chapter 3

Step #3: Know How Your Body Really Works—the Foundation for Health

If we asked you why you eat, how would you answer?

From an intellectual perspective, it’s easy to understand that human beings eat to satisfy hunger and fuel the body. Some of you might even say that you eat to be healthy. What you may not realize is that our food choices are more complicated than you think. We make over 200 decisions each day about food based on emotions, habits, environment, whom we’re with, and food chemistry (the food additives designed to get you to eat more).¹

“I digest life and assimilate all new experiences peacefully and joyously.”

— Louise

While that may seem overwhelming we’re going to keep it very simple here. Because there is only one emotion, one habit, and one environment to cultivate: loving yourself. When you practice loving yourself, you set the stage for making the best food choices. In this chapter, we are going to share how your body works, so you can love yourself with food that is the most nourishing for you.

Where We Got Lost, and How to Find Ourselves Again

Both experts and laypeople agree that eating a healthier diet is a great way to feel our best. So why don’t more people do it?

If we were to go back in time, before people moved into cities, before the Industrial Revolution and back to when people lived off the land, we’d find that our ancestors ate food that came from nature. Our agricultural-era ancestors had a connection to nature and ate what they grew. They learned to cook and prepare foods from scratch because that is all they had access to.

In her book Food in History, Reay Tannahill explains that the Industrial Revolution changed “the face of the earth.” The population grew dramatically in Europe (from 180 million to 390 million people) in the 1800s, people moved into cities, and a food crisis began.2 During this time, the focus of society was building machines, and people worked in factories instead of on the land. With less time and access to land, and a subsequent food shortage, machines were employed to manufacture food. Canning, freezing, and transportation efforts grew as food was imported across cities, countries, and the world.

To stretch food and lower costs, the first food shenanigans began. Local retailers would stretch cocoa powder by adding brick dust. Everything from mustard husks to sweepings from the store floor were added to stretch black pepper. Ash leaves were mixed into tea. And as late as 1969, an Italian manufacturer was charged with making a “Parmesan cheese” out of plastic umbrella–handle shavings!³ Tannahill calls this the period of food “adulteration,” and while there were many complaints and government policies enacted around it, the crisis to feed a growing population was the larger concern.

While the British government thought it was doing a great job feeding the poor, they realized they were wrong when 41 percent of the men examined for war duty between 1917 and 1918 were deemed unfit due to health deficiencies.⁴ Right around this point, the new science of nutrition was uncovering the need for vitamins and minerals, but the challenge of feeding a growing population and keeping them healthy became its own battleground, one that still exists today.

It’s no surprise that there would be so much confusion about what to eat and how to nourish our bodies. At one time, nature’s food was all people had. Today, we still have those options, but we also have what social scientist Claude Fischler calls UFOs, or “unidentified food objects.”⁵ We no longer know what’s in our food.

Fischler’s views were aptly summed up in an article by Ashley Braun: “What happened with food in the West is that food became disenchanted…. When we grab food without thinking, without ritual, there is a loss of meaning…. When food is commodified and processed, it retreats into a black box. We are what we eat and if we don’t know what we eat …”⁶

We believe that the disconnection from real, all-natural, nourishing food is creating a focus on eating for taste and convenience, rather than health. For many of you who do eat for health, we know it can be confusing to know how to eat with all the mixed messages today.

The good news is that in the next two chapters, we are going to provide you with two simple yet important concepts that will empower you to make the best choices for your own health. In this chapter, we’re going to share how your digestive system works, so you can see how miraculously your body was created to support your wellness. And then in Chapter 4, we’ll teach you how to listen to your body, so you can follow your own inner guidance when things feel confusing.

We invite you to take a moment right now to put one hand on the center of your chest and the other on your abdomen. Take three deep breaths. Tell yourself how much you love yourself, and then ask if you believe you deserve to feel your best. Whatever comes up, tell yourself: I am willing to release the patterns in me that created these conditions. I am worth healing. I am worth the time it takes to learn how to nourish myself. I love you, body.

Most of us didn’t learn to nourish ourselves well. We learned about food from advertisements, our families, and our friends. We ate what was convenient. Very likely, we were never taught how our bodies worked and what they truly needed to feel calm and balanced.

One of the most important things you can be aware of when it comes to the thoughts you think and the food you eat is that this is what you are feeding yourself. If you are focused on thoughts that make you feel bad and foods that do not nurture your body, you are denying yourself love and feeding yourself misery. You deserve to feed yourself love and let go of the misery. Misery is not the path to good health or happiness.

There are many studies that show that acts of love, such as reducing stress, getting exercise, and improving sleep, can positively affect your digestion. A healthy diet positively affects your digestion, too—and a little-known bonus is that it positively affects your brain, including your moods, memory, and willpower! (We will focus on your gut-brain connection later in this chapter.)

We would like to give you the important highlights for how your digestive system works. We’ll keep this as simple as possible and then share some amazing ways that the brain and digestive system communicate with one another.

Digestion: Your Body’s Miraculous Way of Nourishing You

Your digestive system is the only system in the body that can function without the help of the brain; the gut has its own enteric nervous system, which is often referred to as a “second brain.”7 It’s one of the most important systems you can learn about, because it is through the digestive system that you get all the nutrients your body needs to look and feel your best.

