Starting the Holistic Health Journey

where I would start if I was beginning from scratch.

Overwhelming is an understatement. Where on earth do you start. You hop on your phone to look for some kind of solid, trustworthy info to help you begin healing the unrest you sense in your body, mind, and you’re just bombarded by opposing info from all sides. Keto, mediterranean diet, vegan, carnivore, all claiming to be THE diet, one supplement after another rising and falling, all touting miraculous health claims and half of them ending up being cancelled for one reason or another. Blood sugar, cortisol, hormones, body fat, mental health- where do you start??

Not only that, but the industry that has been created from the health and wellness world is INSANE, capitalism profits big time off of people’s genuine desire to be well and just tries to sell sell sell, always preaching that some new purchase will be the answer. Many people think they can’t afford to be healthy and I am such a firm believer that this is not true.

All the same, it stumped me for so many years. I was on a total hamster wheel, buying one supplement after the other- ending up with a cupboard full of barely used bottles. One diet after another, constantly going back to the drawing board looking for that ONE missing piece, a miraculous a-ha moment that would change everything and get me finally on the right track. Truth be told I was so scatterbrained when it came to health that even if I did land on something great, I wouldn’t even know if it was helping because I was so inconsistent.

To be honest though, I’m lucky to have had a better start than many. My mom is a smart woman, and was way ahead of her time when it came to health & wellness and raised us on a pretty well balanced diet. She made kombucha from scratch and soaked her lentils & beans overnight (“to neutralize the phytic acid” she told me which, it turns out, is absolutely true). I’ll admit that as a kid I turned up my nose half the time and begrudged traipsing to the garden in the rain to pick kale and wash the bugs off it, but the older I’ve gotten the more like her I’ve become and the more I’ve returned to that balanced foundation. I tried it all, the diets, the pills, the workouts. I moved through disordered eating and out the other side and wouldn’t you know, the more I research the more I keep coming back to the most. basic. principles. It’s almost laughable, I wish there was some fancy answer sometimes, it would be more fun.

Anyways, if I was beginning from scratch, total scratch with little to no foundation in health, and perhaps not even a clear picture of my own wellness (or lack there of), here’s where I would start.

1. Elimination is free. Start by removing major toxins from your diet and home because it doesn’t matter how many fancy pills you take if you are consistently adding poisons and stressors to your body. This doesn’t need to look like trashing all your food and products and starting again- in fact I think that approach is usually unsustainable.

   Instead, slowly swap out processed foods for whole foods, starting with snacks- it’s easy to swap a bag of Doritos for an apple or some nuts, even though it may take some getting used to. Or at least, swapping it for a plain tortilla chip dipped in salsa! We all know the basics of what is healthy vs. unhealthy so you can keep it as simple as avoiding excessively processed things and then slowly learning more and getting more particular about the rest of your food.

   When it comes to personal care & household products, it can feel a little more tricky but this is an important area to assess. So many of our daily products truyl contain super harmful chemicals that 100000% are proven to mess up our hormones, not to mention cause cancer and a slew of other issues. Of course, if you’re trying to heal hormone imbalance, it doesn’t matter how many flax seeds you eat if every day you are covering your body with products that are directly effecting your hormones. However, it would be expensive to suddenly swap all of your products out, so this is an area to just slowly change- as you run out of something, look into cleaner alternatives and try one at a time.

   If you want to get a little more specific here are some helpful resources-

   The EWG's top 12 food chemicals to avoid is a great resource to help you prioritize where to start swapping foods.

   This article from Made Safe is a great starting point for understanding endocrine disrupting chemicals in the home and steps to take to begin removing them.

2. Assess your stress and begin to control/mediate as much of it as you can. God, its the inescapable villain. We all have so much genuine and often unavoidable stress in our life and it GENUINELY is killlinnnngggg us. The link between stress and ill health is so well established at this point that there is no denying it. Chronic stress causes overproduction of cortisol, the stress hormone. This depletes essential nutrients and steals them from other essential hormones & glands. Not only so, but this stress sends primal signals the rest of our body to shut down “non-essential functions” but these are things like digestion, sleep, mental clarity- things that may not be essential if running from a wolf but are absolutely essential to our daily quality of life. The knock on effect is signals sent through the deeply interconnected and delicately balanced endocrine (hormone) system, telling all kinds of hormones and glands to shut down or overproduce, throwing everything out of balance. If cortisol is in overproduction for too long it can actually wear out your adrenal glands to the point where they underproduce cortisol, which is a whole other kettle of fish in and of itself.

   Cortisol also raises blood sugar, and over time can contribute to things like insulin resistance which is the root of many hormone disorders including PCOS- and about 50% of women with PCOS will have type 2 diabetes by age 40.

   It’s. All. Connected.

   I don’t say this to scare you but to EMPOWER you. If you can manage your stress, you can manage your health and heal your disease to a great extent.

   Now this can be easier said than done, and of course we all have stressors in our lives that are absolutely unavoidable, and those categories change from person to person or at different phases of life. But equally, we all have areas of stress that we can very much take control over. I’m gonna list some common areas/ causes of stress. Use that list as inspiration to list out your own stressors- from the biggest, strongest that you feel most powerless to, to the ones that you feel could be the most avoidable.

