I’m not sure when it happened, but somewhere along the line, this whole eating thing got fraught with doubt and difficulty. Some would assert that the trouble began millenia ago with the agricultural revolution. But as far as I’m concerned, it started in the 1970s when I was about 8 years old.

That’s when U.S. ag secretary Earl Butz made his mark on our food supply, when factory farming took hold, and when consumer reliance on fast food and convenience foods began to spike.

It’s when I came to understand that there were “good foods” and “bad foods,” and that my own food choices could become the basis for conflict, competition, shame, and regret.

It’s when I put myself on my first “diet” because that seemed to me like what all the grownup ladies were doing, and I wanted to be just like them.

Basically, it’s when I took my first fledgling steps on a journey that would take my relationship with food from healthy to wacky and back again.

I shared a bit of that journey in my last Revolutionary Acts column (“Celebrate What’s Good,” September 2014), so what I’ll offer here is my broader takeaway: Food is a charged topic, because how you relate to your food has everything to do with how you relate to yourself and your life.

Food, in my mind, is the ultimate microcosm. It reflects how we consume and generate energy. It translates and broadcasts how we feel about our very existence.

Whether we eat consciously or unconsciously, strategically or randomly, pleasurably or dutifully, with voracious hunger or ho-hum disinterest, we can always see in our relationship with food something true and essential about the way we experience other aspects of our lives.

Food teaches us that we can be the author or the victim of what we swallow, integrate, and, ultimately, of who we become.

And the totally fun, totally crazy-making thing is, we are continually faced with that choice, at breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and at various intervals in between.

There’s no end to the arguments about what we should or shouldn’t eat (you’ll read more about many of them throughout this issue, and especially in “The Ethics of Eating” ).

So, how the heck do we manage to make sensible, sane choices in a food world as nutty and confusing as the one we live in now? We can start by recognizing that until our bodies and brains are reasonably well fueled, we are simply not going to be good for much of anything.

No matter how inspired you are, no matter how much you want to accomplish for yourself or contribute to the world, if you’re living on doughnuts and soda, you’re not going to have enough vitality to develop and give your best gifts with full mojo. Nor are you going to feel good enough to enjoy the process, at least not for long.

Next, each of us has to decide how much we want to focus on and argue about food — with ourselves or anybody else.

I have strong opinions about food. I enjoy thinking about and exploring all things edible, and I’m happy to share my views with anyone who asks. But I also have a strong respect for other people’s right to explore and decide for themselves.

Vegan or paleo. Indulgent or ascetic. Industrial or artisanal. Instinctive or assiduously selected. It’s up to each of us to decide how we want to play that field. And hey, if you’re determined to stick with your doughnuts-and-soda regimen, you can do that, too. You’ll notice how that’s working for you over time, and when you’re triggered to make a change, you will.

Meanwhile, it’s worth asking: How is my relationship with food going? Are you friends? Enemies? Frenemies? Are you having a lovefest, getting along and having fun, politely tolerating each other, unintentionally tripping each other up, locked in daily combat or dealing with some combination of all of the above?

What does your relationship with food say about your relationship with life in general? Is it about self-authorship and appreciation, or something less satisfying? Are you paying attention to it, or letting it just blow by?

Like all good friendships, a happy relationship with food starts with authentic interest. We hope this issue of Experience Life sparks plenty of that.

Today, I am here to speak to you of happy things. And I’ll get to that in a second. But, first, allow me to share with you the memory of an unfortunate era during my teen years — an era when I was not so happy.

Back in those days, I was pre-occupied with being thin (which I thought would make me happy). So, taking my cue from the bikini-body magazines I relied upon for advice, I would dutifully get on the scale every morning. And based on the number I saw there, I would decide whether it was a good day or bad day.

A bad day (which could be determined by the presence of what I deemed a single “extra” pound) meant that I’d start out feeling lousy about myself, and I’d approach every meal with a mixed sense of dread and obsession. A bad day revolved around diet soda. And carrot sticks. And low-fat crackers. Which I would count out of the package before I ate them.

Bad days were miserable, but “good” days weren’t much better. Because if I’d somehow managed to drop a pound overnight, it was probably as the result of starving myself the previous day. And thus, on my so-called good days, I felt like crap.

I had no energy. I’d be hungry, shaky, beset by crazy food cravings, beleaguered, distracted, and depressive. By midafternoon I would “reward” myself for my suffering and stoicism by eating something I’d regret, and spend the rest of the night dreading getting back on the scale the next day.

