How to Activate Your Inner Healer: Tips for Healing with Nutrition

Ready to kick those food cravings to the curb?  How do you rid yourself of cravings and jumpstart your healing journey?  Let’s talk about tips for healing with nutrition.

Today I want to focus on the most common theme I observe my clients struggling with currently: FOOD.  Food is a topic coming up daily in discussions with clients, my private Facebook group, and loved ones.  People are looking for tips for healing with nutrition. 

Food is one of the most powerful tools to support your healing, but I see so many struggling with uncertainty.  I am living proof, and so are my clients, that food has the power to heal.

A lot of traditional health care practitioners either dismiss or do not address the importance of healing with diet.  It’s simply not a part of their education (something I hope to change in my lifetime).  Most medical schools provide a 45 minute to 1 hour lecture on nutrition that’s often sponsored by a pharmaceutical company. #canwesaybiased?

As a society we’ve grown quite emotionally attached to food.  We use food as a reward.  Food is used to celebrate, to mourn, to grieve, and to entertain.  But what about using food to heal and sustain optimal health and well-being?  This is not always given top priority.

Many now turn to food as a coping mechanism during tough times.  Unfortunately, the dependency on processed, packaged, and unhealthy foods has contributed to the growing prevalence of chronic health issues.  This is one of the many reasons it’s important to talk about tips for healing with nutrition.  

Another comment I hear often is that although people are intellectually aware that the foods they’re eating are not helpful for healing, they just can’t seem to stop themselves from grabbing the unhealthy snacks, pulling into the fast food drive thru, or stopping for that ice cream cone.

The tips for healing with nutrition I’m going to share will help you understand and deal with those cravings, while activating your own inner healer to align with a lifestyle that prioritizes food as medicine.  Food should be a facilitator of healing and good health, not a barrier.  

Let’s dive into tips for healing with nutrition.

Activate Your Inner Healer: Tips for Healing with Nutrition 
(and kicking those cravings to the curb!)

1. Keep in mind that 100 years ago many of the things you crave today that are not supportive of health and healing did not even exist.  Cheese, ice cream, pizza, fast food, soda, and frozen dinners were not a part of daily life.  Cheetos and Doritos were not even words in the English language or a figment of the human imagination.  

   It was the industrialization of the United States and the rest of the world that led to the creation of these foods as people moved away from rural settings and into urban environments.  It’s helpful to keep this in mind.

   People were living healthy, happy, and productive lives without the foods that many eat today.  Remember that those foods are not necessary to be healthy.  In fact, they will be a barrier for you if healing is your goal.

   Consider how your ancestors ate.  They were not running to Walmart to raid the snack isle.  They were growing their own foods and cooking from scratch at home.

2. Start making small changes.  Small changes can lead to big shifts for your health and healing journey (shout out to one of my favorite podcasts Small Changes Big Shifts with my friend Dr. Michelle Robin).  If you’re eating all the Red Vines and high fructose corn syrup, it’s going to be tough to go cold turkey, binge eat fruit, and expect that habit to last.  

   Not sure where to start?  Do a little self-assessment.  What do you know you’re doing that is not helpful for lasting health and wellness?  Make a list.  Look at your list and choose one thing you can change today.  Maybe it’s skipping the cheese on everything, maybe it’s swapping out that high-fat lunch for a salad, maybe it’s skipping the Red Vines.  Stick with it and you’ll feel the positive impact.  When you feel comfortable, come back to your list and choose another change you can make with confidence.

   Another small change?  Hydrate.  The more you hydrate your body, the less you’ll rely on unhealthy drinks and snacks, the clearer your mind will be, and the more your body will heal as you help it cleanse out harmful toxins and pathogens.

3. Bring fresh fruits and vegetables into your diet.  Fresh fruits and vegetables are the foods that contain the most powerful healing properties.  They fight pathogens like viruses, remove harmful toxins from the body, and restore your system with the nutrients it needs to heal and sustain optimal health.

