Step #2: Love Yourself and Your Body—Food, Weight Loss, Dis-ease, and More
We have established that health is a reflection of your relationship with yourself, and that health conditions are your body’s way of asking you to come back to self-love. Now we think it’s important to talk about why this is happening—why have so many people disconnected from themselves, and why does it seem so challenging to love oneself? As we’ve already mentioned, the lack of self-love comes from a feeling of not being good enough. Let’s exlore that a bit more.
“Love is the great miracle cure. Loving ourselves works miracles in our lives.”
— Louise
How many of us have grown up learning how perfect we are? How everything about us is beautiful, unique, and wonderful? The truth is that most of us have been brought up with messages indicating the opposite: that there are many things wrong with us. Whether these messages came from family, school, religious institutions, friends, or the media, it seems that too many of us have grown up with a firm belief that we are not good enough. So how can we be who we really are or trust our inner guidance if we feel that we’re not good enough?
In her best-selling book You Can Heal Your Life, Louise shares some very important exercises that we encourage you to do. Here are two of them that relate to what we’ve been talking about here:
1. Write down all of the negative beliefs you have about yourself and identify where they came from. Did they come from your parents, school, church, other authority figures, friends, or the media? Identifying where you learned these beliefs is one step toward realizing that these are just thoughts and they are not true. These beliefs stand in the way of your accepting and loving yourself. (Please note that at the end of this chapter, we are going to give you some affirmations to use for your mirror work anytime one of these beliefs comes up.)
2. Imagine a three-year-old child. Look at this three-year-old and think about what it would be like to yell all of those negative beliefs you carry at this tiny child. We all have a three-year-old inside of us, and when we continue telling this child that he or she is not good enough, it’s no wonder that we don’t feel well.
What if you told yourself how much you loved yourself instead of listing everything that is wrong? How do you think your life would be if you encouraged yourself and accepted yourself just as you are every day?
This is one of the greatest steps you can take toward creating good health.
The Media: Turning Off Negative Programming
Once you’ve committed to reconnecting to self-love, there is something you may become very aware of: messages in the media. Television and radio shows, magazines, and Internet sites are often geared to make money by reinforcing that you are not good enough. Advertising focuses on making you feel like less than the perfect person you are so that you will buy certain products or services. It plays into the part of you that believes the negative messages you learned growing up.
Since the 1800s, advertisers have used fear, guilt, and shame techniques to create emotional imbalance and compliance for their intended goal: to get you to purchase something.1, 2 The end result is to disconnect you from yourself, so that you feel like you need something to make yourself acceptable or better in some way. In his book Mind Programming, Hay House author Eldon Taylor describes how advertisers spent $149 billion on market research in 2007 alone, using psychologists and other experts to find out what would make people buy products.3 According to Taylor, they learn what makes us tick and how to manipulate our choices and behavior.
These messages of fear, guilt, and shame have shaped people’s lives, decisions, and attitudes in many ways. These negative messages often reinforce choices that are not in alignment with good health. They sell a focus on the outside—on how you look or what others think of you—rather than the inside, on who you are and what makes you wonderfully unique.
In her 2014 San Diego TEDxYouth talk, Caroline Heldman, Ph.D., shared some startling facts from her study about what happens when media ads portray women as sexual objects4:
— The number of advertisements that the average person is exposed to has increased from 500 per day in the 1970s to 5,000 per day today. In modern advertisements, 96 percent of sexually objectified bodies are female.
— Children from the ages of 8 to 18 are attached to technology for an average of eight hours per day, where advertisers can get to them. These ads have become more hypersexualized to cut through the clutter of other ads competing for attention.
— The more women are conditioned to feel like sex objects, the more they:
These are exceptional reasons to stop consuming damaging media and purchasing products that promote negative messages.
The good news is that you no longer have to be subject to this conditioning and can instead focus on love. As you move away from messages of shame and reconnect to your inner guidance, you get clearer about what you really want. You can choose to stop watching, reading, and listening to programming that only serves to reinforce negative thinking; instead, focus on cultivating positive thoughts that remind you that you are already perfect, whole, and complete in this moment.
The thing is, we are always in a state of growing, changing, and evolving, and it’s much easier to grow when you can accept and love yourself where you are now. Remember, you are perfect and lovable just as you are right now. The most stable foundation from which to change is a foundation of love and acceptance.
For 16 years, Heather searched for answers to help her recover from bulimia. And while she was successful on the surface and very optimistic, she held back some happiness and self-acceptance because of the shame and guilt she felt for having an eating disorder. She kept this secret locked away, worried that people would not accept her if they knew.
One day, she realized that the shame, guilt, and lack of self-acceptance kept her from fully enjoying her life. She began to wonder, What if I never recover? Could I accept myself anyway? Could I maybe just enjoy precious moments in my life anyway? What if I could love myself just as I am? As you can imagine, it felt a little scary to think these thoughts because most of us are taught that in order to change, we can’t accept where we are. However, this was the beginning of Heather’s recovery. The moment she decided to accept herself just as she was, something inside her shifted. She began to look at life from a more open, loving perspective. Within about a year, she was able to connect the dots that led to her recovery. Accepting herself did not stop her from looking for answers—it allowed her to love herself and her life more fully, which led her to a recovery that felt miraculous and simple.
Change implies that things are shifting and moving, and it often requires you to move out of your comfort zone. It is much harder to do this if you are constricted and bound by fear, guilt, or shame. You might take action from these places, but it’s rarely sustainable.
