Healthy Eating ~ A Body-Mind-Soul Experience

Are you too obsessed with certain food and supplements in your healthy eating habits or is your eating more of a body-mind-soul experience?

'Our own physical body possesses a wisdom, which we who inhabit the body lack. We give it orders, which make no sense.' ~ Henry Miller

Most of us are familiar with the concept that our eating habits have an influence on our health. Regardless of our knowledge, it is amazing that so many Americans are overweight.

Results from the 2005-2006 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), using measured heights and weights, indicate that an estimated 32.7 percent of U.S. adults 20 years and older are overweight, 34.3 percent are obese and 5.9 percent are extremely obese.

This means that a combined total of 72.9 percent of Americans are above their ideal body weight! Maybe we don't know about healthy eating after all!

The Body Window's Self-Guided Healing Course is Now Reduced to only 19.95 USD!

Click here to learn more about how this healing course can change your life!

An Adventure Into Self-Healing eBook Cover

I believe the obesity epidemic is a direct reflection of our collective cultural issues. We are chronically stressed and we are over-indulgers, over-consumers and under-movers as a result.

I address these issues in Self-Love - Caring for Your Body is Caring for Your Soul where I discuss why we overeat.

The disconnect with our bodies to provide nourishing food for it has never been so strong. There has never been a time in our collective history when we needed so much to get in touch with our bodies!

The body-mind-soul integration regarding food and nourishment is completely lost. Your Body Window is screaming to the word what your internal issues are, if you are obese.

Be sure to also read my article on healthy weight loss to understand a dramatic new way that I believe in, to break your psychological addiction to food.

You Are What You Eat – Or is it You are What You Believe?

The single most cause of stress in our lives surrounds food. There is more information on healthy foods and healthy eating out there on the Internet than we can possibly digest!

We have a love – hate relationship with food. We put ourselves through amazing struggles over it, and food often becomes the enemy. Food, of course, is not the enemy, but how we chose to view it.

Food should bring us enjoyment and nourishment, and instead, because of our stressful lives we turn it into a huge source of anxiety.

Food becomes an addiction because the very thing you try to deny that you want, you end up thinking of all day long! Food! Why am I hungry all the time? How will I keep myself from eating? How will I make sure I get the exact amount of this nutrient and that nutrient?

Maybe I’ll just take 20 vitamins a day and I’ll stay healthy despite what I eat! Then I can eat whatever I want! Yes, that is healthy eating!

Food becomes the enemy because we don’t understand the connection of our body-mind-soul and how we use food as a substitute for love, and more specifically self-love.

Without our body-mind-soul connection food becomes an addiction. Especially and specifically sugar and salt-laden foods become an addiction. There is no question about it. Add stress and a sedentary lifestyle and the combination becomes lethal. Then healthy eating becomes a mere fading light in the horizon.

How many of you gorge yourself with green peppers, tomatoes, carrots and celery when you are frustrated, lonely and depressed? Fruit, maybe, but vegetables? Unless it is high-glycemic potatoes, loaded with butter and sour cream or worse, potato chips, which don’t even come close to healthy eating.

You can tell the high-glycemic foods, even fruit and vegetables, because they taste sweet! Really taste carrots sometime or plain white potatoes or winter (yellow) squash, and you will notice they taste sweet.

Many people are surprised to find that carrots have a higher glycemic index than a lot of vegetables. But because they are low in calorie density (higher in water content) and contain nutrients, they are a much better choice than cake or cookies and other higher-glycemic and calorie dense foods.

You gorge yourself with calorie-dense, sugar-laden foods because you are craving the chemical in your brain that is lacking that sweets provide. This chemical is called serotonin and it will actually make you feel better. Serotonin is one of our body's natural feel-good chemicals called endorphins.

If you were connected with your body-mind-soul you would not be lacking in serotonin. This addiction to sugar will not change until you address your soul issues.

