Today I am not writing a traditional health tip in the blog. I feel compelled to talk about something that I laid in bed thinking about last night.
I named this group, "Eat to Live" after I heard Rebecca and Lori discussing a conversation about changing our thought patterns about what food means. This name has two meanings for me.
Our society hasn't always eaten for enjoyment. If you look back in history, Socrates talks about society eating to live. Meaning, they ate out of need. Most people did not own surplus livestock or crops. They had just enough food to eat to keep them alive. Over time, agriculture changed, and so did people. There was suddenly a shift in how we viewed food. It started becoming a symbol of wealth and prosperity to have more than one needed. When this occurred, so did the start of health problems associated with excess. We still struggle to find a balance between starving and gluttony. Holidays, birthdays, family events are centered around food. And often times too much and unhealthy choices of food.
Eating to live simply means, eating to sustain oneself. Feeding our bodies the nutrients and vitamins it needs to function as best it can. All of the processed, sugary, starchy foods that are available to us now hold little nutritional value. They are made to make our lives "easier", when in reality they have made our physical health far worse. We need to get back to a method of eating to live. This means whole, unprocessed foods. This means we need to stop eating for the emotional pleasure of it. And this means that we need to eat to survive..as long as we can.
The old phrase, "you are what you eat" often comes to mind for me. ALL foods cause chemical reactions in our bodies. Our body's innate intelligence knows how to process and use whole foods in portions that are healthy. It's when we start adding in foods that aren't really foods at all, but are products, that our bodies become confused and conflicted and start working in negative ways, attacking itself with auto immune issues, candida, bacteria, fungus, insulin over reactions, liver enzyme increases..on and on it goes. Until the body starts to shut down from the inside out. This is also true for our mental health. Eating balanced and healthy has been proven to help people who suffer from depression and anxiety. If we already have a genetic propensity to mental health issues, and we feed our brains chemicals and junk..it can trigger unwanted results.
I think we get so caught up on looking at ourselves from the outside that we rarely give thought to our insides. When people talk about diet, they assume you are trying to lose weight. I often tell people, I don't have a goal weight. I want to be healthy. Losing weight is a side effect of eating well, and for others gaining weight is a side effect of eating well. Again, our bodies are intelligent and know just what we need. But in order to do that, we need to feed it correctly.
Are you eating to live or are you living to eat? They are two very different things, and have very different results.
