HJ: The resulting frustration from experiencing one or more of these extremely common physical symptoms is typically what gives those seeking greater wellbeing the impetus to begin their journey towards achieving higher states of health. Eventually these symptoms get bad enough where people become catalyzed into action to end their suffering and take control of their health — either that or they develop into more serious illnesses that are difficult to heal/cure. When one finally gets themselves to this wonderful point of empowerment — where they have decided to take decisive action to improve their health — is where the real journey begins. It is at this point that one realizes how little they really know and seeks guidance and knowledge to help them navigate these uncharted waters. However, we do have the latent ability to heal ourselves and it need not be a complicated or expensive affair involving high-paid professionals and extensive analyses and tests. These all have their place, but it is simply incredible how much positive change one can affect in their lives simply by making a few simple dietary and lifestyle changes.
All the expensive remedies, medicines and healing therapies will be ineffective if one does not make fundamental changes to diet and lifestyle. Quite simply, there is no more powerful medicine than food and neglecting this aspect of ones life will sabotage all efforts for healing that do not take it into account. It can be that simple and at the very least, this is the first step on the path to overcoming ones health challenges. First, diet must be in order and then one can move onto more advanced levels of healing. Diet is encompassed by changes in lifestyle, however, the term lifestyle also encompasses things such as exercise, sleeping habits and so on. Between these two things – diet and lifestyle – we can eliminate about 90% of the health challenges that humanity currently suffers from. The remaining 10% are spiritual in nature and certainly can be healed, but that is beyond the scope of this introduction and article. For more information on healing spirituality see the article here: Understanding the Root Spiritual Cause of Disease and Illness
– Truth
Four Symptoms of a Poor Diet
By Deborah Barr | Whole Health Resources
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So, you think you have a pretty healthy diet. You read labels, minimize foods high in fat, sugar and calories; include lots of fruits and vegetables; and shop at a health food store. Despite these efforts you struggle with persistent health and weight problems.
A successful approach to nutrition improves health, energy, digestion, and elimination; provides restful, uninterrupted sleep; healthy emotions and a clear, focused mind. The right foods for you leave you extremely satisfied and without cravings.
Many people are suffering with multiple health issues including pain problems, skin issues, immune disorders, allergies, bone problems, male and female related diseases, heart disease, cancer, and many others. Please do not underestimate the healing power of food to reverse these issues. This article gives solutions for common health complaints including constant hunger, fatigue, digestive and weight issues. When you resolve them, every aspect of your health will improve.
All chronic, acute and degenerative disease can be helped with therapeutic foods. Your diet is one of the best ways to prevent, even reverse, disease. Certain foods help you maintain healthy weight; a clear, focused mind; and emotional harmony. The problem is there are many versions of what constitutes a good diet. Most of them conflict with each other. They all have a common theme: everyone should eat according to the same rules and each one claims their rules are the ones that will make you healthy.
Worse yet is the scientific reductionist view adopted by many alternative practitioners as well. Science evaluates foods solely by the presence of proteins, carbohydrates, calories, fats, vitamins and minerals. Foods containing similar quantities of nutrients are considered equivalent in therapeutic value. All people are assumed to be the same physiologically, so choice of foods is simply a matter of preference within scientific quantitative guidelines. As evidenced by the rapid increase in disease and obesity in children and adults, scientific nutrition is ineffective.
The value of food extends far beyond its nutrients. Food has an essence which is far more than the sum of its nutrients. All food has a character and energetic properties that science has not yet been able to define. You become the frequency of the food you consume.
Trendy diets come and go and science continually changes its mind about food. No wonder the public is confused and searching for a sane and sensible approach to nutrition and health. Believing that a specific diet will eliminate all people’s health and weight problems is unrealistic, even absurd.
Symptom #1: Constant Hunger, Insatiable Appetite, Grazing all Day
Even though you’ve eaten and feel full, some part of you is not satisfied. You often go to the refrigerator looking for something, but can’t figure out what it is you want. The modern diet is filled with highly refined and processed foods devoid of real nutrition. Many nutrients and much of the food’s life force energy are lost in the processing. Your insatiable appetite may be for wholesome, unrefined, unprocessed, chemical and drug-free foods. Constant eating may be your body’s attempt to get the nutrients that have been lost in the processing.
