Health and wellness are often thought of as two personal attributes that individuals can prioritize to enhance their lives. Certainly, you stand to gain the most benefit from treating your body right. However, we can not forget the inter-connectedness that is inherent in issues of health and eating, especially as it relates to the environment.
Last month, I shared a delicious kale salad recipe with you. This month, I want to show you how you can easily make a delicious dessert chock-full of nutrition. Behold these no-bake (perfect for these hot summer months) chocolate truffles!
Spend fifteen minutes watching your average cable news talk show and you are bound to see a three-way split screen; host in the center, two people with opposing viewpoints on either side of him or her debating back and forth. While this helps present both sides of an issue to viewers, it propagates the notion that is so pervasive in today’s society — “you are in camp A, and I am in camp B, and we have NOTHING in common.” While there is no doubt people are bound to have opposing viewpoints on issues, I also think that, in some matters, i is crucial for those with opposing viewpoints realize what they do have in common and band together to bring about change.
It hit me that after months of contributing to Awaken Your Careerpreneur on issues of nutrition, health, and wellness, I had yet to share a delectable recipe. And, so, here we are!
Although we tend to equate the term “career” with profession, I argue that our health is the most important career of our lives, one that we must sustain and adapt as necessary. For business and entrepreneurial-minded folks who seek me out to help them achieve their health goals, I like to make the following analogies between their “day job” and nutrition:
We live in a time of promises, money-back guarantees, and claims inflated with marketing hype. Food – which is meant to nourish us and provide enjoyment to all of our senses – has increasingly become a vessel for advertisers to target our deep-rooted insecurities.
I find the correct delineation between physical and emotional hunger (as well as the accurate quantification of hunger levels) to be one of the most common and difficult hurdles for many people to jump over in their quest to achieve their healthy eating goals. After all, you can have the healthiest diet in the world (meaning, full of nutritious foods) but if your hunger and satiety recognition mechanisms are off, you can still end up overconsuming calories and gaining weight.
These behaviors — and, in many cases, patterns — can take a significant amount of time to change largely because they stem from years of conditioning. A variety of factors can make it challenging for people to, first, correctly assess their hunger level and, second, determine whether their hunger stems from physiological or psychological roots.
Too often, when someone is touted as a “nutritional role model”, the focus is on what they eat (or don’t eat). And while, of course, food habits are a large part of one’s nutritional makeup, it’s the “behind-the-scenes” factors that are often looked over.
If you come across someone whose health, nutrition, and/or fitness habits you admire, I suggest you ask deeper questions — like the three listed below — that really get to the core of their successes:
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From a sociopolitical standpoint, I appreciate and understand identity politics.
Without it, groups of disenfranchised or oppressed individuals would not be able to band together and gain power and strength by celebrating their differences and mobilizing.
In nutrition, though, I often see a more destructive — rather than constructive — side to identity politics.
What images does the word “wellness” conjure up? For some of you, it may be a constant feeling of centered alertness. Perhaps a relationship with food that is about nourishment, not punishment; satisfaction, not deprivation. Or maybe what comes to mind first is a mind-body connection based on reciprocity and balance.
Regardless of what your wellness goal(s) may be, I believe there are three important questions we must ask ourselves periodically to ensure we are on a path that leads to fulfillment.
