66: The 5-Step Healing Process
There’s a specific approach I take when working with clients:
1. Identify and Remove Stressors
2. Design Optimal Diet
3. Build-In Stress-Reducing and Oxytocin-Producing Activities
4. Add Supplements
5. Space and Grace (time to apply)
In this week’s podcast I’m walking you through the steps to consider when you’re seeking better overall health or beginning a healing journey.
EPISODE 66: The 5-Step Healing Process
SHOW NOTES
(0:00) Intro
(0:44) Welcome back to the club!
On today’s episode I’m going walk you through these general 5 steps and concepts I’m thinking about when it comes to helping people through a healing plan.
(1:34) #1. Identify and remove the stressors— the greatest burdens on the body:
Food:
The wrong foods place an enormous amount of stress on your body. Whatever you put in is what your body has to deal with.
If you keep putting in foods that aren’t really foods - fake foods, processed foods, fast foods - instead of Real Food, the way God made it, your body will eventually tell you what it thinks about that.
Your body’s voice is the feedback you get in your health. It’s not that your body is against you, it’s trying to communicate to you that something is wrong.
We want to remove the biggest dietary culprits - inflammatory oils, excessive sugar, flour and alcohol, chemicals, dyes…all of the factory made ingredients they stuff into a package of food are no bueno for the bod.
The next level would be to consider the top food allergens - wheat, soy, corn, dairy and eggs. More people than you think are sensitive and vulnerable in health when they consume these foods.
People are shocked when I run a food sensitivity test on them and find that their body is reacting to even healthy foods.
If you listened to the podcast I did on food sensitivities you’ll remember that I had to temporarily remove beef, blueberries, basil, squash...I mean, things that are really good for you. I’m going through this with my son right now. The problem I’m tackling with him is allergies and sinus problems. He is stuffed up more than he’s not, which stems from poor gut health and immune issues.
I did the stool test and the food sensitivity test on him and we are working through that health protocol now - but the first step was to identify the stressors, which we are talking about here.
(9:30) Systems of the body:
The next stressor we need to identify is what body systems seem to be out of whack.
The way I describe it to my clients is that we have to look at food as fuel and the body as the engine that uses the fuel. We want to put in the right fuel, but we also need to make sure the engine is able to utilize the fuel well.
The NAQ is a questionnaire about signs and symptoms you may be experiencing - again, these health issues, seemingly small or big, are the way that your body speaks to you.
By that, we can get a general idea of things that may be off in the body -certain nutritional deficiencies, poor digestive capability, imbalanced hormones, irregular cortisol.
We can get a feel for some of your body’s biggest engine problems whether it’s digestive, detoxification, blood sugar balance, hormones or immune function and make a plan to nurture those holistically to better health.
Other physical stressors can come from chemicals you may be breathing in or putting on your body every day.
Go back and listen to my podcast called The Liver Bucket— if your liver is overburdened and can’t detoxify well, this will create overall health problems.
Gut infections, mold, dental issues, heavy metal exposure
(11:59) More stressors….
We need to identify come from lifestyle choices: are you getting enough sleep? Are you working too much? Are you sitting all day and not moving your body? Are you getting too much blue light and not enough sunlight?
Sometimes we need to not only address the physical toxins, but also the mental and emotional toxins which play just as heavy a role in your overall health.
What toxic thoughts do you need to take captive?
Remember that stressful emotions and feelings produce chemicals in our body that can negatively impact health.
If your mind always goes to worst case scenario, that alone can cause more adrenaline and cortisol to be released in your body which can cause blood sugar problems, adrenal problems and hormone problems - all from your thoughts. Your body will respond whether it’s in your mind or actually happening.
We need to invoke some 1 Corinthians 10:5—We’ve got to release those thoughts that do not serve us or align to who we are in Christ.
We spend an entire month on this in The Christian Health Club in the fall. We work through a program I call Self-Coaching Christians which I’ve based on what I’ve learned in a life coaching group I’m in called Self Coaching Scholars.
You’ve got to remember that your actions start with a thought in your mind and if you’re not examining the thoughts that are leading you to decisions that are not good for your life, you’ll keep repeating them.
So that’s Step 1 - identify and remove the stressors. What is negatively contributing to your health and to your life? We can’t make any meaningful change or progress until we get a good grip on that.
(15:30) #2. Create your dietary protocol:
For most people that I work with it’s going to look like what we do in Feast 2 Fast. We want to create a plan that saturates your body in real food the way God made it - with lots of vitamins, minerals, amino acids and fatty acids but that also allows room for our ‘Heck yeah’ foods.
It’s a real foods meet real life approach
Sometimes, we may have to take more therapeutic measures. There are times when more extreme tweaks are necessary.
