Awaken Lifestyles with Olamide Balogun: True Nourishment

Nourishment is defined as food and other things that are needed for health, growth, happiness, contentment and much more.

For many years during my weight loss journey , I had always thought that you are what you eat as the adage goes. I have recently however realised that true nourishment for us was way more than food.

One thing you must know about exercise is that you must do all over body exercise if you want to reduce one part of your body. So for example, if you want to firm up your stomach muscles, you will not have much-sustained success just by doing stomach crunches – even if you are eating right. You will have to do some cardio and strength training plus practice good eating habits.

Remember I asked you to do a SWOT analysis of mainly your eating habits. Today I will give you some other areas of your life that constitute true nourishment.

What relationships do you have and how is that working out for you? Are your relationships nurturing and affirming or are they toxic and critical? There are some people who you need to get closer to because you know they will add value to you. While there are others who you need to block on your phone and out of your life.
What have relationships got to do with real nourishment? Bad relationships cause us to be stressed out which can lead to a heavy release of cortisol, a hormone that caused belly fat. This cannot be shifted with exercise or diet.

A bad relationship can cause your eating to be out of control and make you become addicted to a food that causes weight gain. I never heard of anybody addicted to lettuce. Addiction comes because those foods make us feel good and we always want to replicate that feel good feeling so we eat more and more of the food. Usually, containing sugar and or flour. Two things that we must not eat, not only because they are fattening but because they are also addictive.

Another thing that can affect your weight and health and that you need to pay attention to, is your finances. Many of us stress about having or not having money. Not many people believe that they have enough money and are content. The challenge is that many are not doing anything in the area of their finances positively or negatively.

You need to analyse your beliefs concerning money and adjust any negative thoughts. Money is an exchange medium for what we need and want. It is not a god to be worshipped neither is it to be shunned. Be sure to have a healthy view of the place of money. How much do you earn? What do you spend your money on? What should you not be spending money on? How much of your earnings should be saved? What expenses should you suspend on and which ones should you increase. Do you spend any money to pamper yourself without it being just about bills being paid?

What do you have in your wardrobe and what should you have? By the way, if you have stuff in your wardrobe you have not worn in years, clear them out. (De-clutter your life by de-cluttering your wardrobe and home and life)
As an aside, your home environment can also be responsible for weight gain and sickness. When you live in a toxic environment, where there is a lot of clutter and arguments and in some cases fear, you need to find a way to normalise your environment.

As with relationships above some of our answers to the finance question can cause stress and therefore weight gain and illness.
Your social life can also be a source of negative weight adjustment and therefore sickness. If you are out at all hours, you may think you are ‘enjoying yourself but you may be killing yourself instead. Please do an analysis on your social life to help you see the advantages and disadvantages of your social life.

There are many more areas that contribute to true nourishment if they are well calibrated.
Food apparently constitutes only 10% of our nourishment since nourishment is much more than growth. Food makes us grow and keeps us healthy depending on the type of food we ingest. However even if we are eating the very best food, we can still have ill health and stunted grow and be over weight. From the above, you can see some of the other things that keep us looking good and healthy or not.

There are many examples of people who have eaten properly and who exercise regularly but who are always sick, unhappy and not necessarily slim. One of the other things that helps with weight adjustment, health and happiness is your spirituality. I will discuss this and a few more things at a later date, in another post.

Even if a person is slim it does not solve all their problems. As you will find out – if you ask most slim and fit people, that in itself does not constitute happiness. For sure they like the fact that they look good in their clothes but after a while as with most achievements (that is if they adjusted the weight down), it pales into insignificance. This is because other issues come and overshadow the achievement.

If they are naturally just blessed with amazing metabolism that makes them trim all the time you will find they don’t particularly value this as they take it for granted. Naturally being slim does not mean you don’t need true nourishment.

True nourishment just speaks of a well rounded life, everything in moderation. There are many depressed and unhappy slim people. Please don’t get me wrong, exercise is a great and it makes people feel good; however you can’t exercise all day just to ensure you are happy all day.

The myth we are busting today, therefore, is that all your problems go away when you lose weight. Indeed you cannot lose weight if your whole life is not balanced. Even if you do and not have true nourishment you will be unhappy and unwell.

Remember nourishment is defined as food and other things that are needed for health, growth, happiness, contentment and much more.