Eating Intuitively

Hello Live Nourished community,

It has been a while since I’ve written to you wearing my Health Coach hat, but over the past few weeks I’m finding renewed inspiration in the building blocks that create health, specifically what we eat. Early in my coaching practice, I quickly learned that in order to attain true health and vitality, one must venture beyond what’s in the fridge. Sleep, hydration, time in nature, nourishing friendships, work/life balance, and more, all contribute to health and healing. In the quest for holistic self care, we can often forget that the food choices we make really do matter.

So how do you know what to eat?

In my practice I encourage a client to find his/her unique blueprint. It’s true, we all share a basic need for sleep, water, healthy friendships, healthy diet…but within those buckets, it can look unique for each person. For example, foods that are positive and impactful for one person may not work for another person.

I’ve come to see that becoming friends with your intuition (aka inner knowing) is an essential part of any self care playbook.

A friend of mine recently switched to a plant-heavy diet and, as a result, is seeing her digestion improve. The fascinating part is that she has been talking about her desire to cook with less meat for a number of years. Instinctually, she has always known what her body needed for greater alignment.

So often we override intuition because we are conditioned by old habits, or maybe live with a partner who thrives by eating in an entirely different way, or we need to put energy into other areas of life first. It’s not easy to leave the comfort of the familiar, much less hear the pings of intuition. That’s what makes health transformation so exciting - when you heed the call and take the steps needed. It’s amazing how quickly I’ve seen people’s bodies and health optimize once they have applied just the right intervention. It doesn’t have to be a wholesale life recalibration; often times it’s a small, subtle shift.

The key is following the path you already know deep down to be true.

I’m still applying this principle to myself as well. Like many people, I’ve been in a love-hate relationship with sugar all my life. It has been medicine when I feel down, a joyous reward when I feel up, but the rollercoaster has a price. Sugar happens to be a major source of inflammation in the body, and inflammation is something I have wrestled with. Even so, I still let my sweet tooth get the best of me, and then wonder why aspects of my health feel stuck.

Seeing others transform by aligning their inner knowing with outer world actions encourages me to listen closer to what my gut is saying and trust her guidance. “What is the thing I keep saying I want to do, that I am currently not doing?….Where have I gotten out of balance?….What’s the thing I know will make a difference in how I feel?”

It doesn’t mean the change will be easy or desired…but you are aligning with truth, and that, in itself, is powerful.

It can be helpful to ask a coach or close friend for some objectivity: “Is there something I keep talking about, that seems important to me and my health?” Gut instinct is also amplified by real world knowledge. Once I learned about the inflammatory impact of sugar, it made intuitive sense to change my diet in order to heal the inflammation in my body. (I also give myself grace to myself when I fall back into old patterns…and remember every day is a chance to start fresh.)

The healing journey is a complex, winding road, but it IS possible to experience direct and accelerated healing. It happens when you give your body exactly what it knows it needs.

xo,

Allyn