10 Things To Know About Your Microbiome

10 Things To Know About Your Microbiome

If you had to name the most exciting recent medical discovery, what would you say? As a health practitioner, I know my answer, hands down: the microbiome.

That’s the community of trillions of bacteria that inhabit our gut, mouth, lungs, nasal passages, skin, and brain. Although we’ve been aware of these bacteria for a while, until now we didn’t realize what a crucial role they play in just about every aspect of our health.

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How to Overcome Emotional Eating

How to Overcome Emotional Eating

How to Overcome Emotional Eating – 4 Tips To Let It Go For Good

Emotional eating can begin in childhood when food becomes your parents’ favourite tools of distraction and reward, wielded in response to various emotions and behaviours that you exhibited. As a baby, they silenced your cries with a bottle. As a child, they rewarded your good behaviour with candy, snacks, ice cream and various sugary desserts. As an adult, you may find yourself eating certain junk foods just because it reminds you of some happy childhood memory. – Huffpost

 

  • Do you eat more when you are feeling stressed?
  • Do you eat when you are not hungry or feeling full?
  • Do you eat to feel better? To soothe & calm yourself when sad, bored, etc?
  • Do you reward yourself with food often?
  • Do you feel powerless or out of control around food?

 

How to Overcome Emotional Eating – Difference Between Emotional Hunger and Physical Hunger

Physical Hunger

  • comes on gradually
  • can wait
  • is open to options – lots of things sound good
  • stops when you are full
  • eating to satisfy this hunger doesn’t make you feel bad

 

Emotional Hunger

  • comes on suddenly
  • feels like it needs to be satisfied instantly
  • craves specific comfort foods
  • isn’t satisfied with a full stomach
  • triggers feelings of guilt, powerlessness and shame

How to Overcome Emotional Eating  – Causes of Emotional Eating

  1. Stress – cortisol (stress hormone) triggers cravings for salty, sweet and high-fat foods – giving you a burst of energy and pleasure.
  2. Silencing uncomfortable emotions – numbing yourself with food so you can avoid feelings you would rather not have – anger, resentment, anxious, sad, lonely, shame.
  3. Boredom or emptiness – Fills a void for a short period of time.
  4. Childhood habit – rewards, nostalgia these can carry over to adult life.
  5. Social – overeat just because it’s there.

What To Do?

1.How to Overcome Emotional Eating – Identify Your Triggers – Keep a food and mood diary to track these. Identify them then backtrack.
What you ate or wanted to eat? What happened to set this up? How did you feel before you ate? What you felt as you were eating? How did you feel afterwards?

2. Find Other Ways To Feed Your Feelings – beyond food to meet your emotional needs. The keys to success are moving (dance, bike, swim, walk…), changing your focus (outside of yourself with music, friend, helping others, etc) and engaging in gratitude (get optimistic) are some universal tools.

Ideas are – Exhausted –> take a hot bath or spa, allow self to have quick nap, lay in sun outdoors & listen to nature; Lonely or down –> ring a fun friend, go for a walk with a friend or your dog, watch a comedy movie, crank up fun music; Anxious –> dance to your favourite song, go for a walk, do 15 minutes of yoga, take it out with a friend.

3. Pause When Cravings Hit – Take 5 before you mindlessly part-take – go outside and skip for 5 minutes, dance like a maniac to your favourite song, drink 2 glasses water, 30 sit-ups. This will interrupt your mindless pattern so you can exert your option to choose.

Remember it is key to learn to accept your feelings even the bad ones and remember you have control over your emotions…..a choice in each and every moment. An emotion lasts for 45 seconds you can choose to let it pass or hold onto it for 1 hour, 1 day, 1 year, a lifetime.
Allow yourself to feel uncomfortable emotions they can be scary but in reality, when we don’t obsess or suppress them, even the most difficult feeling subside relatively quickly and lose their power to control our attention.
Instead, opt for being present in the moment – feel it, smell it, hear it, see it. In opening up to our emotions, our lives become richer as they help us discover our deepest desires, fears, frustrations and the things that make us fulfilled and happy.

4. Prevention With Healthy Habits – Being physically strong, relaxed, well rested enables you to better handle what life throws at you. Living in overwhelm and exhaustion will send you straight to the fridge or pantry.

• Daily exercise – reduces stress, enhances mood, boosts energy levels, increases fitness
• Daily relaxation – schedule in 30 mins each day to relax, decompress, unwind. Recharge your batteries, break from responsibilities
• Connect with other – social activities, close relationships are essential to protect you from the negative effects of stress.
• Get at least 8 hours sleep – lack of sleep is linked to consuming more food and reduced satiety signals, plus increased stress levels.