It’s time to put aside all messages that ask you to do anything other than love yourself and focus on creating a stable foundation for lasting change. Self-acceptance is an expansive feeling that can open you up to finding your own answers, beyond what “they” told you. The more you love yourself, the more you are guided to what is truly right for you.
Diets, Weight, and Health: When the Outside Is More Important Than the Inside
If you were to ask the average person what good health is, what do you think they’d say? Unfortunately, most of us have been taught that how a person looks determines whether they are healthy or not. And all too often, weight is the number one focus when it comes to health.
In 2013, the weight-loss market in the United States alone was projected to be $66.5 billion—and 83 percent of that market is geared toward women, many of whom make four to five attempts to diet each year.5 At the same time, obesity rates are growing worldwide and the World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that over 1 billion adults are overweight—at least 300 million of them are in fact clinically obese, with the numbers continuing to grow.6
With all of this spending and all of these diet attempts, why are the obesity rates increasing?
Because of the weight-loss industry, the fashion industry, and other media messages, many women find this to be their main mantra: I am not good enough. What’s the use? This kind of thinking can lead to them using their bodies as a focal point for self-hatred. Underneath all of this may be the thought If I were only thin enough, they would love me.
If this sounds familiar to you, perhaps you grew up hearing your mother judging her body or watching your friends go on extreme diets. Maybe, like Ahlea, you were a gymnast or in a competitive sport that would send you home if you weighed too much. Perhaps you noticed how people complimented others on weight loss or openly judged women because of weight or looks. It’s not surprising that some part of you would feel like weight is an all-important goal.
But the truth is, nothing works when one’s focus is solely on the exterior. Approximately 80 percent of all dieters regain the weight they lost.7 Embracing self-acceptance and self-love is the true key to both weight loss and lasting health. And here’s the other secret, the one that the advertisers don’t really want to tell you: what you eat matters (and we’re not talking about packaged food), because what you eat is a form of self-love.
Diets based on calorie restriction, packaged foods, and “no pain, no gain” mentalities are not sustainable.
The Only Diet that Works: A Media Diet
If you want to go on a diet, we recommend a media diet! Here, you’d abstain from any form of media that separates you from the lovable person that you are. The same principle is true for things you hear other people saying, or when you hear others judging one another based on looks. We invite you to surround these people with the energy of love. They are responding automatically to what they learned growing up, and they are likely judging themselves just as harshly, too. What others think is never as important as what you think and how you feel. It’s the only thing you have control over, and it’s a direct route to making choices that support your highest good.
Health is not a measure of what you weigh. It’s not about going through something painful for a number on a scale or a size of clothing. It’s not an outside job; it’s an inside job. Health starts with how you think and ends with how you feel. It’s about taking good care of yourself with the thoughts you think and the food you eat. And all of the little, loving things you do for yourself in between.
If weight loss is your goal, we’ll show you gentle, natural ways to achieve it and share some inspiring stories of people who lost weight naturally with a few simple changes. First, we want to share some better measures for health than weight. Please answer the following:
Your answers to the questions above are a better gauge on health than numbers on a scale.
Food Matters: If It Doesn’t Grow, Don’t Eat It
In the book The Hundred-Year Lie: How Food and Medicine Are Destroying Your Health, journalist Randall Fitzgerald details how he began seeing research and patterns that led him to investigate the relationship between manufactured food (or processed food) and health.
Fitzgerald found that three groups have great influence over what we eat: the processed-food industry, the pharmaceutical industry, and the chemical industry. Their goal is to convince us that their chemically created, synthetic foods are better than food grown in nature.8 Unfortunately, they’ve been very successful in reinforcing this belief. Some important historical occurrences have also spurred them on, like food shortages during the Great Depression and World War II, and in more recent times, busy working families.
Margarine is a great example. In the 1930s and 1940s, the Great Depression and World War II caused food shortages in the U.S. Since there was a shortage of butter, “oleomargarine” was a popular replacement. Louise remembers this white substance that came in a plastic bag with a yellow dot of liquid—she would sit at the table and squeeze the two together to get the yellow color of butter.
Over time, manufacturers made margarine with a yellow color so that it would look more appetizing; you may recall the advertising that came along with it. Margarine was touted as much healthier than butter, and many people bought into this belief. Then, decades later, the truth about margarine came out: this synthetic fat is actually a “trans fat” (we will talk more about trans fats in Chapter 5), one of the most harmful fats for your health.9 Experts are now agreeing that butter is better than margarine.
Below are some of the statistics that got Fitzgerald’s attention when researching The Hundred-Year Lie. Over the past 100 years10:
Experts from a variety of industries can argue over why these health issues have been on the rise at the same time as synthetic, manufactured foods have been introduced into our food supply. However, in the study on brain diseases mentioned above, researchers speculated that the results are thanks to a combination of eating processed foods and food sprayed with toxic pesticides.
Fast food and packaged food are thought of as convenient and often inexpensive ways to feed ourselves and our families. Many of us grew up eating these foods. They are made to taste delicious and last a long time; they’re packaged to look fun and exciting; and psychologists, scientists, and researchers have been employed to make sure that we’d want to eat more and more of them.
In the book Fat Land: How Americans Became the Fattest People in the World, author Greg Critser tells us that food manufacturers were having trouble because the size of the American population was not growing fast enough for their profits to increase. So what they did is focus on getting the average American to eat at least 200 calories more each day—by doing so, they could continue to make more money.11 In order to increase their profit margin, processed-food companies also add toxic chemicals to make food more addictive, change packaging sizes and colors, and use advertising and other sneaky techniques.