The digestive system, also called the gastrointestinal tract (GI tract), is essentially a 25- to 35-foot muscular tube running from your mouth to your anus.⁸ Its job is to break down the food you eat into the building blocks for energy, healing, growth, good moods, and every function your body performs. Yet between one-third and one-half of all adults have digestive illness, and it seems to be a growing epidemic among children as well.⁹

Symptoms Related to Digestive Challenges

While you may recognize some of the wide range of symptoms related to faulty digestion, others may surprise you. They include¹⁰:

• Abdominal pain
• Arthritis
• Autoimmune issues
• Back pain
• Bacterial and fungal infections
• Balance and gait (walking) problems
• Bloating
• Constipation
• Crohn’s disease
• Diarrhea
• Dysbiosis (a microbial imbalance in the body that often causes digestive symptoms, fatigue, and mood issues)
• Fatigue
• Flatulence
• Food allergies or sensitivity
• Gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD), heartburn, or acid reflux
• Headaches or migraines
• Indigestion
• Infertility
• Irritable bowel syndrome (IBS)
• Leaky gut syndrome
• Memory and learning issues
• Mood issues or disorders (depression, irritability, and the like)
• Premenstrual syndrome (PMS)
• Skin problems
• Sleep problems
• Ulcerative colitis

Changing Your Lifestyle Can Improve Your Digestion

The best thing about your digestion is that the more loving your choices, the healthier it can be! Aside from your genes, the most common contributors to digestive challenges are lifestyle related. As we learned from Bruce Lipton’s work earlier in the book, genes are only a blueprint, and positive changes in your beliefs and perceptions can change your genes. The science of epigenetics is also uncovering more research showing that better nutrition can “switch off” negative gene expressions as well.11

Here are some of the major contributors to digestive challenges¹²:

• Alcohol abuse
• Chronic stress
• Cigarette smoking
• Dehydration
• Environmental and food toxins
• Genetic predispositions
• Infections
• Lack of exercise
• Low stomach acid
• Poor nutrition
• Prescription and over-the-counter medications

We believe that when you start by making loving choices in how you think and live your life, you are setting the stage for your best health.

The Brain: Where It All Begins

While many people will tell you that digestion begins in the mouth, it really begins before the act of eating. Digestion actually starts in your brain: when you think about, see, or smell food, your brain sends signals to your digestive tract causing your mouth to water, your stomach to contract, and your pancreas to secrete enzymes.13 Your body is now primed for digestion.

Your brain is also very involved with choosing the foods you eat. When you choose real food that grows in nature, you’re giving your body something that it understands. (We will talk more about food choices and willpower later in this chapter, and then in Chapter 5, we’ll give you an abundance of information on choosing delicious whole foods that can help nourish your body and boost your willpower. We will even include menus and recipes to make your choices that much easier in Part II!)

It’s helpful to know how important your brain is when it comes to your digestion. The body believes what the brain thinks, so if you visualize your meal digesting well and nourishing your body, you will also prime your body for better health. There are affirmations and meditations at the end of this chapter that will support you in doing this.

Let’s take a closer look at each part of the digestive system. On the next page, we have included a handy illustration that you may want to refer to as we move along.

The Mouth

Once you’ve made the decision to eat something, it goes in your mouth. Note that chewing your food well and getting it into a mash is one way to love your stomach, because you deliver the food in a way the stomach can best do its job. When you inhale your food or don’t chew well enough, you create a challenge for your stomach by sending it chunks of food that are too large. If you experience indigestion, gas, bloating, belching, or heartburn, you might want to take a look at how well you are chewing.

While you may have heard from a variety of experts that it’s best to chew between 15 and 40 times before swallowing, the important thing to focus on is chewing enough so that you can swallow your food easily. Over time, as you eat mindfully, you will learn what amount of chewing works best for your digestion.

As you chew, your mouth secretes saliva, which contains amylase, an enzyme to help initiate the breakdown of carbohydrates. Saliva also cleanses your mouth and teeth and signals your parotid glands (in the jaw behind your ears) to secrete hormones that tell your thymus to prime the immune system.14

Keep in mind that the health of your teeth and gums matter when it comes to healthy digestion. When you have healthy teeth, you have more surface area to chew better. Additionally, when you choose healthier foods, your teeth tend to be healthier.¹⁵

Health Alert: Silver Mercury Fillings and Choosing a Holistic Dentist

We recommend that you work with a good holistic dentist who understands how the health of your mouth works in harmony with the health of the rest of your body. This type of dentist can assist you in choosing approaches for healthy gums and teeth—and if you need fillings, crowns, or other dental work, they will help you choose materials that are most compatible with your body.

If you do happen to have mercury (silver) fillings, like so many people do today, and you are having health challenges, a holistic dentist can talk to you about the benefits of removing those fillings. Mainstream dentistry did not know in the past that mercury fillings could adversely affect people’s health. While the great mercury debate has waged for years, more studies have begun to reveal what holistic dentists and practitioners have known for some time: mercury fillings in mothers can affect the health of newborns¹⁶; they may also contribute to autoimmune illness, chronic fatigue, and other health conditions.¹⁷ The debate came to a head in October 2013 with the International Mercury Treaty, an international agreement to phase out the use of mercury fillings and mercury-containing products worldwide by the year 2020.18

To find a holistic dentist, here are some steps you can take:

— Ask your health-minded friends, family, or practitioners for a recommendation.