Emotional eating will never change until you recognize that it is not food you crave. Please read "Why We Overeat" to further understand this most important issue. Healthy eating will become a natural thing if you understand your soul issues.

If you are young and overweight, you can perhaps more easily make the emotional changes to heal your body-mind-soul, than if your patterns of behavior are deeply ingrained in you.

If you are older and you are overweight, you will have to make deep soul changes in order to start loving yourself enough for healing to begin and for you to make healthy foods and healthy eating a part of your life.

But I know that you can do it regardless of your age. I know that thought creates matter and if it is in your heart to change, and believe it, you will change!

Dallas Peak in the Morning Light, near Telluride, CO

Vitamins

Vitamins too are often an addiction. We often believe that we can artificially create health outside of ourselves. The addiction to the miracle pills that come in all sizes, shapes and colors just gives us another reason to not go inward and do the hard work necessary to create wholeness and health within ourselves. We believe that vitamins can be a substitute for healthy eating.

Or perhaps your belief is that you can never get enough nutrients, and you are paranoid that you will get one illness or another if you don’t take 20 supplements every day.

Do you believe that by taking a multitude of vitamins and supplements that you will have health, despite all your behaviors that ignore or abuse your body? Do you believe that the magic pills will help you even if you don’t first learn to connect with your body-mind-soul?

Have you lost the ability to listen to your body to tell you if you are healthy? Do you really believe that you can continue on in your stress-filled life, never creating space for yourself, but as long as you take your magic supplements that you will be well? Have vitamins become your panacea to cure you despite your stressful and unhealthy life?

My Vitamin Story

Recently, as I have come to a better understanding of my body, and myself, I have felt my energy moving away from the vitamins that I had been taking for years. They are wonderful vitamins, that promised that by taking them I can forestall aging.

All I had to do was keep this hundred-dollar-a-month habit to find perfect health. This was very enticing to a 40-50 year old. Yet I kept on forgetting to take them, to my surprise.

It finally dawned on me that food and nutrition and vitamins per se, do not necessarily lead to health, but our attitudes towards them do. I was naturally progressing toward a truth that my subconscious mind knew before I was able to bring it into my conscious mind.

My subconscious was telling me that I no longer needed the vitamins, telling me that I was healthy and healthy eating was no longer a concern. My subconscious was telling me what my body already knew.

To be fully conscious of what our bodies are telling us is indeed an ongoing process. There is a quote from Louise Hay, in You Can Heal Your Life that I have often affirmed: “Everything I need to know will be revealed to me.” I firmly believe this.

At some level, I was telling myself this new personal truth. Healthy eating had become a natural part of me. It just took awhile for my conscious mind to catch up.

Our Attitude and Beliefs Count Most

If we take an attitude toward food or vitamins that causes more stress, it may still lead to illness.

If we are obsessive/compulsive about everything we eat, believing that a bite of ice cream will kill us, or if we don't get exactly one tablespoon of ground flax seeds each and every day or we will die of a heart attack, etc., will this create health?

Is paranoia toward what we eat or don’t eat just one more thing we need to worry about in an already stress-overloaded life? Has healthy eating become an obsession?

By not eating something you think you should, this thought is feeding a negative belief system. Because you believe ill health will be created, if you don’t take those flax seeds, vitamins or whatever, then the negative thought will manifest itself if you fail to eat them.

It is your belief that creates the energy to make you ill. Not the lack of flax seeds or vitamins. It is far better to Create Positive Affirmations for Health and to believe that you can have health than to create negative energy surrounding your lack of getting exactly the right amount of something.

Health is a process, a belief system and energetic transformation that goes beyond just healthy eating and choosing the right combination of healthy foods or supplements. (Definition of Holistic Health)

Conversely, if you truly believe the vitamins have healing power, the 'placebo effect' is strong indeed. Was it the vitamins that kept you healthy, or was it the belief that they do, i.e. your attitude toward them? If you truly believe that eating hamburgers and ice cream will keep you healthy, will it have the same effect as the vitamin?