There are deeper dives we can take depending on those stressors we identify, but I find that most people respond well by starting out with something really doable and basic like F2F and then going from there.
Ensure a nice macronutrient balance of proteins, carbs and fats.
Get about half of your body weight in ounces of water each day.
Incorporate some fasting and by doing those things, we can see a lot of great results.
(17:51) #3. Build in healthy lifestyle and stress-reducing activities:
Prioritize sleep:
Sleep is an equally important input as food is.
You can eat a pristine diet but if you don’t get enough sleep, your health will be in the tank.
Most of your detoxification and overall body resetting happens while you are sleeping.
Optimally you’re getting at least 7-9 hours - maybe even more depending on what’s going on with your body.
One of the biggest barriers I see to sleep is blood sugar or cortisol dysregulation.
We can stabilize both through better nutrition but sometimes it takes adding in other therapeutic measures like light exposure and supplement intervention to help boost better sleep.
LIGHT!
We need natural light exposure and we need Jesus Light exposure - both on the daily.
Getting some sun into your eyes and onto your skin is incredibly helpful for Vitamin D production, setting your circadian rhythm so you have more energy and better sleep. I’ve done several podcasts on this including Syncing Your Cortisol, Salty and Lit, and Your Sun Prescription - go back and listen to those if you haven’t already.
Increasing Oxytocin Flow: this episdoe dovetails perfectly with what this step in the healing process is all about— building in stress-reducing activities into your life.
Oxytocin is our love and joy hormone - it’s like Jesus running through our veins. It’s the hormone that gives us the warm fuzzies and we want to do things that promote oxytocin flow.
We can do that through meditation - which to me means meditating on God’s Word, marinating in it so that we can soak it up and become it’s flavor of love and peace and joy in the World.
Exercise
Exercise is another great way to reduce stress and build health - your body is made to move.
Pick something you enjoy!
Ideally you combine some weight bearing exercise and strength training exercise.
Weight bearing exercise is an activity you do on your feet that works your bones and your muscles against gravity - that’s your brisk walking, hiking, jogging, dancing, tennis, etc.
Strength training exercise adds resistance to your movement to make the muscles work harder and become stronger. Remember in last week’s podcast on Why You Need More Protein, how I said getting enough protein plus resistance training is the biggest gamechanger on your body composition and that skeletal muscle is your organ of longevity.
The resistance can come from your own body weight exercises like pushups or free squats or you can add in weights, bands, machines at the gym...something like that. The combination is what’s best for your long-term health.
Grounding/earthing:
Grounding simply means getting getting your bare feet or hands or even the whole body into earthly elements like dirt, grass, sand, the ocean.
There’s nothing more holistic than syncing your body with the rest of God’s creation in nature.
(26:24) #4. Dialing in more customized elements
Supplements:
So a lot of people want to jump straight to supplements without considering these other important steps we’ve talked about. I’m pretty conservative when it comes to supplements.
Now believe me, there are times when I need to load you up. If we’re doing a gut healing protocol, that’s a pretty intense supplement load and schedule.
But unless I have hard data from testing, we’re going to keep it fairly basic.
A few of the supplements I end up recommending most to my clients are pancreatic enzymes and hydrocholoric acid, which is a major component of the gastric acid in the stomach.
So many people are lacking the ability to produce sufficient enzymes and stomach acid to break down food - if you have bloating, gas, burping, diarrhea, constipation, acid reflux, anemia, undigested food in your stool, depression, fatigue, skin issues— these are often signs you’re not breaking down food well. That is the very beginning of lots of issues with the gut and roots of illness and disease.
Enzymes and stomach acid are quite often needed by my clients.
Other supplements I recommend often are a bile supplement for fat emulsification and detoxification, a good fish oil, probiotic...
(31:59) #5. Time:
The last step of the healing process y’all is simply time.
People often don’t give themselves the space and grace of time to allow their bodies to improve and heal.
Your body has to unravel the damage, there has to be time for your body to catch it’s breath and get down to work.
Part of my job is to help hold that space for you— To be your nutritional therapist but also your health coach. To give you the tools but also keep you motivated and moving forward and reminding you to allow your body that grace and time to improve and transform.
God created designed our body with innate intelligence, to know what to do when given what it needs - real food water, sunshine, exercise, fellowship and rest.
(34:00) Closing Thoughts:
So whether you are simply seeking better health or have a condition or health issue you’re trying to overcome, please keep this 5-step healing process in mind.
Identify and remove the stressors, eat food that serves your body well, build in stress reducing and oxytocin producing activities, add supplements as needed and then apply it and give it time for transformation.
As always, I’m here if you need help, but you have so much power in your hands by God’s provision to put these elements in place for good health.
(35:28) Outro & Disclaimer
Thanks for listening! Have a healthy and blessed week!