— Use the Internet. Do a search for holistic dentists and check health-minded social-media groups, forums, and review sites for information on the quality of practitioners in your area. There are also online directories where you can seek out a holistic dentist, including: Mercury Safe Dentistry, the International Academy of Oral Medicine & Toxicology, the International Academy of Biological Dentistry & Medicine, the Holistic Dental Association, the American Academy of Craniofacial Pain, and dentists recommended by the Weston A. Price Foundation.

— Meet with the dentist and see if they are willing to work with you and listen to your goals and concerns. Do they answer your questions? Are they considering your whole health (not just your mouth)? Do they treat you like a partner in your health?

— Look at their methods and recommendations. Truly holistic dentists do not use amalgam (mercury) fillings, do not promote the use of fluoride, seek out other alternatives before choosing to put on crowns, and tend to prefer implants as opposed to root canals. Holistic dentists use digital x-rays or dye staining to reduce your exposure to radiation. If dental surgery is required, they tend to suggest natural therapies to support it, such as vitamin C therapy, lymphatic massage, and a cleansing diet. Often, they will provide natural or homeopathic remedies for pain as well.

— Above all else, follow your inner guidance. Make sure you feel comfortable with the dentist and the approaches that are recommended to you. Heather had an experience where a new holistic dentist suggested she get a very invasive surgery to correct her bite so that she could chew her food better and improve her digestion, but that didn’t feel right to her. Another specialist said that since her digestion had already improved with her positive nutrition and lifestyle changes, her bite was probably not the root cause of her history of digestive challenges. Instead, he gave her the option of doing nothing if she wanted, respecting the adaptability of the human body. After researching the pros and cons of invasive dental surgery, Heather decided to follow her inner guidance, sticking with the dentist who was willing to work with her on natural approaches instead of surgery.

You may have chosen differently than Heather did. It’s not about the choice itself, but about listening to your inner wisdom. By all means, do your research and get a second or third opinion with matters relating to your health, but always trust what your inner voice is telling you, too.

Down the Esophagus to the Stomach

When you swallow, your food goes through your esophagus, which is like a tube. If food is too large or too dry, it can get stuck along the way. At the bottom of the esophagus is a protective flap (the cardiac or esophageal sphincter), which protects it from stomach acid and opens during peristalsis, the wavelike motion that propels food into your stomach.19

Common challenges that can occur during this point of digestion are difficulty swallowing and acid reflux, or heartburn. These symptoms have a variety of causes, including hiatal hernia, which is when an organ, typically the stomach, protrudes up through the opening of the diaphragm.²⁰ (We provide some solutions for acid reflux in Chapter 6. We also have some exercises you can do at the end of this chapter to support your entire digestive process.)

Next up is your stomach, located on the left side of your upper abdomen, below your heart. Your stomach secretes hydrochloric acid, which helps break down food into a blended, souplike consistency (called chyme) and kills bacteria in the food. It also secretes intrinsic factor (which starts the digestion of vitamin B₁₂) and the digestive enzymes pepsin (to break protein into amino acids) and lipase (for fat digestion). Finally, your stomach produces a mucus barrier to protect itself from the stomach acid.

Some common health challenges associated with the stomach stem largely from too little stomach acid. Surprisingly, ulcers can be the result of too little stomach acid, as opposed to too much. (In Chapter 6 we’ll show you how to do a stomach-acid test, as well as provide tips for supporting your digestion.) For a variety of reasons, including poor diet and aging, the body may produce too little stomach acid and too little intrinsic factor. Without enough intrinsic factor, your body cannot digest and assimilate vitamin B₁₂. Symptoms tend to be depression, memory issues, dementia, low energy, tingling extremities, nervous-system conditions, and more (see “Vitamin B₁₂: The ‘Master Key,’” on the following page).

One way to lovingly support your digestion is to reduce stress, particularly during meals. Stress basically shuts down digestion and lengthens the time food stays in your stomach, which can set the body up for gut challenges. Typically, food will stay in your stomach between two and four hours, then empty into your small intestine through the pyloric valve.

Vitamin B₁₂: The “Master Key”

While all nutrients are important, there are some that stand out because of the sheer number of systems they support in the body. One of these is vitamin B₁₂ (also called cobolamin). B₁₂ gets its master-key status from researchers because it plays a functional role in a long list of organ systems and can be used to correct problems caused by other issues, even if a person’s B₁₂ levels are adequate.21

Some medical professionals are calling B₁₂ deficiency a silent epidemic because even low-normal levels can cause symptoms. A Tufts University study of B₁₂ levels in participants between the ages of 26 and 83 showed that nearly 40 percent of participants were “low normal,” 16 percent had a near deficiency, and 9 percent were deficient.²²

While low B₁₂ and B₁₂ deficiency can happen at any age, it’s most common among the elderly, vegans, and vegetarians. It is estimated that over 80 percent of long-term vegans and over 50 percent of long-term vegetarians who don’t supplement with B₁₂ are deficient.²³

People with eating disorders, anemia, autoimmune disorders, infertility, diabetes, or a history of alcoholism—or those with gut issues such as IBS, Crohn’s, or low stomach acid, or those who regularly use antacids—could be at risk for low or deficient levels of B₁₂.²⁴

