Diversity and Resilience

Are you a gardener? If so, you may know that rotating crops is an important strategy for a good crop, but why is it so important and what can we learn from it?

While it’s nice to have a variety of vegetables to eat from year to year, the strategy is intended to keep the soil rich in nutrients. When the same crop is planted over and over it can deplete the soil.

According to Soil Health Academy, “more diversity increases the variety of root exudates produced by the plants and this attracts a much broader array of soil microbial species.” In simple terms, this means that “diversity increases resilience” in the soil. 

This got me thinking about how important diversity is for us. We all want to be resilient in both our physical and emotional health. Could diversity help us achieve it?

Let’s explore why diversity is so important and how it can increase resilience in you!

What Does it Mean to be Resilient?

The dictionary explains resilience as “the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties.” It’s a sort of toughness that allows you to bounce back from setbacks or challenges.

Hard things happen in life! There is no way to prevent all challenges, but we can build our resilience so that when trouble comes, we can recover in the best way possible. In order to build resilience, we need to establish diversity.

In a very real way, the more diversity we have, the more resilient we are in both our physical and mental health. So, in a very real way, diversity makes us more capable of moving through these trials in a healthy way. 

Diversity in our Diets

As I'm sure you all know by now, I am a big fan of eating real food. One of my goals with everyone that I work with, however, is to eventually be on the most diverse diet that they can tolerate. Different foods have different components. They have different vitamins, minerals, and phytonutrients. If a person is only consuming chicken and broccoli every day, while they are eating "real food," they do not have much diversity in their diet. This means that they are likely not getting the full spectrum of all of the nutrients that their body needs to thrive.

Having a variety of meats, vegetables, fruits, and healthy fats is going to bring about not only more diversity in the nutrients for you, but also different components to feed a variety of gut bacteria so that the different species can all be taken care of!

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The Pill, PCOS, & Ovulation

Have you ever gone to your doctor for symptoms like acne, irregular or painful periods and come out with birth control pills? Many of you have been told this is the solution to your problems without being informed about how the pill works and what it is doing in your body. I had that experience when I was 19 years old.

I was experiencing significant acne. Someone told me that Birth Control might help, so I went to the campus medical center and was prescribed birth control pills. The doctor didn't mention anything about the potential side effects or what pills were actually doing in my body. And she certainly didn't tell me that a few simple dietary tweaks could help my acne disappear naturally. 

Like most women, I was told that the pill would balance my hormones and take care of my symptoms. I wish someone would have told me that while the pill might get rid of my symptoms it would not balance my hormones, and it would not get to the root cause of my acne. 

If you are suffering from a nasty symptom, getting rid of it sounds like a wonderful thing, but is it really that simple? Are birth control pills effective in balancing your hormones or is there more to the story? 

Let’s look at this issue and ask whether the pill is really your best option.

The Natural Hormone Cycle vs. Your Hormones on the Pill

In order to understand the effects of birth control pills on your body, you must first understand the basics of the natural hormonal cycle. It is a delicate dance with your hormones ebbing and flowing throughout the cycle.

• Follicular phase (approximately days 1-13) - Begins the first day of your bleed. Estrogen gradually increases during the phase of your cycle while progesterone stays low. It peaks at the end of this phase, and there is a burst of luteinizing hormone resulting in ovulation.
• Ovulation (approximately day 14) - Egg is released. 
• Luteal phase (day 15-28) - Progesterone takes over and estrogen rises towards a second peak.
• If you are pregnant the progestogen remains high. If not, progesterone and estrogen begin a major decline bringing you back to the follicular phase.

Each of these hormones have a specific purpose in the body, and the pill prevents you from going through this intricate cycle.

Chart from: Core Health Coaching

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Emotional Eating in these Stressful Times

You may be finding the winter to be particularly difficult this year. In addition to everyday stressors and seasonal factors, the political climate is especially intense, and we are still dealing with a pandemic. 

With all this going on you may be dealing with more stress, loneliness, and depression than they ever have before. 

When you face challenging times and strong emotions, it can be easy to turn to food for comfort. Eating in these moments may be an attempt to meet your emotional needs rather than physical ones. 

Let’s take a look at emotional eating and what we can do to deal with it in these extreme times!

What is Emotional Eating?

When you feel sad, anxious, lonely, or angry it can be tempting to reach for food. When you reach for food to fill an emotional need rather than a physical one, it is called emotional eating. 

Emotional eating is an attempt to self-soothe and has a way of numbing your feelings temporarily. Not only are you distracted by the sweet or salty tastes, but it can affect the chemicals in your body. 

When you consume sugar, your brain produces a surge of dopamine. Since dopamine is known as the feel-good hormone in the body, it brings temporary relief from difficult feelings. 

While soothing yourself this way may feel better in the moment, emotional eating isn't the best way to handle your emotions. It doesn’t effectively deal with the underlying emotions and often leads to regret. 

Emotional eating may create unintended health consequences if you indulge in it often. There are many better ways to soothe yourself, but first you need to recognize when you are attempting to eat your emotions. 

Building Awareness

You may emotionally eat without even realizing it. If this is the case, it will be important to cultivate self-awareness. By checking in with yourself and knowing the clues, you can determine whether you are truly hungry. 

When you go to eat, ask yourself, “How do I feel right now?”. Are you sad, lonely, angry, or bored? If you are experiencing a difficult emotion, ask yourself if you are really hungry or if you are trying to meet an emotional need?

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My Biggest Struggles

Reading my articles each week may lead you to believe that I've really got my act together. So, I wanted to write a blog to be really honest with you all about the things that I struggle with. 

I feel like when I put out content each week about how to eat better, how to sleep better, how to have less stress in your life, how to move in a more ideal way, that everyone thinks that I am able to do all of these things all of the time. 

Let me be the first to tell you that that is just not the case. I am completely human, and I am doing my best, but I am definitely not able to follow all of my own advice all of the time. 

So.... in no particular order, here are some of the things that I do or think about that are not perfectly aligned with the weekly blogs that I send out.

Don't Apologize

I have patients that come in and apologize to me for "falling off the wagon with their diet." or "cheating" on when it comes to eating healthy foods. I want to let you know that I do not judge you or think of you any differently based on which foods you choose to eat. In my opinion, there is no such thing as "cheating" on your diet. To cheat, is taking an unfair advantage of something. It's just food. With each meal, we make a choice on how we are going to feed our body. We can choose more nutrient dense food or less nutrient dense food. It is not something that any of us need to have guilt or shame around. 

Eating

Our family gets busy and orders pizza, tacos, and Thai food. No, we don't cook every single meal from scratch with real, whole food ingredients. There is probably 1 night every week or 2 that we have no plan for dinner, it is late, and these are our go tos! I figure if we eat well most of the time, we are doing great and getting the nutrients that we need!

Sleep

My children wake me up in the middle of the night.... just about every single night. One is nursing at night still, and the others wander into my room at least a few times a week. I try to prioritize sleep, but sometimes it is a struggle. 

Movement

I haven't done a "good workout" where I get sweaty since I was pregnant with Madison in 2020. Yes, I move. I go for walks. I sometimes pull up a quick yoga video on my phone or have a kitchen dance party with my kids... but a planned workout... at a gym... with weights has not happened! I know that this would be good for me, but I have yet to actually schedule it and make it a priority.

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