Remedy: Include plenty of whole foods in your daily diet. When foods are eaten in their whole, natural state your body will be nourished and satisfied. Meal replacements, shakes, smoothies, energy bars, are not whole foods—no matter what clever ad executives have placed on the label. Brown rice, barley, millet and other grains are whole foods. When they are processed into energy bars, bread, pasta, or crackers, they are no longer a whole food. These fragmented products do not provide the nutrition, energy, and satisfaction you need to be healthy.
Vegetables, whole, unprocessed grains, fruit, beans, legumes, seafood, and drug-free animal products are whole foods. Click here for 3 meals from one pot of brown rice.
Gulping your food without breaking it down with your teeth and saliva makes it difficult to assimilate the nutrients from the food. Your digestive organs have to do the work of your teeth and saliva. This uses a lot of your body’s energy and is often a cause of fatigue. You may feel full, but not satisfied. This leads to constant eating since you haven’t absorbed the nutrients from the food that you haven’t chewed. Eating on the run, while driving, standing or working can be a trigger to keep eating to get the nutrients you have not assimilated because of your erratic eating style.
The remedy is simple: chew your food until liquid and sit down and relax when you eat. Schedule a few meals weekly to eat mindfully. You will feel calmer, more energetic and satisfied on less quantity. Your health will improve too.
An insatiable appetite can be a sign that your meals are not substantial enough. It can also signal blood sugar imbalances which can be balanced with the right foods. Grazing all day long burdens your digestive system causing it to use your energy for digestive processes leaving far less for your every day activities. Sugar stimulates your appetite, causes high and low blood sugar, and it is an ingredient in many foods–even the ones from the health food store.
Are you really hungry or are you trying to get some other need met through food? You eat for many reasons. Many of them have nothing to do with true physical hunger. Are you trying to fill a void left by a lifestyle that is not nourishing or feeding your needs? Start paying attention to why you eat. What are you really hungry for?
Symptom #2: Digestive issues
Do you experience gas, bloating, cramping, distention, constipation or loose stools on a regular basis? A strong digestive system is vital to good health and many modern foods—some seemingly healthy—greatly compromise your ability to digest, assimilate and eliminate. If you have these issues, you are not eating the best foods for you.
The biggest offenders are cow’s milk products, sugar, alcohol, many prescription drugs, spoiled food, and too many ingredients in a dish. Raw foods and fruit juice cause digestive problems for many people, and are not essential for good health.
Bacteria, viruses, overgrowth of yeasts, fungus, and parasites compromise your gut, and their survival is dependent on a poor diet. Click here for more on these issues.
Remedy: Keep your meals simple avoiding complicated dishes like 10 bean soups and lasagna; chew well; eliminate the offenders listed above; don’t keep leftovers more than a few days; drink warm tea after every meal, especially ginger, peppermint, or chamomile. Click here for digestive aids.
Resolve the life issues you are having difficulty digesting. Your body, mind, and emotions are not separate. Health issues can and do develop from a negative mind and stressful emotions. Your body responds to your thoughts and feelings. Attitudinal Healing Counseling can help you understand the positive meaning of your challenges and help you create harmony, balance and strength through them.
Symptom #3 – Fatigue
Sugar, coffee, and alcohol cause blood sugar to plummet, deplete mineral reserves, and make you tired. The effects aren’t always immediate. It’s essential to figure out why you crave these substances. They are filling some need in a harmful way. Click here for a free, useful tool to determine your needs.
Remedy – eliminate or greatly minimize sweets, alcohol and coffee. Click here for some antidotes– a few things can you do to revitalize your energy, focus your mind, balance your emotions, lose the excess pounds, and reverse the negative effects of overdoing these harmful substances. Join my Balanced Blood Sugar TeleClass to learn more.
If a large percentage of your food is frozen then microwaved, you are likely to be tired and sick—even if the food is from a health food store.
