Our continued message about the importance of real whole food.
by Wendy Bright-Fallon
There are so many bizarre misconceptions around food and our health.
We can easily lose sight of the basic idea that eating real, whole food is the best advice out there.
It isn’t sexy but it’s really important and this basic message is being squashed with overthinking AND with quick fix schemes.
Let’s start with the number of fad diets and trending calorically restrictive shake plans – a multi billion dollar business.
They play on false promises and cause a lot of fear and shame toward our body. They make us question our own intuition and resolve around taking care of ourselves. Most don’t use real food and don’t teach you how to move forward once you’ve finished the plan. Don’t get me wrong, some are healthy and good and nourishing – and we’ve tried some ourselves. But most aren’t good for long-term health. Listen to our podcast for more on the subject of the shaming culture of dieting.
To stay on the subject of shame for a minute – The number of funny posts and memes around not being able to fit through the door since being cooped up is getting old for this health coach. The first few were funny (thanks for sending them to us!) – a bit of nervous laughter in the midst of this crisis. But the short term and long-term effects are serious. Too many people are suffering and don’t need to be. And it’s more important than ever to be well. All those posts have an underlying message – ‘we just can’t help ourselves’ – and that is self-defeating and the wrong message.
Here is a real example: You are exhausted and working too much – you turn to some herbal remedies that promise better sleep. You might also stumble upon a post from someone saying how bad coffee is for your adrenals (that’s an argument for another post). So you buy the potions and you ditch your coffee and bank on better sleep. Meanwhile, you don’t even look at your sleep patterns. You don’t change your screen time or sleep time. You don’t practice stress reduction techniques. Many moons later and a few hundred dollars later, someone offers you a double latte zoom lunch-date and you cave because you’re tired. So much for those remedies. You see, they don’t work if you don’t change your habits. You can start again.
Here is another real example: You’ve discovered this shake system that everyone raves about – it’s fast becoming a trend among your friends and they are all losing weight and posting their pictures. So you make the investment only to find out that you can’t eat any real food for a month. No dinner date with your hubby for your anniversary. No cupcakes to celebrate your daughter’s birthday. No lunch dates with your clients and definitely no remote happy hours with your girlfriends. Um. How is that doable? And how is that teaching you how to eat for a lifetime? Not to mention, how is that going to affect your basic need for Connection – one of the keys to your health? (listen to this weeks podcast called Connection during COVID times)
We can get super emotionally charged talking about food – just as strongly as we do politics and religion.
Talk to anyone in the opposite camps of vegan or paleo and the criticisms can start flying without taking a breath. We so often are parroting studies we’ve read without wondering what’s behind them. Again, it’s not that these ideas are wrong or misguided, it’s that they don’t work for everyone – or they work for a while and then they don’t. Then what!? Once you get into a specific, rigid camp, you can get stuck and not listen to your body. Your intuition can get all wonky and your health continues to deteriorate.
Sure, guidelines are super helpful – we can all use a set of boundaries to keep us safe. How about this one to start: Eat real food.
Let’s look at an apple. It has no marketing campaign and no cute figures to help sell it. No snazzy promises. Except one – you will most likely feel better, look better and perform better by eating it and its other beautifully colored neighbors in the fresh foods market.
Debbie and I just finished putting together two lists: Basic Staples for our on-line Meal Planning Made Simple course and the Expanded Version of Staples for our Zen the Kitchen course. The first thing I noticed when we were finished was the fruits and veggies lists are the longest. There is a reason for that.
We can find arguments to support anything we believe and anything we want to hear.
And that can be dangerous to our health. The purpose of this blog is to encourage you to question everything. Everything. Starting with your own self-sabotaging thoughts (we all have them), what you read, what you buy into and what you buy. This cocooning time could be the best time to reset our intentions around our health and how we take care of ourselves. We aren’t talking about perfection, that’s not the point. We are talking about taking small steps over and over again to yield the health results you want. Taking care of yourself right now is one of the most important things you can do. And it can be difficult with all the change and fear happening. So please reach out to someone you trust for support. We’re here to support you too as accountability partners. Here are the ways to connect right now:
- Listen to our Podcast: Nourish Noshes now has 75 episodes. Click here for one most recent discussing of the importance of connection
- Join our next free 30-minute zoom call: 3 Ways to Finding a New Normal Thursday May 7th 4pm – LINK to ZOOM
- Schedule a 30-minute one-on-one reset call with Debbie or Wendy: $30
- Schedule a Coaching Intensive Package: Three 40-minute sessions $197
- Schedule a 3month Deep Dive with 7 sessions and unlimited email support: $325 per month
Cheers to your health – short term and long term. Wendy & Debbie