Every cell, tissue, organ—everything in your body—relies on nutrients from food. Without the proper nutrients, your body and brain no longer function at their optimal levels. One important message that Louise has shared for years is: “If it doesn’t grow, don’t eat it.” If you follow this guideline, you will be giving yourself a huge leg up on health.
Our bodies were designed to function using food and water found in nature. At one time, food from the land and ocean were all we ate. While manufactured food may have been created 100 years ago, modern humans have been around for 200,000 years. Our bodies have not changed, so what happens when synthetic foods are taken into a body that was made for foods found in nature? The body does its best, but we put it under a much greater burden and deny it what it needs to function optimally.
Client Stories
We believe that symptoms are the body’s way of expressing a deficiency of some kind. And your body is longing to be heard. Looking at diet, lifestyle, thoughts, and beliefs is where we always start.
Jennifer: Severe Acne and Rash
Jennifer, a woman in her 30s, came to Ahlea with acne and a rash on her back, face, neck, and torso. This condition had been going on for ten years and was devastating for Jennifer. She had been to every type of doctor and had everything from her skin to her kidneys examined. She had been prescribed various drugs and steroid creams, yet nothing worked.
Interestingly, Ahlea was the first practitioner to discuss diet with Jennifer. When asked about her diet, Jennifer said that she was eating a lot of dairy and that her favorite breakfast was granola with berries and milk, which she thought was healthy. Yet when Ahlea looked at the ingredients of this breakfast, she pointed out how much hidden sugar was present.
Because Jennifer was worried about making big changes, Ahlea asked her if she was willing to switch from conventional milk to organic almond milk as a first step. Ahlea also taught her how to add some healing herbs, turmeric (a spice that is wonderful for healing inflammation and the skin), and some kidney cleansing to her routine.
Within a week, the rash and acne were visibly reduced; within a month, Jennifer no longer even had acne or the rash on her face, neck, and torso. This really opened her eyes to the value of nutrition and organic food. She began to make more dietary changes, and the rash and acne completely resolved. Now if Jennifer gets stressed or starts eating too much junk food, the acne and rash may start to come back just a bit. After working with Ahlea, however, she knows that this is just her body loving her by reminding her to take care of herself. Jennifer now sees that she can adjust her food, thoughts, and habits and get right back on track with her health.
James: Alcoholism and Depression
James, a man in his 40s, started working with Heather because he had been diagnosed with depression, for which he had been prescribed medication. On top of this, he had a daily habit of drinking one or sometimes two bottles of wine after work. He had been in a high-stress job for many years and felt the wine helped him relax. When he started working with Heather, he was concerned about what he felt was quickly becoming alcoholism, and he wanted to recover from his depression.
Heather noticed that James was energetically sensitive and also very driven, a type A personality. She started by showing him how to create more of a work/life balance, and teaching him how to work with his intuition and sensitivity. He began to notice patterns in the way he was thinking, the food he was eating, and how he was working that triggered blood-sugar imbalances and alcohol cravings. This motivated him to implement a nutrition protocol that Heather designed to strengthen his blood sugar, heal his digestion, and balance his moods.
After two weeks, James showed up at his appointment with Heather and announced that he was off his antidepressants and feeling great. He was surprised that changing his diet could have such a strong impact on how he felt. Within the next five months, he reduced his alcohol intake from two bottles of wine to one, and then to the occasional glass. Within a year, he had stopped drinking alcohol altogether; was sleeping more soundly; and found that his moods, energy, and vitality were better than ever.
Most alcohol and addiction issues are related to severe blood-sugar and gut imbalances. Blood sugar becomes imbalanced when you are not fueling your body properly or have issues with digestion. (We’ll talk more about digestion, gut health, and blood sugar in the next chapter.)
You Are Worth It: Why You Can Afford to Eat Healthfully
Manufactured-food and beverage companies aim to increase profits by creating low-cost, quick, convenient products. Too often these days, it’s cheaper to buy packaged items than to purchase healthy whole foods, like produce and foods that are minimally processed, unrefined, and without chemicals. However, there are hidden costs associated with packaged foods. In fact, experts who care about the health of our worldwide population and of the planet are analyzing the true cost of junk food, fast food, and processed food. We’d like to share some of their findings with you.
In 2013, the Sustainable Food Trust conducted an international conference on the theme of “True Cost Accounting in Food and Farming.” The goal of the conference was: “Bringing together world-leaders from across food, farming, conservation, research, finance and government policy … to investigate why our current economic system makes it more profitable to produce food in ways that damage the environment and human health, instead of rewarding methods of production that deliver benefits.”12
While it may seem as if the United States has the worst food-related health issues, it is actually a worldwide concern. The Sustainable Food Trust conference highlighted many international food-related health challenges, including these statistics from the United Kingdom13:
In this report, the shift to a higher dietary percentage of refined sugar, refined salt, and processed foods were cited as the key concerns when it comes to people’s health.
During the conference, experts cited that while each of us may see a lower cost at the grocery store, there are much bigger hidden costs in our own health-care bills, such as insurance; our taxes (which contribute to health care, food subsidies, and disability costs); and the great burden on the environment.
Often we look at one cost at the grocery store and forget all the hidden costs in our lives. For example, when you’re eating healthfully, you often spend less on prescription drugs, trips to the doctor, beauty remedies (lotions, serums, anti-wrinkle creams, and the like), hair products, makeup, weight-loss aids, over-the-counter pain remedies, energy drinks, chiropractors, and other health expenses.