Obviously, this hideous cycle was both mentally and physically unhealthy. It was also totally counterproductive. During this era, my weight rose steadily. The way I was living was killing my metabolism and spirit in one go.

More than a decade later, when I finally got over my weight obsessions and started focusing on my health and happiness instead, something interesting happened: As I let go of the scale as my measure of progress, I became aware of a much wider and richer array of feedback data.

For example, I noticed that when I ate proteins, healthy fats, and veggies for breakfast — rather than cereal and fruit or toast with jam — I had a lot more energy, could think more clearly, and didn’t get hungry (or even think about food) for hours on end.

When I started eating more whole foods and gave up the diet soda and low-fat crackers, my sugar-and-carb cravings subsided. My moods balanced out. My inflammatory symptoms subsided. My self-esteem climbed. Seeing my fridge stocked with whole foods also made me feel so much better about myself than surveying a sea of low-calorie, low-fat diet products.

When I started taking a whole-foods-based supergreens supplement, I got more regular. (I know, TMI, but as Revolutionary Act No. 35, “Move It Out,” emphasizes, these things matter!) My skin cleared up and the whites of my eyes looked brighter.

When I added lemon or cucumber or a mint leaf to my water, I found I was inclined to drink a lot more of it. And when I was fully hydrated, I felt less hungry and had less need for caffeine. My face looked less puffy. I slept better. My dark circles cleared up.

When I got outside and walked or ran in the morning, even for 15 minutes, I had more spring in my step, a more confident, positive attitude about my body, and a great deal more willingness to make healthy choices throughout the day.

When I started swinging a kettlebell, I discovered I really liked the feeling of moving against resistance — and that I could build serious muscle much faster than I had ever thought possible. I took perverse pleasure in my postworkout soreness, and in the ease with which I began bounding up stairs.

Little by little, as I kept experimenting with changes in my daily choices and routines, I found more and more to like about my results. The more I liked, the more I felt motivated to do. The effect was near miraculous.

Today (after 13 years as a health journalist), I know that even a single intense exercise session can alter the DNA in your fat and muscle cells. I know that within minutes, a healthy snack, drink, or meal can influence cell-level activity and blood-sugar levels. I know that within nanoseconds, the mere adjusting of a thought or attitude can affect your neural activity and brain chemistry.

Back then, I knew none of this. I just knew that my body and my life were changing for the better. Instead of watching the scale with mistrust, I began regarding my body with approval. Instead of feeling like I was stuck in a downward spiral, I began to sense new possibilities. I began to reach for goals that had nothing to do with my weight.

My weight, meanwhile, stabilized at a happy, healthy, lovely place where it has remained, with very little fluctuation, ever since.

So why am I telling you all this? I’m telling you this because I am convinced that one of the healthiest and most revolutionary things we can do is simply find something right about ourselves, and celebrate that.

If the scale is always telling you that you’re wrong (or if conventional fitness magazines are making you feel that way), it makes sense to look elsewhere for your feedback and inspiration.

Here are a few ways you can begin getting some more celebration-worthy encouragement now:

1) Give yourself some credit. You are reading this magazine. Maybe it’s giving you some new food for thought. Maybe it is confirming your commitment to creating and sustaining healthy change. Either way, great. That’s progress. You win!

2) Experiment with healthy choices. Do not make them about weight loss — just health. Eat some greens, take a walk around the block, knock back a glass of water you might otherwise have skipped. Notice what happens when you choose the healthy thing. You might feel a surge of pride in the moment. You might notice a subtle result later in the day. Just notice. Keep doing healthy experiments like that and see what happens.

3) Try a 10-day to two-week whole-food detox experience. Do not step on a scale the entire time. Instead, keep a journal, and take stock of the ways your body begins looking and feeling different after even 24 hours of nourishment and freedom from irritation and injury.

4) Load up on positive motivation. First, fire up our free “101 Revolutionary Ways to Be Healthy” app. Next, peruse some of the articles below. Start noticing the feel-good feedback your body-mind is already giving you, and realize how much more it might be willing to deliver with even a little encouragement.

Experiments like these are what helped me figure out that stewing in dissatisfaction is not (for me, at least) a recipe for sustainable progress. Finding something to celebrate will be a much more rewarding, redemptive, and happy way to go.

