A Calmer, Serene New Year: How to Let Go of Health Obsession and Food Fixation and Sustain True Nourishment By Accessing Your Inner Wisdom

From FOMO to Inner Calm

As the holiday celebrations come to a close, preparations for the New Year have many people reassessing their priorities and what areas in their lives need some TLC. Although resolutions may be falling out of favor, with only about 30% of polled Americans expecting to make them, January 1^st still triggers reflections on endings and the possibilities of fresh starts.

Recent years have brought about many transformations and transitions worldwide, especially technological. We now have instant access to social media posts through the mini-computers at our fingertips. This makes it easy to be lured into the dangerous world of social comparisons. Although mindless scrolling may prevent boredom, and seems innocent enough, it can also rapidly and unintentionally feed into “FOMO” (Fear Of Missing Out). This can negatively impact our emotional health and steal our sanity.

Therefore, this new year, I want to offer you a different mindset for how you can seek to transform yourself to your highest potential. It can’t be found in gadgets that track your every step or in diet culture messages perfectly poised on Instagram. It can, however, be revealed through an ancient technology that is low cost. It is a technique that is available to everyone across the world.

The modality is simple. It’s pausing to take a deep, aromatic breathe to calm your mind and body and go inward with the aid of essential oils. Through this tuning into your inner wisdom, and silencing the distractions and external noise, you can discover what you need most, based on your personalized needs.

Topics in this video post include:

• How our health obsession can harm us and the pitfalls of “quantified ideology”
• How diet culture aims to always leave us unsatisfied
• Why we need self-care and stress relief resources to access our inner guidance
• A summary on the importance of self-nourishment, following our own truth, and nurturing ourselves

As always, all the links to the articles, research, and references will be posted in this accompanying article.

So, let’s get started.

 

Tracking Our Way to Wellness… and Insanity

The lavish parties, fancy vacations, and images of perfect homes that we are exposed to on our daily feeds can heighten our insecurities. In the healthcare space, we can equally feel unworthy by diving into the echo chambers advocating for heath purity and obsessive biometric tracking.

Seeking answers in objective data can be well intended, and even helpful for gathering clinical data and motivation. However, constant attention to numbers can also spur orthorexia, healthism, and competitive tendencies. “Quantified ideology” can also take our focus away from the basic foundations of wellness. These include:

• social connections
• sleep, rest, and recovery
• adequate nourishment that is sustaining
• managing stress
• taking time for pleasure
• proper hydration
• socioeconomic security

Although I have no qualms with trackables when used mindfully, they have their downsides when they are sought as “the answer.” These include:

• provoking anxiety
• making one obsessed with counting
• causing dependency on gadgets over one’s inner wisdom and body cues
• prioritizing numbers on a screen rather than a life that is balanced and well-lived

At some point, this striving to be overly healthy can become pathological. The line can be thin.

 

Will Healthism and Diet Culture Ever Let Us Be Satisfied?

Besides being inundated with resolutions and wellness goals, I would be amiss to not point out that the new year also brings many promises of weight loss by diet culture. By praising thinness and perfection, diet culture can keep us on our toes and constantly striving to achieve the ideal, which is impossible to attain for so many. Healthism, the belief that health is a moral obligation, can tag team diet culture. This destructive duo can multiply the shame of the majority of mortals who can’t live up to their unsustainable standards.

That is, if we don’t stop to question what they are “selling us.”

What if diet culture is wrong?

What if the problem is the fact that we are being “sold dissatisfaction”- with ourselves, our bodies, and our food, and that we keep purchasing it with poor results?

These are all topics found in Abbie Attwood’s latest post. It reviews:

• How diet culture will only be satisfied when we aren’t
• The madness associated with the constant changing of food rules and “good” and “bad foods”
• the shifting beauty ideals

These aspects all point to one thing- “there will always be a new way for us to be ‘not quite enough.’”  Abbie Attwood

We can take back control of our life and say yes to our peace by saying “no more” to diet culture.

We can stand in our power and decide what we need eat that sustains our body, how to best take care of ourselves, and to be satisfied with ourselves.

We don’t have to pay anymore with our mental and physical health by being obsessive about our health and weight.

The price is too high.

Read Abbie’s article and check out my other articles on diet culture here for inspiration to focus on self-care and true nourishment.

(Yes, I do subscribe to the belief that food can be medicine. However, this includes the aspects of pleasure and contentment, while avoiding diet extremes and healthism. See my post on personalized diets here.)

 

Self-Care and Stress Relief Resources for a More Nourishing New Year

When we take the time to fully nourish ourselves at the levels of the mind, body, and spirit, our own cup becomes full. Only then can we be truly present to ourselves and to others.

For this reason, I believe that taking time for self-care is one of most important gifts my clients can give themselves in the new year. If we are running on empty, it is almost impossible to be able to be available to the exquisiteness of the precious moments, feel grateful, find joy in our lives, achieve resilience, stay grounded in ourselves, and create lasting change.

By calming down the stress response with healing aromas and tuning in to ourselves, we can shift our life in a way that matches our own desires. This allows for lasting transformation because it is based on what we prioritize, not on what we think you “should” do or external pressures.

Our aromatic allies are my favorite integrative medicine tool to support others in feeling serene and re-centering. This is for several reasons. Essential oils:

• are easy to use and accessible
• complement other approaches
• act instantly to shift the mind’s perception of stress due to their aroma
• support the nervous system and hormones
• balance the mind and body
• enhance our insights of what we need in the moment

Below is a link to previous resources which can can support you in revealing what is best for you at this time.

Topics include:

• Essential oils for soothing holiday stress
• Essential oils for a stressed-out gut
• The science of gratitude and tips to ignite being thankful
• How essential oils impact the brain and how emotional oil blends change our perspective
• How essential oils shift our mindset to feel more abundant
• The benefits of using essential oils to spur self-gratitude

 

Summarizing the Importance of Self-Care and Finding Serenity in the New Year

Staying authentic to our values can be challenging in our modern world, which vies for our attention and strives to keep us dissatisfied. Marketing and diet culture disguised as wellness can feed on our insecurities and shame us for not living up to their unattainable standards.

When we are in-tune with our inner wisdom, however, we can have more meaningful transformations. By taking the time to “stop and smell the oils,” not only are we enhancing our emotional and physical resiliency, but we are also calming our minds and bodies to realign with our own values. From there, we can be empowered to decide how we want to move forward to create more joy in our life.

We deserve sanity, life balance, health, and pleasure.

We have “earned” our satisfaction.

Wishing you a very nourishing and happy New Year and many blessings.

Dr. Sarah

Note: Next year, I’ll be starting a regular series for my essential oils community members. Make sure you subscribe to my newsletter to stay in-the-know about this and other up-coming offers, promotions, and educational opportunities.