What you eat absolutely impacts your physical health, but there’s a greater benefit: the way you feel. Most people who adopt healthier eating habits say they feel better. Their energy, moods, and memory improve. They tend to feel more motivated and productive at work and at home. The benefit of feeling better is priceless.
In Interview with God, edited by Reata Strickland, there is a wonderful quote: “they [humankind] lose their health to make money and then lose their money to restore their health.”14
This is indeed what human beings tend to do. We think about the cost at the cash register and forget that we are a worthwhile investment. We often forget that our health is a product of what we think, what we eat, and how we live our lives. This is when we’ve disconnected from our life purpose as a whole and forgotten to love ourselves.
The greatest investment you can make for a happy, healthy life is loving yourself through your words, your thoughts, and your actions. A healthy body means a healthy mind: a healthy mind means more happiness and joy, and a healthy body means more energy and strength. Imagine yourself in a world where you and the people you share the planet with are happier, healthier, and stronger. How much support for each other and the planet could we provide when we start from a strong foundation of health?
You are worth the investment. Some people have told us that they don’t feel that it’s worth putting healthy food into a sick body. We want you to know that healthy food and thoughts are the way back to a healthy body. With every thought and every bite, you are training your body to move in some direction. You are worth the investment, no matter where you are starting from. It’s okay to start with a small investment, as change builds over time. Your body responds to changes you make with love, no matter how small.
Part of your love story is believing that you are worthy of goodness in your life, even if it costs a little more. You may find, like we do, that you start to prioritize your values differently, like eating at home more than eating at restaurants and shifting your budget to higher-quality groceries instead. (Note that we have many tips for you to eat healthfully on a budget in Chapter 5.)
Taking Time for Your Health Is Taking Time for Yourself
In addition to not wanting to spend money on foods that best nourish their bodies, people often insist that they don’t have enough time to prepare whole foods.
We completely understand! The three of us have been in a place where we’ve had to decide how to fit preparing food into busy schedules with work, families, paying the bills, running errands, business travel, and more.
Heather spent over 15 years working in the corporate world and, due to job offers and promotions, was in a constant learning curve to master a higher level of responsibility. In short, she was a self-described workaholic. When she learned that recovery from bulimia meant eating healthier foods and giving her body high-quality nutrients, she was working as an executive for 12 hours per day and most weekends. At the time her typical grocery shopping included all packaged and processed food, and mealtimes revolved around microwaves and fast-food windows. She had to completely overhaul her life, particularly the way she related to grocery shopping and preparing food, at one of the busiest and most stressful times in her career.
What happened was interesting. She got guidance from a natural-health coach, and started with a few easy recipes for soups and vegetables she’d never tried before and looked up how to prepare them. She asked for advice at the health-food store on how to choose produce. In fact, she had to ask for a lot of help, at home from her husband and at work from her employees and colleagues, which was very unfamiliar for her. She started working smarter so she could leave work earlier and stop working on the weekends, yet no one even noticed that she was working less. Her better health and state of mind allowed her to be more productive in less time. And she developed a love for cooking because it was the first time she was doing something so kind for herself. She was taking the time to heal, and to show herself that she mattered more than the self-imposed beliefs about all the work she had to do.
That year, Heather got promoted and her team was the most productive in the company. Not because she worked harder, but because she was so much healthier. She had a healthy body and a stronger mind that was willing to set boundaries and create work/life balance, which she implemented in her team as well.
Heather’s biggest discovery was that if you put yourself first, you can find ways to focus on what’s important and to take good care of the people who rely on you as a leader or even a parent. Feeling good has a ripple effect with many benefits.
Ahlea and Louise have similar stories of learning how much they matter when it comes to making healthy food. As we write this book, Ahlea is in her first two years with her first baby. She is bringing him up with healthy, whole foods, which often means that they are made from scratch. And she’s running a growing business. Like Heather, Ahlea has had to learn to ask for help, from her husband, friends, and family. She also makes gardening and preparing food part of the bonding process with her son. She brings him into the kitchen, where he stands in a toddler-safe learning tower to watch and participate in what she’s doing.
One of Ahlea’s greatest lessons in having a baby is that you have to accept where you are in this moment. Everyone has something or several things that compete for their time. Perhaps you feel as if you have so much to do and so little time. Remember, this is only a thought, and thoughts can be changed. If you have a goal to get healthy and want to prepare whole foods, start by accepting where you are, and then think about how you can incorporate small steps into your routine. Perhaps there are things you can let go of or people you can ask for help.
To that end, we cannot emphasize enough the importance of a “tribe.” According to The Blue Zones by Dan Buettner, the world’s longest-living populations all found, or were born into, a group of friends who supported their healthy habits and who helped them when they needed it.15 Knowing that they could ask for help and receive it when needed was key to feeling safe and living longer. So if you’re not sure of how to approach healthy eating, or you’re having trouble finding the time, call on your friends, a support group, or your social network to get ideas and support. Maybe you have a friend who knows how to cook and would love to come to your kitchen and help you out!
Louise is brilliant at creating a tribe of like-minded people. She is always pulling people together to prepare food and have fun in the kitchen. Whenever she’s learning something new, she brings in people who can teach her and her tribe helpful concepts, tips, and techniques. She’s always willing to learn new things and “be the beginner,” which is one of the keys to her health and longevity.