Some symptoms of B₁₂ deficiency are²⁵:

• Abnormal sensations (tremor, tingling, tremor, muscle spasms)
• Chronic fatigue
• Deep vein thrombosis
• Diarrhea or constipation
• Digestive pain (poor digestion, full or bloated feeling)
• Generalized weakness (weak arms or legs, difficulty walking)
• Heart attacks, coronary artery disease, or congestive heart failure
• Incontinence
• Infertility
• Loss of appetite, weight loss, or anorexia
• Memory issues and dementia
• Mood issues (depression, irritability, apathy, paranoia)
• Osteoporosis
• Palpitations
• Paralysis
• Premature gray hair
• Pulmonary embolism
• Shortness of breath
• Strokes or transient ischemic attacks (TIA, or “mini-strokes”)
• Tinnitus
• Vision changes or damage to the optic nerve
• Vitiligo

If you think you have a B₁₂ deficiency, talk to your health practitioner. Keep in mind that doctors may not recognize the value of B₁₂ testing, so you might need to work with a naturopathic doctor. The urinary methylmalonic acid (MMA) is the best test to get, if you do decide to get tested. Keep in mind that some people with certain genetic mutations that adversely affect methylation (a key body function that keeps all systems running smoothly) could have tests showing false normal or false high B₁₂ levels due to something called “methyl trapping.” The bottom line is that if you feel you have vitamin B₁₂ deficiency, work with a health practitioner who can guide you through testing, interpreting test results against your symptoms, and supplementation options.

If you do need supplementation, you’ll likely want to look into the active forms of B₁₂: methylcobalamin and adenosylcobalamin (also called dibencozide). These forms are the most bioavailable and can be obtained in sublingual form or shots (at the time of this writing, adenosylcobalamin is no longer available in shot form, but it may return to market in the future).

Because dosage is different for everyone (some people need to start low and slow, others need higher doses), we recommend that you work with a knowledgeable practitioner to identify the type and dosage of B₁₂ that is right for you.

The Small Intestine: The Body’s Factory

Once the stomach delivers partially digested food to the small intestine, it enters the duodenum, the first 12 inches of approximately 20 feet of small intestine. The small intestine is like a factory, responsible for digestion and absorption. Microscopic fingerlike structures called villi are like factory workers, producing enzymes to further break down food, absorbing nutrients that are needed and blocking those that aren’t.26

The wall of the small intestine acts as a gatekeeper, letting through water and needed nutrients and keeping out harmful substances. Poor diet, medications, and bacterial or fungal overgrowth can compromise the lining, causing leaky gut. Symptoms of leaky gut are varied but can include food sensitivities, allergies, headaches or migraines, arthritis, eczema, hives, and chronic fatigue.²⁷

Pancreas, Liver, and Gallbladder: Three Key Players Supporting the Small Intestine

While 90 percent of digestion is taking place in your small intestine, three most valuable players fill very important roles:

— Your pancreas is located toward the back of your abdomen, partly behind your stomach and partly connected to the duodenum of your small intestine. As food moves from your stomach to your small intestine, the pancreas secretes bicarbonate of soda (like baking soda) to neutralize the acid before it enters the small intestine. From there, it secretes pancreatic enzymes: protease (breaks down proteins), amylase (breaks down carbohydrates), and lipase (breaks down fats). If your pancreatic enzymes are too low, nutritional deficiencies can result, like B₁₂ deficiency. The pancreas also regulates blood sugar by secreting the hormones glucagon and insulin. Diabetes could result if this system is out of balance.

Symptoms that could indicate challenges with your pancreas are: pain radiating to your back, nausea, vomiting, fever, increased heart rate, loss of appetite, bloating, or foul-smelling or fatty stools (which have an oily appearance and may float).^28,29

— Your liver weighs about three pounds and sits on the right side of your upper abdomen, under your diaphragm. It is the largest glandular organ, and arguably the hardest working in your digestive system, performing over 500 known functions to support your health.

The liver, which is Ahlea’s favorite organ, plays the following roles: filters almost all of the blood in the body; creates bile to break down fats; breaks down hormones; processes all nutrients, including vitamins and minerals; and neutralizes toxins. This workhorse loves us so much that it makes 13,000 chemicals and 2,000 enzyme systems, and it can lose 70 percent of its function and still show no signs of disease.30

The liver will neutralize the toxins it can, and whatever it can’t neutralize will be stored in the lower lobe of the liver and other tissues in the body. This is why we recommend regular liver cleansing (we’ll share some tips on how to support your liver in Chapter 6).

Signs of issues with your liver could include: addiction to substances like nicotine, alcohol, or food you’re allergic to; changes to your skin (such as a yellowish hue or itchiness and inflammation), urine (changing to a dark color), or stool (becoming pale, bloody, or tar colored); fatigue; weakness; or abdominal pain (cramping, gas, and pressure).³¹

— On the underside of the liver is your gallbladder, a small pear-shaped organ that stores and releases bile to help you digest fats. The most common symptoms indicating that your gallbladder needs love are: gallstones, pain after eating (particularly processed fats or fried food), mild symptoms of abdominal pain that may radiate to your right upper back or shoulder, a lingering bitter taste in your mouth, constantly running nose, painful feet, sore tongue, rectal itching, or peeling skin on the palms of your hands.³²

The Large Intestine (Colon): The Catcher

Your large intestine is three to five feet long and runs up the right side of your lower abdomen, across the front and down the left side. Water, fiber, and bacteria are delivered from your small intestine to your large intestine, where 80 percent of the water is extracted and delivered back to your bloodstream and stool is produced.

