Cultivating Resilience
Cultivating Resilience
Do you feel like everything you eat affects you negatively or causes symptoms? Do you feel stressed out and easily irritated? Do you feel like if you stay out late once or veer off of your healthy plan, you pay for it for a week?
If so, you might feel like your body lacks resilience, or the strong baseline it needs to make it through the day. Whenever we think of the term resilience we usually think of someone being resilient or strong in spirit. When we say someone is resilient we usually mean that they remain strong in the face of adversity and are able to withstand life’s challenges.
Resilience, however, can also be seen as a physiological trait.
A basic definition of resilience is the ability to accommodate change. This can be change in our lives, families, communities or change in our bodies and organ systems. Resilience can further be defined as the physiological response to change as mediated by the nervous system, endocrine system, and immune system.
At a recent event I went to Dr. Jeffery Bland, the founder of The Institute of Functional Medicine, gave the example of a hummingbird to illustrate this concept of physiological resilience. When you look at the hummingbird it appears stationary, but when it’s slowed down you can see all of the hard work that’s going into keeping that bird in one place!
That’s an example of what’s going in in our body to keep us at homeostasis or a healthy baseline. As Dr. Bland illustrated with the hummingbird analogy, there are a number of different stressors that can influence our ability to stay at a healthy baseline. These can be stressors such as nutrient deficiencies from a suboptimal diet, our environment, daily stressors like a busy schedule or work deadlines, lack of sleep, relationships and support systems etc.
Whenever we have symptoms, feel out or balance or have a diagnosis of disease in our current medical system we look for ways to get rid of the disease. To eradicate the symptoms. If we have chronic sinus infections, we want to kill the bacteria. If we have autoimmune disease, we want to shut off an overactive immune system. While this approach is sometimes necessary, if we don’t also address the reason why we got the sinus infection or the autoimmune disease in the first place and work to build resilience in the body and inner terrain, we won’t actually get to the root of the problem.
If we take biologic medications to control the immune system or antibiotics to treat the sinus infections but we don’t work on proper nutrition, hydration, sleep, stress management and taking care of the body, it’s difficult to build that thick baseline for the body to be able to handle change and daily stressors of life and avoid recurrence of disease or symptoms.
So, how do we begin to cultivate this resilience?
Whenever I work with clients we put a lot of focus and attention on the critical importance of strengthening your baseline so you can eat a more diverse array of foods that don’t send you into a flare-up, work a full today without feeling like you’re totally exhausted at the end, and move your body and exercise without feeling like you have to recover for days afterward. If we try to move forward without first establishing a strong baseline, it’s a whole lot harder to achieve sustainable outcomes.
I’ve seen many clients attempt to skip over these pieces or think they’ve already done them only to find themselves stuck in a cycle of being “on or off the wagon” still feeling so up and down with their health after many years. Once we go through, step-by-step, the ways to create a strong, resilient baseline for that specific person, clients instantly see the puzzle pieces that were missing for years.
Cultivating resilience means that we work through the foundations of giving the body the proper nutrition and hydration it needs, work on how the body is absorbing and utilizing those nutrients through supporting gut health, and tone the nervous system by reducing and managing stress. We also work on mindset, who you are as the person eating the food and moving through your day, and give you all of the tools you need to feel strong, resilient, and less reactive to this wild ride that is life!
What a relief.
Watch the video below to learn more about cultivating resilience and leave a comment to let me know your thoughts on looking at resilience through this lens!
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If we haven't met before, I'm Christina Tidwell, founder and owner of Live Well with Christina. I'm so excited that you're here and have begun to delve into your health and wellness journey! Here at Live Well we help people with autoimmune disease take control of their health through nutrition, lifestyle shifts and personal empowerment.
If you suffer from:
Fatigue and energy crashes
Brain fog
Poor digestion
Symptoms of autoimmunity
Stress and overwhelm
...and aren't getting the support you need, I can help guide you through the scope of 1:1 health and nutrition coaching.
Health coaching is a necessary extension of the health care system in that together we have more time to uncover issues, implement strategies and assess outcomes together to help you make sustainable and lasting changes. I offer accountability, knowledgeable guidance and most importantly support.
I always offer free 30-minute discovery sessions to get clear on your major health concerns and what’s standing in your way. Click the button below to set up your free consultation and we can create a plan of action specifically for you.