Since Louise is so busy with teaching and travel, she uses a calendar and schedules in time for what matters to her, which includes her time at the grocery store and in the kitchen preparing healthy food. This is a great tip: give your time in the kitchen and at the grocery store a slot on your calendar instead of leaving it on a long to-do list that might never get done. That is a great way to prioritize your self-care and make sure it happens.
Client Stories
Throughout this book, we’ll share stories of how people healed from so-called incurable conditions naturally, so that you can see how lifestyle, nutrition, and beliefs play a powerful role in your health. First up is Mary, who came to see Ahlea for treatment of lupus.
Mary: Lupus
Lupus is an autoimmune disease that is considered “incurable” by mainstream medicine and typically consists of inflammation; swelling; and damage to the kidneys, heart, lungs, and joints.16 Mary was in her 40s and had tried almost everything to treat the symptoms she was experiencing. Her doctor specifically told her that nutrition would have no effect on the lupus, but Mary’s inner voice was questioning that. She felt that how she treated her body must have some impact on her health, but she wasn’t sure where to start or what to do. That’s when she decided to go see Ahlea.
Like many people with autoimmune conditions, Mary looked perfectly fine, so her family and friends often accused her of being a hypochondriac. The first thing Ahlea did was help Mary understand that her body was telling her something with love and wisdom. Because Ahlea can hear the stories the body is telling, she listened to Mary’s body and shared the messages it wanted Mary to know. She also recommended ways in which Mary could talk to her family so that they would understand her situation and how she was working to resolve it.
Ahlea showed Mary how she was mineral deficient, which was contributing to her full-body aches and inflammation. Mary, a self-confessed fast-food and junk-food junkie, was resistant to changing her diet. So Ahlea encouraged her to start with just one change: giving up gluten. Gluten is protein found in grains that many people have difficulty digesting, so giving it up can often be the easiest way to reduce inflammation and joint pain and even lose weight.
Mary reluctantly agreed to give up gluten for a couple of weeks. She came back for her follow-up appointment very excited, as she had less joint pain and more ease of movement in her body. Pretty soon she was going for walks again because the pain was gone.
Mary was thrilled to realize that she was losing weight naturally and the lupus symptoms had dropped away. Like other clients with autoimmune conditions, Mary’s body will speak to her with lupus symptoms if she starts to go too far off track, so she’s learned how to adjust back to a healthy, loving lifestyle if that happens. Today, she truly understands how loving herself with a healthy diet and positive affirmations is the key to a happy life.
Empowering Yourself: Becoming Your Own Best Health Advocate
While the modern medical system does many things well, like saving lives in emergency situations, many of today’s chronic lifestyle conditions, such as type 2 diabetes, obesity, and cardiovascular disease, respond better to nutrition than drugs.17 Yet it’s becoming a well-known fact that medical doctors are not taught nutrition in medical school. In 2010, researchers did a study of medical schools and found that only one quarter of the schools offered the recommended 25 hours of instruction in nutrition, and some made it optional or offered none at all.18
With so little emphasis placed on nutrition in medical school, your doctor may not be fully up to date on how nutrition can influence your health. The good news is that this gives you the opportunity to become a partner with your doctor. The Internet has brought many benefits, including online support groups and the ability to research just about anything you want. In fact, a 2012 study done by the Pew Internet Project found that 72 percent of Internet users had looked online for health information within the past year; of those with a serious health condition, 60 percent got information or support from family and friends, and 24 percent got information or support from others with the same condition.19
These days, we have many options to learn more about our health. Louise has always been an avid learner, and health and nutrition are two of her favorite topics. She is currently studying homeopathy and the healing power of spices. She attends classes and trusts that the right people will always come along with the right information. And they do!
Louise’s passion for nutrition is one of the reasons she is so healthy, vibrant, and active at 88 years of age. Over a decade ago, Louise started working with Ahlea, and together, they have created a nutrition, exercise, and lifestyle routine that works for Louise’s schedule, which includes a great deal of travel.
Here are some tips from Louise on being your own best health advocate:
— Be willing to learn. You don’t have to have all the answers, just be willing to ask people or look the answer up.
— Ask Life to provide you with the right people to assist you in whatever you need help with.
— Use this affirmation: Every hand that touches me is a healing hand.
— Choose a doctor who you feel supports your vision of health and well-being. Choosing the right doctor for you goes beyond getting a referral from people you trust. Make sure this individual listens to your concerns and gives you the information you feel you need to make your best decisions. Does the doctor explain things in a way you can understand without talking down to you? Does he or she treat you as a partner in your own health? Do you feel comfortable asking follow-up questions? And above all else, are you comfortable with the steps your doctor is suggesting you take?
— Create a team. Your team could consist of a health expert you trust, along with knowledgeable friends or family members. Louise has created her own health team so that she has the support she needs to be at her best. Ahlea is the leader of that team and often will find others to come in as needed. Ahlea is also Louise’s medical advocate and goes to doctors’ appointments with her; in this way, Ahlea can partner with Louise and the doctor to be sure all medical advice is blended with a natural approach to health. This also gives Louise peace of mind that she doesn’t have to know everything, because she has someone with her who knows how to speak with doctors and what is in the best interest of her specific health goals.
— Keep a binder or online folder of your health tests. Make sure to get copies of any medical tests your doctor or health provider does. Ask questions about the results, and make notes so that you understand them. This way, you can review your tests whenever you want and can take them to a new practitioner, if necessary.
— Ask questions. Prepare questions ahead of time and ask them when you see your doctor. If he or she advises something you are uncomfortable with or unclear about, ask more questions.
— Get a second opinion. If you are not sure about advice from your health practitioner, get a second and even third opinion.
