This might surprise you, but this episode isn’t about diets but I’ll say this up front and get it out out of the way – what you eat is really important! I love the quote, “you are what you eat so don’t be fast, cheap or fake” and I really think Hippocrates knew what he was talking about with quotes like, “all disease begins in the gut” and “food is medicine”. Let me also declare that I am really passionate about people eating organic whole foods. The ethos of my business is gluten free dairy free and sugar free and organic food and all of those classifications are not because they are some new fad or that I like to be different or that I like being difficult to take out to cafes and restaurants or that I like to be controversial because it might resemble one of the latest diets causing a cat fight in the media but because I really truly believe in the health benefits of eating that way and I know that eating this way has vital for my health and for the environment. So if this episode isn’t about all of these things what is it about then?
There are so many other ways to nourish our lives. We need to look past food and see what else is going on in the other areas of our life. Depending on how you like to compartmentalise your life, most of us will agree on Family, Work, Social Life, physical activity, finances, and self-care. I’d like to argue for community and spirituality too and some might add education or intellectual pursuits. We compartmentalise these aspects of our life for clarity but really we all know that its hard to just have unsatisfied feelings at work and not have those feelings wash over into other parts of our life, like Sunday nights for example, or in the evenings coming home from work, or an argument or heartbreak being left at door when you walk into work.
So when looking at health and how wee feed our life I think it is really important to take inventory on how we feel we are doing in all the different areas on our life. A great way is with the Circle of Life that I was introduce to during my study at the Institute for Integrative Nutrition.  Joshua Rosenthal the founder of the Institute developed the Circle of Life and he refers to all the other ways we nourish ourselves as primary food, and food as secondary food, with the idea being that if you nourish your self in all the areas of your life, what you eat is secondary. Attached is a picture of the Circle of Life and I encourage you to print it out and then go and mark on each of the lines how satisfied you are in each area of your life with 0 in the centre of the circle representing not satisfied, to 10 being closes to the outside of the circle. Once you’ve done that, go and connect all the dots like a constellation map – you’ll start to see if there is something out of balance. Where there is imbalance come up with some ways you are going to address that and increase your number closer to 10.

Primary food Circle of Life_PDF
I also think it is worth thinking about whether you are actually unsatisfied in those areas of your life. A lot of us can think that our work place is the pits and our boss drives us mad or our colleagues are painful, and we try and blame other people for what is actually a problem we have with ourselves. Maybe you actually just aren’t aligned to that job but you’re too scared to quit your job and work in your business so do make it easier for you to cope and not feel responsible we start to think its because of everyone else our situation sucks.
Is there an area of your life that you are actually really unsatisfied in but you are misplacing it onto other people or situations that leave you looking like the victim and not responsible? This introspection takes a bit of self-awareness and journaling will probably be rea...