Diet is a big deal when it comes to functional wellness, and today, Zoa is diving right into it! Zoa chats about how what we eat can totally flip the script on how we feel. You’ve got the power to change your health, no matter your age or situation, and it all starts with your plate. We’ll explore why nutrient density is key, how to figure out what foods work for you, and why eating locally can make a world of difference. So grab a snack, kick back, and let’s get into the tasty details of how to eat your way to feeling fabulous!

Takeaways:

• Diet is one of the seven fundamentals of functional wellness and is important you may not have considered yet.
• We all have unique bodies, so there's no one-size-fits-all diet solution for everyone.
• Eating nutrient-dense foods like avocados helps keep us healthy and happy.
• Avoiding toxins in our food is key to supporting a healthy inflammatory response.

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Find Zoa:

Zen and Vitality with Zoa (zenandvitality.com)

Intentional Vitality Retreats (intentional-vitality.com)

Music Credit goes to Lemon Music Studio at: https://open.spotify.com/artist/4XWZhZ32YrVV5lvpF7cr1E?si=tnbSklR7SJyPNKiHP4MbHA

Welcome to Sustain youn Vitality, the podcast that gives you a nurturing kick in the ass so you can take action every day to feel better, not older.

Your lifestyle holds the power to change how you feel, and no matter your age or health issues, you are in the driver's seat.

I'm your host, Zoa Connor, Functional wellness guide at Zen and Vitality with Zoa and retreat leader at Intentional Vitality Retreats.

I'm here to help you figure out how to lower your stress, increase your energy, put yourself into a healing state, boost your drive and pleasure in life, prevent disease, and feel the best that you ever have with no regrets later.

Let's go in my work with clients so that they can feel better, not older, through lifestyle interventions and actions.

Diet is an important part.

It is only one of the seven fundamentals of functional wellness, but it's one that we have complete control over pretty much every day.

So what should your diet look like?

There is not a one diet solution for everyone.

We have unique needs, we have unique bodies, and we have to figure out what works for us through experimentation.

But there are some basics that I think apply to everyone and then we can discuss the specifics of how to apply them to yourself.

So one basic is that we want nutrients to come in through your diet.

So this is not just your macronutrients, your carbs, your proteins, your fats, those are the things that keep you alive.

You need protein to grow body.

You need carbs and fats to fuel your body and to pad and to make hormones and to have a healthy, happy brain.

But it's the micronutrients that keep you wanting to stay alive.

So your vitamins, your minerals, and getting all of them coming in in a balanced way.

So when I look at someone's diet to assess whether it's working for them or not, we're looking at the nutrient content and the nutrient density.

So let me give you an example of nutrient density.

An avocado, it is a fruit or vegetable, depending on how you look at it.

It's not sweet, but it did come up from a flower and it does have a seed inside.

But it's also a very fat rich food.

So it is definitely in the category of healthy fats.

And its nutrients include many fat soluble vitamins like vitamin E.

The question is, how nutrient dense is it?

So when you look at the micronutrients, the minerals and the vitamins that are in the avocado, you get a lot of them for one avocado or a half an avocado.

So you don't have to eat very much of the food in order to gain a lot of nutrition from it.

And that means it's nutrient dense.

Let's examine another food, popcorn.

Popcorn is primarily air.

You took a tiny little piece of corn seed, added heat, and exploded it into a piece of popcorn.

It doesn't have a lot of density, it doesn't have a lot of weight, and it doesn't have a lot of nutrition.

So popcorn would tend to be used when you're trying to satisfy your desire to put something in your mouth and fill your belly a little bit.

But it doesn't have a lot of nutrients to it, and so it's not particularly nutrient dense.

Another general quality of diet that I focus on is whether or not that food has toxins or not, whether it was grown locally or not, whether it was grown with sustainable methods, and it has the nutrients in it that it's supposed to.

Many of us go online and we look at what are the foods that are high in vitamin C, what are the foods that are high in zinc, and we try to incorporate those into our diet.

But what if the nutrients aren't actually in those foods anymore?

What if those foods were grown in depleted soils?

And so they don't have the nutrition that they did for our grandmothers and great grandmothers, grandmothers, that is definitely a problem.

So here is where food quality really matters most.

People can acknowledge that a tomato fresh off the vine in the heat of summer tastes so much better and different than a tomato in January, grown in our country, picked early, before it was fully ripe, shipped to you, and sits there at the store waiting.

Do we still buy the tomatoes?

I don't know.

I don't.

I don't want to.

That doesn't have the flavor, the enjoyment, or the nutrients.

And it's expensive.

So I would rather go with seasonal food grown by my local farmers, who I know are tending to the soil and putting the nutrients into the soil so that it can be in the plants and be in my food.

I also want to know that my food was grown with the same basic concepts that Mother Nature applies for wild plants.

Nature composts.

I want my farmer to compost.

Nature knows how to combine plants in order to bring nutrients into the plant and have the less need for pesticides and artificial fertilizers.

Nature knows how to grow great plants, and so do my farmers.

How about your farmers?

Another basic principle for diet is that the foods create a healthy inflammatory response from your body.

Inflammation has become a bad word, something to be Avoided.

It's also the way that your body stays alive when you have an injury or an illness.

Inflammation is your body's response to the need to heal and fix a problem.

What we don't want is for inflammation to always be happening and never get a chance to rest and relax and tell you that the problem is gone.

So chronic inflammation is what we're trying to avoid.

Some foods encourage more of an inflammatory response to the body than others.

And while for some people they tend to react to certain types of foods, oftentimes the problem really is with your body's response to that food and toxins.

Let me give you an example.

