At the age of thirteen, I began to look at food not just as a source of satiety, but as an act of conscious care for one’s own body. It was not a sudden revelation, but rather a natural movement, guided by a deep intuition that what I put in my mouth influences not only my momentary state, but my entire life.
I started cooking on my own, out of necessity, but also out of sincere curiosity. At a time when the internet didn’t yet offer today’s access to information, it was nevertheless clear that fried foods, carbonated juices, or fast food couldn’t be considered food. I gave them up without drama.
Then, over time, I began to “simplify” my diet (in reality, it became more varied, conscious, and carefully constructed). I eliminated meat, then fish, eggs, and dairy, not to imitate a fashionable behavior, but out of a sincere reaction of rejection towards the taste, smell, texture, and appearance of these foods that, to those around me, seemed natural.
Much later, around the age of twenty-four, I understood that nutrition cannot be isolated from the rest of my life. A healthy diet doesn’t compensate for a lack of sleep, a sedentary lifestyle, strained relationships, or critical thinking. This is how I began to build a coherent lifestyle, in which discipline is an expression of care.
I didn’t experience this transformation as an excruciating effort, but as a natural, even pleasant evolution. And what I know now, I learned because I wanted to learn. After all, I was interested. For this reason, it is difficult for me to understand why so many people treat self-care as a burden or a chore imposed from the outside.
In today’s society, caring for health has often become a matter of appearance or immediate efficiency, not of profound transformation. More and more people are looking for quick solutions, outsourcing the responsibility for their inner balance to specialists, whether nutritionists, personal trainers, or therapists.
It is, of course, not wrong to ask for the help of someone competent. The problem arises when this help is perceived as a replacement for personal effort, not as a support for a lasting process. Those who want standardized eating plans or punctual interventions for chronic problems rarely seem interested in the mechanisms that led to the imbalance. Instead of understanding and assuming their habits, they prefer to passively follow someone else’s instructions.
This almost complete delegation of responsibility often implies a lack of real commitment to change. It is more convenient to apply a set of rules than to form your thinking, learn how your body works, and make informed choices daily.
But without genuine involvement, change remains superficial and temporary. A healthy lifestyle is not built through universal recipes, but through a process of continuous awareness, and informed and repeated choices, assumed with maturity.
Over time, I’ve observed this trend of externalizing responsibility repeatedly, in different contexts, but with the same underlying pattern. A close friend, who is facing difficulties related to weight, expressed her desire to turn to the nutritionist for a personalized eating plan. However, she didn’t seem interested in understanding the basic principles of nutrition or building autonomy in her daily choices.
Another example, from a former relationship, involved a person eager to lose weight, who had accepted my help with initial enthusiasm, but showed no real willingness to learn or take on a minimum of documentation effort. She constantly waited for precise indications, without forming a framework of understanding of her diet and lifestyle.
Within the family, I witnessed how a serious diagnosis, such as type 2 diabetes, was treated as a problem to be managed externally, through a standardized eating plan from the nutritionist, followed superficially, without a deep restructuring of habits and beliefs. It was obvious that, beyond the recommendations, there was a lack of that change of perspective that could have turned the disease into an opportunity for reconstruction.
Even in the case of another friend, who was concerned with general aspects of health, the call to a specialist seemed to completely replace the need to learn to listen to her body, ask questions, or practice her discernment.
What unites these situations is not the lack of access to information, but the avoidance of a real commitment to one’s transformation process. Quick, short-term solutions are sought without understanding that any authentic transformation requires an active, constant, and assumed effort for life.
There is a key difference between seeking guidance and becoming dependent on the authority of an expert. A nutritionist, a psychologist, or any other doctor or specialist should not take responsibility for someone else’s life, but contribute to the formation of a framework in which the individual can make more conscious decisions. In its mature form, professional support is a catalyst for autonomy, not a substitute for it.
When one constantly turns to expertise without developing discernment, the process of inner growth stagnates. A relationship of dependence is created, which, although masked by good intentions, perpetuates a state of immaturity.
Responsibility for daily choices, whether food, emotional, or otherwise, cannot be delegated. Learning to listen to your body, to recognize your limits, to adapt your behavior according to the context requires a form of practical intelligence that cannot be mechanically transmitted by someone else.
The specialist provides context, explanation, sometimes even motivation, but the real transformation comes from within, through repeated practice and personal assumption. In other words, it is not the expert who must have a plan for you, but you must learn how to build and sustain your path, using, if necessary, the tools offered by others. Not to be led, but to see more clearly.
Prevention is the clearest expression of self-respect, but also the most neglected. We live in a time when access to information is almost unlimited; we can find out in a few minutes what effects excess sugar has, how a sedentary lifestyle influences mental state, or why sleep is essential for brain function. However, the most basic truths about health are often known but ignored until symptoms or diagnoses arise that require urgent changes. Why don’t we start earlier?
It is because simple things seem trivial, and the mundane does not cause fear. But what is essential is usually not spectacular. In a culture that values quick solutions and dramatic transformations, prevention, with its discretion and constancy, does not offer immediate satisfaction. And yet, it is the only real path to stability.
Knowing is not enough, but ignoring what is already known is tantamount to a form of denial. The fact that many people continue to live in ways that hurt them, despite the evidence, is due to a subtle form of refusal: to see themselves as worthy of care. Prevention does not mean fear of disease, but an exercise of conscious care, of building a future in which the present is not sacrificed. And this care is not learned from fear or obligation, but from a profound choice: not to abandon yourself.
Being healthy is not just about having a functioning body, but about living in tune with yourself, consciously and intentionally. Choices related to food, sleep, exercise, or relationships are not details of the state of health, but also expressions of a philosophy of life. A life in which presence becomes a form of dignity, in which learning is a gesture of love for oneself, and discipline no longer appears as a constraint, but as a chosen freedom.
We do not need perfect plans, but a return to clarity, to everyone’s ability to build their path, step by step, not as an answer to the problem, but as a form of fidelity to their own life. The lack of authentic models of self-care has pushed us towards chaotic searches or dependencies on authority. But that is precisely why, when one becomes aware, they choose more than health. They choose to break a chain, to refuse the transmitted unconsciousness, and to assume, for the first time, the responsibility for their own life.
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