Your colon is full of good bacteria (flora), which keep bad bacteria under control and help with peristalsis, the motion that keeps chyme, the partially digested food, moving through your colon. Nutrients are extracted from the chyme and the remaining waste (feces) is stored in the rectum. When enough feces has collected in the rectum, your sphincters relax and you have a bowel movement. (See the next box to learn more about what a healthy stool looks like, symptoms of constipation, and the metaphysical meaning of poop.)

Challenges can arise with colon health if chyme moves too quickly through the colon, causing diarrhea, or if stool sits too long in the colon, causing constipation. Diarrhea and constipation could actually be considered two sides of the same coin because if one is chronically constipated and compacted stool builds up in the colon, only watery stool may be able to pass through, appearing as diarrhea. Other challenges associated with the colon are: bacterial overgrowth, diverticulitis, IBS, Crohn’s disease, ulcerative colitis, inflammable bowel disease (IBD), hemorrhoids, and parasites.33

The Scoop on Poop

About 80 percent of people experience constipation at some time in their lives.³⁴ What some people or health professionals think of as “normal” when it comes to bowel movements varies widely, from three times per day to three times per week.

The fact of the matter is that what goes in, must come out. If you’ve experienced constipation, how do you feel? While constipation may not cause symptoms in some people, it’s not uncommon to have symptoms such as: bloating, abdominal pain or cramps, foul-smelling gas, irritability, fatigue or lethargy, inability to pass gas, rectal bleeding, or changes in appetite or vomiting.³⁵

The reality is that you live in your body, and you know when you are not feeling comfortable or something doesn’t feel right. (We encourage you to trust yourself when it comes to how you feel, and you’ll learn more about how to do this in Chapter 4.)

Luckily, there are also some signs you can look for if you are not sure what a healthy bowel movement should look like. Take a look at the following lists and chart to learn more.^{36, 37, 38}

Signs of healthy poop:

• Brown in color
• Well formed, like a banana with a tip at the end
• Consistency like toothpaste and well hydrated
• Slips out easily with no straining or discomfort

Signs of unhealthy poop:

• Stool that is pencil thin, loose like pea soup, hard, lumpy, or in balls
• Soft, foul-smelling stool that sticks to the sides of the toilet
• Whitish mucus in the stool
• Having to strain or experiencing discomfort
• A feeling of incomplete evacuation
• Pale, yellow, green, black, or red in color
• Feeling like you have to manually manipulate your abdomen to push stool out
• Feeling like you have a blockage in your colon
• Feeling like you have to extract stool with fingers
• Undigested food in stool

Note: in the illustration on the next page, type 4 is what a healthy stool looks like.

The Bristol Stool Scale was developed as a tool to assess gastrointestinal health. It can be a helpful way to identify how quickly stool is moving through your colon and, therefore, if you are tending toward constipation or diarrhea. The first two stool types would indicate constipation; types 3 and 4 indicate more normal transit time, with type 4 being the easiest stool to pass; and types 5 through 7 leaning more toward diarrhea. While this scale is not definitive proof of your digestive health, it can provide insightful feedback for nutrition and lifestyle choices.39,40

Your poop is just one sign of the relative health of your digestive system. Typical suggestions to improve the health of your stool and your digestive system harken back to the basics of health: eat more fiber, drink plenty of water, get enough sleep, exercise, and reduce stress. Surely, we can all agree that these are great guidelines, along with paying attention to your thoughts and doing mirror work! At the same time, there are other aspects that can create challenges to your digestive health, as you’ve seen thus far. The exercises at the end of this chapter, along with those in the rest of the book, will give you plenty of ways to improve your digestive health, including the health of your stool.

The Metaphysical Meaning of Poop

When Louise was asked to share the metaphysical meaning of poop, she said:

Bowels or poop are an indication of how we live our lives. All of life is: taking life in, assimilating what is good for us, and releasing and letting go of that which we no longer need.

When intake, assimilation, and elimination are all in Divine right order in my body, I feel great. There is nothing that feels like a really good poop. Then we flush and it’s on its way, never to return! This is nature’s way. I do not know of anyone who tries to go into the sewer to retrieve their poop.

If only we could treat all of our life experiences the same way. Intake, assimilation, elimination, and flush! How often do we dig into the garbage of our past, try to bring back a situation so we can rehash it, go over it again—worry some more—and look for a different solution, when it no longer exists in our life?

When I find myself doing this, I say to myself, “Flush, Louise!” and I bring myself back to the now. Now is where the action is.

Working with Your Body’s Loving Army

It’s worth noting that 70 percent of your immune system is located in your gut. This makes sense when you realize how many toxins work their way through the digestive system. Your miraculous body has been designed to keep you healthy and strong!

