The "why isn't this working" question

You’re eating veggies. You’ve cut out (or at least way back) on sugar. You’re matching your intake to what a specific diet tells you to eat: and yet, you’re still tired, still foggy, still not quite yourself nor reaching a health goal you’ve set for yourself.

Sound familiar? If so, you’re probably starting to think, “I’m doing everything right – so why isn’t this working?” The answer often has less to do with what’s on your plate and more to do with what your body does with the food after you’ve eaten it.

Really, there are two questions “underneath” the above question that are important to ask here. The first is “Am I eating well?” That question is about input: choosing nutrient dense foods… balancing nutrients… avoiding excess sugar and processed ingredients. Being able to answer “yes” to that question is the foundation – but a foundation alone does not a safe home make…

The second question is “Am I using what I eat?” That is a question of utilization: once this nutrient enters my body, is it being activated, transported, and put to work inside the cells? That answer involves many steps in a long chain of biological processes and if any chain in that process is weak, the nutrient may not be able to ever perform its job regardless of how good the input looks on paper. There are many reasons a “good” diet may not translate into feeling good or producing optimal results:

Chronic low-grade inflammation often interferes with normal hormonal signaling in the body, making it harder for nutrients and hormones to be received and utilized even when they’re available in the bloodstream.

Chronic stress hijacks the body’s resources toward short-term survival processes and away from long-term maintenance processes (including nutrient metabolism, for example). A person can eat a perfect diet, but under chronic stress their body may still struggle to metabolize nutrients well.

Many nutrients need other nutrients to become active, so deficiencies in what are called “co-factor” nutrients affect the ability of their counterpart nutrients to become active in the body.

Genetic factors sometimes play a role, as well. For example, some people have a genetic difference that hinders their body’s natural ability to convert specific nutrients into active forms the body can use (this is one reason why two people can eat exactly the same diet and get different results).

The reason this is important to understand is that often times a frustrating but increasingly common situation emerges: “normal” labs while still not feeling normal at all. Standard labs are good at detecting what is in the bloodstream but are not reflective of what’s happening at the cellular level, which is where nutrients get put to use. That gap is where a lot of unresolved fatigue, brain fog, and low energy lives: it’s not that intake is “wrong,” it’s that the nutrients provided by that intake cannot be utilized by the cells for some reason.

Improving utilization may or may not involve major changes to intake: it’s really about identifying and supporting the specific step in the biological process chain that isn’t working efficiently. So while it may involve improving daily intake choices, it may instead be more about addressing a co-factor gap for improved absorption of a key nutrient; reducing physiological and/or emotional load of chronic stress so the body returns to a state of regulation rather than survival; calming inflammation in the body so that hormonal signaling doesn’t get blocked; or recognizing genetically driven patterns regarding nutrient absorption to become able to support the body in its own natural efforts.

None of this replaces eating “well” – it builds upon that good foundation. Healthy intake provides the raw materials the body needs – healthy utilization determines whether those materials ever get used.

If you’ve optimized your diet and still don’t feel “right,” the problem may not be what you’re eating: it may be what’s happening inside your body after you’ve eaten it, which is a different kind of dietary investigation than another round of food tweaks.