Day 20. Holistic Diet

In this New Healthy Me Plan my new weight / size must be created by understanding my Physical, Emotional, and Mental starting points, against my environmental backdrop.

I am defining ‘environmental backdrop’ as things that are slow-moving-fixed (bearing in mind that nothing is ‘fixed’ absolutely.) So, these are enduring choices that will remain in play for the foreseeable future, thinks like: work, family commitments, key people/ personalities in my life, and my time of life. I don’t do ‘age’, but I’ll tell you why tomorrow.

So my environmental backdrop looks like this:

1.        I am a businesswoman living in a fast-paced city.

2.        I am in my Season 2 years

3.        I am a single parent to a baby boy.

There are probably more, but this will do for starters.

I am choosing and committed to being an active, energetic businesswoman and Mum. So I am choosing a health routine that enables this.

Now, I get that I need to understand my physical starting point, but why emotion and mental? This is because my emotions and my mental states both interact with my physical body, and they can completely hijack any progress I may make physically.

For a long time now, it has seemed totally insane to me that Diet Programs don’t include these two powerful parts of our mindbody. In fact, I would suggest that these are not two but three vital players in our body shape and size, since Mental must be split into Conscious and Subconscious components. Once we have dealt with what we know is playing in opposition to us, we must then deal with those beliefs that we don’t even know we have – the ones hiding in our subconscious! More on this over the coming weeks.

So, I need to know my starting points in all these areas. Let’s take a look at my Physical, Emotional and Mental positions.

Physically, I am in Season 2, so there are hormones that come into play, there’s menopause, there’s the apparent status that my body seems to heal slower than previously. I’d like to understand more about why this might be. I notice cuts don’t heal as quickly and structural problems take months going on a year to resolve.

Also in Season 2, muscle mass starts to deplete so weights and resistance exercises are important to add to our routines. Plus, it’s important that we eat more protein to support muscle repair.  So, for women with salads in mind, we need to make sure they are protein heavy.

Emotionally, I have a solid practice for recognizing my emotions, being with them, and letting them pass through me. This is a ‘practice’ because it’s something that is never complete but always improving. In fact, one may suggest that I am emotionally comfortable, which means I need to keep doing new things, and keep feeling the fears, the rush, the excitement / nervousness, the hunger for new experiences which will all come with new emotions!  Not doing this may see me forget how to deal with all emotional states and become afraid of allowing things or people into my life who may trigger them. As a single woman who would like to meet the right partner, being too comfortable could see me play ‘safe’  and exclude opportunities to invite a new  relationship into my life.

Mentally, I am in a very good Conscious place. I am happy with what I have in my life. My focus is on keeping it.

Subconsciously, I have some self-sabotaging things going on. They are super subtle players, very well disguised as genuine concerns and real choices. But I am being just as super vigilant to these little subconscious critters. I am not taking anything at face value, and just as well, as I have discerned a tiny wriggly critter that is determined to keep me at Size Status Quo.

So is what needs my deep investigation next…