— Seek your own inner guidance. This one is important. If a doctor tells you something that doesn’t feel right to you, trust your inner guidance. Trust that you will find the answers you need. Louise, Ahlea, and Heather have all been in this situation more than once—take it from us, the most important thing you can do to become your own health advocate is to listen to your inner voice and trust its guidance.
You Can Heal Your Body: Moving Beyond Incurable Illness
You may already know that decades ago, Louise was diagnosed with cancer. At the time, she was scared, and yet she knew this was a huge opportunity to walk her talk. She already had a deep understanding of how her thoughts influenced her life and her health, and she suspected that Life was giving her a chance to prove it to herself.
One of the things you might not know about that time, though, is that in addition to working with her thoughts, Louise decided not to use a mainstream medical approach to treat the cancer. At that time, there was very little knowledge about natural treatments for cancer, but Louise’s inner ding said to look to nutrition as a form of healing. One of the protocols she followed was eating two ounces of pureed asparagus three times per day. Because of her teaching and travel schedule, this often meant carrying her food. She looked around and found that film containers (back when cameras used film) were a perfect two-ounce size, so she cleaned them out and used them to carry her asparagus. (These days, there are lots of new and healthy options for carrying food for travel, and we’ll share Louise’s healing asparagus puree recipe in Chapter 10.)
What Louise noticed during that time was interesting. As she moved into a full-scale trust for her work—a trust in her thoughts, her commitment to nutrition, and in Life to take care of her—her clients and students got even better results. If you’ve ever met Louise, or just seen or heard her teach, you may understand this. When someone truly embodies what they teach, there is an almost magical quality that transcends what is being said. We learn more and change more because we can recognize and feel what is being taught. This is the beauty of investing time in yourself, loving yourself, and trusting Life to take care of you. When you do this, you change your own life, but you also become a beacon for others, just by being who you are.
When she was 12 years old, Ahlea was diagnosed with muscular dystrophy, which weakens the muscles and can result in the inability to walk or sit up. She was told she would require surgeries on all of her major joints. Ahlea knew in that moment that this diagnosis was not true for her—she was adamant that she would not visit that doctor again, nor would she be treated through mainstream medicine. Fortunately, Ahlea’s parents had developed a deep respect for her intuition and alternative views on health after years of observing her within the family, with animals, and with her friends. They could see that she was determined to heal herself naturally, and they decided to support her and watch to see what happened.
From that point forward, Ahlea became deeply conscious of her body’s needs, nutritionally, functionally, spiritually, and structurally. She learned everything she could about physical and emotional health and focused on loving thoughts and self-care. Decades later, she is strong, vibrant, and healthy, and she too embodies what she teaches. Over the years she has extended her childhood gift of seeing into bodies into her work, so she can hear the stories that unlock other people’s ability to heal.
In the 16 years that Heather had bulimia, she had almost every scary, painful symptom you can imagine and had gone to countless doctors to find answers for them. The one thing she knew was that she did not want to be treated with gastrointestinal-system surgery (for example, gallbladder removal, which one specialist insisted was the only thing that would work) or drugs—so, like Louise and Ahlea, her inner guidance turned away from mainstream medical approaches and found her healing in working with her thoughts, lifestyle, and nutrition.
Heather developed a strong belief that people could recover from anything. Some experts told her that she desperately needed to commit herself into a treatment center because she could die at any moment. There were times she was afraid she was about to die, and during those dark moments, she chose to believe in her health. What she learned was to be unafraid of symptoms, recognizing them as the body’s way of giving clues for recovery. Today, her ability to see even the hidden symptoms in people’s bodies and minds allows her to support her clients in healing naturally from addictions and chronic health conditions.
You see, we have each had conditions considered “incurable” by mainstream medicine. In each case, we followed our inner guidance, and we’ve gone on to work with many others to support them in doing the same.
Now, it’s critically important to note that we are not saying to avoid medical doctors and medical treatments. We all work with medical doctors and we value them. We make sure our clients are working with their medical doctors as well, and we consider ourselves a part of their team.
What we are saying is that we truly believe there is no incurable illness. The word incurable means that something can’t be cured by any outer means at the moment, so the answer lies in going within. We believe that your body is just asking you to come back to a loving relationship with yourself. That symptoms don’t need to be scary; they can instead be a guidepost for when you are off track and need to make some adjustments in self-care. If you understand this, then you can allow your inner guidance to point you in the direction you want to take in your healing journey.
We also want you to feel comfortable researching and getting a second opinion about any diagnosis or drug you are asked to take, especially if your inner guidance is questioning it.
As we mentioned, Louise is studying homeopathy as we write this book, and one expert told her, “If you want to know your next health problem, look at the listed side effects of the pharmaceutical drug you are taking right now.”
In 1998, The Journal of the American Medical Association published a study finding that every year, more than two million Americans become ill and 106,000 die from the toxic side effects of correctly prescribed pharmaceutical drugs.20 This study only looked at pharmaceutical drugs properly prescribed by doctors and properly taken by patients. The study was not suggesting that people stop taking the drugs prescribed by their doctors, but instead, that the medical system should have better checks and balances in place to protect patients.
That’s the thing with pharmaceutical drugs taken for long-term, chronic health conditions. Instead of having a clear picture of your relationship to yourself, where symptoms are your guideposts to readjust this relationship, it’s like looking in a fun-house mirror—the picture is distorted by symptoms from the drugs’ side effects, and you lose the ability to truly know how your body is doing.
