobby for the rest of your life, or should you rather design an environment where you stay fit merely by doing your daily duties?
9. New diet recommendations are mostly political, with the health benefits fabricated afterwards
   
   • You should exercise the precautionary principle when it comes to your health. Lab grown meat and insects sound like great new ideas, politically and ecologically. But it's not natural: you might get 10,000x the dose of Xyz than you would get in nature, and that may have hidden consequences.
   • With diets, we should look backwards, not forwards.
10. Any advice insisting on strict routine or repetition cannot be healthy. Variation is essential.
    
    • It's quite popular to take certain supplements or foods every day, or to carry out a specific morning routine. But there are hidden reasons why variation is essential for health. As an example, if you eat Superfood X every morning, toxins present in Superfood X have a chance to build up, eventually causing problems. If you ate Superfood X only when they are in season, the toxins are cleansed from the body before becoming a problem. 
    • In other words, one should have a varying diet, and the most natural way to implement this is to eat locally and follow the harvesting calendar, at least for the most part.
    • If you follow the harvesting calendar, you'll naturally have seasons of relative fasting, and seasons of relative feasting. Your total calorie intake varies week over week, quarter over quarter, probably peaking during autumn and slumping during winter. This is probably important for clearing out bad cells and preventing bloating.
11. Ignore nutrition science and research, just eat what is natural
    
    • Nutrition “science” is more flawed than one might believe. You don’t have to just take my word for it, but the more I read on it, the clearer it becomes that 99% of food research is paid corporate propaganda and/or unreliable.
    • You don't need to know anything about nutrition or vitamins and absorbance rates etc. The studies don’t matter, anyway. When you eat naturally, everything takes care of itself
      
      • You don’t need to be a scientist
      • You don’t need to count every calorie
      • You don’t need to be always changing to the newest diet
      • Just eat what is natural.
    • (the only supplement I regularly take is vitamin D because we have so little sunlight in Finland most of the year. I’m experimenting with vitamin C to see if I catch fewer viruses as a result.)
12. Health avoids measurement. Nature has built in the necessary indicators, if only we follow them.
    
    • Why listen to a “sleep score” instead of your body telling you how you slept?
    • High cholesterol is probably not an immediate red flag metric like we’re taught to believe, if you feel healthy otherwise
    • Burnt calories or active zone minutes are a worse metric than the extent of your hunger after the exertion.
    • Just listen to your body! If I eat salad for lunch, I feel unfulfilled. If I eat a hearty, nutritious meal, I feel strong and happy. 
    • (I have a long rant on this, but in short:) We’ve lost common sense with regards to health. People’s bodies are breaking down, and they continue eating the same “healthy” way, expecting it to somehow start working, eventually. A healthy gut is normal! You should feel energetic and sharp most of the time! If your default state isn’t pretty good, your body is trying to say there’s probably something wrong with your diet, and you should listen to it.
13. Use your body in more ways. Not just exercising all parts, but performing constantly different movements
    
    • The average adult performs a very narrow set of movements compared to all potential things you could be doing with your body. Imagine how few times we hold weight above our heads or drag heavy things or take big leaps or roll on the ground.
    • Yes, a gym routine expands the set of movements, but only a bit. We are still very restricted.
    • Constantly changing stress and loads on your muscles, bones and joints keeps them young and fresh, just like using your brain in new ways (learning) keeps it fresh.
    • I find the biggest sources of variation for me are:
      
      • Playing with my kids. Constantly throwing or turning or lifting them in new ways. Improvising on the playground or sprinting on a field or pretending to move like different animals etc. Play is a source of improvisation, a massive movement expansion compared to adult routine. 
      • I consciously seek new ways to use my body, just as I consciously seek new ideas. It's just fun, and that's nature's way of saying “this is good for you, keep doing it”. 
14. Get to a situation where you don’t need discipline because you’re working with nature, not against it.
    
    • We tend to believe health requires sacrifice, discipline. Abs are reserved for those with hero-like willpower. This view on health is damaging because you're fighting an uphill battle. 
    • The causality is backwards: in the past, you were hungry so you needed to move (go pick berries or hunt something). Today, we eat first, then decide we’ve eaten too much and decide to start moving. In the first, there is intrinsic motivation, an absolute force keeping you moving. Nature is with you. In the latter, nature is against you: it wants you saving energy, not spending it unnecessarily. So you must exert willpower, which few do.
    • In other words, the less discipline you need to stay healthy, the better. Create an environment where your body must work for it to survive.
15. If your idea of longevity is supplements, ultimate measurement, constant optimization, staying on the lookout for the next scientific breakthrough – instead of effortless movement, natural eating, purpose, community, right decisions followed through for decades – you’re mistaken.
    
    • Again, we must go with nature. If you take all the “right” supplements and do all the “right” routines, but you hate it, you will not follow through for decades. You’re going against nature. Health should come almost effortlessly.
    • The environment must be one where you effortlessly do what is best for your longevity, because you have no other choice or because it’s the most enjoyable choice. Either you need to hunt and pick and harvest your own food or you’ll die, or chop your own wood or you’ll be cold, or you need to find enjoyment in these activities and prefer them over the easier alternative. The first option happened in the past, largely unrealistic and undesirable today, so you must go for the second. I believe you can just decide to enjoy activities that are good for you merely by understanding that they are good for you. 
    • The trick is: instead of chasing longevity, you must actually chase a good life. Pills, metrics, skipping a dinner with friends because you must go to sleep early - if they don’t produce a good life, they won’t produce longevity.
16. The biggest things for your health don’t look like health things. 
    
