Written by: Amy Bondar, Executive Contributor
Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise.
As a Nutritional Consultant and Eating Psychology Coach, my mission to help people find their greatest joy, health and vitality with every bite of food.
Food is our medicine. It is the foundation for healing, wellness and vitality. Food has the power to regenerate, restore, rebuild, re-energize and help us to feel amazing! It connects us to ourselves, to Mother Nature, to farmers, growers, and the planet.
Every BODY deserves nourishment and is capable of being nourished. Food is the essence of life and yet there is a collective struggle because we live in a world of nutritional confusion and conflicting!
No matter where you are, the latest nutritional buzz words are floating out of people’s mouths – keto, paleo, gluten-free, vegetarian, vegan, grain-free, plant-based, intermittent fasting and every variance in between. Just walk into any bookstore and shelves are lined with nutrition, cookbooks and diet books that cover every possible way of eating that is often in conflict with the book sitting right next to it. It is enough to make you crazy. It makes me crazy and I’m a Nutritionist! We want to devour the one perfect way, the right system and seek the latest fad and greatest miracle diet. But nourishment is not linear. Nourishment goes through phases, cycles, seasons, it evolves, it changes and often matches and mirrors where we are at in our life right now.
In a time when we are inundated with nutritional information we are more conflicted and confused than ever about what to eat and how to feed ourselves. We have made nutrition so complex and in doing so we have taken the love and joy out of the eating experience. We have lost the simplicity, the trust in our own body wisdom and the guidance from Mother Nature. We have disconnected from the magnificence, beauty and perfection of Mother Nature’s bounty. We have turned to listening to the masses about nutrition instead of listening to our own intuition. We have taken the peace and ease out of eating and replaced it with stress, anxiety and uncertainty. In the quest for nutritional information, we are starving for nutritional wisdom.
We have approached food from restriction, weight loss, cheating, good foods and bad foods. There is endless nutritional dogma about the “dangers” of what we once saw as “good” food to now being labeled as “bad.” We have heard about the dangers of farming, genetically modified foods, pesticides, herbicides, demineralized soils. We have watched movies and read books about supersizing, the negative impact eating meat has on the environment and the reality of how our animals are raised, handled and fed before our meat arrives at our table. Food and eating has become a scary experience. But it doesn’t have to be nor should it.
We have to relate to food every day of our lives. It truly is our longest-lasting relationship! Yet so many people, especially women struggle with this most important relationship. For two decades, I have sat with men and women and listened to their stories, their confliction, their challenges and struggles with food and body. What I know for sure is that there is a collective struggle among us all. It fascinates me that something so essential to our being can be so conflicting which is what inspired me to become a Nutrition Consultant in the first place – so that I could inspire, educate and guide my clients and audiences to have a healthy, joyous and beautiful relationship with food.
It is time to embrace and nourish our relationship with food – one that promotes wellness, vitality, abundance, excitement, joy and the pleasure of eating. We need to think of food in a different way, a more sacred way, an exciting way! It is time to awaken to the sheer joy of having a human body to take in the delights from nature’s garden.
It is time to get excited and inspired to eat again. It is time to awaken to the power of food and nourish from a place of abundance and pleasure vs. eating from a place of restriction and fear. It is time to awaken your nutritional vitality. There is hope, joy, energy and richness waiting for you in nature’s garden.
This summer, I encourage you to go on a journey of exploration with food. Be spontaneous, try new things, get creative, connect with the vibrancy and quality of foods you see at Famers Markets and local fruit and vegetable stands. If you have been restricting, start expressing your love for food. If you have been dieting, start trusting your body. If you have been obsessed about trying to follow a perfect way of eating, give yourself permission to play and have fun with food again. Release yourself from rigidity and awaken and empower your relationship with food and nourish yourself with the limitless supply of healing vibrant food found in nature ‒ that is waiting for you.
Here’s to happy, joyous eating!
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Amy Bondar, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine
Amy Bondar, Certified Eating Psychology Coach, Author and Speaker, has dedicated her life to inspiring, educating and encouraging people to realize the significant impact nourishing the body, mind and soul has on achieving optimum wellness. Her mission is to help people transform their relationship with food, their body and themselves. Amy believes nutrition is so much more than what we eat. How we eat and why eat are essential components to awakening our nutritional consciousness. If you truly would love to make a shift in the way in which you nourish yourself, visit www.amybondar.com or contact Amy at (403)245-2611.
