Recently I had to admit the bread substitute I was purchasing wasn’t my favorite and it was too expensive. Admitting this to myself created an incentive to consider something different. Then I forgot about it. Online, a recipe and picture crossed the screen and I was attracted to it. It had few ingredients and would provide a protein source for my eating plan. There was no energy put into thinking, strategizing or searching except in my own cupboard prior to bed last night. That involved putting the lentils on to soak. Here is the result. Will it taste okay? Have to wait until it cools. However, it leads to a topic I have been wanting to introduce with a more concrete focus………..

Making a decision to explore living foods about 8 years ago led to a discovery that wasn’t in my mind’s eye when making this choice. The focus was on what foods are available in front of us that we are overlooking. In the course of taking this action, the exploration led to creating recipes that were known such as growing cultures and making sourdough bread, apple cider vinegar, sauerkraut, kombucha and kefir. As these cultures began to coincide with more fresh greens through edible weeds and homemade dressings something odd began to happen. All old cravings vanished and something else replaced it. There was a physical incentive that inspired organic motivation that was new. When recognized as a shift in behaviours I knew it wasn’t a familiar one when it came to food choices, preparing food and even making time for it. My experience has been that when someone is developing a career or has been food shamed or controlled by a partner this experience mentioned above is not an organically felt somatic experience. It is certainly one I appreciate.

Having this experience and entertaining it for a good length of time allowed it to manifest as a baseline experience. One that I began to observe and engage with when working with functional integrative sessions with students. I began to observe the connection between food and function. As a communication mentor and empathy coach, I extended this same observation to behaviours. I discovered there is a correlation to the balance of health and well-being connected to functional movement, emotions and mental focused dominance when it came to food and diets.

The main takeaway has been that when the diet has a scientific or trending focus the likelihood for success in integrating it into a lifestyle is minimal. It remains an outside strategy versus the inner incentive that motivates one into long-term habitual changes. However, I can say that a habitual lifestyle diet can be interrupted by a change in influences. For example, being on holiday and eating completely outside of ones wheelhouse for an extended period. The discovery is that it only takes a short period to develop new food habits and it somehow shifts an inner messaging system toward that last pattern of eating. What you put in for extended periods is what the body wants to continue eating. Diets focus on the mental and emotional states of being that lend themselves to self-judgements and those of others. However, it is a physiological condition as I discovered. However, each time one taps back into the foods that feed their organs and body functions the easier it is to get back into it. The mental, emotional and physical aligns to make it easier to achieve through experience versus a focus on thinking about what it should be, and how it should be, it seems more organic. My goal is to grow this in my own experience.

I can only imagine this is how people once connected with their food and landscape before organized food availabilities and current luxuries. They would gather what was available and create meals with it spontaneously unless dried and packed along with them on their journey.

This journey of food discovery that began as a personal eating plan has given more insight into environmental influences through coaching others and shifting my own lifestyle habits that I will share over time. I hope you will be motivated to join me in this exploration.