By Richmond Natural Medicine

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May 12, 2016

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We are all striving to be “healthy” but what does that entail and how do we attain it?

When you think of your entire lifestyle, is being “healthy” just one part of your life, like your blood pressure, your stress level, your digestion, your relationships or your diet? I’m sure you can find resources out there for the healthiest way to deal with stress or the healthiest way to nurture your relationships, or the healthiest diet on the planet. But truthfully, if we focus on just one single area trying to perfect it to a state of what we’re told is “healthy”, we’re often missing the big picture, and we often struggle to make it feel just right for what we need. That’s because, in my opinion, there is no such thing as “healthy”.

There is such a thing as Mindful Health, which is always changing as your body changes, and as your lifestyle changes.

Mindful Health encompasses everything – from the big things in life to the small, from the tiny parts of your diet to the larger staples of nutrition. My desire as a Nutritionist is to make sure your dietary inputs are reflective of your body’s needs, your lifestyle parameters, and conducive to your entire whole body picture. That includes your stress levels, your job, your family, your current and past medical history, and of course your current state of health. That ends up making nutrition just one part of your overall health – and consequently much more manageable.

As you focus on making dietary changes, it’s always very easy to feel overwhelmed with how to do it the “right way”. Should you be counting calories? Fat content? Avoiding inflammatory foods? Avoiding grains? Avoiding starches? Eating more green vegetables….or orange ones? When we can step back to look at the big picture, we might notice that other areas in life need to be addressed and adjusted before nutrition can even begin to be successfully and sustainably changed.

For example, I have seen several patients who for years struggled with making their diet “healthier” and/or their weight loss and eating habits successful and sustainable but could never reach their goals. Their dietary habits were all over the place, and they always felt a sense of failure when they just couldn’t stick with a recommended strict dietary protocol. After we worked together for a few sessions, it always became clear that their sporadic and perpetually negative eating habits were a small but clear reflection of many other aspects of their life which also held them in a negative cycle, leaving them feeling helpless and angry. Food was often their comfort when other areas of life were not leaving them feeling satisfied.

Although their immediate goal was to improve their overall nutrition, we always needed to look at the bigger picture and focus on why those behavior patterns persist. We needed to explore the other areas of their life that were holding them back from making positive changes. If we continued to focus on just nutrition alone, they would likely fall back into those same negative patterns. Trying to work on one piece of a puzzle while ignoring other ill-fitting pieces doesn’t make for a sustainable approach. Often, they will not see the changes they want to see in their body (nutrition inputs/weight loss/health improvements) unless they make necessary changes to their lifestyle first.

So when it comes to making positive nutrition changes to support your Mindful Health status, begin by making two lists. The first list will include all of the things in life that are going well. This should include people who support you, things you’re grateful for, things you’re happy about, and also things that will ultimately support you to mentally and physically want to stay focused on a holistic nutrition lifestyle. When looking at this list, pick one thing (or more!) that you can implement every single day that will remind you to stay the course and stay positive about your nutrition goals. The second list will include all of the things not going so well. This should include lifestyle habits that do not hold a positive influence for you, (ie. bad habits), people in your life who leave you feeling not your best self, situations you find yourself in daily that make you angry, job situations, family situations, financial situation etc. Ultimately, this list should represent to you the areas in life that are holding you back from making positive changes. When looking at this second list, pick one thing that you can actively change or dismiss from your life. It doesn’t have to be a big thing. Just reducing this list tiny amounts at a time will offer big results over time.

By presenting yourself with these written lists, it’s much easier to see that your overall state of “healthy” is not reliant on just one thing. It should show you that many, many things in your lifestyle either contribute to or detract from you feeling your best self. Nutrition, in turn, is just one part of that, and subject to the many other moving pieces of your life. Take small, manageable steps – they really do add up!