I’m sure many others can relate when I say my relationship with food is… complicated.
Growing up, I had some kind of turbo metabolism, meaning I had little idea of the physical consequences and effects of poor nutrition. My parents weren’t terribly unhealthy, just not particularly health-conscious, so I never really learnt about the chemical and emotional connection to food either.
At some stage, 1-2 years ago, I was feeling so exhausted and just very ‘bleh’ all the time.
After trying many other methods to combat these feelings, I thought, “hey, why not try some healthier eating habits for a bit? It couldn’t hurt, and if it doesn’t do anything, then you can just go back to the diet you have now.”
To my surprise, for every single day of the three weeks that I had a particularly healthy diet, my typically cloudy, jumbled thoughts lined up into rows and columns; the easiest to decode that they had ever been, and my outlook (on everything) was drastically more positive than my usual perspective.
The shock of such a dramatic change stood out to me and the direct connection of nutrition and wellness sparked my motivation to make changes.
So, over the past year or so, I’ve been aiming towards a more consistently healthy diet, but above that, a greater understanding of food and the effects on the body, mind and soul.
The amount I’ve learnt about health and wellbeing is astonishing to me; I didn’t know there was so much to know about food! Don’t get me wrong though, I am certainly no expert and anyone who knows me can attest to the fact that I enjoy a sweet or two (or seven), but the way that I see nutrition has changed considerably, and my health and habits are overall much better.
Clarity
As a natural-born scatterbrain, thoughts are always buzzing around in my head.
My mind on a normal day sounds something like this…
“Oh, yep, gotta rememb- ah, I love that jacke- you spin my head right round, right round, like a- SQUIRREL!”
And that’s on a good day.
So clearly, I need as much clarity as I can get. When I changed my diet, planning, organising and sifting through my thoughts became so much easier. What normally took a lot of effort and caused a lot of stress and anxiety became simple and straightforward.
It was such a refreshment not to feel overwhelmed every time I tried to schedule my tasks and to finally believe that I could handle it!
Inspiration
I also found myself continuously coming back to a place of almost boredom and disinterest. I always felt very apathetic towards, well, everything.
It’s not like I felt hopeless or sad all the time, but I just couldn’t find interest in anything, nor the motivation to follow through with things that minorly interested me.
As soon as I straightened out what I was putting into my body, it felt like the world lit up again; inspiration and excitement covered everything I looked at.
Passion for music echoed out of my heart and the committed motivation held my interest steady, even when hitting walls. My bored brain that once couldn’t focus for 5 minutes in class began to grow strong enough to feel alive and excited about study again.
My general state of being dramatically improved once I started eating healthier things. But what is the most interesting to me is, my situation didn’t change. The life I lived didn’t change, apart from what I ate.
I was doing the same course, working the same job, living in the same house.
Everything was the same.
Except for what I put into my body; my nutrition.
Something that seemed like such a minor factor to me changed my outlook on everything. I think that’s why God said in 1 Corinthians 6:19-20 that our bodies are temples – not just for His glory but for our wellbeing.
God created people and food and cares enough about us to guide us towards the healthiest, happiest lives we can live.
If you can relate to my spinning brain or to the apathy I mentioned, I encourage you to try changing up your diet; whether it’s cutting gluten or consuming more protein; whether it’s step by step, or all at once.
Your nutrition directly effects your emotions and thoughts; the solution you’ve been waiting for might be sitting on your plate.
Laura Miles is an excitable and fast-paced Brit, living in Australia. She can’t sit still; she has a serious addiction to sudoku, and she can be won over by a good cup of tea and a laugh. Studying to become a doctor, she is expectant and excited to see all the crazy things that the Lord is going to do in her life.
