Integritus Prime

As we navigate wellness practices, it’s important to remember how important good nutrition is for everything: mood, productivity, plus physical, emotional and mental health. Let’s explore how this plays out. When we are eating and drinking those things that optimally support our body and mind – we can perform to the best of our ability, except for how trauma influences our behavior patterns – read our book, From Abused to Empowered: Recognizing and Releasing Behavior Patterns that come from Trauma and ask us about our trauma course, for more on the latter.

Here are some tips on how best to give your body the right nutrition:

1. Listen to your body: when you eat or drink something, notice how your body feels and functions. Shift your behavior away from foods and drinks that make you feel bad. It sounds deceptively simple because it is. We can find it hard to change our behavior due to family, cultural, traditional, religious, and social pressures, plus addictions to certain foods.
2. Know your allergies: A great way to learn more about your body is to get tested for your food and other allergies, so you can avoid the foods that create inflammatory reactions. Again, you may struggle with the factors mentioned in #1, but ultimately, if you steer clear of what harms you, you will consistently feel good – and that’s worth it!
3. Observe your mind: When you eat and drink certain things, notice how well your mind functions. Gluten, for instance, is known to be associated with brain fog. Lean toward consuming things that optimizes your brain function, leaving you refreshed, like fresh fruits, raw vegetables, and lots of pure water. We tend to avoid processed starches like white rice and pasta in general, but especially at lunch time, to avoid feeling sluggish in the afternoon when the sugar crash hits.
4. Cook from scratch: When we eat a lot of restaurant or processed or junk food, we are ingesting a huge variety of preservatives, chemicals, trans fats, processed sugars, and other nasty substances that wreak havoc on our bodies and minds. Learn to prepare and cook food well, so you know what you’re putting into your body, and you will notice the difference. One of the ways we do this is by making pizzas, lasagna, and many other complex dishes from scratch.
5. Read labels like a boss: It’s so important to read labels well to ensure we are not selecting foods that are laden with harmful substances, including preservatives, flavor enhancers, processed and trans fats, processed proteins, refined sugars, too much salt, and much more. Once we become adept label readers, we can influence better health for our entire household.
6. Experiment: It’s important to try out different ways of preparing and making foods, to keep our taste buds and creative sides happy. Often people complain about lack of flavor when they stop consuming junk food. Fresh foods have tons of flavor; it’s simply different. For instance, we may miss the saltiness of junk foods or sweetness of sugary cakes, but making our own sausages, burgers, and cakes using a huge variety of local ingredients has given us many options for beautiful flavor. We are working on our 5th and 6th cookbooks, evidencing a wide variety of options through experimentation.
7. Stay in tune with Nature: Food comes from Nature, and so do we, so it’s important for our bodies that we eat close to Nature – choosing seasonal, fresh, and colorful varieties of fruits, vegetables, legumes, nuts, grains, and so on (avoiding allergens of course). We can also study how to prepare food to retain the most vitamins and minerals, so we avoid having to take supplements.
8. Improve Gut Health: The gut is crucially important to our wellbeing. We can improve gut health by consuming prebiotics like garlic, onions, bananas, leeks and artichokes. Probiotics like miso, kimchi, sauerkraut, plant-based yogurt, and tempeh are also important. Polyphenols, which act as antioxidants, can also help us keep our gut health – so choose nuts, berries, olives, tea, coffee, herbs, and spices. These also provide great flavor to our meals.
9. Choose Smart Supplements: If we do need to take supplements, because our ability to absorb vitamins or minerals is changing, which happens to many of us, then we should choose options with the least possible amounts of harmful allergens and additives. Raw, vegan, and organic supplements are great choices.
10. Avoid fads and diets: Diets and fads can be tempting, but they encourage a yo-yo lifestyle, where we get excited then fall off the bandwagon. It’s much better to make slow changes that last, always moving in the direction of what your body accepts and feels good about.

Share with us your experiences with smart food practices.