Microwave cooking damages the molecular integrity of food, diminishing its subtle qi. Experiments reported in the prestigious British medical journal, The Lancet, (Dec. 9, 1989) show that microwave cooking alters food enough to cause structural, functional and immunological changes in the body. The report states that microwaves transform the amino acid L-proline into D-proline, a proven toxin to the nervous system, liver and kidneys.
The Russians, who have done the most diligent research into the biological effects of microwave ovens, have banned their use due to the negative impact on people’s health. They issued an international warning about the biological and environmental damage that can result from the use of microwaves and similar-frequency electronic apparatus. A few of the effects the Russian scientists observed: the creation of cancer-causing agents, increased chance of cancer development, and decreased nutritional value of the food.
Remedy – try a 2-week trial of eliminating frozen foods and microwave use. Eat fresh whole foods cooked on the stove. Keep a daily journal of how you are feeling and notice how your energy improves.
Symptom #4 – Difficulty Losing Weight
When you are eating the right foods for you your body will naturally be at a healthy weight. Many struggle with excessive weight, eating denatured low-fat, low-calorie and fat-free foods. Most of these are defatted with chemical solvents that compromise your health, slow metabolism, and ability to maintain a fit body. Many diet foods, smoothies, and shakes create sluggish metabolism because of their damp, cooling effects. Others cause heat and stagnation driving the excess deeper.
Blood sugar imbalances, food sensitivities, and digestive issues, including yeast and fungi, are a few causes of stubborn weight loss. I know you want a quick solution and I’ve offered some tips. These are complex issues that took years to develop.
Weight issues are health issues. The same choices that are causing your health issues are contributing to weight challenges.
Remedy: Eat real food that comes from the earth, emphasizing unprocessed whole grains, lots of vegetables, and healthy proteins. Avoid diet foods. If you eat a lot of animal food, begin to minimize and have two or more meat-free days weekly. You can get ample protein from grains, vegetables, beans and legumes. Animals are given hormones to make them fat and you get the same result when you eat them.
Stop obsessing about weight and make your goal be balanced health in body, mind and spirit. As you fight against excess weight you strengthen its hold on you. Self criticism, hating your body, and being mean-spirited toward yourself are some ways you fight against weight issues.
Join Holistic Weight Loss Tele Seminar beginning September 29, or take advantage of my Holistic Weight Loss Home Study Program and save $40 through Labor Day. Both are comprehensive Body, Mind Spirit programs and will teach you how to evaluate your condition and craft a flexible eating plan for creating a healthy, fit body and mind permanently. Your health, energy, and emotions will greatly improve too.
My Detoxification and Regeneration Fall Health Tele Seminar will help you kickstart your health and vitality. Join me on September 8 for this very information class.
Every food you eat and each cooking method has specific therapeutic properties. The effects of your nutritional choices are relative to all foods that you eat and altered by your thoughts and beliefs about the food. Other factors influence the results of food, including medications, supplements, activity level, environment and season; emotional state, stress level and how you process life’s challenges.
There is no magic bullet, no one food or supplement, or a one-size-fits-all approach to the growing health and weight problems of the world. Take responsibility for your health by investing some time to learn how to assess your health and create a flexible nutrition plan that takes into account seasonal influences.
Following a rigid dietary plan devised by someone who knows nothing about your constitution and condition will not make you healthy or happy. Please have an open mind when it comes to your well being. Explore a true holistic approach with an experienced professional.
About Deborah Barr
Deborah Barr founded Whole Health Resources in 1985, the premier Holistic Center in Pittsburgh. She helps clients reverse health and weight issues; create emotional harmony; and a joyful, abundant life they love. She provides a wide range of services including Holistic Health and Nutrition Counseling, Natural Weight Loss Services, Herbal Medicine; Spiritual Psychotherapy; Whole Health Life Coaching, Shiatsu Therapy, and a wide range of workshops and seminars. Deborah is a sought after speaker and writer sharing her Holistic message to audiences of regional and national scope.” She can be reached by calling 412.361.8600, e-mailing deborah@wholehealthresources.com, or visitingwww.wholehealthresources.com
