First comes knowledge...
‘Lifestyle choice’
We hear this term bandied around all the time. For me I feel it is often associated with whether someone is doing the ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ thing for their health. It is almost a judgement on someone: ‘Well, they got sick because of their lifestyle choices!’. However, choice can only come about when there are options on the table, and so before anyone can choose a specific lifestyle, they first have to have the knowledge! Beyond that though, we need to have the right knowledge.
I know this to be true because I made ‘healthy choices’ for 15 years before I actually had the knowledge to truly choose. Throughout my teens and twenties I suffered from anorexia + bulimia. Everything I ate centred around the % fat in the food, the amount of calories per item, and the total number of calories I had eaten per day (if I went over my allocated number, which varied between 800-1200, I would purge). On top of this I excessively exercised. My lifestyle ‘choices’ were actually my lifestyle ‘obsessions’ and whilst I was very slim, I was far from healthy in body or in mind.
It wasn’t until I became pregnant with Caleb that I started to reel it in. Diet Coke was previously my best friend. It was sweet, had zero calories, and the caffeine made it addictive as hell - it was my ‘treat’ in an otherwise pretty miserable life (when it came to my diet) where food had no joy associated with it at all. I must have known though, deep down, that it was horrifically bad for me, because as soon as I got pregnant it went out the window. I have always LOVED vegetables, so the changes for me were less about eating more veg, but more about cutting out the processed calorie free foods, and introducing way more variety in terms of whole foods, including dropping my fear of eating fats (I am not joking when I say I used to cry if anyone put any kind of oil anywhere near my food, and I would completely refuse to eat it!).
After I had Caleb, I slipped back a little bit, but when he was two years old I met my friend Ania. She had just trained to be a Health Coach, and she opened my eyes to the world of what it is to truly eat healthily AND enjoy it! I started to read + watch everything I could get my hands on around ‘real food’. Two books that really supported me on this journey were: Crazy Sexy Diet by Kris Carr and Food Rules by Michael Pollan. I was hooked. I finally got it! And as I understood it, the more I connected to my body, and the more I wanted nothing more for it than to be well.
I had the knowledge, and for me, from that point + ever since, there has never been any other choice.
Our bodies love us, it is time we love them back
Our body works thanklessly (unless we have become connected to it already - then it is very much appreciated) every split second of the day to do everything it can to keep us well. Our digestive system is working to break down our foods to extract every nutrient that it can so that it can be absorbed into the blood + be used by all of our different body systems. Our digestive system is also there to protect us from unwanted threats: from the point it enters our mouth to the time it leaves our body (whether it be food, or something we have taken in from our environment) our digestive system is sorting + cleaning. Did you know that 70% of your immune system is in your gut? And that the majority of serotonin (the happy hormone) is also produced in there, not in your brain! Our digestive system is the central point of our health, and yet most abuse it every day. Beyond this we have all our other body systems: the complexities of the immune system as a whole, the respiratory system, the endocrine (hormone) system, the neurological, the reproductive, cardiovascular….and more beyond (11 in total). We can then break that down to our different individual organs, we can consider the different types of cells (over 200), and we can get really geeky on our bacterial balance too: did you know we are 20x more bacteria than we are the total number of cells in our bodies - we are walking bacterial hotels!
This is knowledge. When you understand your body + how it works tirelessly to keep you well. When you understand how different foods then work to support the body to do this. When you understand how processed foods, sugar, toxins…actually cause the body to have to fight hard to eliminate them first + foremost, subsequently distracting it from the important work of, for example, destroying damaged cells before they become a big problem, or killing off a virus before it takes hold and they end up with sepsis. When you understand all of this + more, THEN you can make a lifestyle choice!
And this is why I became a Health Coach myself. I wanted to empower women with this knowledge. I wanted to take away the confusion around what is truly healthy, and provide the framework with which women could choose to truly nourish themselves, forever, and teach future generations to do the same.
Let’s do the work
Over the next month I am going to share with you some of the reasons why I chose to do this work starting nearly 10 years ago now. As I mentioned last week, I am stepping into something new (equally important) albeit with elements of this truly fundamental groundwork sprinkled in. I will always incorporate empowerment in this arena into my work, but not with the same focus as I have previously delivered it through my 31 day cleanses. I am being called to something else right now, but I couldn’t move away without running one last cleanse. I feel passionately that as many women as possible join me for this last time. I see us like ripples, pulsing out into the world + healing it as we heal ourselves. With this programme, which is designed to empower for a lifetime, not just be a 31 day ‘quick fix’, I really believe we can do that.
You can learn more via the link below + join the waiting list. It is inexpensive for a reason - I want it to be accessible to all. I hope to see you in there + do please share with others who may like to join us too.
Join me on Telegram here. You need to download the app first and then come back and click to join my channel. I am loving it because it has everything in one place. Channels so you can hear from those you want to, without algorithms, group chats with family and friends, and then 1-2-1 ‘texting’. It is so refreshing to not be mindlessly clicking through loads of apps all the time, and there is nothing addictive about it once you are in there, to pull you into thoughtless, numb, scrolling. Come and check it out if you haven’t already.)