The more you listen to your body, the more it will teach you what you need to know for your health and happiness. While you may not be certain of how to listen to your body at first, we will share some excellent techniques later in the book to help you discover how to listen to your body and understand the signals it’s giving you.
When you learn to listen to your body and lovingly give it what it needs—and when you learn how to feed it with healing thoughts and food—your body responds with better health. Your body is always speaking to you with love.
Exercises to Love Yourself and Your Body
We have designed the following exercises to support you in creating a more loving relationship with yourself and your body.
1. Vision Exercise
Heather does a vision exercise with all of her clients because she finds that the first step to creating optimal health and lifestyle is to get clear about what we really want in life. Many of us operate based on what we think we “should” want or what others want from us. Or we find that we are unhappy and don’t know how to change.
“Whatever the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve.”
— Napoleon Hill
Heather was still in her corporate job when she went to a seminar about writing visions. She was very skeptical since she had done similar exercises before, but she figured what the heck, and went ahead and wrote hers. Her vision included starting her own business and living on a tiny Caribbean island, two seemingly impossible goals. Because she was not sure what she wanted to do besides her current job, she just focused on the kind of work she loved and how it would feel. She included how she wanted to feel about herself and her relationships, as well as how she wanted to feel physically and emotionally from a health perspective.
Heather focused on her vision each morning in meditation and read it at night. After a few months, she stopped reading it at night and just focused on her morning visualization. The more she visualized her new life, the more comfortable and achievable it felt for her. At the same time, she wanted to be practical, so she and her husband, Joel, began discussing ways in which they could manage moving to the Caribbean. How could they make it work financially? Would Joel be able to work remotely at his corporate job?
What they found out was that the simple act of focusing on what they wanted to achieve allowed them to set some practical goals. First they made a budget to learn what they had to change to make their dream financially feasible. As they looked at their current spending, they realized that they could drastically reduce their expenses. They wrote up a detailed plan that included the following: (1) selling their current home and most of their possessions, (2) Heather becoming a writer and certified professional coach, and (3) Joel getting the go-ahead to work remotely. While each step had its challenges, their intense desire to create a simpler life in the Caribbean allowed them to stay focused and believe in themselves enough to make big requests that they might have been afraid to make previously. This is not to say that there weren’t some very difficult decisions and fears along the way. And yet, the decisions and fears seemed small compared with their passion for creating their ideal life. Getting clear and committed about what they wanted seemed like the catalyst they needed to really change their lives.
Many people say that when you put your focus on something, you notice solutions you might never have seen otherwise. Heather and Joel felt that solutions seemed to pop up almost magically to make their transition much easier. A year later, the two of them were on a plane to Saint Martin. As they landed, Heather burst into tears. Joel asked her what was wrong, and she said, “I just realized that I’ve achieved most of my vision.”
Heather had left her job and started her coaching business. Joel had gotten permission from his company to work from the island. And that was when Heather realized that writing a vision is not “woo-woo.” Yes, it’s a whole lot of belief and magic, but from a practical perspective, it’s about getting clear about what you want and then creating a plan to get there.
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As a very simple example, you may know from work experience or even from having kids that clarity is very important when giving instructions. Would you tell your kids, “Don’t come home too late” without telling them what time you want them to be home? Would you tell your employees, “Do a good job” without telling them what specific result you want them to achieve?
Your mind works the same way. The more clear you are about what you want, the easier it is to put the right messages and affirmations into your conscious mind, so that your subconscious can carry it out.
While you may have a focus on what you want to do (such as a career) as part of your vision, keep in mind that the most powerful part of doing this exercise is to identify how you want to feel. So although a vision for what you want to accomplish in your life or career is wonderful, there is a journey and steps to be taken from where you are now to accomplishing that goal.
On the other hand, once you are clear on how you want to feel, you can begin feeling that way today. And the great news is, since your body believes what your mind thinks, a juicy, positive feeling can bring all kinds of benefits to your body and your overall health.
There are two key benefits to writing your vision:
Let’s get started!
Setting the Stage
Guidelines for Writing Your Vision
Alternative Option: Vision Board
If you tend to have better success expressing yourself in visual ways, rather than in writing, you can do a vision board instead. Follow the same guidelines as you would in the written vision. Start with a blank poster board and add:
Place your vision board on the wall by your desk or in your bedroom—anywhere you will see it often. Some people paste the pictures in a journal that they can carry around with them. Look at it every day, notice every detail, and believe in it!
If You Are Having Trouble with Your Vision, Consider These Questions
Is this the first time writing your vision? Don’t know where to begin? Here are some questions to get you started:
Then there’s the “Keep It Simple” option: You may want your entire vision to simply be about how you want to feel, with no emphasis on anything else. In this vision, you’d focus on how you want to feel from the beginning to the end of the day, or how you want to feel throughout your life. You might focus on how you’ll know you are feeling that way. (For instance, I feel loving toward myself, and I know I’m feeling this way because I am kind to myself. I say yes when I truly want to say yes and no when I want to say no. I feel a sense of ease in how I do things, and I know this because I have very little stress in my life. I feel happy and calm as I go about my day.)
Your Vision Is Complete—Now What?
— Once your vision is written or your vision board is completed, keep it nearby.
— Read your words or view your vision board every morning and every night.
— Consider doing a morning and/or evening meditation where you visualize everything in your vision being a part of your life today. If you aren’t ready to meditate or visualize yet, simply read your vision while breathing deeply as you read. Do deep belly breaths, where you gently fill your lungs with air and feel your breath filling your abdomen. If you are tensing your abdomen, relax and let your breath expand it. Feel your breath filling your body with the words you’re reading.
