While improving your nutrition will produce almost immediate results and is often the gateway to better total health in recovery, food alone is not the answer to long-lasting wellbeing. Ask anyone who’s tried a fad diet—including me! I developed a formula that addresses all aspects of wellness. Let me show you how it works.
My education and experience have taught me that there are 5 major areas of practice that need our attention if we are to reach our optimal health in sobriety. Together, these 5 elements form the founding philosophy of all my work. They are the Sweet Science 5!
As a whole, the Sweet Science 5 make up a foundation, a routine, a core. As we work together, you’ll learn what you need from each of them to achieve balanced health, and how to work with them separately and in conjunction. They’re the support system that you can come back to again and again to access your wellspring of innate vitality. Truly, no matter how or when you “go astray,” you can always come home to them.
It’s become common knowledge that a balanced diet is central to optimal wellbeing. However, this doesn’t mean that sustainable health begins and ends with food itself. It’s important to know not only what to eat (and not eat), but also why, when, and how to eat it.
Learning how to savor our food instead of bingeing, eat only when we are hungry, chew enough, take our time, and avoid overeating are all examples of the many factors that go into maintaining a healthy diet. Also, what constitutes balanced nutrition can vary widely between people; there is no one-size-fits-all solution.
As we work together, you’ll learn what's best for your body and lifestyle by experimenting with a variety of foods, preparation methods, and eating habits. Learning about and practicing what works for you will help take your recovery to the next level.
Chronic lack of good sleep has now conclusively been linked to obesity, diabetes, heart disease, cancer, depression, and other major ailments. Yikes!
We’ll review current scientific evidence about why getting enough sleep is not a luxury but a health necessity, identify any routines you have that might be preventing quality sleep (like using artificial light, eating, or ingesting stimulants or depressants too close to bedtime), and make a plan to ensure your mind and body both get enough rest each night.
If you stick with your plan, you’ll begin to fall asleep more easily, get deeper rest in fewer hours, and wake up with ease, feeling rejuvenated and ready without stimulants like coffee. Imagine that!
How we breathe is intimately connected to our physical and emotional states—many yogis even believe it’s connected to our ultimate longevity.
When we’re under stress, our breathing becomes erratic, shallow, and constricted, resulting in less oxygen traveling to our cells. We also eliminate a lot of waste through our lungs, so too much improper (shallow) breathing can cause headaches, brain fatigue, and the accumulation of toxins in the body.
I’ll share tips and exercises with you that will help increase the depth of your breath, keep the oxygen flowing to your brain and body, and help you stay balanced in stressful situations (without alcohol!).
If we want to be truly healthy, one of our priorities needs to be getting the right physical activity into our lives. But what’s “right”? I think it’s any movement you take pleasure in doing, not something you feel obligated to do. When we feel pressure to exercise, we can end up forcing ourselves into strenuous and unenjoyable activity that pushes our bodies into “survival mode.” Instead of being beneficial, this type of activity actually produces negative stress and can make it more difficult to shed excess weight. Talk about a good thing gone bad!
Adequate movement and moderate exercise that we look forward to infuses our bodies with joyful effort and “happy hormones” that help keep us fit and trim, build good digestion, and keep bad moods at bay. Depending on what you like to do, a regular combination of stretching, walking, dancing, boxing, gardening, rowing, yoga, weight-lifting, playing with your dog or kids, hiking, team sports, or any other physical movement can provide all the activity you need in a fun way that’s easy to stick with. If you don’t already have a movement routine you enjoy, we’ll explore options you can start experimenting with right away.
Over the years, hundreds of scientific studies have shown the benefits of meditation: lower blood pressure, prevention and management of anxiety, and increased focus and emotional stability—just to name a few.
Meditation also helps support healthy change in a deeper way, as it increases our awareness of our unconscious mind and helps us dissolve hidden patterns of behavior. It helps those of us who struggle with stubborn habits to feel hope that we can change: that we can start to feel free and stop blaming ourselves for being weak.
If you are a newcomer to meditation, I can help you integrate the practice into your schedule. If you already have a practice, I can support you in deepening it. If the traditional sitting meditation style doesn’t turn you on, I can help you bring awareness practices into your daily activities. Anything from playing a musical instrument to eating, walking, or grocery shopping can become a vehicle for helping you become more conscious of what’s happening within you and around you at all times.
As we become more aware, we learn to relax in our situation instead of trying to avoid it by doing things we might later regret—like mindless eating.