Your gut-associated lymphoid tissue (GALT) is like a loving army that protects your body. When Ahlea works with clients with low immunity, she can actually hear that their GALT feels like “unequipped, lonely soldiers.” A healthy diet and lifestyle is one way you can make the job of the GALT and your entire digestive system much easier. Imagine how much energy would be left over for you if they could take a rest from working so hard!

From your digestive organs to the 100 trillion bacteria that live in your gut, your body was designed to work in perfect harmony. Over the years, modern lifestyles have become busier, with more stress, increased exposure to toxins, less sleep, and a diet full of fast and convenient processed food.

We don’t go wrong when we live in the modern world. We go wrong when we let the speed, convenience, and fears of the modern world disconnect us from our bodies. For example, if you want a break, but you feel you must push on and “get through” a difficult week out of fear of some consequence, it requires disconnecting from your body’s cry for rest.

The truth is, we live in human bodies that have needs, and we inhabit a world that often asks us to put aside those needs and keep going. After a while, we fear that if we listen to our bodies, we will have some adverse financial, social, health, career, or relationship situation. Too often, we live based on what we fear could happen.

Most of us have not been taught to listen to our bodies and inner wisdom, so we don’t trust it. While we will talk more about this later in the book, we wanted to make an important point now: when you stop listening to your body or your inner voice, you move from harmony to disharmony. It’s harder to make loving choices for yourself when you don’t even know what your body is asking for. When it comes to your food choices, it becomes easier to follow the more obvious signals, like cravings, the need for speed (fast, processed food), or disconnecting from the sensory experience of food (eating while multitasking).

These behaviors set the stage for eating a nutrient-poor diet, eating too quickly, overeating, and a vicious cycle of cravings. What’s happening inside your body is even worse: your organs don’t know what to do with the chemicals in processed foods; your body can become depleted through lack of real, usable nutrients; and other symptoms, like fatigue, joint pain, irritability, depression, and weight gain, become your body’s only way to reach out to you.

Going deeper into your digestive system, your gut bacteria—once a health team working together to get you everything you need for good health—are waging a battle with “food-like” chemicals that they don’t know how to deal with. The good guys begin to die off, allowing the bad guys to overtake your system, creating a state of dysbiosis (the absence of harmony). These bad bacteria adore sugar because it helps them grow even bigger and stronger. They love a “messy room” to play in, and as they start partying in your system, you may begin to feel out of control, like you have no willpower and just can’t figure out what to eat or how to heal.

Have you ever de-cluttered your office and felt like you could work better, or cleaned a room and felt happier? If you are feeling confused about how to move forward in your life, or you feel that you can’t stick to healthy habits, cleaning up your diet is a great place to start because it essentially cleans up your digestive system and helps good gut bacteria thrive.

Digestive Health: Starving Bodies, Full of Food

There are three important steps in the digestive process for good health:

1. Food must be broken down into nutrients.
2. Nutrients must be absorbed and assimilated.
3. Waste must be eliminated.

When your diet consists largely of processed foods, you set your body up to have difficulty with all three steps in the digestive process. Over time, the body can become deficient in the nutrients it needs to stay strong, energized, and happy. Muscles can lose tone, caffeine or energy drinks may be needed to get through the day, and you may experience cravings and mood swings. Over time, this could progress to aches and pains, lack of sleep, constant stress or “frayed nerves,” and weight gain.

Did you know that cravings and overeating are signals that your body may in fact be starving? Now you can see how weight gain may actually be related to nutrient deficiency. However, keep in mind that weight alone is not an indicator of digestive health.

Now let’s say you are eating a healthy diet, but you still have trouble with the second and third steps of digestion—this is a sign that you may have a compromised digestive system. The fact that you are already eating a healthy diet is a beautiful way to love yourself, and you may want to continue by focusing on improving absorption, assimilation, and elimination. Make sure to read the client stories in this chapter to learn how others have healed their digestion. This may give you the encouragement you need to continue the healthy habits you have started!

Symptoms that you may have problems with the second and third steps (and may have dysbiosis or malabsorption) are:

• Abdominal pain and cramps
• Constant cravings (especially for sugar or carbohydrates)
• Constant hunger
• Constipation
• Diagnosis of parasites, fungal overgrowth, or bacterial overgrowth (candida, small intestine bacterial overgrowth [SIBO], Clostridium difficile, and the like)
• Diarrhea
• Eating disorders
• Fatigue
• Feeling simultaneously hungry and full
• Gas, including that which feels trapped and painful
• IBS
• Joint pain
• Low blood sugar or hypoglycemia
• Mood issues (such as depression, anxiety, apathy, or irritability)
• Skin problems (such as acne, eczema, psoriasis, or rashes)
• Stool changes (see “The Scoop on Poop,” and particularly the Bristol Stool Scale, earlier in the chapter to discover why the type of bowel movement you have can be an indicator of digestive health)
• Ulcers

No matter where you are in your digestive health journey, we will have some solutions for you in Chapters 5 and 6. For now, please take a look at the “Be Kind to Yourself” section earlier in the chapter to see how soda affects your body. Soda is full of chemicals that your digestive system does not understand. You’ll clearly see what happens to your body when you ingest harmful chemicals in processed foods and beverages.

