Eating, it turns out, is hard.

How many people do you know who can say - hand on heart - they don't have some food-related issue, anxiety, or dissatisfaction? If not a full-blown, by any definition of the word, problem.

In the course of my day, I don't just see this a lot, it's rare for me to see otherwise. Which strikes me as most peculiar.And boringly predictable.

Peculiar that something so fundamental, so central to our existence has become a source of confusion, if not misery.

And predictable when you recognise that while public health messaging and junk food marketing may be polar opposites in their motivations, it's only on the basis they are equally likely to be false. A middle ground - if it can be said to exist - distorted by these extremes.

And so here we are, broadly divided into two camps:

Either not knowing or, at best, second-guessing how we might reasonably go about keeping ourselves alive.

Or devouring what amounts to proof that we're not worried about that at all.

As with fitness, we make this far more complicated than it needs to be. Far more complicated than it is. If complexity - in any domain - is what floats your boat, fine. But only as an extension to the basics, never a substitute.

The basics, it should be no surprise, begin with reality. And - not belief or opinion - the straightforward acknowledgement that no food, or even foodstuff, is inherently good or bad. We can't make that distinction without an understanding of what we are trying to achieve. And who is trying to achieve it.  

Context is key. 

This allows us to then determine the minutiae (what, when and how to eat) as being helpful towards that end, or not. So we might imagine that everything we eat falls on a spectrum. Where you sit on that spectrum most of the time will determine your body shape, performance and wider health.

Most of society is very familiar with this spectrum - and the pattern is for people to oscillate from one extreme to the other - super tight for a while, and then a wild shift back to the other end - a well-worn pendulum.

And the spectrum will change depending on the story being told.

• Health spectrum

• Calorie spectrum

• Macro-nutrient spectrum

• Social spectrum

• Convenience spectrum

• etc.

Certainly, each of these plays a role and influences your wider life, but the problem is also that we look at them in isolation. Forever missing the big picture and arranging deck chairs on a behavioural Titanic.

That too is by design. Dietary dogma has to take a slice. You can’t be sold on it otherwise - either the problem or the solution. But a problem partially defined means a problem partially solved so failure comes built-in. When food becomes simply about calories, nutrients, or any other single thing, quite aside from that being unhealthy, we discount what makes us human. It also makes everything boring as batshit. And why in umpteen seasons of multiple Bourdain TV shows you never heard him refer to 'macros.' Not once.

Because you don't live on a spectrum. You don’t live in a lab, a textbook, a magazine, or in the palaeozoic era. You live in your life. And all the big, and the many more little things that make it yours, mean that every single nutritional theory, philosophy, dogma and fad, both the good and the bad, will ultimately die for lack of relevance to someone critical to the whole project: you. 

You know this. How many of them do you already have buried in the backyard. 

It should come as no surprise to readers here that the way I suggest you alight this murderous merry-go-round is to make the switch to a manner of eating you can and will do forever. It takes work, but a helluva lot less work than switching your dietary allegiance every week or month or year all on the same hollow promise. Not to mention dealing with the same dissatisfaction and anxiety surrounding your health and fitness.

Most of you will know that I am not one for shortcuts. A life hack is usually just a quick way to be shit at something, but today you’re going to get one. One simple rule to help you cut to your dietary chase, and no one else’s.

And one that by contrast to ignoring reality and viewing your dietary intake steadfastly through a single lens - typically calories - you instead look to mealtimes as an opportunity to make everything better. Because health, body shape, and enjoyment of life are not, and never have been, mutually exclusive.

No longer trying to make nutritional choices ignorant of your life and wider experience, the only rule now is to bring it - all of it - front and centre.

But before I give you an example, I want to make it very clear what this is NOT.

You will have heard the dietary advice to ‘substitute a better option’, Switching out your butter for avocado is passable, but instead of that shortbread you're eying up, choose a healthier option. Knock up some chia seeds stuck together with tree gum. That'll hit the spot. It's not the worst dietary advice you'll hear, but it makes me want to reach for the nearest hot dog. 

Because that’s not the point of eating it, is it? If sustenance is the only lens through which I'm to view food, I might as well hook myself up to a soylent drip overnight and be done with it. I’ll save a hell of a lot of time, money and effort. This is in the same vein as financial advice recommending you never buy takeaway coffee. The kind that has you living longer, wishing you were dead. The kind of advice that makes nothing better. 

We're doing the opposite. 

Then, along with what is best for my body, I further consider my mental energy, emotions, circumstances, company and everything else. Our experience of life - eating included - encompasses all of these things. So we have a responsibility not to pretend that it doesn’t. That butterfly flapping its wings is forever in effect, within the context of your life as on any scale.

So the only instruction is not to eat better but to better eat.

Let’s take a look at this in action:

Monday morning:

Standard: wake up late, have a coffee on the way to work, eat a muffin (i.e. breakfast cake) at your desk which will have your blood sugar crashing before you're even close to lunch.

 Same shit, different day and with a few important points of note.

Everything about your life is suffering - health, body shape, mood, productivity. This is where diet and weight loss companies will remind you that your life is so much more fun and fabulous than what those uptight health freaks must endure daily. And where they promise you can return to as soon as you've finished 6-12 weeks of their dietary dogma. Happy days.

Better eating: Wake up early enough to enjoy a satisfying breakfast - eggs on toast - leave for work with plenty of time, arrive rested, fed, and with enough energy to work optimally throughout the morning.

Here, by contrast, health, body shape, mood, hormone profile, stress levels, productivity and happiness, all get a tick. And you can mark off just one more morning you've had to endure with a slightly less convenient, more disciplined approach.

