At the core of our health and wellbeing lies a fundamental truth: our values shape our choices, habits, and ultimately, our lifestyle. Yet many of us, despite achieving great success in various aspects of life, grapple with less than ideal health or a feeling of powerlessness in our relationship with food. This anomaly often represents a deep-seated disconnection stemming from an inconsistency between our actions and our stated values. Understanding this disconnection is the first step towards healing our bodies and our relationship with food.
Let me explain what it means to live a values-based life. Our values serve as guiding principles, shaping our decisions and actions. We may say that we value connection, freedom, or adventure, but are our choices reflective of these assertions? For instance, if we claim to value connection, yet experience chronic loneliness, OR we pronounce freedom as a core value but feel shackled by our 9-5 jobs, we’re living in a state of disconnection. When this happens, our health suffers and for some it’s all too easy to turn to food as a surrogate to fill these emotional voids. Food becomes our reprieve, our reward, our indulgence, and our escape. Recognizing these subconscious substitutions is crucial to unearthing the true root cause of our dis-ease or our troubled relationship with food.
In a society steeped in impossible expectations, we can easily lose touch with our authentic selves. We've become so entrenched in fulfilling societal ideals that we've gradually distanced ourselves from our core values. This leads to a profound sense of unease—a perpetual state of discomfort that can manifest through unhealthy habits. These habits offer a temporary respite but not a sustainable or healthy solution to our deeper needs.
Embracing a life of Authentic Nourishment™ offers a way out of this predicament. Unlike dieting strategies that emphasize mechanical aspects of food and nutrition, Authentic Nourishment™ underscores the importance of aligning our life choices and our nourishment with our core values. This transformative journey involves a deep process of self-discovery, self-respect, and ultimately, self-love. It calls for the courage to challenge societal norms, break free from the constraints of diet culture, and realign our behaviors with our deepest convictions.
This journey isn’t easy. We must confront the deeply ingrained societal pressures of diet culture, which portrays health and wellness as a numbers game. The prevailing narrative pushes us towards superficial metrics—losing a certain number of pounds, fitting into a specific size, consuming a strict number of calories. This undue focus on numerical targets leads to an unsustainable cycle of restriction and temporary “achievement”, followed by inevitable backsliding.
To free ourselves from this vicious cycle, we must shift our focus from the superficial mechanics of weight loss to a more holistic view of wellness. This shift involves significant inner work, including cultivating a positive mindset, exploring our emotional needs, and understanding our psychological patterns. The outer work requires us to build healthier habits around food, cooking, exercise, sleep, and stress management. It's not about hitting arbitrary numerical targets, but about becoming our ideal selves—individuals who live authentically in alignment with their core values.
But it’s the inner work that makes all of this truly sustainable.
The inner work is about rewriting our narratives, redefining our health journey on our own terms, and making a long-term commitment to ourselves. It's about moving away from external societal pressures and moving closer to our internal guiding compass—our values. This alignment between our true values and our actions gives rise to a lifestyle that reflects genuine wellbeing and fulfillment.
In this transformative journey, our personal values serve not only as guiding principles but also as empowering tools that drive us towards our unique Authentic Nourishment™. They help us navigate through societal pressures, overcome the allure of quick fixes, and equip us with the fortitude to make sustainable changes. It's not about the pursuit of an unrealistic ideal, but about embracing our authenticity, cultivating self-love, and honoring our bodies through nourishing choices. This is the essence of aligning personal values with health habits—the foundation of Authentic Nourishment™.
Margaret Schwenke is a Certified Eating Psychology Counselor and Certified Holistic Health Coach with education in Culinary Arts, Mind Body Nutrition, Dynamic Eating Psychology and Science of Willpower. My own struggles with health and wellness created a desire in me to help people look deeper at life’s challenges, to find the why and then the how, and then to overcome. I am deeply committed to helping women discover what uniquely nourishes all aspects of their life. It is through this self discovery that thriving health can be created. My desire is to guide and support my clients on a conscious path back to their individual most authentic version of themselves so they can experience vibrant health.