Choosing Conscious Nutrition And Wellness
W&S Health and Wellness Editor
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We saw this amazing TikTok from @laurenwolfe (check out her content!) and got inspired to make this article about pathways to conscious nutrition and wellness.
Spring is the perfect season to start making healthier habits. To avoid the unproductive and gimmicky content that plagues this time of year, we offer the concept of conscious nutrition and wellness.
Conscious nutrition and wellness is a great tool to have in your arsenal of defense against the boom and bust cycles of unsustainable health kicks followed by deep shame due to minor setbacks.
The meditative approach of conscious nutrition and wellness is the better way forward. Keep reading to learn more about what it is, how it works, and why you should incorporate it into your spring.
What Is Conscious Nutrition And Wellness?
We define conscious nutrition and wellness as the process of facilitating an in-depth awareness of what our bodies and minds need to sustain themselves and how we can most optimally provide these needs.
It’s important to emphasize the word “need” here, as this is what separates conscious nutrition and wellness from fad diets and exercise challenges.
No one necessarily needs to have a better hip-to-waist ratio, do high intensity, targeted workouts every morning, or only eat vegan and gluten-free meals.
Yet, I’m sure many of us scroll through Instagram or see ads from the fitness and diet industries thinking the above are requirements to be happy and healthy. The sooner we’re able to separate marketing from fact, the better off we’ll be.
It’s about living slowly— it’s better to assess our lifestyles and circumstances holistically and find a balance that works for us. This means talking to our healthcare providers, certified dietitians, and certified mental health professionals about the kinds of steps we can take to improve our health.
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Let’s not forget before embarking on any exercise regimen or diet, there is always that tiny disclaimer to “consult your physician before.. [INSERT NUTRITION AND WELLNESS FAD HERE]”. Yet, how many of us take the step to follow through? Think about how much better off we’d be if we always did.
There is a lot of discussion about the rise in misinformation on the right. However, we still fail to wholeheartedly acknowledge the misinformation and lack of understanding of health science on the left/more progressive side.
While the right deals with conspiracy theories, the left deals with the pseudoscience empire of “white [health and] wellness”. Even worse, the few times we do try to address it, it’s usually made into a Twitter joke or mockery, as seen with reactions to the infamous “GOOP lab” series on Netflix.
Conscious nutrition and wellness is about finding a balance best suited for you (back by some solid science, of course).
Tips For Approaching Conscious Nutrition And Wellness
At W&S, we never support any plans or regimens not backed by evidence. We also refuse to promote any ideas of nutrition and wellness that are rigid, lack nuance, or are unreasonable.
We do this because we acknowledge that not everyone has the same privileges, needs, and access to nutrition and wellness resources.
Therefore, instead of giving you specific tips on what you should be doing to be your most nutritious and well self, we offer some steps to help you define what it means based on your specific circumstances:
no. 1
Embrace Slowness
According to data, lifestyle changes are lengthy endeavors when implemented effectively. This goes against the common misleading concept from the self-help industry, popularized by Maxwell Maltz, that habit-forming takes 21 days.
Instead, most up-to-date, peer-reviewed data shows that habit-forming is a lengthy process. On average, it takes two to eight months for a new behavior to become automatic.
This is because habits, whether we consider them good or bad, are naturally formed by our brain to save effort. This perceived saving in effort immediately triggers our reward system, and it makes us feel good in the short term.
This explains why exercising or nutritious eating might be harder to form habits. The rewards tend to be long-term and are less likely to trigger that immediate dopamine response our brain prefers.
On top of this, our environments tend to be organized around giving us these immediate responses. Cell phones, computers, social media, fast food, two-day delivery, etc., all contribute to this need for immediate reward.
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So, how do we counteract this? One way is to understand that approaching conscious nutrition and wellness will take time to become something you are committed to.
Understanding this means you can prepare yourself for making mistakes. In turn, this allows you to better cope with the feelings of shame and irritation that come with the inevitable troughs during your nutrition and wellness journey.
James Clear stated it perfectly when he said that “You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems”. Therefore, our systems for nutrition and wellness should be designed in the spirit of long-term sustainability. One way to do this is to embrace slowness.
Slowness is a core value at W&S. We believe that improvements in personal consciousness happen when we give ourselves the grace to take our time.
How can we expect to disrupt a habit that doesn’t serve us, which took at least months to form, with a few weeks of changed behavior? (We can’t!)
no. 2
Observe Your Constant Habits Without Judgement
I’ve been a long-time subscriber to Hitomi Mochizuki. I discovered her while beginning my spiritual journey back in 2018 and have been touched tremendously by her transparency and vulnerability about her mental health.