Methylation: A Biochemical Process That’s Key to Your Health

You can see that your digestion is a very important process for keeping your mind and body healthy and strong. Another lesser-known yet critical function of your body is methylation. According to Dr. Mark Hyman, methylation is a biochemical process that occurs billions of times every second, affects just about every system in the human body, and is essential for health and longevity.⁴¹

We’ve already learned about Bruce Lipton’s work in epigenetics, which proves that environment and perception can change your genes. Some doctors refer to epigenetics as “a second chance that allows the body to make changes to its genes,” and this second chance is made possible through methylation.⁴²

Methylation is a set of processes that work hand in hand to give your system what it needs for optimal brain and body health. You can understand why when you see that methlyation is involved in important processes such as: gene expression; building energy, mood, and stress chemicals in the brain; digestion; detoxification; nervous system function; mobilization of fat and cholesterol; hormone control and production; allergic response; cellular function; homocysteine regulation; and the production and repair of proteins (including collagen and elastin).⁴³

According to Dr. Hyman and other experts, problems with methylation can contribute to a wide and seemingly unrelated set of health issues, including: birth defects (such as spina bifida and Down syndrome), miscarriage, diabetes, osteoporosis, gut dysbiosis, fibromyalgia, cancer, depression and other mood disorders, and addictions.44, 45

One of the more talked about methylation defects is called MTHFR, which stands for methylenetetrahydrofolate reductase. MTHFR is estimated to affect more than 40 percent of the population, but there are several other defects that also play a role in methylation problems.⁴⁶ If you or a loved one has a chronic health condition, autoimmune disease, an addiction, or autism, or if you find that you aren’t improving despite many efforts, we recommend getting tested for methylation defects. Women wishing to conceive a child may also want to be tested. The best way to do so is to work with a doctor who is familiar with MTHFR and related methylation-pathway challenges. Your doctor can recommend a methylation-pathway blood test or may direct you to a saliva test that you can get yourself by mail from 23andme.com.

The test you receive from 23andMe is a genetic one that provides information about your ancestry and other DNA, including your methylation genes. It’s helpful to work with a doctor or qualified health practitioner to interpret your results because 23andMe provides them to you as “raw health data,” which means you receive a bunch of letters and numbers (such as “rs4477212”). The raw data is very difficult for laypeople to do anything with, so companies like LiveWello (LiveWello.com) have developed online technology applications to take the 23andMe raw data and put it into a more organized report.

While many people are choosing to go this route for genetic testing, the data you receive can still be confusing. If you have a health background or are a skilled researcher, you can learn a lot about your own genetic health with a combination of the 23andMe saliva test and the LiveWello report. However, it takes a knowledgeable practitioner to interpret the data and help identify a natural health, nutrition, and lifestyle protocol based on your genetic blueprint and the symptoms you are experiencing. (To find a list of doctors around the world who understand MTHFR and related methylation challenges, go to Dr. Ben Lynch’s website, MTHFR.net, and select “find a doctor.”)

Remember, your genes are just blueprints—they do not dictate whether or not you can create a state of good health!

Diet, Thoughts, and Lifestyle Can Positively Affect Methylation

Methylation is an interesting and fairly new hot topic in health and medical circles. Much of the conversation is around gene defects and how to resolve gene expressions, or symptoms. What’s fascinating is that for most people with methylation problems, the prescription is to “heal the gut.” A healthy diet is one of the most critical ways to support methylation. And many people with methylation issues have digestive issues as well.

It may not surprise you to hear the additional recommendations for improving methylation: getting plenty of sleep, reducing stress, exercising … all the “basics” that we’ve heard over the years, regardless of the latest trends.

Now, there are vitamin and mineral supplement recommendations as well, but very few prescription medications are available. We are happy to see this because the focus on optimizing methylation may encourage mainstream medicine to embrace nutrition and lifestyle recommendations that have shown success, rather than pharmaceutical drugs. While we would not be surprised if pharmaceutical companies start to create drugs to improve methylation, we are excited to see more scientists and medical professionals teaching their patients how diet and lifestyle can improve their health dramatically. Although it’s currently rare to find medical doctors who work with patients to correct diseases associated with methylation defects, we are seeing more emerge. These doctors are excited about the successes their patients are having with all-natural supplements, nutrition, and lifestyle changes like stress reduction.

We are even seeing scientists talk about Bruce Lipton’s work and taking a more positive mental outlook to improve methylation.47

Besides Genes, Here’s What Impacts Methylation

Methylation is important for everyone to understand because it can be adversely affected for reasons besides a genetic expression. For example, the following also contribute to methylation issues⁴⁸:

• Poor diet
• Poor gut health (low stomach acid, malabsorption of food/nutrients)
• Smoking
• Alcohol abuse
• Medications (birth control pills; acid blockers; high-blood-pressure medication; and medications for cancer, arthritis, and autoimmune issues)
• Conditions like cancer, kidney issues, and low thyroid
• Pregnancy
• Toxins (in food, water, and the environment)
• Stress (chronic stress can even affect the genes of future generations)49

Methlyation is yet one more reason to make your health your greatest love story! Science is continuing to give us more evidence that healthy food and healthy thoughts are the keys to wellness.