   Fruits and vegetables will also strengthen your immune system, one of the best things you can do to protect your health and speed up the healing process.  There is truly no fruit or veggie that won’t contribute to healing in some way, even plain old potatoes.   Don’t listen to the noise of those that say to watch your fruit intake because of sugar or avoid potatoes because of starch and carbs.  Your body needs sugar from fruits and veggies to heal.  In fact, fruit is the most important thing to eat when you’re healing.  Fruit is antiviral, antibacterial, and anti-aging.  Your body’s cells, especially your brain, need the sugar from fruit to survive and thrive.  Start eating real fruit snacks daily-bananas, apples, peaches, oranges, mangoes, berries, etc.

4. Reduce animal protein.  While meat and fish do not necessarily feed or fuel chronic health issues, they can be problematic.  

   A high-fat, high-protein diet contributes to many of the chronic illnesses and issues people are struggling with today.  As a society, a high-fat and high-protein diet has become the norm.

   However, this diet is burdensome on the body, especially the liver, digestive system, and immune system.  After years on this type of diet, the body starts to struggle to break down fats and proteins efficiently.  As a result, undigested fats and proteins get left behind and become a food and fuel source for pathogens that cause many symptoms and health problems.

   Try to start by limiting your servings of animal protein to once a day, preferably at dinner time.  If you’re already there, try for one serving a week and watch the impact this has on the way you feel.

5. Be a smart shopper.  Check the labels on packaged and processed foods.  

   If you cannot understand, pronounce, or recognize an ingredient on a food label, your body won’t recognize or understand what to do with it either.  Therefore, it doesn’t serve your healing in any way to consume it.

   Look for names that sound like chemicals, or other additives such as canola oil, citric acid, natural flavors, artificial flavors, corn syrup, and artificial sweeteners.  

   Be cautious of products that are labeled “gluten free”, “vegan”, and “allergen free”.  Many of these items are still loaded with other additives that will serve as barriers to healing and it’s important to check their labels too.

6. Don’t go hungry.  Healing with nutrition has nothing to do with starving or not eating enough food. 

   Allowing yourself to go hungry has a few negative consequences.  First, it will encourage you to give into those unhealthy cravings.  When you get to that point of feeling like you’re starving, it’s challenging to avoid the junk food.  Second, going hungry strains your adrenal glands.  When your adrenal glands are strained, your body gets stuck in fight or flight mode and your adrenal glands start overproducing chemicals like adrenaline.  The overproduction of adrenaline becomes toxic and corrosive, serving as another food and fuel source for harmful pathogens that cause many chronic health issues.

   It’s important to nourish your body with healing fruits and vegetables, and enough of them.  If you don’t eat enough, your body will not have the energy it needs to heal and sustain you or your health and well-being.  

7. Remember it’s a lifestyle, not a temporary diet.  Healing is a lifelong journey.  When it comes to healing with nutrition, persistency and consistency is key.  

   The healing and sustainable, optimal health will not come overnight, it will take time.  Give yourself and your body a chance to adapt and give healing with nutrition time.  It’s not a magic pill that will resolve your symptoms overnight.

   Traditional medicine has led us to believe that healing should happen fast, but this is completely wrong.  Yes, it’s possible to suppress surface level symptoms quickly with drugs that only manage these issues.  True, deep healing that targets the root cause of symptoms takes time and can only be done with the support of healing with nutrition.
   

   It’s not a destination, it’s a continuous and never-ending journey. 

The truth is that there’s no such thing as an “easy” path to healing.  There is no short cut.  True, deep healing happens from the inside out.  An important part of the physical healing work is diet and nutrition.  But that’s just one layer of healing.  At my holistic health practice, I facilitate healing across all layers and dimensions.

I guide my clients to activate their inner healers in many ways.  In time, I’ll share more of these tips and strategies with you.  If you’re ready to get on your path to healing NOW, sign up for your HEAL one-hour intensive consultation with my today.

The only person who has the power to heal you, is YOU.  I’m here to guide you.

Sending healing energy all around today! 

XO,
Dr. Elizabeth