For many people who have or know someone who's dealing with the autoimmune issue of Hashimoto's disease, this thyroid gland attacking autoimmune problem, it's related to the fact that they have a gluten response as well.

So gluten molecules look a lot like thyroid gland molecules.

And so if there's a problem with the gluten and your immune system's response to it, then your body's going to get overactive over extended exposure and also start to wonder if the thyroid gland is a problem, is it actually gluten or is it something that's in the gluten molecule or that comes in at the same time?

We can discuss that when we talk about toxins and toxicity.

It is an example of an inflammatory response that we want to avoid.

We don't want to activate and challenge the body's immune system, which is in your small intestine and in your digestive system.

So we want to choose the foods which support a healthy inflammatory response, not an overactive response.

And that will look different for each person.

We also really want to avoid toxins.

Now, toxins can be a simple thing.

Like your farmer or the farmer next to yours sprayed a pesticide because that way they can control the weeds and the bugs.

Herbicides are about plants.

Pesticides are about living creatures.

And they both tend to be used in conventional agriculture.

So the problem is, is that those things were designed to kill the cells of plants or the cells of an animal.

And you are taking in those things that are designed to kill.

And the question is, why do you think that they aren't also going to damage you?

They are worth avoiding.

So ask your farmer.

Check the labels.

Avoid those toxins, avoid the pesticides, avoid things which are modified, genetically modified.

Avoid things that you don't understand what they are.

Go with simple, natural ingredients.

Now, not everything that's natural is Harmless.

Many natural things are quite powerful.

We use them as cleansers.

We use them to help detoxify.

We use them to help kill things, but not ourselves.

And we use them wisely and sparingly and with knowledge about what we're doing.

Part of the problem with toxins in our food is that we don't know what it is or what its response is until too late.

So diet, keep your focus on the nutrient density, the quality of the food, who grows your food, the loving care brought to the food, the way your body's going to respond to the food, the inflammatory response.

Does it make you feel good when you have the food?

Does it make you tired and fatigued?

Does it make you jazzed and energized?

Do you want to be jazzed and energized?

Is it overloading your liver and making you work harder than you need to in order to clear your body of toxins and waste products?

Then we can get to the fact that perhaps you need to incorporate more vegetables.

Perhaps you need to focus on getting enough protein.

Maybe you've been avoiding fats in your effort of controlling your weight, but now you're starting to have some pre diabetic tendencies because you're having too many carbs and sugars.

These are all things that we can work on.

Before you make big diet changes though, it's important to know what's actually working for your body and what your body thinks about the diet you have been making use of.

So one of my best tools for clients is a hair mineral analysis.

So a hair mineral analysis involves taking a small snippet of freshly grown hair, sending it off to the lab, and getting back the results of how much of each mineral is in your hair.

If it's in your hair, it's in all the rest of the cells of your body.

And we want to know how much of the life supporting and life giving minerals do you have?

How much of the macro minerals that you need a lot of do you have?

Are you throwing them away or not even taking enough in?

What about toxic minerals?

We want to see them leaving the body because we know alive in this modern world you have some exposure.

But if you're going to be finding yourself with a lot of toxins leaving, are you trying to have them leave?

Are you actively supporting detox?

Or do you have an exposure that you want to manage and control and reduce?

What about the proportions of the minerals?

Most things in the body have an on switch and an off switch, and those are controlled by minerals.

Do you have enough of the on supporting mineral and enough of the off supporting mineral.

Let me give you an example.

Sugar regulation.

Your insulin regulation, the ability to add fat is controlled by the pancreas and calcium and magnesium.

Calcium controls the release of insulin into the bloodstream and insulin's job in life is to store fat.

Magnesium controls your ability to stop releasing insulin into the bloodstream.

So what if you're magnesium deficient like most Americans are?

Then you have no problem getting the insulin to leave and go into the bloodstream and store fat.

But you can't stop it.

So you've got a trouble with your blood sugar regulation.

The way that you know if your diet is working for you is partly your symptoms, your feelings, and partly the results from your hair mineral analysis.

We always do a three day food log because in order to understand whether the problem is with the food going in your mouth or your digestion, we need to match up mineral intake through your diet with the minerals present in your hair and the rest of your body.

We use this to assess what changes to make.

Informed consent, shall we say?

You're no longer guessing and hoping that it works or trying something and it's not making a change.

You don't feel any better.

My goal is to help you feel better, not older, with information that makes sense for your unique body.

Diet is only one of the seven fundamentals of functional wellness and I look forward to helping you with yours.

If the Sustain your Vitality podcast is helping you understand what you need to feel fabulous in every way with the least amount of effort, please share the show with someone who also needs it.

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The Sustain your Vitality Podcast is a gift from Zen and Vitality with Zoa Ella LLC and Intentional Vitality Retreats based in the State of Maryland, usa.

All the podcast things planning, recording, editing, producing have all been done by me, Zoa Connor, Ph.D.

even though you can call me doctor, I'm not a medical professional and your safety is your responsibility.

By listening to this podcast and understanding that any movement, nutrition, lifestyle or health problem protocols discussed, you are agreeing to take full responsibility for your actions.

Zen and Vitality with Zoa are not responsible for any injuries or issues that may occur.

This podcast is intended for educational and informational purposes only and is not a substitute for personalized medical, wellness, nutrition, lifestyle or movement and fitness advice.

Always practice any fitness or movement related activities activities in a safe environment.

I make no claims about the effectiveness of the techniques or protocols discussed for you or any specific results that you may achieve.

I recommend you consult with your healthcare professional before changing your diet, exercise routine or healthcare plan.

Zenin Vitality with Zoa and the guest of this podcast are not liable for any injuries or health problems that may arise from following the information presented.