Ever notice how much time and money Americans spend trying to be skinny? Many of them are chasing their tails, never reaching their goal. Do you ever feel that way?
I have a secret for you... are you listening?
It's because THEY HAVE THE WRONG GOAL.
You don't lose weight by trying to lose weight. You lose weight by being healthy.
I don't want to keep this a secret. I want to shout from the roof tops that if you achieve good health, healthy weight naturally follows. Healthy weight is a by-product of being healthy.
Before we get into the weeds, I want to state that being skinny is not important. Being healthy is important. Women shouldn't feel pressured to be a certain size. My hope for everyone who reads this is that you can stop fixating on your waistline and start taking better care of yourself because being healthy will improve every aspect of your life: mental, physical, and emotional.
Grass fed raw milk is a living, vibrant food.
What does it mean to be healthy?
I grew up being told that if I count calories, trim out extra fat, and exercise, I would be skinny and healthy. Yet when I followed those guidelines, I was in poor health and I was the heaviest that I have ever been.
That advice is missing several important pieces.
it assumes that all calories are equal, whether they come from a soda or a grass fed steak
it assumes that all fat is bad for you
it completely ignores the fact that your gut is the center of good health, and that without a healthy gut it is very difficult to be a healthy weight
I have had a challenging health journey, but I learned a lot of wisdom along the way. I want to share that wisdom with you now.
Drinking milk still warm from the cow, cream and all.
Here are my 4 pillars of good health:
1. Read Ingredients
I once heard an ad for coca cola claim that the calories from a coke were just the same as calories from any other food.
Ugh.
That mentality has GOT TO GO.
What you put in your body matters. Garbage in, garbage out.
The problem with counting calories is that you lose sight of the quality of the food you eat. All calories are NOT equal. It's not about the number of calories, whether the food has a lot or none at all, it's about the quality of ingredients.
Get in the habit of reading the ingredients of everything you eat. If the ingredients list contains many things that you can't pronounce, don't eat it.
Your goal should be to eat simple, real foods with ingredients that are basically straight from nature.
DO eat things like:
raw milk, especially if it has been cultured into kefir or yogurt, or made into cheese
organic fruits and veggies
lard, butter, extra virgin olive oil
pasture raised eggs, including the yolks
raw honey and maple syrup
naturally leavened sourdough bread
fermented sauerkraut and kimchi
sea salt or himalayan salt
ginger, garlic, and herbs
a little bit of dark chocolate
DON'T eat things that include:
refined sugars including high fructose corn syrup
vegetable oils including soybean oil, corn oil, rapeseed oil, canola oil
anything listed "to preserve freshness", because those are preservatives
dyes, artificial flavors, and "natural flavors" which can hide so many bad things
emulsifiers
artificial sweeteners, which are actually worse for you than refined sugars
msg
potassium bromate
If you want to read more about ingredients and your health, this blog goes into more detail.
2. Gut Health
If your gut is not healthy, you cannot be healthy. Unfortunately, many things in the modern American lifestyle destroy the gut.
Your gut is the center of your immune system. Back when I was at my worst health, I had severe gut inflammation and leaky gut (meaning that my gut walls had holes that let particles through that should have remained in my gut). I was sick almost constantly--I had no immune system. Most of the health problems I endured were directly caused by the processed foods I used to eat and the effect they had on my gut.
Once I healed my gut, my immune system came back strong. I almost never get sick anymore. My whole body was able to begin healing, once I healed my gut.
Inflamed gut causes a cascading chain of problems that affect your entire body. Things like arthritis, psoriasis, candida, and liver problems stem from an unhealthy gut. One of the reasons to avoid food additives such as emulsifiers and refined vegetable oils is that they cause gut inflammation.
There is a direct connection between the gut and the brain, so much so that scientists have dubbed the gut "second brain". The health of the gut affects mental and emotional health. Toxins in the gut are often at least partially responsible for anxiety and depression.
Have you heard of the microbiome of your gut? That refers to the ecology of bacteria, yeasts, and other microorganisms living and interacting in your gut. There is a very important job that these critters play, helping you digest and assimilate your food. It is crucial that you have the right microbiome (in other words, the right blend of desirable microbes), and not a microbiome of unhealthy yeasts and bacteria.
The microbiome is a result of what you eat. Even if you take probiotics to inoculate your gut with the "good guys", you will still be dominated by undesirable microbes if the foods you eat every day are the foods that the bad microbes live on. In order to have a gut filled with good microbes, you must fill your gut with the types of food that good microbes need.
This goes back to watching your ingredients, as explained above. Sugary, processed foods feed the "bad guys". Whole, nourishing foods feed the "good guys". Preservatives, similar to antibiotics, kill good bacteria and throw off your microbiome.
Kefir made from raw, grass fed milk is one of the best foods to nourish and improve the microbiome in your gut. This blog article gives more information about kefir.
3. Fasting and Healing
Fasting, or going for periods of time without food, is a powerful way to allow your body to heal itself. I have practiced a fasting lifestyle for about a year and a half now, and I have personally experienced that it
finished healing my gut (after implementing everything mentioned above),
healed a torn ligament that had bothered me for years,
helped me lose weight (and keep it off),
and cleared brain fog.
My husband reversed his prediabetes through fasting.
Additionally, fasting can cure or prevent type 2 diabetes, cancer, dementia, and a host of other problems. If that sounds too good to be true, think of it this way. When you eat all the time, your body is constantly using its energy and resources to break down that food. When you give yourself a break from that work, your body has a chance to get to all the other house keeping it's been meaning to do, such as repairing damaged cells and clearing out toxins. It allows your blood sugar to come down which is crucial for insulin sensitivity.
If you eat during all waking hours, your blood sugar stays high. This gets turned into fat. Simply restricting you eating to a narrower window every day, for example, from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m., would help you shed fat
There is a reason that fasting has been a part of traditional cultures for thousands of years. Americans have forgotten the ancient wisdom of fasting.
The more often you fast, the easier it gets. Your body gets used to switching to burning fat from blood sugar. I honestly enjoy fasting now--something I never thought I would say just a few years ago!
This blog goes into more details about fasting. I explain how anyone can implement fasting and intermittent fasting into their lifestyle, even if you can't (or don't think you can) go for days without food.
I have been blessed by holistic healers that helped my body recover from years of damage. Their work is outside of the scope of my farm, so I will not go into detail about what they do. But I at least have to give a shout out to them and encourage you to find people who can help your body heal. Seek out good practitioners of chiropractic, acupuncture, nutritional healing, and other modalities to help you on your journey.
4. Exercise
I don't need to go on and on about the importance of exercise. You hear it all the time.
All that I will say is that when you are healthy because you eat only nourishing foods, have a healthy gut, and allow your body to heal itself through fasting, you will feel great and exercising will be easy and enjoyable.
Exercise need not be in the form of going to the gym or training for a marathon. Just get out and be active.
Being healthy makes it easy and enjoyable to be physically active.
When you take control of your health, every aspect of your life will improve. Losing weight is insignificant compared to the other numerous benefits you will experience!
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