I don’t know about you, but in my world, there are days where it feels like every moment is spoken for — or worse, being fought over.

Too often, from the time I wake up until the time my head hits the pillow, I’m scheduled. I keep a pad of paper by my bed because many nights, even after my head hits the pillow, my brain is still busy making lists of things for my body to do.

For the most part, I’m busy doing things I love, things that I believe are worthwhile, things that I believe help make a positive difference. But even so, there are many times when I wish I could feel less busy, less frenetic, a little more centered and at peace.

I want to feel more often the way I feel at the end of a good yoga class. Or sinking into a hot bath. Or settling into a nice long meditation.

[callout]I’m alive, conscious, and breathing. I’m doing OK. There’s no need, in Byron Katie’s wise words, to “argue with reality.” I can just be here now and be fine with that.[/callout]The problem is, it’s precisely on the crazy days, when I am most hungry for those sorts of relaxing activities, that I’m least likely to have them scheduled. And on those kinds of days, if something isn’t scheduled, it probably isn’t going to happen.

That’s why I’ve come up with a two-minute calming ritual I can squeeze in around the nuttiest of itineraries.

It requires no special equipment and can be done just about anywhere, even when I’m feeling frantic, reactive, or hopelessly behind schedule.

I call it “The I-Am-Here Cure.” And it’s a combination of a classic 4-7-8 relaxation breath along with some body-mind tricks that I’ve experimented with and found work well for me.

Here’s what you do:

• Wherever you are, come to a complete stop (if you’re driving, pull over). Set down anything you are holding.
• Stand or sit with both feet flat on the floor. Gently pull your chin back so that your head isn’t jutting out ahead of your body (a classic rushing posture we tend to unconsciously adopt).
• Inhale slowly through your nose, counting to four. As you inhale, straighten your spine, drop your shoulders, and lift your head. Gaze straight ahead at a particular spot on the wall, or a particular area on the horizon.
• Hold your breath for a count of seven, resting the tip of your tongue on the roof of your mouth just behind your front teeth.
• Exhaling through your mouth (with your tongue still in place), expel all the breath in your lungs over a count of eight.
• With lungs empty, hold your breath for a count of three, gently blinking your eyes on each count, retraining your eyes on the same spot each time you reopen them.
• Allow yourself to breathe in again through your nose, feeling the sense of relief as air comes into your lungs.
• Keep your lungs filled for just a moment, then slowly exhale while saying to yourself, silently or aloud: “I . . . Am . . . Here.”

Speaking this simple, factual statement from a still, conscious state reminds me that, whatever my worries about the future may be, at the moment, I just am where I am.

I’m alive, conscious, and breathing. I’m doing OK. There’s no need, in Byron Katie’s wise words, to “argue with reality.” I can just be here now and be fine with that.

Often, even that little bit of present-moment reality is enough to help get my wits about me. And from there, I can proceed with a more conscious sense of calm to whatever comes next.

So, that’s what works for me.

This issue of Experience Life is filled with lots of other fun ideas and powerful perspective shifts to help you discover what works for you. From more effective ways of approaching weight loss to more nuanced ways of resolving conflict, plus some smart ways to avoid overscheduling yourself in the first place.

Oh, and if you are looking for another rewarding way to spend two valuable minutes, may I suggest you go grab our incredible new enhanced digital edition for iPad from the App Store? (The first time you download the app, the current issue is free.)

That way you can keep this and future issues of Experience Life (with lots of fun interactivity and bonus content) always at your fingertips and ready to share with the people you love most.

For anyone too young to remember, Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies was the title of Jim Collins’s first big business book. Published in 1994, and now considered a classic, it explored the common characteristics of enduringly great companies.

Collins explored the values and practices that allowed these organizations to flourish over the course of many decades, even as their competition faltered or treaded water.

More recently, other books have explored that territory from fresh perspectives. I particularly like a book called Firms of Endearment: How World-Class Companies Profit from Passion and Purpose, coauthored by Raj Sisodia, a well-respected business-school professor at Babson College and one of the visionaries behind the Conscious Capitalism movement.

In Firms of Endearment, Sisodia analyzes a collection of companies that have dramatically outperformed those profiled in Collins’s second big book, Good to Great, over a 15-year period. He concludes that much of what separates these beloved brands from their competition has to do with their passionate commitment, beyond mere profit seeking, to a deeper sense of purpose, and to changing the world for the better.

