A Healthy Life Versus A Nourished Life

You have probably heard people talk a lot about how I hate
the word healthy life and much
prefer the term “nourishing”. The difference between the two terms
really is huge. My point, life altering, you will never diet again or do
exercise you hate kinda huge. A nourished life cannot be found in an extreme
diet, pill or a whisk. It is found in a lifestyle. A nourished life is a composite of nourishing
choices made on a regular basis that lead to a state of harmony in how you
look, feel and behave. A person can live a “healthy” life but not be
nourished, but it is impossible for a person to live a nourished life and not
be “healthy”. For example, think of a man you know who is trying to
be healthy odds are they are on some crazy crash diet, drinking shakes or
taking pills, having a fraudster day when they get eat large amounts of
junk and generally sense bad about themselves because they just can’t seem to
get the results they want or if they do take results they need to do even insane
things to maintain them.

Let us
compare the two lifestyles as I see them:

A
person trying to live a healthy life:

The alarm goes off at 6 am. He is
groggy, grumpy and hungry. He heads to the kitchen to make a pot of coffee and
to drink the first of two meal replacement shakes that day. Still somewhat
hungry, she gets dressed and head to a job he hates, but heck, it pays the
bills. He drops the kids off at school and then heads to the office. Lunchtime
comes and he has a microwave meal in a box, a diet coke and some low fat
cookies. After work he heads to the gym to go to a workout class they hate, but
hey it burns a lot of calories, after all they gotta do what it takes right?
After leaving the gym he picks up the kids, heads home, turns on the TV, kicks
back and enjoy her meal replacement shake while the kids eat hamburger, hot dog
and cheese bread because mother is just too tired to make anything else. Everybody
is zoned out on TV and the family only somewhat talks to each other during advertising
show up. After about 3 or 4 hours it is time for bed, only to get up tomorrow
and do it all again.

I’d like to say that example is
extreme, but it’s not. It’s what I see time and time again, and it really
saddens me. He may be doing some things that fall into the zip code of healthy
(working on losing excess weight and getting exercise), but her other choices
are by no stretch leading to a nourishing life.

Get off the roller coaster. Our life supposed
not to be this way, and a nourished life is not that way.

An
example of a person living a nourished life:

Imagine instead, that same mother
wakes up and eats a breakfast that he feels nourihes her (perhaps an omelets
loaded with fresh veggies and eggs he got at the farmer’s market over the
weekend or maybe it’s even a tofu scramble). He gets ready for her day and
looks forward to going to work at a place that nourishes his, where he likes
what he does. He drop her kids off at school and listens to some of her
favorite music on the way to work. Lunchtime comes and he has a meal that he
feels will really nourish her (perhaps it is some sushi and a bowl of fruit for
dessert). He takes time to not only eat but maybe to relax a little and work on
that book he’s been writing. He heads back to work, enjoys time with her
coworkers and gets her tasks done. He leaves for the day, heading to the gym to
climb the rock wall and take a yoga class with friends. He has a great time and
then heads home where he prepares a meal that he feels will nourish her family
(perhaps grilled chicken, broccoli and a side salad that the kids helped prepare.)
They all sit down at the table to eat dinner and discuss their how their day
went. Bedtime rolls around mother has the energy to read to the kids a bit
before he heads off to bed to read for his self.

See the
difference?

There is no trying to live a nourished
life you just live it. When people “try to get healthy life” they
associate that with doing something they don’t enjoy and therefore it’s unfulfilled and unenjoyable (and more often than not unlasting.) I want to
make one quick point about living a nourishing life that is very, very
important. There is no one size fits all for a nourished life. You and only you
can determine what that looks like. There are a lot of variations on what it
means to live a nourished life. To find yours, you will need to sit down and
really think about what is important to you. Some variations on a nourished
life might be: eating meat, not eating red meat, only eating farm
raised/hormone free meat, not eating any meat, eating vegan (to name a few). It
could mean that you completely cut out refined sugar or perhaps it means that
you just cut back on it. You could also go gluten free, organic, wheat free,
dairy free, or take up fasting one day a month. You could spend hours at the
gym each day or never set foot inside a gym again. The point is that there are
thousands of different types of combinations of ways to live a nourished
life–you job in this lifetime is to figure out what nourishes you. Designing
and living a nourished life is so much more than low fat eating and spending
time doing exercise you hate.

Sounds so basic doesn’t it? But yet
thousands if not may be more than ten of thousands of people will start diets beginning
of January, only to be disappointed, frustrated and depressed at their lack of
(lasting) results. Don’t get smoked into the hype of “healthy life”!
Take 25 minutes and make a list of what you like. Get clear on what are you,
and then drove into those things. The humorous thing is that once
you start living with nourished life, you will find yourself getting more and
more nourished choices on a more regular basis. There is an indisputable
snowball effect, and first you get going you will be at a very vary place
in the very near future. And So what does a nourished life effect for you? What
kinds of hobbies would you like to have? or friends? or a job? Really, think
about this, and remember that life is not about discovering of yourself.
It is about creating yourself to have good life and make healthy.

about this, and remember that life is not about discovering of yourself.
It is about creating yourself to have good life and make healthy.