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In short: first perceive, then reflect, then connect.

In slightly-less-short: first, practice perceptive skills of intuition, interoception, and mindfulness; then, keep a record that accurately reflects your food, feelings, exercise, and experiences; then, identify health patterns at your baseline and after making changes, to see whether and where those changes are having effect.

Humans are very good at pattern recognition. We’re so good at it, in fact, that we “trick ourselves” into seeing familiar patterns in clouds or in Rorschach blots. But we can’t recognize a pattern anywhere if we don’t look for one. Keeping the record isn’t going to do you any good if you don’t go back and analyze it.

Conversely, we might feel a sense of accomplishment if we make some change “for our health”, but we can’t have real confidence in it unless we can point to a pattern of cause and effect linked to it. Put those pattern recognition skills to work, and quell any doubts about the value of your adopted habits—whether those doubts are your own, or those of others who look askance at your strange new ideas about food, medicine, and movement.

When my daughter was born, she had very severe eczema. Eczema is almost always related to food allergies, and hers were gluten and dairy. Giving up food allergens is important, but skin issues, especially long standing ones, take a while to resolve. Here’s a simple topical that will cut your waiting time: Licorice oil!

Reflection is a bending back. It requires some flexibility.

Reflecting is intimately bound up with recording. If a recording does not reflect well its original, we say it has low fidelity. We prefer the highest degree of fidelity possible, as this gives us the greatest amount of useful information.

Reflection is similarly bound to recollection. Recollection is a reconstitution, and this always involves some adhesive or binding agent, which is an addition to the original component parts and which may keep them from fitting together as closely, or covering the same range of motion, as they once did.