Nutrition and nourishment are not synonyms. Nutrition boils down to vitamins, minerals, calories, and the like. Nourishment, on the other hand, is about assimilation. It's about how effectively our bodies process what we give them and it's about overall well-being. So, while nutrition deals primarily with food, nourishment encompasses so much more. Let's take a look at a few elements of nourishing our bodies.
1. Breathe
An often overlooked tool in taking care of our bodies is intentional breathing. After all, we can do it without thinking about it, so we usually don’t. But taking even a minute or two each day to think about our breathing is a powerful practice. It can calm and center us. It can relax our muscles. It can allow us to release tension in general. It brings us into the present moment.
Practice – Be still – sit, stand, lie down, whatever you like, just stop for a few seconds. Inhale through your nose as you silently count to four very slowly. Exhale through your mouth equally slowly. Think about filling your whole torso
with air. Repeat 3-5 times. Do this as often as you notice you’re feeling tense,
unfocused, or uncentered and feel the difference it makes.
2. Water
Current advice for how much water a person should drink is all over the map. What we do know for sure is hydration is critical for the proper function of our bodies. It not only aids every part of our body in doing its job, it also helps flush toxins from our systems. So, how much water should we drink? A good rule of thumb is to notice the color and odor of our urine and how often we need to pee. Unless we have some other medical issues going on, needing to pee every two to four hours is sufficient. Our urine should be the color of lemonade and basically odorless.
Practice – Check out that toilet after you pee. If the color is darker than lemonade,
drink more water, starting as soon as you leave the bathroom. (Yes, it’s smart, not gross or weird, to look in the toilet after doing our business. It’s a simple way to monitor some aspects of our health.)
3. Quality food
This is pretty much a no-brainer; better quality food is more nourishing. That being said, it’s often more expensive, too. But often it's more satisfying, so we need less of it to be happy. The trick here is to find a balance that works for you. In the book The Culture Code we learn, not surprisingly, that the American code for food is fuel. That being said, doesn’t it make sense to put the best fuel we can into our most important mode of transportation, our bodies? I could go on for pages on this topic but that’s not the purpose of this post, so I’ll leave it at this -
Practice – Take a moment before you put anything into your mouth to think about that food. Consider how it was made and what it’s made of. Ask yourself if those ingredients are something you want filtering into your bloodstream and the cells of your organs to help them do their jobs as well as possible.
4. Slow down
The American culture promotes a go, go, go attitude. This definitely bleeds over into our behaviors with food. It’s why one of our main contributions to world cuisine is fast food. We want to refuel our bodies with as much convenience and as little time as possible, think race car in a pit stop. This does nothing to help our digestion, not to mention our enjoyment of life. When we approach our food like a predator – eating as fast as possible to protect our prey from others and eating as much we can in order to carry us over to whenever our next meal is – we create a stress response in our bodies. Do yourself a favor and quit that rat race. Slower, more relaxed eating not only promotes better digestion, it nourishes us by getting us out of the go, go, go mentality, even if just for a few minutes.
Practice – Take a few seconds and take a few deep breaths before you eat. Relax just a little before you even take a bite. After that, try to be the last one to finish your meal if your with others, or simply make a conscious effort to eat slowly if you’re by yourself. Which leads us to…
5. Truly enjoy our food
I know many people who claim they love food. This statement is usually made with a big smile or an enraptured expression. Yet often these same people will –
eat so fast they scarcely have time to even notice what they’re eating, let alone enjoy it.
eat so much food that by the time they’re done they fall somewhere on the spectrum of physically uncomfortable to downright sick to their stomachs, and emotionally numb.
eat so mindlessly that at the end of the day they couldn’t begin to tell you what they had eaten that day.
So, a question for you: If I said I loved a person and interacted with them in a similar manner – rushing through my time with them, having our time to together leave us both feeling uncomfortable, sick, or numb, and being so checked out during my time with them that I couldn’t recall much, if anything, of we shared – how would you think I really felt about them?
I don’t know about you but that doesn’t sound much like love to me.
Practice – For at least one day take the time and presence of mind to savor every bite of what you eat. Make it your goal to take sincere pleasure in every morsel that enters your mouth and notice what a difference that makes toward true nourishment.
Stay tuned next week for five more ways we can nourish our bodies. In the meantime, breathe, drink, honor your body with quality food, slow down, and take deep pleasure in the foods you eat.
In other words, nourish yourself. You deserve it.