It is your attitude and beliefs that you are well that will make you well.

Now, I am not recommending ditching healthy eating and healthy foods and eating whatever you want, or ignoring the scientific studies that help us understand what creates health. Just don’t punish yourself when you fail and gorge on potato chips or ice cream.

Each new moment creates a new opportunity to believe that you can have health. You must create positive thoughts that change your belief that you are healthy in the present moment.

Also keep in mind that scientific studies do not prove anything per se, but what they do is establish a potential relationship between two factors or events, not necessarily a causal relationship. One can find a study to support just about anything.

Don’t beat yourself up trying to follow every new study on healthy eating that says this or that will make you healthier or live longer. Enjoy what you eat and eat what you enjoy, at least occasionally even if you know it is 'bad' for you.

What we know about health is more than just what we are told is scientifically true. It is our attitudes and beliefs that really make the impact. Finding your own intuitive, personal balance is important. Health is a holistic, more than physical concept or a scientific study.

Stressing over food and vitamins will only increase the cortisol response, the stress hormone that results in all bad things that stress creates. You must believe that a thought is the same as a molecule, an emotion is the same as a chemical – your body does not know the difference!

The body, mind and soul are one! Thought creates matter. Your beliefs create the molecules, the hormones and the chemicals to transform your body! This is why you must create positive affirmations for health! Health is so much more than just healthy eating and selecting healthy foods. Healthy eating is important but not the only factor in health.

Bless your healthy foods before you eat them. Consider their nutrition for your body. Ask the nutrients to provide wholeness and healing for you. Believe it and it will be true!

Healthy Fruits and Vegetables

More is Better?

We give our vitamins permission to heal us, but do they? Aren’t healthy foods and healthy eating the necessary source for vitamins? But more is better, we think, and it applies to vitamins.

The more we have of a good thing, the healthier, we believe. This is just another example, in my opinion, of over-consumption and over-consumerism and the brainwashing that goes on in our commercial society to get us to believe that more of everything is better.

I have friends and family that every day set out unbelievable numbers of vitamins and other magic pills for 'health' to take each day. And each and every person has a different belief system on which vitamins are the best and will provide the greatest health.

Each and every healthcare provider or 'expert' also has a different opinion on which ones will provide the greatest health! It is often about selling you their particular brand!

Vitamins and supplements are so immensely confusing to understand, based on the latest study, not only what we are supposed to be taking, but exactly how much we are supposed to be taking. I tried, in my career as a wellness counselor, to keep up with this game. It was virtually impossible, and it was my career! Where does healthy eating fit in?

Ever notice that when you take vitamins in a pill form, it comes out in your urine? Your urine smells like vitamins and the color changes. When I over-indulge on fresh, local peaches and tomatoes, in season, it never comes out in my urine. My urine never smells like a vitamin C tablet.

Many experts believe that vitamins must be obtained in their whole food format, through healthy eating and healthy foods, that contain the right molecular structure for your body to effectively utilize.

Americans have the most expensive urine on the planet, as we try to create health through over-consumption of 'health' in a pill form. The health that we attempt to create is imaginary.

You can have a much simpler life and less stress regarding food and supplements if you learn how to balance your diet and get the majority of your nutrition the natural, holistic way: through a balanced and healthy diet consisting of unprocessed whole foods.

You can find healing of your body-mind-soul through healthy eating if you believe that natural and whole foods will provide the nourishment that your body needs.

The latest vitamin or diet fad will fade in a few months. Listen to your intuition regarding hunger and emotional eating. Try to eat less through a healthy weight loss program.

Learn meditation or centered prayer, so you can understand what your intuition is telling you. Let your healthy eating become a truly integrated, body-mind-soul experience!

***If you are under persistent stress that is unavoidable, and meditation or centered prayer is just becoming a way of life, you may want to take a multivitamin, or other supplements until your stress is under control. If you are being treated for any chronic illness, and need additional nutritional support, it is best to consult a nutritionist to help you with your special needs.