What is holistic nutrition? d

It is common that when we think of undertaking a diet or make healthy changes in our diet and lifestyle, we think that the aspects we want to improve are located in our body, so we seek to measure the improvements through what we see in our physical. The truth is that there is an intrinsic relationship between body and mind, it happens in all areas, otherwise a high performance athlete would not need psychologists or motivators, as their progress and success would only be conditioned by their level of training.

In an attempt to harmonize in a coherent way this relationship, which is sometimes very difficult to appreciate, the so-called holistic nutrition arises. Holistic nutrition comes to break the classic paradigms that we tend to assume for lack of information, it tries to educate in the appreciation of our body as a whole.

This topic can be somewhat complex, that is why we will dedicate the following guide to deepen on the basic aspects of it.

What is holistic nutrition?

Holistic nutrition means considering nutrition as a whole, that is, it is based on an integral vision of nutrition, where the different elements that make up the human body, and that in one way or another interact in our diet, are related at the same level of importance.

The spreaders of holistic nutrition study this integral system from three fundamental elements, the body, the mind and the spirit. Most diets tend to focus in depth on the body, we come to understand some basics about the nutrients in each food, the number of calories, glucose, minerals and vitamins, and little else.

Then we try to plan a diet that generates a caloric deficit in the body in order to reduce body fat. In this simple scheme it seems that the mind and the spirit have little to contribute, and it is precisely this mistake that causes most people who undertake a diet end up abandoning it after a few months and regaining the lost weight, even in higher figures.

The mind and spirit

The mind and the spirit could be subjects that at first glance seem impossible to link with nutrition, but nothing is further from the truth.

When we talk about the mind, both the mentality we adopt when facing a change of diet and the state of our central nervous system when taking on this challenge come into play. There are now many scientific studies on these two aspects. The central nervous system is fundamental when it comes to losing weight or improving our state of health.

It has been proven that stress causes an increase in the degree of excitement and alarm in the organism, activating the sympathetic system, which is the side of the nervous system that prepares us to defend ourselves in the face of a threat. This causes dissimilar damages to our health, but to make it clear how much damage it can do to a person trying to lose weight, it is enough to illustrate that this phenomenon triggers glucose levels from the body's reserves, so that our body fat increases when glucose comes into contact with the body's insulin. Another manifestation of the above is increased constipation, digestion problems and lack of sleep,

The spirit here fulfills the role of mediating as that cognitive force that allows us to appreciate nutrition differently. A more spiritual vision will allow us to see food as more than calories or nutrients, it is based on having a full knowledge of what we eat, how our body interacts with food and the mental state in which we find ourselves. It is the part of the system that connects us with health, beyond weight loss or improving our physical appearance.