    • Who you marry & befriend – influences all aspects of your health, but no health textbook talks about it.
    • Having kids – improves existing dimensions of health, and creates a new one. (I eat better because now I’m also cooking for my kids; I move more and in more varied ways because I constantly carry / play with them; I’m happier and notice reasons for joy all over…)
    • Working on meaningful projects – energizes your mind, creates motivation to get out of bed, mystically improves your stamina & cardio.

Getting and staying healthy should feel enjoyable and effortless, not like sacrifice

17. Eat when you are hungry, but make sure you only get hungry (about) 2-3 times a day. 
    
    • Fasting and feasting is more natural than a meal every 4h, with snacks in between.
    • Needing to snack is an indicator you don’t eat enough of the right stuff. Double the protein & good fats to halve the hunger.
    • You shouldn’t purposefully keep yourself hungry, unless you like it. If you’re still noticeably hungry within the next 4h after you ate, that’s a sign you didn’t eat the right stuff, so just eat the right stuff.
    • People think intermittent fasting requires discipline, to ignore your hunger all day. But the trick is to not be hungry by eating more nutritious things that keep you filled for longer. (Your body - or your mind - may need some time to adjust to your new schedule, though.)
18. Almost anything can be healthy or unhealthy, depending on how it is prepared.
    
    • You can make exceptionally healthy burgers and exceptionally unhealthy burgers.
    • Many vegetables can be toxic when prepared wrong and healthy when prepared right.
19. Almost anything can be healthy or unhealthy, depending on the dose.
    
    • Hard rules on health make life unnecessarily complex. If you insist 100% on a carnivore diet and absolutely zero sugars, you’re working against nature and life is an uphill battle. 
    • Yes, you should be serious about health, but again, are you living a life where health is effortless? If you’re not in great shape, health is not coming to you effortlessly and you need to make some (big) changes. Perhaps initially, hard rules on health are the way to go.
    • But if health is effortless, will a slice of your friend’s homemade pie mean you’re somehow failing? Absolutely not.
20. Micro-doses aren’t enough 
    
    • Mastering your mind isn't just about the 2h a week you meditate, but how you think and see all day long.
    • Mastering your body isn't just about the 2h a week you exercise, but how you expose yourself to varying loads all day long. 
    • 2h a week -type of thinking leads you to think linearly. Obviously a person cannot “outrun a bad diet” if they exercise only 2h a week, so you think health is a sacrifice because you can’t treat yourself, ever. But what if someone “trained” basically the whole day, every day? 
    • Personal example: I’m currently a stay-at-home dad, and my day consists of almost constantly being on my feet, almost always carrying one baby/toddler while doing some chore, or playing with the kids in some active way. When not with kids, I’m probably doing a physical activity, like renovating, chopping wood, or woodworking. As a result, a dessert at a relative’s place during afternoon coffee is wholeheartedly enjoyable, not something I secretly regret and wish I hadn’t had.
21. Take cold showers. Or hot showers. Whatever feels good in that moment.
    
    • A cold shower after sauna is heaven. A hot shower after hours spent in the chilly outdoors likewise. If you’re so convinced of the benefit of cold plunging, arrange your matters such that it feels like a reward, not like a dreaded punishment - like after sauna or a sweaty workout.
22. Food should make you feel good.
    
    • Many prevailing health narratives sell you the idea that health is a sacrifice. Eating only a salad for lunch is supposed to be healthy because you’ll feel hungry immediately after. I think it was Rory Sutherland who speculated that the reason health smoothies taste kinda bad is that you wouldn’t believe it’s healthy if it is delicious.
    • If you eat unhealthily, you know, and you feel guilty. If you eat too little, you know, and you don’t feel satisfied. If you eat well and enough, you know, and you will feel strong. 
    • You know how a really good workout can make you feel strong afterwards? Food is the same. A nutritious meal fills you with strength and energy.
23. Exercise should make you feel good. Not fatigued, achy, fragile, injured.
    
    • You can be absolutely exhausted after exercise, yet still have a certain lightness and spring in your step. Mentally you’re oozing strength and vitality, and can’t wait for the next time.
    • If you are more tired after exercising than before; if your body starts breaking down instead of getting stronger; if you dread the next time; you should listen to what your body is trying to say. There’s something wrong with how you move. Exercise should make you feel good.
24. With meditation, aim for exhaustion over serenity.
    
    • Meditation sitting down is okay if it works for you (for me it doesn’t). We sit too much anyway. 
    • I empty my head much more reliably by completely exhausting myself in forest work, sauna, shoveling snow, any heavy labor, which I’m lucky to have plenty of weekly. Work like an animal to remove humanly worries.
    • Again, by arranging your environment and lifestyle well, meditation / mental health should come naturally, effortlessly. Without any meditation journaling or sessions that 95% of us can’t keep up anyway because they require willpower.
25. So simple, yet one of my deepest beliefs: The healthiest lifestyle is one that feels wholeheartedly good.