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If you would like further information or help to formulate a diet plan which will reduce the urge to Emotional Eating BOOK HERE

 

Holistic Life Coach – Live a Happy Life

Holistic Life Coach – Live a Happy Life

“We must be willing to let go of the life we have planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us.” – Joseph Campbell

Yes …..Life doesn’t always go as planned…. Damn it!

And this can unexpectedly knock us off course.
  • You may have lost your job to the latest round of layoffs.
  • A relationship you thought would last forever, didn’t.
  • A health challenge is disrupting your life.
  • A loved one passes away suddenly.

 

Holistic Life Coach – Resources for Moving Forward When Life Doesn’t Go As Planned

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Naturopath Mental Health Melbourne

Naturopath Mental Health Melbourne

Naturopath Mental Health Melbourne – ‘Mindfulness’ is a hot topic of late, as it is increasingly recognized as an effective way to reduce stress, increase self-awareness, enhance emotional intelligence, and effectively handle painful thoughts and feelings.

Although mindfulness has only recently been embraced by Western psychology, it is an ancient practice found in a wide range of Eastern philosophies, including Buddhism, Taoism and Yoga. Mindfulness involves consciously bringing awareness to your here-and-now experience with openness, interest, and receptiveness. It is about waking up, connecting with ourselves, and appreciating the fullness of each moment of life. A profound way to enhance psychological and emotional resilience, and increase life satisfaction.

Naturopath Mental Health Melbourne – What is Mindfulness And How Can It Help Me?

Mindfulness is the basic human ability to be fully present, aware of where we are and what we’re doing, and not overly reactive or overwhelmed by what’s going on around us. – Mindful

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Naturopath Mental Health – Six Human Needs

Naturopath Mental Health – Six Human Needs

Naturopath Mental Health  – Our needs create desire and motive. Why do human beings do the things they do?

All human beings are driven by the same six fundamental needs, which shape all of our emotions, actions, qualities of life, and ultimately, our destinies.

There are also six fundamental needs that everyone has in common, and all behaviour is simply an attempt to meet those six needs.

 

The Six Human Needs

1. Certainty: assurance you can avoid pain and gain pleasure. Security, survival.

2. Uncertainty/Variety: the need for the unknown, change, new stimuli.

3. Significance: feeling unique, important, special or needed.

4. Connection/Love: a strong feeling of closeness or union with someone or something.

5. Growth: an expansion of capacity, capability or understanding.

6. Contribution: a sense of service and focus on helping, giving to and supporting others.

 

What differs among each of us is how we value these needs. Are we driven primarily by certainty and significance? Connection and contribution? Variety and growth?

What we value shows up in how we live every part of our life. For instance, the person who values variety will have a very different life to someone who values certainty.

The means by which people meet these six human needs are unlimited.

For example, the need for certainty some people pursue by striving to control all aspects of their lives, while others do it by giving up control and adopting a philosophy of faith.

Variety makes us feel alive and engaged.

Then there’s the desire for significance—a belief that one’s life has meaning and importance. Some individuals will pursue this need by competing with others, or by destroying and tearing down those around them.

Others may strive to fulfil this need through connection with other human beings.

The force of life is the drive for fulfilment; we all have a need to experience a life of meaning.

Fulfillment can only be achieved through a pattern of living in which we focus on two spiritual needs: 1) the need to continuously grow, and 2) the need to contribute beyond ourselves in a meaningful way.

All dysfunctional behaviours arise from the inability to consistently meet these needs. When our attempts to reach fulfilment fail, we will settle for comfort—or for meeting our needs on a small scale.

The idea is to look to replace any dis-empowering ways of meeting your needs with things that empower and support you and others.

Which needs tend to show up most in your life, particularly when you are experiencing stress, fear, angst, or difficulty? Where do you spend most of your time in your relationship and in other areas of your life?

Naturopath Mental Health – What is the primary driving force of your life? What needs do you value most?

 The secret is to understand where you truly are and how it impacts your life so that you can ultimately learn to expand the choices available to you to create fulfilment.

 

Understanding these needs, and which ones you are trying to meet in any given moment, can help you create new patterns that lead to lasting fulfillment – Tony Robbins

 

There is no greater force in your life to direct your destiny than the needs you value most.

Naturopath Mental Health Melbourne & Online Video Consults Australia –

Learn what is directing your life from the inside out and how to change it if it isn’t working for you. Contact me today for a free no obligation phone consultation. Available in person or online video consults.