That’s an insight that Collins touched on in Built to Last but ignored in Good to Great, leading him to label Philip Morris as a “great” company on the basis of profitability, while largely ignoring its deplorable costs.

The inherent truth about anything “built to last,” of course, is that change is the only reliable constant. New insights and circumstances arrive, unbidden, and when they do, they inevitably surprise us. Big changes, in particular, trip our nervous-system alarms and throw us at least a little off our game.

Which is why books like Built to Last and Firms of Endearment strike such a chord with us. They broadcast a message that is not just true in business, but in all of life — namely, that tapping into our guiding sense of purpose can help us weather all kinds of change with grace and resilience.

That’s something we’ve been learning and relearning here at Experience Life since the day we launched the magazine.

The magazine’s team, processes, and editorial content have all morphed over time. But our central reason for being (to help people get healthier and happier even in the face of real obstacles) has remained constant.

During the course of the last year, in particular, the magazine has undergone all kinds of evolutions and shifts. In addition to my own voyage to New York City’s Huffington Post and back, a number of our team members went on their own change-intensive journeys. Some were faced with significant family crises and losses. Some struggled through crises and life-shifts of their own.

As I witnessed the equanimity and courage with which they faced these changes, and how they supported each other through challenging moments, I saw them actively demonstrating many aspects of Experience Life’s philosophy and principles. It was lovely to behold.

Over the past year, we’ve also had many exciting breakthroughs and unexpected blessings to celebrate. Some wonderfully talented new folks have joined our team (including managing editor Michael Dregni and staff writer Maggie Fazeli Fard). Others have developed new skill sets and grown into new positions (congrats to Casie Leigh Lukes on her new role as digital content specialist). And recently, David Schimke (who served as our editor in chief since my departure last May) decided to redirect his considerable journalistic talents toward some exciting new creative pursuits of his own.

I am deeply grateful to David for the intelligence and dedication he brought to the magazine. And I appreciate the space he and the whole team held for the magazine to continue delivering on its editorial mission, even as its founding editor (yours truly) went off to explore new horizons and eventually found her way home.

Since my new role has me busy steering a variety of exciting healthy-living initiatives in addition to Experience Life, we’ve already begun our search for a new top editor — someone who believes as profoundly as we do in the “no-gimmicks, no-hype” promise this magazine has always held sacred.

In the meantime, we hope you enjoy this issue. We’ve packed it full of timeless wisdom, right-now insights — and our own built-to-last commitment to helping you stay true to the healthy-living values that matter to you.

This spring, I attended an advance screening and press event for an exciting new documentary film called Fed Up. It’s been playing in theaters across the country, and if you haven’t already seen it, I hope you will.

Fed Up is one of the most courageous and outspoken explorations of this country’s obesity and chronic-disease crisis to date.

It’s also a great example of how Revolutionary Act No. 3 — “Rage Against the Machine” — can inspire healthy transformation.

The film is the brainchild of TV journalist and talk-show host Katie Couric, who co-executive produced and narrated the movie. She says her desire to make the film was fueled by both her personal and her professional frustration with how little decent, deep reporting she saw being done on the root causes of obesity.

The more Couric dug into the topic — for herself, her family, and her audience — the more she realized that the most essential and scientific truths about the drivers of obesity and disease simply were not reaching the American population.

She saw how special interests had either confounded or co-opted public policy and public-health information, and how mainstream media had more or less gone along for the ride.

The trickle-down effect? Mass confusion — among the general public as well as a great many influential experts — about what actually makes us fat and sick. And about what we need to do to turn things around.

As a result of that confusion, we’re suffering runaway rates of obesity and disease. We’re enduring economy-killing healthcare costs. And we’re raising at least one generation of children who are predicted to live shorter and less healthy lives than their parents.

Couric found this state of affairs dismaying and maddening. So she invited co-executive producer Laurie David (best known for An Inconvenient Truth) and producer-director Stephanie Soechtig (of 20/20 fame) to help her look beyond pat answers, and to reveal the realities too many other media outlets were ignoring or getting wrong.

The resulting film is riveting. It puts a stake through the heart of a great many popular myths and misperceptions about our nation’s health and weight challenges. This includes the notion that if we just had more willpower and exercised a bit more, we’d all be fine.

