Nourishing mind, body and spirit is a creative process which comes from within you. It is based on your intuitive sense of what your body needs and what it doesn’t. What makes you feel great and what just doesn’t. Unfortunately, instead of taking a creative and nurturing approach to health, most people reach for the latest diet book, believing that it will finally be the one to give them the perfect body and perfect health they’ve been hoping for forever. But most diet books don’t leave any room for creativity and exploration. They may also be very restrictive and not sustainable for true lifestyle change.
Health doesn’t come from a book or from a strict set of rules and regulations which we force ourselves to follow for a specific amount of time. It is freer than that, more balanced than that. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t take work and discipline and time. It does. But it has to be sustainable.
There is great freedom in a whole-foods diet. There is color, there is flavor, there is sweet, there is savory, there is life. Whole foods are living foods.
As a health coach, I can tell you what to eat, what not to eat, when to eat (or not). I can tell you to sleep more, or exercise more (or less), eat more mindfully, drink more water (always). But you have to be able to work this advice into your life. Test it out. See what works and what you can realistically change in your lifestyle. And sometimes you have to get creative to do it.
The reason most diets fail is because there are about a gazillion other aspects to our unique selves that are also part of the equation. Our emotional state, genetics, sleep patterns, stress levels, personalities, relationships…. just to name a few.
Some other typical reasons are:
- Choosing to use a diet to achieve a short-term goal (usually to lose weight). The diet is viewed from the start as a temporary action used to obtain an immediate result. Once that result is achieved, the diet ends and old eating habits return.
- The yo-yo diet or weight cycling. You go on diets, lose weight, then gain weight, often more than you lost. And then the cycle is repeated. You haven’t made the changes a permanent part of your lifestyle. This repeated failure can have negative effects on a person’s mental health and could also result in an eating disorder.
- Many diets are based on the premise of counting calories using a formula meant for the general population as opposed to the individual. Everybody processes calories differently. This formula says that if caloric expenditure exceeds caloric intake, you will lose weight. But this premise is misleading. Every calorie is not created equal. Calories consumed from spinach or sweet potatoes are much more nutrient-dense than calories consumed from a processed, low-fat muffin. In addition, if you were to consume too few calories, your body goes into survival mode, slowing down the metabolism.
- Before even starting a diet, you believe that you will be depriving yourself of foods you love, rather than focusing on discovering a bounty of new, healthier foods. Entering into a program with this mindset clearly does not support success.
- What you eat is important. It is very important. How much you exercise is important. Very important. But you can eat right and exercise and still not be well.
I view health as an art and creative process because ultimately it is a process of self-discovery. A process of trial and error where you discover what foods, exercise and daily habits make you feel amazing, energized and ready to take on the world, rather than sucking the life out of you. It is about making simple improvements and gradual changes. As these habits build on each other over time the changes collectively make a much larger impact than expected.
This is what my cleanses of the past year were all about. Finding out what foods work for your body and then building your own diet out of those. What foods make you feel your absolute best? What foods give you energy?
Also, what habits are a part of your daily life, aside from what’s on your plate. What are you doing to nourish yourself spiritually? What are you doing to nurture your relationships? Diets don’t typically take on these topics.
I encourage my clients to create a healthy lifestyle that is flexible, not fanatical. It is not about deprivation, but about learning to crave and enjoy, delicious, vitality booting foods. It is about a journey that goes beyond healthy eating and exercise and delves deeper, because that’s where the wholeness is. That’s where true well-being begins.
Live nourished,
Heather
