6 Components of PHysical Health
Real Nutrition
Nutrition is anything that feeds your body the nutrients (building blocks) that help support the growth, development, and health of your body. Anything that is harmful, steals from your reserves or causes long-term negative effects. Real Nutrition looks different for everyone, based on gut health, genetics, and internal and external conditions. It’s also super important to note that the way food is produced and processed changes so much about how nourishing or depleting it is.
I’ll give a few examples here. One great example of this rings true in my life drinking “regular” milk gives me a stomach ache all day. Drinking Raw milk has no noticeable effect on my system. Why are they different? Well, raw milk is taken from pasture-raised cows that are fed a natural diet, which in turn doesn’t create the crazy imbalances in the mama cow’s internal physiology. Normal Dairy cows are fed grain and corn, which is terrible for the cow and causes all sorts of infections which pass into their milk (EW, I know!) Raw milk (from pasture-raised cows) is also full of natural anti-pathogenic components (if you want to learn more head here) Another example is genetic SNIPs. Some people have genetic mutations which cause them to be intolerant to meat. The meat will literally make them sick, while others could exist solely on meat without a problem. (A great place to start with learning more about epigenetics is the “Dirty Genes” Book.) And then there are food sensitivities. Food sensitivities are often really difficult to detect unless they’re severe. They don’t show up on an allergy test because they aren’t the same type of antibody. Food sensitivities are created when particles of food slide past the gut lining and get marked as an intruder by the immune system. And each time you eat the food, you’re body has defenses against these so-called intruders, so it creates inflammation which in turn weakens the gut lining more, creating more food sensitivities. Yay for positive feedback loops! (Bio reference) If you are interested in taking care of your gut health send me an email and we can chat.
Now, what actually is nourishing? We have some essential nutrients we need to take in on a regular basis. These include the macros like carbs, fats, and proteins. (and this is mainly what people squabble about) The truth is that real food, that’s as close to nature as intended, is the healthiest for you. Homemade meals are by far better for you, and eating a wide variety of foods is helpful to give you lots of different nutrients and keep you from developing food sensitivities and reducing the ones you already have. Now whether you are trying out Whole 30, keto, paleo, Mediterranean, etc… The new diets that are helping people improve their health come down to the things mentioned above. There are no hard and fast rules. You can find cultures around the world that are extremely healthy and that break any rule you can come up with, with the exception of no processed food. The Standard American Diet (SAD) has been shown over and over again to cause disease in all perfectly healthy cultures.
The goal is to slowly increase your intake of unprocessed food, leaning towards organic (you can actually get off a bunch of the pesticides by soaking the veg/fruits in water with baking soda, a little salt, and vinegar, we do this with pretty much everything and the water is always brown… 🤢 there are several versions and you can just find a video online) If I’m stuck on what to make I usually like to scour Pinterest and often go for paleo recipes as a good start. Another new diet term that’s good and heavier on the veg is “pegan” (vegan + paleo). And you can’t honestly fail with a bowl of sauteed veg mixed with a marinaded protein of your choice.
Good Sleep & Better Rest
I don’t know about you, but there has been a long period of my life that I’ve spent being tired. Feeling like I’ve never gotten enough rest even when I’ve slept a “good” amount, or being woken up by some nagging thing “I HAVE to take care of right now” at 2 am. The stress of school, raising children, working, etc all wears on us. The unrealistic expectations of our Western culture that tells us to “just work harder” is burning us out. We have all the urgency without any purpose.
Another form of nourishment is rest. Sleep is so necessary, but can be so difficult sometimes. Our internal clocks dictate when we sleep and how well we sleep and if our circadian rhythm is off, good luck trying to get any good rest. Stress, artificial lighting, lack of natural light, sitting all day, using stimulants (whether that’s coffee, sugar, salt, or prescriptions), and other issues like blood sugar imbalance all lead to problems with our sleep. Creating good sleep habits is essential to resetting your circadian rhythm.
Good Sleep Habits:
Good sleep habits start at the beginning of your day. Choosing to eat a balanced breakfast that is protein, fat, and fiber-rich is super important for maintaining blood sugar throughout the day and helping with your mood which in turn affects your stress levels. Continue eating in a balanced way till you stop eating before bed.
Turn down the lights an hour before bed. This means no phones, tablets, laptops, tv, etc… (if you absolutely HAVE to do something make sure the blue light shield is on.) This is a REALLY hard habit to break. I know. I still struggle with it, especially as my muse is like “oooo here’s a cool idea” as I’m laying down in bed.
