What Is Nutrition Counseling
Fitting in time to do your own research and understand what you should be doing can be time-consuming in an already busy day. There is so much information that exists that can not only be unreliable but confusing. You have a long list of supplements that say they will help your medical condition, tests you should have, and foods to try, but you’re unsure where to start. For many it is too much, and they just put it off. Confusion creates inertia. If you need clear answers for your specific concerns and a supportive nutrition counselor to help put you on the right path, then you have come to the right place!
According to the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, nutrition counseling is a supportive process that creates personalized priorities, establishes goals and creates individualized health plans that create sustainable habits for improved health.
The goal of nutritional counseling is to restore nutritional deficiency to nutritional sufficiency. Conventional medicine will not heal your body, and merely treats your symptoms. Nutrition improves the body's own innate ability to heal itself. At Lifestyle Nutrition and Health Coaching we uncover the root cause of your disease, and prepare a bio-individualized plan to correct your body's imbalances. This will be done using the mind, body and spirit approach.
NO FOOD POLICE, NO BODY SHAME, NO JUDGEMENT
If you are struggling with illness, understand that your body wants to be healthy. You want to be healthy. Symptoms are the indicators of disease, and by conventional medicine simply treating your symptoms the root cause of the health problem is left intact. For example, acne can be treated with antibiotics or birth control pills. The acne is the underlying symptom while the root cause is systemic inflammation. The antibiotic treatment makes you more unhealthy by destroying the microbiota in your colon that is critical to health and feeling well.
Building knowledge will help you understand why you are feeling the way you are. To feel healthy and whole we must address the mind, body and spirit connection. At Lifestyle Nutrition and Health Coaching we will help you create healthy routines and habits that build a strong mind, body, and spirit so that you can live your best life. I focus on six areas: healthful eating, nutrition, exercise, stress mitigation, sleep and personal relationships.
MIND
Each of us are more than just our thoughts. A healthy mind creates a healthy body. For example, chronic illness and stress increase cortisol levels, and prolonged cortisol level elevation causes adrenal fatigue. Everyone has stress in their life, and it is unavoidable. But not mitigating that stress can have deleterious effects on the body.
How you think affects how you feel, which affects your body. The brain communicates directly with the gut via the vagus nerve. What is known as the gut-brain axis. For example, the gut instinct you always hear about comes from the microbiota. The microbiota, bacteria in your large intestine, are one cell away from this nerve, and they can produce virtually every substance your body can. Of the serotonin stored in your body, 90% is stored in the large intestine. This is why depression is not a disease that originates in the brain.
In addressing the mind, I focus on mitigating stress, reframing thoughts to always put an experience into a positive light, improving thought processing, and improving sleep. I improve the brain-gut axis.
BODY
Eating well can fend off disease, illness, and pain. LEAKY GUT is the cause of most, if not all disease. Leaky gut syndrome causes cracks in the lining of the gastrointestinal tract, our colon, which then allows partially undigested proteins to enter your blood. This is the root cause of all autoimmune diseases as the body interprets these undigested proteins as foreign invaders. Our immune system then mounts an attack to neutralize the threat, but in the process the body begins to not recognize its own healthy self. EVERYTHING that goes on in your body stems back to or is ROOTED in the health of your digestive tract from depression and arthritis to hemorrhoids.
I create bio-individualized meal plans that adapt to your lifestyle and culture. If you do not want to give up meat my meal plan will help mitigate the effects that meat can have on your body. I do the work for you so that you can focus on what is important to you.
In addressing the body I focus on healthful eating, exercise promotion so that you can live your best life.
SPIRIT
A healthy spirit creates a better sense of self and centers us. This can be done in a myriad of ways that include volunteering, yoga, meditation. But it can also be done simply by performing deep breathing exercises. It does not matter what you eat if your body cannot break down the nutrients to their simplest form, and then absorb them. Deep breathing improves your digestion while focusing your thoughts and calming you. This has a positive impact on your body by improving your sense of self and self-worth, and improving your stress and anxiety levels. Lowering your stress levels decreases your cortisol levels and boosts your immune system. I will teach you how to do these deep breathing exercises.
In addressing the spirit, I focus on you and your relationships. When addressing the mind-body-spirit triad you cannot address any one without the others. They are intimately connected as you will learn.