So many of you are buying organic and grass-fed, nutrient dense food. GREAT!
That is the first step for nourishing our bodies. The next piece is getting all of the nutrients out of this food. Here are two basic ideas on how to do that.
First, we need to prepare our body to accept the nutrients. Does that sound funny? Well, whenever we expect our bodies to do something we mentally prepare. No, you may not have a personal sports psychologist but I’m sure that even before you run the Turkey Trot you check the course, think about the milage, and may even stretch or do a warm-up routine before you go. I sure know that in all competitive athletics we prepare the mind and body before we expect performance. Well, nourishing our body is a big deal to the body. Think about our ancestors, food didn’t just appear for them, they secured it and then celebrated it. You know how just thinking about a great meal can make you salivate? -well that is a good thing. Our minds need to prepare the body for food’s arrival and then we need to be in a parasympathetic (relaxed) state to accept the nourishment. This parasympathetic state allows the body to produce the acid and enzymes to breakdown the food so we can absorb all it has to offer.
If we are not allowing our mind the think about the food we are ingesting the body cannot get all of the nutrients out of the food.
Second, now that our minds are preparing the body, we need to give the body a chance. We need to actually chew our food. It sounds like something our mother would say- well she was right on this one. Without chewing our food the body simply can’t break it down for optimal nourishment. Think about a lifesaver in your mouth. You can suck on it for 30 minutes and it will slowly melt away but if you chew it a little each piece dissolves at the same rate, making it melt away in a fraction of the time. Now that’s just sugar. Our food is a mixture of more complex molecules than that. The enzymes in our mouth and stomach need access to each particle of food, and they need help with some physical mastication.
So, to get the most out of our food we need to allow the mind to prepare our body for the food and chew our food. These two simple things make all the difference in nourishing our body and allowing it to work for us as it was built to do.
