Your Foundation is Everything.
I am allll about laying a strong foundation of health. It’s the most important things you can do for your health. Period.
Here’s why. When you work on laying a strong foundation of health, you are paying attention to all of the needs of your body on the most basic, fundamental level. When your most basic, fundamental needs are met and in a great place, your body and mind will be happy. When your body and mind are nourished and happy, your health will improve as a result in a very organic, sustainable way.
On the flip side, when you start trying to change your health by addressing and treating your symptoms alone, you aren’t going to get very far. Maybe you’ll get some relief for a period of time, but you aren’t ever addressing the root cause or fixing the issue. You are just putting a band-aid on your symptoms, and one that probably won’t stick.
Same thing with dieting and weight loss – if you try the quick fix approach and focus on simply cutting calories and exercising more, eliminating food groups, doing juice cleanses, starting a new diet every other month, etc. maybe you’ll lose a few pounds, but you aren’t ever addressing the foundational pieces of why your metabolism isn’t working for you and finding sustainable weight loss.
That’s why I’m all about working at the foundational level when it comes to your health. So that all those symptoms get addressed, but at the source. And the weight you lose is because you have started to optimize your metabolism by making real, impactful, lasting changes to your diet and lifestyle.
So, what are those foundational pieces?
Here are the 5 foundational pieces of health and some follow up questions to start asking yourself to find out what your foundation looks like:
Mindset : What is your mindset like regularly? Is it positive or negative? Do you own your mindset or just let your mind do whatever it’s going to do today?
Movement: Are you moving your body regularly? Do you sit most of the day, or make a point to get up and move? Are you exercising enough, or maybe too much?
Diet: What does your diet look like? Are you balancing your meals with PHFC? Are you skipping meals and eating junk? Are you eating too much, or maybe not enough? Are you riding the blood sugar roller coaster all day? Are you spending more time in fat storing mode, or fat burning mode?
Sleep: How much sleep are you getting at night? Is it good quality sleep? Do you fall asleep and stay asleep, or wake up throughout the night? Do you wake up feeling rested?
Stress: Yeah. About that one. How full is your stress bucket? What’s in there? What’s making it overflow right now? Where is the stressor coming from – life, mindset, body, diet?
These 5 pillars of health are so important individually but each one is also a key piece to the puzzle that is your health.
If one is out of balance, the whole system is out of whack. Remember, it’s your foundation – the thing you build your health on. Just like building a house – if you have a crappy foundation, you might not see the effects right away, but you can bet that down the road, you’re gonna have some issues. And at some point, you are going to have to do something about the foundation. The longer you wait, the more expensive it becomes, the more problems arise, the bigger the project when you finally address it.
Same thing with your health. If you have a crappy foundation and things are off – you might not see the effects right away, but you can bet that down the road, those cracks are going to start showing up somewhere in your life and your health. The longer you ignore those symptoms or continue the unhealthy foundational habits, the more issues will arise. And those issues will likely get more complicated and the harder to fix, and yes more expensive too.
Check out your foundation now. It’s never too late to listen to your body and start making changes.
What does a cracked foundation look like?
Many symptoms that we experience on a regular basis get brushed off as “normal”. However, they most likely have a root cause that you can address if you are willing to look a little deeper.
Things like weight loss resistance, blood sugar dysregulation, fatigue, and skin, gut, thyroid, and hormone issues can all likely be traced back to an issue at the foundational level.
So those symptoms you have been having- yeah they are real. And no, you don’t have to live with them. Just because you’ve lived with them long enough that you are used to them does not make it right.
Here’s one example:
Let’s say you have weight loss resistance. You’ve tried all the things, cut all the calories, done all the cardio, and it’s just not budging. Let’s see how the foundational pieces might come in to play here.
Mindset: You’re done, resigned to the fact that nothing will work, you’ve lost hope, and you just can’t try another diet because it’s too much. You live and die by the scale and your sense of worth and success is at an all-time low. You are stuck in the dieting mindset and convinced that eating less and exercising more is always the answer. This adds stress to your already full stress bucket and makes motivation realll hard to come by.
Movement: Maybe you’ve given up on exercise because it doesn’t make a difference and you don’t have time. Or, maybe you are over exercising and putting more stress on your body without fueling it properly. Maybe exercise is a punishment for overeating or a means of “earning” junk food. Whatever the case, the foundation of movement needs some help.
Diet: Calories have been counted, and counted, and cut, and cut some more, and yet the result never seems to work out in your favor. That’s because your body is not a simple math equation. It is a complex biology project with so many factors that go into weight loss other than calories in < calories out. Or, maybe you don’t pay much attention to what you eat and you simply aren’t balancing your meals properly with protein, healthy fat, and high fiber carbs. Riding the blood sugar roller coaster all day long will also leave you in fat storing mode, which isn’t where you want to be when it comes to weight loss.
Sleep: You might not be prioritizing 7-9 hours of good quality sleep. This is when your body and brain rest and reset, your hormones get a chance to come back to equilibrium. If that’s never happening, maybe because you aren’t making the effort, or because you are stressed to the max and unable to sleep through the night, your hormones will take a hit. Whacked out hormones and high stress levels are not great in the world of weight loss.
Stress: This can come in so many forms, life stress, emotional stress, perceived/mindset stress, or even things like inflammation, nutrient deficiencies, hormone issues, infections, and so on. If stress is running the show, it’s likely going to affect your sleep, your gut, your hormones, and your ability to lose weight. When you are living in the stressed-out fight or flight mode, your body isn’t worried about losing weight, it’s more concerned about storing everything to deal with it later cause it’s gotta run from the stressor as fast as possible. Which means you spend a whole lot of time in fat storing mode.
So how do you fix it?
If you’ve got health goals, start taking a look at your foundation. If you’ve started to notice some cracks, that might just be the perfect place to start making changes.
Start with the basics like practicing mindfulness first thing in the morning. Take a few minutes to set your mindset to positive and set your intention for the day. Move your body intentionally every single day. Make time for workouts, but also to just get up and move throughout the day. Eat real food and balance your meals with protein, healthy fat, and high fiber carbohydrates. Find the balance of indulging when it’s worth it and eating to fuel your body well. Prioritize sleep, good quality sleep. Your body and brain need this. And stress, good old stress. Find where it’s coming from and use healthy coping techniques to deal with it (unfortunately, alcohol is not one of those healthy ones). Work to minimize stress in all of its forms – life stress, mindset stuff, physical stress, diet stress, all the things – so your body and mind can start to feel safe once again. You may have to dig deeper here and look into hormone issues, gut issues, nutrient deficiencies or hidden infections to pinpoint what is holding you back if everything else really is in a great place.
Point is, your foundation lays the groundwork for your health. You do the work there, you are more likely to reach your goals, get to the root of your health issues and truly fix them in a sustainable, real sort of way. No quick fixes, just real work. Do the work right so you only have to do it once -and then just maintain that swag forever.