Honor Your Health
- Intern Foodies
- Aug 30, 2019
- 3 min read
Updated: Sep 18, 2019
One blog left and so much to still share! I want to start here with acknowledging the predicament America is in around food choice. A 2018 Food and Health Survey conducted by the International Food Information Council Foundation found that 80% of participants find conflicts in food and nutrition information and 61% of them reported that this conflict interferes with their choices. We’re living in a very precarious food environment so the next time you find yourself feeling broken or confused by the
choices around you: 1. remind yourself that you’re not alone 2. take a moment to feel your emotions 3. give yourself some credit for how far you’ve come 4. keep on going.
Why Is It So Complicated?
Not only is there a lot of misinformation out there on social media but the news media running to the public with every “recent study” they find can also be unreliable. Author, scientist and activist Marion Nestle, discusses in her book “Unsavory Truth” how the research behind nutrition science can be biased. Big food companies can fund studies and manipulate the data to make their products look more appealing to the consumer.
So, if you hear a “research based” claim about a food that doesn’t quite settle well with your instincts or intuition, I’d recommend digging a little deeper. Here are some resources you can refer to for reliable nutrition information.
We have a lot of challenges that we’re faced with when it comes to deciding what we put in our bodies. Just remember that it’s not only you and it’s not all on you. We are combatting a $1.4 trillion dollar fast food industry and a $750 billion dollar food processing industry that also has a responsibility to fulfill. It should also be said that decoding our intuition’s message into practice is also open to interpretation and bias. But like anything else, the more you practice and the more you strengthen your self-expertise to support that inner voice, the clearer it will become. And you can rest assured that you will have your best interest in hand and heart.
Dietitians are sharing how this “antithesis of diets” actually frees people up from stressful food-related decisions and goes against everything American’s have been taught around food. Rather than learning what we need to do, this is a process of discerning which of the ideas and beliefs we carry serve us or not. We do not need to be clouded by the burdens that are not ours to carry. We can however, learn a bit more about ourselves, what makes us tick, what makes us happy, what fulfills us, and what doesn’t.
As we peel away the layers of who we think we are or who we think we should be we can also begin to dust off that inner compass that’s just waiting to be awakened allowing us to honor our health and the person we were born to be. You feel it pecking away inside of you, don’t you?
I can’t emphasize enough how this path is going to look very different for everyone, just as it should. Yoga has influenced my path greatly and an aspect I really appreciate about the practice is the ability for it to meet you wherever you’re at, meaning that there is no perfect time, there is no judgement of how you got “here” or where you’re going or how fast you get there.
As a fellow human, I can tell you that I have certainly been through my share of conflicted emotions around food. It took a ride through the extremes for me to find peace with my relationship with my body and the food I put in it. I grew up eating everything and at some point I began to feel ungrateful for the body I was given. Through personal challenges I found a different attitude towards food which swung me to the opposite end of the spectrum. I placed extreme restrictions on my diet and found myself judging others in that process. Eventually I found strength and guidance from my inner wisdom and it continues to evolve with me today. I didn’t find it in a book or a blog, I found it by listening to my intuition.
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