But I Eat So Well

Do you use eating well as a way to avoid giving your body the attention it deserves?

I used to base my “health esteem” on my “Good” eating patterns, on my diligence to choosing the cleanest foods, the pastured meats, the freshest and most accessible local foods.

I know that doesn’t sound like a bad thing, but I was using my logical brain to cajole my emotions and my body experience into being right even when there were issues.

I hear this all the time….BUT I EAT SO WELL…

A call from the logical brain to say...we did a good job, why won’t everything in our body just act like we did?

Funny enough, our body doesn’t function by the rules of the mind, and the logic we have built up so well into our fortified walls of internal justification just don’t work in the flow and movement of our internal systems.

In fact, logic fails to account for the way our body really works. Let's take salad, I hear about 10 times per week women telling me how great they do at eating well, after all, they have a salad at least once per day if not more.  Now, on the surface, that salad looks like an awesome choice, veggies are the base and then on top of that often comes lean protein and good vinegars, maybe “healthy” fats.  

But, the salad is hard to digest, and because of the density of cellulose bonds in the lettuce and in many of the veggies, we fail to grab all the nutrients, not to even mention that cold and raw foods take energy to digest...more than a nicely steamed green or cooked veggie, so despite the higher concentration of enzymes, we don’t get those benefits, we get a Spleen and digestive system which is aggravated and challenged by the large volume of raw food. 

Now, I know, this one is hard for many...after all, salad has been promoted as the ultimate “you did good with food” today food.  But, ancient medicine traditions...Chinese, Ayruvedic and others have long thought that salad is not a healthy food.  

But our logical brain assumes that because all those nutrients were there, we got them in...which leads to vast confusion when the positive consumption of salad fails to result in energy, hormonal balance, digestive balance and more.  Why???

Because our body, our health isn’t just made up of the right nutrients, it is made up of the right balance of factors and foods, of the balance of cold and warm, of raw and cooked and at all times, our body wants to expend as little energy as possible so it can devote the rest to healing, vitality and deep restoration.  In fact, if you really want to know, the biggest thing we can do for our vitality and recovery is to learn how to consciously and continuously cultivate vibrance, vitality and energy without expending any on useless pursuit.

In this case, salad is the useless pursuit.  

But it could just as easily have been something else...crossfit, sprinting, over-exercise, not sleeping, working too much…

See, it actually ends up being an equation of sorts in the body, the goal is to end the day with a surplus, which can then be turned to growth and balance, a surplus of what I suppose you are wondering….

Lifeforce, Joy, vitality, creativity...essence...a surplus of essence.

But, if I can be honest, our logical mind doesn’t account for a surplus of essence, it is focused on nutrients in, nutrients out, calories in, calories out and a whole host of other manners of thinking which conclude if we just put all the pieces in the right boxes, we will have function.

All those ways we use to justify why our body should function at a higher level are based on something other than essence, and hence, we wonder...if I am doing it all so well, why am I suffering so?

The way out of this is to learn how to understand what your organ systems actually need, to learn how to use food as deep nourishment and not just as nutrients, to learn how to cultivate essence outside of food, to learn how to feel our body and the emotions residing within and to learn how to differentiate the logical traps of our well honed intellect and the deep, soulful language of our cells.

This is what I teach my clients, this is what can set you free.