Nutrition

‘You are what you eat.’  The food you eat provides your body with the nourishment you need to thrive.  Healthy eating does not mean expensive or complicated diets.  On the contrary, getting back to the source and eating unprocessed simple natural foods is what our bodies thrive on.  A healthy diet is composed of foods that provide you the utmost energy.  In my practice we talk a lot about individualization.  Individualization of health plans and individualization of diet according to the numerous factors that make up who you are (gender, weight, climate you live in, age, body type, work load, lifestyle…). This means choosing foods and cooking methods that your body needs to get the right amount of vitamins and minerals and energy. 

Stress Management & Self Care

Many definitions exists, stress according to Seaward, “is the inability to cope with a perceived threat to one’s mental, physical, emotional and spiritual well-being, which results in a series of physiological responses and adaptations.”  Unfortunately stress has become a daily part of many of our lives.  Chronic stress have a physiological response on the body and is known to negatively affect health.  Scientist have shown the damaging effects of chronic stress on the nervous, immune and endocrine systems which in turn influences other bodily systems.

The good news is that there are a variety of different and effective tools and techniques to help us manage stress.   Stress management allows us to cope and change our perceptions of threats which we consider stressors.

I look at how you deal with stress, your coping mechanisms as well the various stressors in your life, sometimes known sometimes unknown to you.  Stressors may be related to relationships, social interactions, work, environment, but also nutritional choices, vitamin and mineral deficiencies, toxic load (from various forms of pollutants), etc.

Subsequently, the appropriate tools and techniques are chosen and applied to manage and reduce stress such as:  nutrition, herbs, supplements, physical exercise plan, cleanses, breathing exercises, meditation techniques and flower essences.

Exercise 

‘Go hard or go home’.  This is the moto I was trained on while doing competitive running as a teenager.  Many of us have this misconceived notion that we should push ourselves to the extreme in our workouts to obtain the results we want from our bodies.  Science is now proving this wrong.  

Such as in nutrition, exercise plans should be highly individualised taking into account not only ones initial strength and endurance but also the body type, stress level (heard of cortisol-conscious workouts?), pre-existing condition, constitution, life cycle, hormonal state, chronotype…  Workouts also need to be well scheduled during the day for them to be energy creating rather than energy depleting.  Remember that like in nutrition there are fads to work-outs not everyone is made for HIIT, TRX or hot yoga.  The key to staying fit might just be finding the right shoe and the right moment to practice.