   • work (boss, deadlines, colleagues)

   • money

   • major health (major health concerns & chronic illness)

   • mid health (hormones, IBS, migraines)

   • general health (gut health, intolerances etc)

   • physical fitness

   • sleep

   • parenting

   • anxiety/worry

   • mental health

   • friendships

   • family

   • food (literally eating foods that cause your body more harm than good)

   • clutter

   Once you list out your stressors as honestly as possible, think about which things on your list you could most easily take control over- even if it would be a challenge. For instance, maybe you are having some financial issues that feel insurmountable and a close family member is fighting cancer. Big deals. You can reduce the stress of lack of sleep/poor quality sleep by choosing not to scroll your phone for the last 30 minutes before bed. You can increase your feel good hormones by stepping outside for a few minutes early in the morning to get ‘red light’ rays from the sun. You can say no to engaging in unnecessary drama or make boundaries with friendships that are more of a drain than a support in this season. You can choose low impact workouts instead of super intense high stress ones if you are already in a highly strung nervous state.

   I have personally found this life changing over the last few years, as someone who struggled for years with poor mental health, constant worry, and putting my body under so much stress through poor nourishment, lack of sleep and overworking. I began slowly making chnages many of which began internally, with realizing how much power I actually had over my mental chatter and internal dialogue, regardless of what was going on around me.

   So, this will look different for everyone, but it’s worth evaluating to find the areas of stress you can control or at least begin to reduce.

3. Get outside. Literally touch grass. Ok this is gonna be short and sweet and I know it sounds so simple and cheesy but nature is magical and healing and we are so disconnected from it. I even call myself a nature girl and the reality these days, with a new baby in the house, food to cook, dishes to clean and all of my work to be done on screens, I am appalled at how little time I spend outside. I cant even imagine the struggle for people who live in cities, or who maybe didn’t grow up spending tons of time outside and are now just in that day to day rat race. It’s way more of a struggle than it should be to get outside but WE ARE NATURE we are literally intrinsically connected to the earth and our literal physical health improves (as well as out spiritual and mental health) when we just put ourselves back IN NATURE. (Sorry for shouting.)

   If you haven’t heard of forest bathing, the practice of just going into nature with no agenda but to mindfully take it in that originated in Japan in the 80’s- let me tell ya. I mean, I grew up ‘forest bathing’ we just called it…hanging out? But it turns out theres tons of research into its benefits for not only mental but physical health too- largely immune support!

   Here’s a little forest bathing article and a more in depth study on grounding and the science behind its benefits.

   Movement should probably also be in this category, because again- it’s something that is so often overcomplicated but some of the healthiest cultures in the world aren’t full of ripped cross fit dudes but 100 yr olds who work in their gardens and walk up and down hills every day. If you haven’t watched the documentary on Netflix about the blue Zones “Live to 100” I highly recommend it- looking into areas across the world with the highest numbers of centennials (people living to 100) and best health outcomes. One common factor is consistently moderately active lifestyles, so rather than stressing yourself out to get to the gym and do intense worlouts (not that theres anything wrong with that!) try starting with just walking- briskly, with purpose, but just walking. Get out in nature. Maybe do some stretches.

4. Circling back to food- after beginning to eliminate processed foods and toxic products, you can start to look a little deeper into your food. There are a billion different diets out there but unless you’re having some extreme health concerns, the best place to start in my opinion is a simple, balanced, traditional whole-foods diet. This means not vilifying any one food group, eating them all, but having them in appropriate balance and trying to choose foods that are as close to nature as possible.

   Some great guiding thoughts come from Michael Pollan, renowned professor and food writer, who has written countless incredible books (The Omnivores Dilemma, Food Rules) on food, health, and the links between the two-

   • “Don’t eat anything your great-grandmother wouldn’t recognize as food”

   • “Eat whatever you want, just make it yourself”

   • “Dont eat anything that doesn’t rot”

   • “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly Plants”

   I honestly love his thoughts on food. So freeing and so simple.

   Another thing to consider at this point is the quality of your food as you slowly transition more and more things to healthier alternatives.

   When it comes to produce, there can be pressure to switch to completely organic to avoid all those pesticides but lets be real- IN THIS ECONOMY?? Not always possible. Instead, a great place to start is working with the Clean 15 and the Dirty Dozen- another great resource developed by the EWG outlining the produce with the most and least chemical residue. Start by buying the dirty dozen organic and dont worry so much about the clean 15! Here’s their full list of both.

From here, I would look into water purity, start to think about what you can add in terms of minerals, supplements etc and then begin to assess movement further. But honestly, these things are all malleable dependant on your circumstance and what calls to you. Idk, as I look back, maybe minerals should be one of these main points ahhh!!! Making sure you have the minerals and nutrients you need on the daily is indeed so important for mental & physical function - so while I wouldnt go diving in to supplements before adressing your food and your stress, it might be worth starting in with some Adrenal Cocktails alongside the rest of these things to give you some extra adrenal support on the journey.

If you made it through this, thank you for your patience haha- it ended up way longer than I thought and now its so late. I would love to hear your thoughts, your journey, what has helped you along the way and what you would put as your first steps!