I accept that many of you have commitments that might make this somewhat challenging. Those of you even now screaming OHHH WELL I WOULD JUST FUCKING LOVE TO GET UP EARLY AND ENJOY THE PURE LUXURY OF TIME TO MAKE MYSELF SOME EGGS FOR BREAKFAST BUT I’VE GOT 4 KIDS DICKHEAD!!!  

And I’ll quickly hold both hands out to my side, palms forward, and with eyes lowered, in a quiet voice humbly remind you of the whole point of this exercise: better. If you don't have time to cook eggs in the morning, fine - make a bacon and egg sandwich the night before - nuke it - and you’re out the door. 

No? You don't eat eggs?

Look, this is an example, right? If it doesn’t accurately capture your reality there's a reason for that. The same reason as stated at the outset that all diets are doomed to fail: too many variables means they do not, and cannot, account for your life.  

So take a leaf - in fact, the only leaf - out of the Leftfield Youniversity textbook and use your imagination instead of mine.

Evidently, this suggestion does not make your life better. So change it then. To something that does. Forget about getting it 'right' the first time - you are only looking for better.

Happily, this means the ‘worse’ your breakfast is, the more options you have available to you. If currently you drink a black coffee and smoke a ciggie you could skip breakfast in favour of licking your MYKI on the way to work and already you’re ahead. Never an overhaul, just one small improvement. Not an event or a destination, a practice.

Another example? Let's go to the movies:

Standard: Ice cream and popcorn

Better:  Ice cream and popcorn.

Yup, exactly the same. This is no time for your eggs on toast or a quinoa salad. And you know where I stand on the tree gum. Eating an ice cream at the movies makes the experience better - what better eating is all about. Furthermore - when you've been better eating for the rest of the week you're now really enjoying your ice cream, your popcorn and the movie.  

Your standard doppelganger is at this point making bets with themselves about how much exercise they can do in punishment for eating ice cream! Or maybe bringing the annual juice diet forward a couple of weeks.

If you are at the football, a pie and a beer will make it better - not broccoli. 

You get the idea. The fact is, we are all well used to this theory in action. On special occasions - family reunions, birthdays and Christmas the food is central to the celebration - a sacrament. We can bring the same mentality to the everyday.

If that sounds faintly ridiculous consider that we already look to food to make things better - only we often do so in situations where food can’t help - but as a crutch or distraction. Not surprisingly, this leaves us feeling worse. That same movie ice cream sitting on the couch every single night will more likely leave you guilt-ridden or regret-filled. Not making things better, but detracting from the experience.

Like music, food occupies our senses but it does not discriminate - and it will amplify a positive or negative signal - fitting soundtrack or screaming feedback. And if this multiple menu design sounds fanciful this is perhaps the most helpful way to think of it.

“ Food is music to the body, music is food to the heart”

Gregory David Roberts - Shantaram

Most of us have some idea as to what music would work best in a given situation: a suitable soundtrack. And what wouldn’t. And we know this despite what might as well be infinite possible musical selections and variables in play.

Try it:  

Picture you and a group of friends on a tropical beach at sunset - you know, like a Corona ad. What soundtrack comes to mind?

Now take everybody out of the picture except that special someone. Notice how you have no trouble at all changing the soundtrack. The music has likely chosen itself. Maybe you don’t have a particular song in mind, but you will certainly have a musical ballpark.

Now change something else. Same person, same time of day, different climate - now it’s snowing. You instantly get a whole new playlist. You can do this with food. Every single time you eat. 

- But what if it doesn’t make it better? Are plums better or blueberries? Grilled or fried? Ice cream or frozen yoghurt?

Relax. As with music, there’s no right or wrong answer. Admittedly it's not as easily revised as pushing shuffle but the banality of life won’t always demand an ongoing playlist creation. You'll probably eat roughly the same things for many meals throughout the week, month and seasons - especially when certain they are making things better.

And, like anything, the more you do this the easier it gets.

The biggest hurdle here is that you've likely come to believe that if left to make your own decisions about food, you’ll eat shortbread all the time. So you know what? Go ahead. Eat it. Knock yourself out. See how long it fits any definition of better.

That helplessness - a byproduct of the diet industry - is learned. Even something as simple, as human, as eating it’s difficult to escape the dogma we've been force-fed. Obvious extremes aside, even the seemingly reasonable are garbage.

Things like 'everything in moderation' - a concept loved (and pitched) by junk food companies along with other meaningless platitudes like ‘balance’. The 'balance' proposed by Coke works out as follows: 5 minutes drinking = 3 hours of walking.

That doesn't mean you 'shouldn't' drink Coke. I do. The point is, you do you. Not as a puppet - but on the basis - and experiential understanding - of what works. Along with the suite of other benefits, it also makes you immune to the bullshit. Which - spoiler alert - is all of it. 

Finally, if the idea of better eating sounds like I’m stating the obvious, I get it. Much of Leftfield Training is. Here, you might try looking at it from the flip side. Because it’s all very well for us to have aspirations as to how we want to, look feel and perform, but we can’t hope for too much when I am eating to make things worse may not be the intention or dietary philosophy most of society subscribes to, but it's evidently the end result.

You eat in your life. You always will. So why not develop and follow your own dietary protocols. Instead of again setting an inevitable time bomb when the dietary training wheels come off. Learn to make your own decisions: design a menyou. And if you can imagine how when everything is considered, and overall - everything is better, then, unlike every single diet ever created, it becomes not a question of how long must I do this, but why the hell would I stop.