So what is the truth? Spoiler alert (and this won’t surprise anyone who’s been reading this magazine for long): It’s not so much about whole-food calories and fats as it is about sugar-packed, addictive, metabolism-disrupting processed foods and beverages.

Here’s another inconvenient truth the film spells out: While exercise and physical activity are absolutely essential to health, fitness, and well-being, they cannot, by themselves, reverse the health-crushing, body-warping effects of a nutrient-poor, toxin-heavy, processed-foot diet.

I won’t give away the entire film (you can watch the trailer and sign up for the Fed Up Challenge at www.fedupmovie.com). But I will say this: The more you learn about how badly corrupted our understanding of health has been, the more apt the film’s title becomes.

And this brings us to this month’s Revolutionary Act: “Rage Against the Machine.”

Let me clarify that normally I’m not a big fan of raging about anything. And I’m not suggesting that merely getting fed up, riled up, and infuriated about our unhealthy status quo is going to do anyone a whole lot of good.

But I do think that feeling a collective sense of moral outrage (as well as grief, compassion, and hope) about our current conundrum can be a powerful force for momentum and courageous action.

During the Q & A portion of the Fed Up press event I attended this April in New York City, I asked Couric (whose TV work relies heavily on advertising revenue) whether she had any anxiety about blowback from powerful food-industry advertisers.

Her answer suggested that she had certainly considered that possibility. “I’m now at a point in my career where I feel I can speak out about these issues,” she said.

And if she were a younger, less-established journalist? Couric put it this way: “I’m not sure that I would be willing to take that risk.”

The problem, of course, is that the majority of mainstream journalists don’t have anything like Couric’s level of journalistic freedom and fearlessness.

This goes a long way toward explaining the state of today’s health media. It also explains why our confusion has become so entrenched, and why making healthy choices has become so challenging.

So, what can we do about this? How can each of us begin to push back on the “machine” that’s been working against our health and happiness for far too long?

Here’s my prescription:

1) Start from a place of empowerment: Fearlessly assess where, in the past, you have allowed yourself to be a victim of circumstance. Acknowledge your own vulnerabilities and moments of collusion with the unhealthy machine. Then decide to begin doing things differently. Use your intelligence and creativity to ask, “How can I become a more powerful force for healthy change in my own life and the lives of others?”

2) Speak up and speak out: If you are frustrated by the unhealthy choices and influences being pushed on you and your family at work, school, restaurants, stores, even hospitals, say something. Tell folks in charge what you think, and why. Do some healthy educating and inspiring. Use whatever authority or influence you have to advocate for a better way, and take some satisfaction in your proactive pushback.

3) Adopt a damn-the-torpedoes approach to healthy living: Know that you are going to be surrounded by unhealthy nudges. You will be offered doughnuts at work, soda at the doctor’s office, candy at the bank, cookies on the airplane. Take your healthy snacks, water bottle, and healthy determination with you everywhere you go.

4) Focus on the positive: Revel in your healthy resistance. Look for ways you can make not-so-great situations better by cultivating your willingness, creativity, and healthy moxie. Be grateful for the steps others are taking to make healthy living easier, and for how they are advocating on behalf of a healthier world.

Ultimately, the best way to rage against anything you don’t like is to support something substantially better. Or better yet, create and share something you absolutely love.

Look for ways to do that in your everyday life, and have faith that before long, the destructive machines in our midst will cede their power to the beautiful and life-sustaining systems we all create and embrace together.

Over my career as a health seeker, I’ve seen a lot of nutrition and fitness trends come and go. Back in the day, it was bran muffins, ankle weights, and Lean Cuisine. This year, it’s oil pulling and green juice (both of which I’m into, by the way). Next year, who knows?

It’s kind of funny how inclined we humans are to seek the novel and interesting and, for better or worse, to hop on various bandwagons as they cruise on by.

Of course, this is also true of fitness fashion. Leg warmers and sweatbands — two phenomena I saw come and go the first time around — are now apparently back in a big way. Cute.

What’s not so funny or cute, though, is the confusion and ennui a lot of us feel as an endless stream of supposedly healthy trends are foisted upon us.

Often, that foisting happens courtesy of the media. Always on the prowl for something new, sensational, and exciting to report, both print and digital media have made an art form of spinning attention-getting (and sometimes misleading) stories out of little or nothing.

Evidently, the headline “What Makes Us Healthy Now Is Pretty Much the Same Stuff as It Has Been for All of Human History” just doesn’t grab a lot of eyeballs.

