April 7th is World Health Day and we wanted to celebrate by talking about what health means to us.
The dictionary describes health as “the general condition of the body or mind with reference to soundness and vigor” or “soundness of body or mind; freedom from disease or ailment”. We may think we are in perfect health, completely unawares of an underlying, or dormant condition that appears suddenly. There are some conditions or illnesses that are beyond our ability to control.
Conversely, eating a slice of pizza does not an unhealthy person make, however it is our continued actions, activities, diets, etc, that help to create the level of health we achieve. That one slice of pizza may not have had much impact on our overall health, yet that same action repeated over ten years can be detrimental. Functional Nutrition is about finding those habits, and often times they are ones we don’t even realise are bad for us, and eliminating them.
Your body (at the cellular level) is made from and runs on the nutrients you get from your food. We have all heard the saying we are what we eat – but we literally and physiologically are what we eat! If we eat foods that are highly processed, loaded with preservatives and other non-foods we don’t feel so good. If we eat foods that are vibrant and vital then we are vibrant and vital. I felt this in my own body and I see this everyday in the people I work with. Eating real, nutrient dense food is fundamental to feeling well.
Function Nutrition is not only about identifying the foods that are detrimental to your health and eliminating them, its also about educating you on the right foods. We are constantly bombarded with advertisements of fat free, sugar free, gluten and dairy free, but we are’t properly educated on the correct foods to eat.
My goal as a nutritionist is to provide education about the ‘why’ (why I should or shouldn’t eat that) behind the ‘what’ (what I should and shouldn’t eat). I truly believe that when we understand how our body responds with food we are able to make conscious and informed decisions. It is not about feeling guilty, or beating ourselves up for having the pizza, its about having the right information to make conscious decisions about which foods make us feel great and which ones don’t.
– Lyndal Harris, Function Nutritionist
For more information on Functional Nutrition or Lyndal Harris check out her website Unrefined Nutrition.“Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food”
– Hippocrates