Notably, she’s been very open about her struggles with binge-eating, a habit pervasive in young women in their 20s and 30s. Although I can’t remember the exact video, she mentioned having a setback with this behavior earlier this year.
In a remarkably kind gesture toward herself, she stated that she intended to observe the behaviour without judgement as a way to understand why she was feeling the need to do it.
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Why do I not feel safe?
What triggers can I observe that encourage me to engage in this behavior?
She didn’t rush into any solutions, fall into a pit of shame, or veer further off-track from behaviors she felt were more aligned with who she wanted to be. She simply meditated on her actions and asked herself (with love):
Seeing Hitomi treat herself with kindness immediately made me realize I was too often refusing to give myself grace. I used to immediately judge my actions, fall into shame about them, and find myself back at square one. This maladaptive pattern stopped me from actually understanding myself and, in turn, knowing how to address the problem effectively in the future.
Inspired by Hitomi (and regular visits to my therapist), I observed my unaligned actions without judgement. When I miss workout classes, instead of following the instinctual inner dialogue of self-loathing, I ask myself, “what’s going on, girl?”
I noticed that day one of my period is ALWAYS a no-go when it comes to exercise. I also came to understand that I crave “unhealthy” foods (if such a thing exists) the days leading up to it.
For me, then, conscious nutrition and wellness look like respecting this need and allowing myself to indulge in that ice cream when I’m menstruating. I also learned that I HATE HIIT workouts and only feel comfortable doing pilates, barre and yoga.
Focusing on understanding myself instead of judging myself boosted my self-confidence and helped me learn what works for me and what doesn’t.
Another layer to this change in perspective is that it allows us to acknowledge the structural barriers contributing to specific patterns impacting our nutrition and wellness.
For instance, there is a lot of research on the impacts of “food desserts”, inflated food prices, and lack of accessible wellness spaces in predominantly BIPOC communities. These gaps become more apparent when things such as gender and sexual orientation are considered.
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It’s not a coincidence that marginalized groups in the US make up the majority of diabetes, hypertension, and heart disease patients who have marginalized identities.
As mentioned, our environments play a role in approaching nutrition and wellness. Our environments are not solely a product of our own doing to a large extent. We must observe the collective, historical experiences that contribute to our relationship with nutrition and wellness.
Focusing on the self can only get us so far. For conscious nutrition and wellness to work, we have also to encourage a shift in the systems that impact our nutrition and wellness in the first place.
no. 3
Read More Peer-Reviewed Scientific Data Focused On BIPOC-Specific Nutrition Wellness And Needs
Another thing that should be encouraged when assessing what conscious nutrition and wellness looks like for you is to engage with different data. It might seem tedious, but hear me out.
It’s understandable in the age of the COVID pandemic, increasingly more people might have trouble accessing reliable healthcare services. Although talking directly to a professional who can assess you personally, there are still alternatives to getting reliable medical information when this option isn’t feasible due to your circumstances.
There are plenty of studies being done by and for BIPOC women regarding nutrition and wellness. It’s essential for us to engage with these studies because a lot of the mainstream data about nutrition and wellness suffers from Eurocentric and misogynistic biases.
The USDA’s dietary guidelines, for example, are notorious for excluding non-European, white-American foods within its suggested model of “nutritious” eating. Moreover, women-specific health concerns like iron deficiency (due to heavy menstruation) are seldom included in nutrition and wellness models in the US.
There is also a widespread failure to incorporate access issues into mainstream US nutrition and wellness models, which, as mentioned earlier, are undeniable barriers for marginalized populations.
These factors have two main consequences. First, it isolates communities most vulnerable to lack of nutrition and wellness by ignoring the cultural importance of food and flavours most familiar to them.
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Second, by defining nutrition and wellness synonymously with masculine, Eurocentric lifestyles, there is an underlying discouragement of nuance, limiting everyone’s understanding of the concept.
Luckily for us, many BIPOC women working within the medical, physical, and social sciences are researching these issues. I suggest seeking out the work of Deanna Bellany, Tamara S. Melton, and Yasmin Hurd, to name a few of the women making strides in improving nutrition and wellness data for BIPIC women.
Even more, scientific papers and research is more accessible than some might be led to believe. Websites like CORE, Science Open, and Directory of Open Access Journals all offer what we call “open-access” reviews and papers on all sorts of studies.
Another tip is to use the site ResearchGate. You can think of research gate as the social media for academics and researchers. Each of them has a profile where they upload their work. 9 times out of 10, if you send them an email on a paper you are having trouble accessing for free, they will send it over.
Researchers are committed to education and will, most of the time, have a welcoming response to anyone wanting to learn more about what they’ve dedicated their lives to understanding. (As an academic working on her PhD, you can trust me on this one.)
