Fertilehealthy

Love Actually

No, you don’t have to brace yourself for another fanciful analogy.  I just needed a snappy title and “He’s just not that into you” didn’t feel quite right.

Today I want to explore our relationships.  More specifically our relationships with food and with our bodies respectively.

As overeaters, comfort eaters, emotional eaters, we have developed a very unhealthy love-hate relationship with food.  The dieting experts tell us to change our relationship with food.  What they’re actually saying is “Stop loving food.  It’s just fuel for the body!”  That is the whole premise of calorie counting.  Energy taken in and energy expended.  This is far from the whole truth. 

Yes, we eat too much!  Yes, people lose weight by limiting calories.  But health and weight loss are better achieved by eating more calories of a higher quality, than fewer calories of poor nutritional value.  And we’re doing this for health, remember!  Everything you put into your body affects your body in some way.   If you eat fresh, mostly raw, whole foods, you are enabling your body to heal on a cellular level.  We are made up of trillions of cells, all of which get replaced on a regular basis, ranging from daily to every few years.  These replacement cells are built by the nutrients from the food we eat.  Are you building a healthier body, or are you creating the breeding ground for disease? Cancer cells cannot multiply unchecked in a body made up of healthy cells.

What the body can’t use is either being excreted via our organs of elimination - the bowels, the kidneys, the sinuses, the skin, the lungs and sometimes even the uterus.  A rash is the body trying to expel something that it doesn’t like.  Same with acne,  eczema,  mucus and a whole host of other “conditions”. 

If the body can only eliminate 10 units of waste a day, but you’re feeding it 15 units, by the end of one week you are left with 35 units of waste.  This has to be stored somewhere.  Fortunately for the body it has a handy storage solution, known as fat cells.  Where to the preservatives we eat go?  Yup, you guessed it!  They go and do some more preserving in our fat cells.  This is why it keeps getting harder and harder to lose weight.  And you’ll be surprised at what the body deems as waste!  It has not fallen for advertising and doesn’t care a whit about “enriched XYZ”.  It wants food made by God, not man!

Have you ever had a big steak for lunch?  How did you feel afterwards?  Energized?  I didn’t think so!  The fact of the matter is that some foods require more energy to be digested than what they contribute to the body.  So clearly, eating for energy only works if you are eating foods that are easily digested, like fruit and vegetables.  A calorie is therefore not the end all and be all of our existance.

 Similarly, we’re not doing exercise for the amount of energy we’re expending.  We’re doing it to get oxygen rich blood to the furthest reaches or our bodies, to build strength, to protect us against bone loss and disease, and to feel good.  Did you know that exercise stimulates at least 16 different hormones in the body? 

All our body functions are dependant upon hormones produced by our endocrine system.  Temperature control, weight control, fertility, mood, water retention, appetite, metabolism, thirst, sleep patterns, insulin production, growth, digestion, etc.  The endocrine system is a very complex and sensitve system made up of glands, like the gonads, the pituitary, the thyroid, the adrenals and a few more.  These glands have to work together to balance the production of hormones.  Everything you put into your mouth affects the endocrine system.  Not surprisingly, the things that stimulate and promote the effective functioning of the endocrine system are fresh, whole foods.  And the things that upset the endocrine system are refined foods, sugar, drugs, caffeine, alcohol and other fermented products, artificial sweeteners, animal products, heated fats and food additives.

Back to our relationship with food…  Clearly, we need to start seeing food in a different way.  Not as a calorie or a point.  But as something that will either promote health or disease in our bodies.  The question to ask when we eat is not “How many calories/points does this have?” but rather “What is this going to do to my body?”.  In time we will start loving the foods that nourish, hydrate, alkalize, build and cleanse the body.  We will be loath to put anything into our bodies that harm them.

Slowly but surely, our focus will change from a relationship with food to a relationship with our own bodies.   Trust will be built.  The fear of regaining weight will disappear.  We will exercise because we love ourselves.  There will be new respect for the wonder and the miracle that is our bodies.  Eating will become an act of thankfulness and worship. 

May all be fed!

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