Still more trend-pushing comes courtesy of commercial interests who benefit from manipulating what we buy and how much of it we consume.

They’ve been known to manufacture skewed studies, infiltrate blogging communities and social networks, buy off or intimidate journalists, and even invade public-school systems in an effort to establish the trends they think will best serve their bottom lines. (If you haven’t read about this in Michael Moss’s Salt Sugar Fat, or John Stauber’s Toxic Sludge Is Good for You, or Ryan Holiday’s Trust Me, I’m Lying, please do. And check out our health-media feature “Decoding Health Media“.)

I’ve certainly experienced my share of frustration and bewilderment trying to separate the nifty from the nonsensical over the past 25 years or so. But I’ve also developed a good nose for which trends have merit, and which don’t.

Here, off the top of my head, is a list of just some of the trends I could happily see pass into the great beyond, never to return:

• Calorie and gram counting
• Low-fat diets; the pushing of skim milk and reduced-fat cheese and fat-free yogurt as great for health and weight loss
• Diet soda and zero-calorie drinks sweetened with chemicals
• Fat-free cookies, muffins, cupcakes, crackers, and chips
• The proliferation of “healthy” extruded food products made of pastelike  ingredients (refined flours, starches, sugars, industrial oils, and flavorings) formed into puffs, polygons, disks, sticks, Os, clusters, nuggets, and so on.
• Misleading “heart-healthy!” and “healthy choice!” labels on unhealthy processed foods that happen to contain some “whole grains!”
• Long, boring treadmill workouts that focus primarily on calorie burning
• The chasing of thigh gap (don’t get me started)
• The overprescription of statins, antacids, and other symptom-suppressing meds that can have serious health-undermining side effects

So those are some trends I’ll be happy to see die. On the other hand, there are also plenty of nascent trends I’d like to see gather more steam:

• Rediscovery of whole, unprocessed foods as the basis of a healthy diet (check out Whole30.com)
• Re-embracing of healthy fats (including coconut oil and grass-fed butter) for health and pleasure
• Growth and increased accessibility of organic, biodynamic, local, heirloom, and non-GMO foods
• Recognition of sugar, flour, and trans fats as primary culprits in heart disease, type 2 diabetes, and obesity
• Increasing awareness of gluten, dairy, and food-additive sensitivities
• The redefinition of kale, chard, collards, and other dark greens as staple foods; sweet potatoes, cauliflower, and Brussels sprouts as comfort foods
• The return of sustainably and humanely raised pastured meats, eggs, and dairy
• The rise of super greens and fatty-acid supplements
• The growth of functional, integrative, and P4 medicine (www.p4mi.org)
• Emphasis on sleep, rest, and relaxation as key health requirements
• Appreciation of meditation and mindfulness as tools for body-mind health (check out Headspace.com)
• Women with real bodies rebelling against idealized-body media obsessions (check out Weirdlyshaped.com)
• The rise of health coaches
• People focusing on fitness and strength vs. “skinnyness”
• Use of elimination diets to identify food intolerances, clear up chronic inflammatory conditions, and break food addictions
• Activity-based communities (yoga, Zumba, boot camp, circuit-training, cycling, athletic events, etc.) becoming central social gathering places
• Support for self-powered transport (walk, bike, skate, etc.)
• Expansion of the definition of “health” to include environmental considerations like air, water, soil, food supply, ecosystems, and climate stability

There are a great many more trends I could list in both categories, of course, but you get the idea.

The challenge, naturally, is sorting the beneficial trends from the pointless and harmful ones. Because while the mere fact that something is trendy doesn’t mean it’s smart or good for you, it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s stupid or bad for you either.

My advice: Consider whether the trend in question works in sync with or against the natural order of things. Notice whether it appeals to or offends your most basic sensibilities, and whether it makes you happy or angst ridden. Connect with some well-informed resources you can trust to help you parse the confusing stuff.

When in doubt, you can also try out an appealing trend to see whether or not it works for you.

Last time I ate some “healthy” extruded snacks, I found them yummy   (addictively so) — and then felt sick and hungry for hours afterward. And the first time I tried Zumba, I thought I would hate it, but I found it was actually pretty fun. You just never know.

Above all, don’t be afraid to launch a trend of your own. If something is working for you, notice that. Tell the world about it. Recruit some followers. Who knows — you might just start the next Big Thing.