“I believe that if we really and truly listened to our bodies, we would intuitively know what to eat and there would be no need for practitioners like myself, there would be no obesity or ill health due to poor food choices, and that producers of inferior quality food would go out of business.” These were more or less the opening words of my presentation on mindful eating for Step 4 of the 12 Steps to Wholesome Nutrition course.
As both a parent and a natural health practitioner, Natural Health 21 is particularly interested in childhood nutrition and the therapeutic principle of ‘prevention’ being better than ‘cure’. Hence, this week’s review of global health news settles nicely upon an article by dietician Emer Delany, that looks into the causes and treatments of Attention-deficit-hyperactivity-disorder (ADHD), which is; “a condition with a persistent pattern of inattention, hyperactivity and impulsivity in which children find it very difficult to focus their attention or control their behaviour.” (1)
Last night I presented Step 5 of the 12 Steps to Wholesome Nutrition course in Johannesburg. It was all about fats - the good bad and ugly ones….. I explored a number of fat myths with the class, starting with ‘fat will make you fat’ and finishing with ‘fat will make you skinny’! That really is the extent to which many people’s thinking has changed in recent years and in many ways, it’s good because we shouldn’t be afraid of fats, but in other ways, it’s not so good, because we need to be deeply respectful of them.
If you’re lucky enough to have a healthy canteen at work, then this article won’t be for you. However, there are many of us that are not that blessed with nutritious wholesome food at work, so I’m going to share a little secret with you to keep you on track. This lunch option should keep those energy levels up until home time.
The subject of my talk this week in the 12 Steps to Wholesome Nutrition course was calories. A year or three ago, aged 24 and trying to maximise my running performance, I made very careful calculations as to my exact calorie requirements for my body and my training - I ended up guzzling down 4,000 calories every day, making sure to include a large proportion of wholegrains and starchy vegetables, while avoiding fats, as was the convention those days. As I gradually took my nutrition interest into professional practice, I sometimes did these extremely laborious calculations of calorie and macronutrient intakes for my clients, but I quickly realised that by maintaining all of my focus on numbers, I was missing the bigger picture of food quality. It was then that I started using the phrase that all of my clients know me for:
