What is "Typical" is not "Normal"

By: Danielle

Health is a funny thing. We trick ourselves into believing we should feel a certain way, based on our experiences to date. For example, a lot of what we experience symptomatically, we tend to identify as "normal" in our lives. Be it acid reflux or headaches, PMS or bloating, Fatigue or Irritability, And the list goes on.

Yet these symptoms may be common or typical for you, but they are not necessarily "normal" at all. We're used to feeling 'bad'...so we expect and accept it. Sometimes it's just a matter of changing up some small things in our lives. It could be how we're sleeping, how we're moving, what we're thinking, and the most common culprit for our uncomfortable symptoms…is what we are putting in our bodies. Maybe we're getting too much of something and not enough of something else. Every BODY is different.

As they say, one man's meat is another man's poison. So what may feel good for your neighbor may not sit well in your tummy. Once we add/remove certain foods we can start to feel good. That is normal!

So if you're feeling blah, fatigued or not 100% …take the first step to pinpointing the culprit. I'm going to help by asking you to remove the common foods that wreak havoc on our health for about 2 weeks.

1. Gluten (wheat, barley, rye, even some oats if processed in a factory with wheat)
2. Dairy
3. Sugar
4. Corn (comes in so many forms in so many packaged foods)
5. Soy (also in a lot of packaged foods)

Then after a few weeks of testing out the removal of the above five foods with no improvement, I suggest moving to this list of nutritious foods which also tend to be common culprits:

1. Eggs
2. Nuts / Seeds
3. Legumes
4. Chocolate / caffeine

You may need to go a step further and keep a food journal to document how you're feeling after consuming certain foods. It may surprise you to see which foods (if any) are driving your less than optimal feelings – the ones that have become your normal. All I ask is that you don't accept them as your normal.