My hierarchy of healing is as follows:
1) Food first.
2) Lifestyle second.
3) Supplements third.
With all of my clients and students in The Hormone Healing Secrets, we focus on food first simply because it is THEE foundation for a healthy life and the most sustainable way of living.
What’s more basic than eating, sleeping, and pooping?
(nothing).
You feed yourself 3 times a day (hopefully, if not we need to talk!) – so it makes sense that this would be the first part of any healing journey. I encourage my clients to incorporate the most nutrient dense, highest quality food they can afford as a first line step in healing their bodies. Read my blog post about how healing happens in the home here.
Let me show you what this looks like.
FOOD FIRST
High quality animal protein at every meal.
Carbohydrates in the form of fruits, roots, and high quality sugar sources like maple syrup and raw honey at every meal.
High quality fat at every meal.
Eat enough.
Eat often enough.
We start here. We start here because it makes the most difference in the long run. And it’s the most sustainable! And it's so basic! Build your plate with proteins, fats and carbs, incorporate animal protein at every meal, eat every 3-4 hours, make sure you're eating enough food when you do sit down to eat, and do this consistently every single day. This is where we start. I teach my clients to view their food as their medicine, so with each meal, its an opportunity to introduce more healing medicine into our bodies to assist and augment our healing.
So at this point, we’ve got food dialed in – clients are eating breakfast lunch and dinner, 2-3 snacks throughout the day, feeding themselves beautiful whole foods, nourishing their body day in and day out, and they are becoming aware of their food choices and the impact they have on long-term health.
THEN we dive into lifestyle.
LIFESTYLE SECOND
Lifestyle means things like:
daily non-negotiable stress management practices
optimizing your home environment
dialing in your sleep routine
moving your body on the daily
evaluating your career and place of work
tending to your creativity, curiosity and your inner child
spending time in nature
nurturing your life-giving relationships and eliminating the toxic ones
cultivating a spiritual practice
Lifestyle is one of my favorite pieces of the hierarchy because not only does it move the needle more than anything for my clients and students, but (selfishly) I have so much fun learning from them! I learn every single day from my clients about new ways to harness joy. Ways to destress. New techniques to make sleep even better. Ways to bring more peace and calm into my own life. Etc etc etc.
Lifestyle is a smidge harder for many people because a lot of this involves breaking old habits:
Going to bed at 10pm instead of 1am. Taking morning walks for circadian rhythm regulation rather than scrolling IG. Building in time for stillness rather than watching Stranger Things. Getting in your adrenal cocktail every day. Setting boundaries rather than allowing our energy reserves to be sucked by the energy vampires in our lives.
FINALLY, SUPPLEMENTS
Then, and ONLY THEN, do I talk about supplements.
Here’s how I feel about the matter.
Now, I like a good supplement as much as the next health coach. There is power in catered, targeted supplementation from high quality sources and companies to fill in the gaps where your diet is lacking. It’s sometimes very necessary. I myself am on a handful of supplements that are serving me well.
But here’s why it is not my first approach. And why it’s not even my second approach.
Taking a supplement doesn’t change the pattern that created the imbalance in your body. We’re not CHANGING the cause of our health challenges, our disease processes, our hormonal imbalances, our mineral depletion, etc by taking the supplement.
I liken it to cancer.
(hang with me for a sec)
Chemo and radiation and surgery may shrink the tumor, and sometimes completely kill the cancer all together, but the environment that allowed the cancer to grow in the first place is still present. The treatment does nothing to shift the environment toward one where cancer does not want to grow. It’s mechanism of action is to annihilate the cancer, not to rehabilitate the terrain.
Just like taking a medication doesn’t get to the root cause of your hypertension or diabetes or hypothyroidism or your depression.
Taking a supplement (without making any of the necessary diet and lifestyle changes) to fix your health problems is absolutely akin to just taking a pill for your ill.
It is the exact same dogma promoted and encouraged by medical doctors and the pharmaceutical industry. And this is not an agenda that I subscribe to any longer.
We’re not changing the CAUSE of our health challenges, hormonal imbalances, mineral depletion, etc. We have to decrease the number of things that are contributing to dysfunction in the body that is allowing these processes to manifest in the first place.
Do you see the difference?
This is why I teach my clients the food first approach to healing. This is why I teach about lifestyle and sustainable choices AFTER the food piece is dialed in, and THEN when its time to incorporate supplements, I teach them to view them as that – SUPPLEMENTS to an incredibly healing, nourishing, fortifying diet and lifestyle.
WE DON'T TAKE SUPPLEMENTS TO HEAL OUR HEALTH PROBLEMS;
WE TAKE THEM TO SUPPORT AND SUPPLEMENT THE PROGRESS WE MAKE IN OUR HEALTH BY ADDRESSING THE DIET AND LIFESTYLE FIRST.
So yes – we have to change our mindset around supplements and our intention in using them. The act of taking my supplements is not charged with “okay yay I’m taking this thyroid supplement so I really don’t need to worry about eating my sea veggies like kelp and nori because there’s iodine in this thyroid supplement. And I really don’t need to eat those brazil nuts and those oysters for selenium and zinc because I’m taking this thyroid supplement.”
This energy and mindset are literally no different than taking a thyroid medication in lieu of a thyroid supplement. Instead of viewing your supplements like this, I encourage you to think something along these lines instead: “I had 3 amazingly delicious and nutrient dense meals today that nourished, satisfied, and deeply healed me. Now I get to take these supplements that are the cherry on top of an already stellar and wildly nutrition-filled healing regimen.”
Yes, these conscious thoughts flow through me every single day, crazy as I may sound lol. And I am fully bought into the notion that these intentions and powerful thought patterns are a huge reason my health has catapulted this last year (and also dialing in my diet and lifestyle).
This hierarchy of healing is incredibly empowering because your health and your healing journey is entirely up to you.
YOU get to be the quarterback of your own healing journey.
You can choose to start healing yourself TODAY. You don’t have to sit around and wait for some doctor in a white coat to come save you. You don’t have to wait for the insurance company to approve this or that latest greatest drug or treatment. You don’t have to wait to get permission from anyone. You get to start healing today.
And let me tell you what happens when you get in the driver’s seat of your own life and healing:
AMAZING SHIT HAPPENS.
HEALING HAPPENS.
NOURISHMENT HAPPENS.
EMPOWERMENT HAPPENS.
POWERFUL THINGS HAPPEN.
You are more likely to experience long-term gains in your health when you do the things that are most sustainable.
Food first.
Lifestyle second.
Then and only then, supplements.
Tell me below what you think of this approach to healing! Which area could you use some support around?
Yours In Abundant Health!
xoxo,
Emily 😊
