Having a healthy and balanced lifestyle is managing your stress. Have you ever noticed when you’re especially stressed you tend to reach for food to fill your body? The choice in your snack bowl probably isn’t a nutritionally rich choice. Typically, the quick grab is reaching for cookies, cakes, potato chips, or other similar foods. If you find you’re eating not because you’re hungry but because you’re angry, sad, or frustrated know that you aren’t alone. Numerous people eat for reasons unrelated to nourishment—without realizing they are mindlessly eating. When you hold onto repressed feelings, anger, sadness, and stress, this can show up as problems in your physical and mental well-being. It’s time to let these things go. And if you’re not careful these choices can manifest into chronic health issues and added weight…which leads to increased stress levels. It becomes a vicious cycle you want to avoid. But how?
Eating with Mindfulness
Comfort foods can be okay in moderation but when you find yourself reaching for these foods all the time these become like a drug to numb emotions. When you really think about the underlying cause of weight gain and why you’re holding onto to weight it becomes apparent it’s not a physical thing. The reasons behind everything that’s been filling your body have shifted to emotions and mental stresses. This is a sign of imbalance.
It’s hard when we are conditioned from the environment, the media, and from peer messages which they learn from advertising commercials. Such influences are all around but it’s during these times where eating with mindfulness is required. We must be conscious of the tv commercials selling three-dollar value meals and few in society blink an eye at the cravings this creates. Fast food cashiers are trained to ask if you want to up-size your serving. The lure of the food being “cheap and quick” is hard to resist. To truly transform and squash the epidemic of obesity, of diabetes, and embrace healthy living when these temptations show up we must say “Stop!”
Food can heal a body or destroy it. It’s time to embrace living and halt the fad diets. This isn’t about doing exercise, counting calories, eliminating carbs, or watching your fat intake. It’s about being mindful of the types of foods and quantity of foods you’re choosing. It’s about being grateful to wake in the morning. It’s about being intentional towards choosing healthy living. It’s about educating yourself, researching, and figuring out what’s best for you as well as what’s going to support you.
You are Worth It
Making an investment in your health is one of the greatest returns on your money you will ever make. You’re given only one body to last your whole life. Once you become unhealthy, medications and healthcare are expensive to try to treat you and return you to optimal health. There’s some deep education which needs to take place to help people maintain a healthy lifestyle and to choose ways to bring well-being to their daily living practices. For some, this solution includes connecting with mindful living, meditations, Yoga, prayer, or any number of healthy living practices.
For more on how transformative nutrition can be in one’s life listen to my podcast episode, Transformative Nutrition and Balanced Living, where I interview Michael Tamez, author of the book, Transformative Nutrition.
You have all the tools inside you to make the changes you need…and want. All you need is for someone to guide you and show you how. I’d be honored to help you in your journey. Contact me to schedule a 1:1 Consulting session.