Food and Nutrition – “Do your work series”

When we say this welcome, it is from The Ancestral Medicine Women and many blessings to you.

So, we have been talking about aspects of support when you are doing your work and we have spoken about sleep and the next thing we want to talk about is nutrition.

Now nutrition is not just about the food that you eat, it’s about the way that you eat it, the time that you eat it and the nourishment that you expect to gain from it. So, nutrition is something that is not really understood by very many people and when we say that, what we mean by that is, it is not understood by very many people on their own individual level, and that’s the important thing.

So, there are plenty of diets out there, plenty of cultural customs,  but when it comes to food, not a lot of people know their body well enough to know what they can tolerate, what’s good for them and is going to be nourishing for them.

So that’s the first thing that we would suggest to people. To really look at what you eat, when you eat it and in what combination that you eat it and really start to build a picture of you – your body’s individual needs for food.

So, for example, today you might be able to have dairy or milk or some such thing and then you find the next day if you have it you have an upset stomach or you have a lot of reflux or some such thing. Ok, some people say you are allergic to dairy. We would say ok, maybe.

But firstly, let’s look at the frequency with which you have the dairy, the combination of the foods that you are having with the dairy and the time of day that you’re having the dairy and your state of mind when you’re having the dairy.

So, let’s say that you – Day 1 you have the dairy with cereal and it is a very relaxed morning and you have nothing to worry about – no problems. The next day you have the dairy, you have it with the same cereal and you also have a cup of coffee, but you’re really rushed this morning and you are also really tired, which is why you are having the coffee. You think that it’s going to bolster you. So, you’ve got extra variables there, in day two than you do on day one. The fact that you are tired, that fact that you are running late and the fact that you added coffee to your mix which was the cereal and the milk.

So it could be that you are allergic to dairy because that was a common denominator, as was the cereal, but there is also the possibility that the other things, there were contributing factors, the tiredness, the lack of sleep, the coffee and the fact that you are stressed either about running late or whatever – you have something big that you need to do.

So, there is more involved in that process of nutrition than just:
‘I’m allergic to such and such, or this doesn’t suit me’.

So you know we talk a lot about ‘Doing you work‘ and doing your work is a hard thing, it is not an easy thing and it really takes up a lot of concentration and a lot of dedication and here we are talking about nutrition and we are talking about the way that you eat, what you eat, when you eat, combination of what you eat it with and you can see, ‘Oh my goodness, this is a mine field, this is yet another thing, another big topic that I have to work through so I can do my work!’

Well, yes, you are right, however to do your work well and to be effective in your work, the body needs fuel that makes it work at its optimum level. So that means you may have to really look at your nutrition and what is going into your body and what is actually being used, and that’s another thing.

For some people who have, they eat a lot of raw food, they eat raw spinach, raw kale and so on and so forth and they eat a lot of fibrous food, these raw vegetables and such and such. It is quite difficult for the human being, unless they chew and chew and chew, like the cow, like the ape world, chew their food into a pulp, they are going to miss out on a lot of nutrition from the raw foods.

Now people on a raw food diet tend to say they feel better. Yes, absolutely we are not disputing that, but when you are on a raw food diet, if you are on a raw food diet you tend to buy better raw food. You tend to be more dedicated to how the food is produced, because you need it to be raw, you tend to be more balanced in what you eat at different times because you are very conscious of getting in the nutrient. You are very conscious of what you are eating and how that is going to affect you.

So, that in itself is going to give you a better diet, what we’re saying is that the density of the nutrient in the food is not being fully realised because of the way that humans, our physiology. So that’s just one example of making sure that you get the nutrition from the food that you are eating and that nutrition, by that we mean all the aspects of it the fibre, the vitamins, the fluid content and so on into your body so that it’s all working. It’s very difficult to do that.

When we talk about nutrition as well, we have talked about the combination and we have talked about what you put your foods with that is something to really look at because there are some foods that go really well together, and then there are other foods that seem to work at a contradiction and that again is going to be an individual experience.

So, some people could have fruit and dairy together and that would not bother them, but other people that would be a fatal combination that the body just could not digest together. It could not.

So it’s very important that you understand how your body reacts to certain food combinations because you might have the most beautiful organic such and such which goes beautiful with the organic such and such and those two things in your body clash, it’s like they fight with each other, and you’re not going to get anything very much out of those two beautiful organic such and suches.

It’s very important that you know how to put food together for you… for you! And that is trial and error, listening to your body, watching how you react to things, seeing how you even respond:

• does your saliva, is it starting to activate right?
• is the mouth starting to activate when you see certain foods?
• even on that one score you might see that when there are different foods that you are going to eat the saliva glands do not activate and,
• then there are other times when the saliva glands really activate, so we would be watching things like that.

How do you taste the food? Sometimes you can taste the food and it is absolutely scrumptious, it’s delicious and another time you taste that food, it doesn’t taste the same. Some people say that is because you have this inflated vision or remembrance of what it was before, but it’s possible that the body is not wanting that. The body is not going to take from it what it needs because that’s not what it is looking for.

So, really start to understand how YOUR digestive system is working.

Another thing to think about with nutrition is the timing. Some people need to have 6-8 small meals per day. Some people need to have two. Some people need to have three. Some people need to have everything between six in the morning and six o’clock at night. Some people can’t eat till twelve then they’re hungry and won’t eat till nine at night. Whatever it is, it’s important that you know your body well enough to know you’re eating pattern, but, that you are getting the nutrition that you require at those times, because what often happens is, let’s say you can’t eat till eleven or twelve o’clock, so you leave home and you don’t have anything, and you’re working and in your work place there is coffee and biscuits and such like. Lunch you have at one o’clock – that’s just the way it works, but eleven o’clock you are really hungry. So, what do you have? Coffee and biscuits – no nutrition what-so-ever!

Just forget it! You need to be prepared to have something at that time which provides you with the sustenance, salves your hunger but is also giving you the nutrition that you need at that time, and again it comes back to ‘knowing your work’ body, knowing what it needs.

Another thing with nutrition is the nourishment factor. Now when we say that people say, ‘Well of course nutrition is nourishment’. Well, we would dispute that, nutrition is nutrition, nourishment is something altogether different.

Nourishment is the feeling, if you like, that goes into the food or the energy that goes into the food and the energy that you take out of the food.

So, if you are buying food that you know has been lovingly and dedicatedly produced and you are buying it from a shop that is passionate about the quality and the nutritional value of food and then you are preparing that food in a way that is honouring you, your needs, or the needs of the people around you and with love and care and so on, then the nourishment that you’re going to get from that is far greater than if you go to a fast food outlet and you buy something that they say has this many kilojoules in it and is Angus beef and la, la, la. You are going to get far more nourishment out of it because the nourishment comes, as we said not just from the nutritional aspect of the food, but the nourishment comes from what energy that’s been put into it and the energy you are going to take out of it.

So, that’s something to really think about. If you take nothing else from this talk, except that – that will be an enormous step forward.

What nourishment has been placed into the production of this food and what nourishment am I expecting to take out of it.

Those two things are possibly the most important things that you can think of when it comes to nutrition.

So, we come back to ‘here you are doing your work’.

You need to be sustained whilst doing your work. One of the things that sustains you and gives you the physical energy as well as spiritual energy to actually do your work, to sustain the amount, or the level of energy that is required to do you work and to maintain it, is nutrition. Is the good, the nourishment that you get from nutrition, from food.

We hope that you found this nourishing in so many, on so many levels.

Thank you.

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