A cool-down routine is super helpful. Create a bedtime flow that makes you feel good. Maybe do some stretches, read a cozy book, have some family time… We love turning off all the lights and lighting a small candle, while we all sit at the table together. I read a poem to the girls and we draw pictures based on how we’re inspired until the candle burns out (usually 30-40 mins later)
Go to sleep at the same time each night and reserve your bed for only sleeping and sexy time. Don’t do your work in your bed. “Location has energy and time has memory” If you do the same thing in the same place at the same time over and over again, you’ll build that spacial energy and your internal clock will go, yup that’s what we’re doing now. You can use this to your advantage for building habits.
Slow Deep Breaths
Pause, take a moment to fill your belly with breath, exhale, and let everything release just a little bit. Maybe try that 3 more times. Your breath is your first medicine. It gives you back control over your nervous system, helps detox gaseous waste, and helps you bring your focus back to the present moment. Uplevel the healing potential of your breath by heading out to a forest or treed area to breathe in its yummy air full of fresh oxygen and super-powerful healing constituents. If you can’t make it outside, or there aren’t many trees near you, use some essential oils. Another easily accessible way to uplevel your breathing is to add in a body scan. You can find many online or do one yourself by using your breath to guide your focus as you scan up and/or down your body. This can be so helpful in bringing yourself to the present and turning off your racing thoughts.
Connection with the Earth
Get your feet and hands in the dirt. Step in a stream, swim in the ocean, and get early morning and late afternoon sunlight. Watch the sunset. Smell some flowers. There are SO many health benefits from being in connection with nature. Being in physical connection with the earth is grounding. It helps us release free radicals (free-flying particles that grab onto other atoms pulling them apart causing damage to our cells and therefore inflammation). Getting your hands in dirt gives you beneficial bacteria that produce serotonin for you. Vitamin D is one of our most important nutrients. And we all aren’t getting enough sun to get the Vitamin D we need. Vitamin D is anti-cancer, helps the cells mature, boosts our immunity, and so much more. Plus being in nature is just fun! And pleasure is healing.
Consistent Movement
Our bodies were never meant to sit ALL freaking day long. We were meant to walk, jog, jump, squat, bend, lean, shimmy, crawl, lunge, and move in all manner of ways all the time. Movement is important for so many reasons, but some main ones are:
Detox- moving helps the lymph move through the body, clearing out toxins. It helps us let things go literally and figuratively.
You solidify when you don’t move. You know how jello gets hard when it gets cold? Well, that happens to you. Jello is made out of animal connective tissues, you’re an animal. So, exercise and getting your body warm helps to keep you nice a limber. This also helps keep things moving.
Muscles literally make molecules that make us feel hopeful when we exercise. Exercise has been shown to be 1.5x more effective than any other treatment for depression.
Movement also helps bath the cells in new nutrients
AND the reality is that our lives are stressful. The hormones our body produces when we’re stressed are almost all meant to gear us up for movement. Fight or Flight, both movements (yes there is freeze or faint, but there is still great importance in getting back going again). We are meant to fight for our lives or run for our lives when we release those hormones and our brain knows no difference between the stress of a bear coming at you or the stress of your bills being due. If we don’t ever move those hormones aren’t getting used properly and they float around the bloodstream causing some serious problems, like blood sugar spikes that go unused.
Hydration
hydration is absolutely key. We are almost all water. But it's not just plain water. In that water float all kinds of electrolytes and minerals. When you drink plain water you actually can dehydrate yourself because of the way osmosis/diffusion works. I don’t know if you ever learned about what happens to a saltwater fish that you put in freshwater or freshwater fish going into salt water, but it isn’t pretty. Water moves to balance out the amount of minerals in the system as a whole. If you don’t replace the electrolytes and minerals in your body you end up pulling minerals from your body to balance the difference between the water you took in and what’s going on in the body.
So, to really hydrate well you can:
Drink water with a small pinch of Celtic sea salt dissolved in it. (No this is not the same as regular table salt. Regular table salt is only sodium and chloride, Celtic sea salt or other colorful salts are full of other minerals)
Have coconut water (or add some to your water)
Drink fresh vegetable juices (fruit juices are really high in sugar so be very mindful about that)
get a supplement like Mega Mag to add to your water (check the thing below to head to my Fullscript to order)
The reality is our body is super complex, but as we start to turn inward we begin to understand what it’s telling us. When we turn towards our pain, our symptoms, and our frustrations with our bodies we usually learn a whole lot more than we expect. Our physical health is all about creating harmony in our internal ecosystem one step at a time. If you want help figuring out where to begin, check out my free Energy Audit Program, by filling out the form below.
The Energy Audit is a DIY program to help you figure out where energy is getting stuck and therefore where you might be struggling. There’s a lot there, so pick one thing to focus on at a time based on your answers to the prompts. If you have any questions feel free to email me.