— Act as if you have everything in your vision right now. Since everything is energy, you are actually embracing this energy in the present to attract it in the future.
— Really believe in it! If you’re having a difficult time with this, start by being open to believing it and as you accomplish that, move into really believing it.
— Open your mind to the limitless possibilities Life has to offer.
— Take action. Take steps that will bring your vision closer. Look for anything that will bring the feelings or people or things into your life, even if it’s a small step.
— Focus on inspiration. Read books; attend seminars; watch programs; or listen to podcasts, radio shows, or other audio programs that inspire you!
— Pay attention to events. Start noticing when opportunities arise that will bring you closer to your vision—and take them!
— Pay attention to your thoughts. Catch yourself thinking thoughts that are negative and limiting and delete them! Replace them with positive affirmations or statements from your vision.
— Eliminate doubt. Look for proof that what you’re doing is working, and write it down in your journal. Proof is anything big or small that shows you’re moving toward your vision. It may be that you are actually feeling happier or calmer, or things may just get easier for you. Perhaps some magical things are happening in your life. Even if they feel very small compared to what’s in your vision, they are still signs that Life loves you and is taking care of you. The more you notice signs each day, the less doubt and more belief you’ll have. The stronger your belief, the easier it is to create the life you want.
— Record and celebrate your results. Keep notes in your journal about your progress. Notice the miracles that start to happen in your life, however small. Keep a record so that you can see how far you’ve come. Celebrate the miracles that happen. Sometimes you may even forget how you used to be—your journal will show you how much you have shifted by believing in your ability to create the life you love!
2. Affirmations
Here are some affirmations that will help you love yourself and your body more. Pick one to begin with; you can choose more when you feel ready. Say these affirmations as you look in the mirror. Practice them throughout the day, anytime you feel you need them.
Judgment and Compassion
We are going to start with Louise’s affirmations on judgment and compassion because we find that those who judge others are often the most critical of themselves. Learning to stop judging is a great way to develop more compassion.
Often, when you think that something is wrong with yourself or someone else, it is really an expression of individuality. Every human being is unique and special, just as no two snowflakes are alike. We are meant to be different. When you can accept this, there is no comparison and no competition.
Affirm:
I am willing to release the feeling that I am unworthy.
I see myself and others with compassion and understanding.
The people in my life are really mirrors of me.
This allows me the opportunity to grow and change.
I have compassion for my parents’ childhoods. I now know that I chose them because
they were perfect for what I had to learn. I forgive them and set them and myself free.
There is no competition, no comparison,
for we are all different and meant to be that way.
I accept my uniqueness, and I accept the uniqueness of others.
Loving people fill my life, and I find myself easily expressing love to others.
I am worthy of the very best in life, and I now lovingly allow myself to accept it.
I radiate acceptance, and I am deeply loved by others.
My heart is open—I love myself, I love others, and others love me.
The subconscious mind has no sense of humor and does not know false from true. It only accepts what you say and think as fact, and this is the material from which it builds. As you say these affirmations, trust that you are planting seeds in the fertile soil of your subconscious mind. These affirmations can help you have a body you really love:
I love you dearly, body. I love every inch of you.
I have a happy, slender body.
It is my joy to love you to perfect health.
I love my beautiful shape.
The more I love my body, the healthier I feel.
My body is such a good friend; we have a great life together.
I love and appreciate my beautiful body just the way it is.
I rejoice that I have chosen this particular body because it is perfect for me.
I create my own security. I love and approve of myself.
It is safe to be me. I am wonderful just as I am. I choose joy and self-acceptance.
Health and Nourishment
We all have ideas and habits around the food we eat and the thoughts we think about health. If you put yourself in the position where you know you can create healthy habits around food and trust that you can be healed, the right information and support will come to you. If you believe something is too hard, takes too much time, or can’t be done, your life and habits will reflect that. When you shift to believing it can be done, the how will show up.
Affirm:
Hi, body, thank you for being so healthy.
My health is easy and effortless.
I am healed and whole.
I am worthy of being healed.
My body knows how to heal itself.
Every day and in every way I am feeling healthier and healthier.
I love selecting foods that are nutritious and delicious.
My body loves the way I choose the perfect foods for every meal.
Planning healthy meals is a joy. I am worth it.
When I feed myself healthy foods, I nourish my body and mind for the day ahead.
Troubleshooting: If You’re Having Trouble Believing Your Affirmations
Many people ask how affirmations about loving themselves or their body work if they don’t believe it when they say it. First of all, be patient and kind with yourself. You are digging up years of negative conditioning, and it sometimes takes time and practice to plant new seeds in fresh, fertile soil.
One step you can take is to simply say, I am open to loving and accepting myself. When you begin there, you may find that being open to this belief allows you to move into actually believing it with time and consistency in your mirror work.
Another great way to start seeing how your thoughts can change your life is to depersonalize the whole experience. Louise suggests that you consider starting by believing that you will get a green light or a great parking spot. Since these have nothing to do with you personally, you don’t have to work through so much old conditioning.
Give yourself 30 days to practice focusing on getting green lights on your way to work or to the grocery store. Or focus on believing that you will find a great parking space. As your belief grows, notice how Life brings you these things. This is proof that positive thinking works, and it may help to give you confidence in how affirmations and mirror work can change your life and health in other ways.
In the next chapter, we’ll teach you more about how your body works, so you can create a strong foundation for health.
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