Why Now? Processed Food Has a Negative Effect on Methylation

Now that you understand how a poor diet can negatively affect methylation, there’s one more interesting piece to this puzzle. Since 1998, the U.S. government has mandated that folic acid (synthetic folate or vitamin B₉) be added to flour and other processed cereal and grain products. The government chose to regulate this because folate deficiencies in pregnant women led to babies being born with neural tube defects, such as spina bifida.⁵⁰ While statistics for neural tube defects began to fall, other methylation issues cropped up that seemed unrelated because no one knew about MTHFR at the time. If someone is one of the over 40 percent of people who have MTHFR, they likely cannot break down folic acid.

In some recent studies done on women who took folic acid (synthetic folate) and ate folic acid–enriched foods (processed flour and grain products), unmetabolized folic acid was found in 78 percent of the participants.⁵¹

Unmetabolized folic acid causes the following symptoms⁵²:

• Low immunity
• Anemia, memory problems, and cognitive impairment from B₁₂ deficiency that is masked by folate levels that are too high
• Higher incidence and development of certain cancers
• Neural tube defects (Yes, the folic acid that was added to processed grain products can actually contribute to neural tube defects in babies with the MTHFR gene defect. This is problematic for pregnant women who don’t know they have MTHFR and are prescribed a folic acid supplement during pregnancy.)

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has guidelines for how much folic acid is safe to consume in processed foods, but it’s not likely that the average person knows what these levels are, or that they are aware of exactly how much they’re eating as they go through the day. Additionally, taking a B-complex vitamin supplement, a multivitamin, or any supplement with “folic acid” just adds to the problem when someone has MTHFR.

We suggest that you avoid folic acid in food and supplements, and instead focus on getting folate from healthy greens (romaine lettuce, parsley, collard greens, spinach, mustard greens, and turnip greens), asparagus, lentils, cauliflower, and beets.53 Some people may need to supplement due to pregnancy or gut issues; in that case, using the active form of folate, called methylfolate, is better than folic acid. People with MTHFR are able to process methylfolate. You can look for methylfolate supplements like: L-5-MTHF (important to avoid racemic R forms), Quatrefolic (glucosamine form), Metafolin (calcium form), L-Methylfolate, and 6(S)-5-Methylfolate.⁵⁴

We highly recommend that you research carefully and/or work with a knowledgeable practitioner before starting a methylation protocol. When your body starts methylating again, you may have symptoms or need to make adjustments, and it will help to have guidance for how to modify your protocol.

Diet, Thoughts, and Lifestyle Can Positively Affect Digestion

In her classic bestseller You Can Heal Your Life, Louise asked an important question about stomach problems and digesting: “What or who can’t you stomach? What gets you in the gut?” For decades, Louise has taught that there is a connection between your digestion and how you digest life.

Think for a moment. Do you like your life? Do you trust it? As long as you’re afraid of life, you’re not digesting it. If you find yourself worrying about the future or upset about the past, if you are constantly working a long to-do list without any time to relax, if you feel like no one is there for you, or if you fill your time with work—even work you love—with no time to relax and have fun, you are likely not digesting life.

The first time that Heather went to the health-food store with Louise, they were approaching the elevator with their shopping cart. There were only a few bags in the cart, so Heather asked, “Do you want to leave the cart and we’ll carry the bags?” Louise looked at her and said with a smile, “Let’s take the cart. I’m not into suffering.” At that moment, Heather realized how much of a habit she’d made of “shouldering” things—this went well beyond grocery bags to how she approached her life. Thanks to one simple, yet profound, statement by Louise, Heather realized that she could choose the easier path, rather than the one that required a great deal of strength and energy … or suffering.

Where can you make life easier on yourself? Where are you choosing to carry heavy bags, rather than taking the shopping cart and floating along?

Breathe deeply into your body several times and ask yourself the following: Am I feeling safe? Is life safe for me? Am I giving myself what I need? Am I saying yes to please others when I want to say no? Where am I denying myself? Sit with these thoughts for a few minutes and write down what you learn.

Remember the vision exercise at the end of Chapter 2? That is a great way to focus on creating a balanced lifestyle, with more of what you truly want in your life, while letting go of what you want less of. We have also provided affirmations at the end of this chapter, and we encourage you to continue doing mirror work so that you can learn to deeply love yourself and trust Life to take care of you. This step alone will go a long way to healing your digestion.

The Body-Mind Connection: Digestive Health and Your Brain

Have you ever had a gut feeling? Or felt butterflies in your stomach? If so, then you have experienced the gut-brain connection. Some experts once believed that issues in the brain should be handled separately from the gut, but more research is showing that if you want to improve your moods, memory, and brain function, look to the health of your gut.

There’s a good reason why. Let’s start as early as conception, when a baby is in the embryo stage. During this stage, a clump of embryonic tissue separates, and one becomes the brain (the central nervous system, which is the brain and spinal cord) and the other becomes the gut (your digestive system and its enteric nervous system).⁵⁵ Connecting your brain and gut is the vagus nerve—like a telephone line, it carries messages from the brain to the gut and vice versa. It’s also how the bacteria in your gut speak to your brain.

Michael Gershon, professor and chair of pathology and cell biology at Columbia University, has done groundbreaking work on how the gut’s brain, or enteric nervous system (ENS), works. Here are a few key facts^{56, 57}:

• The enteric nervous system is embedded in your entire digestive tract from mouth to anus.
• It relies on, and in many cases creates, more than 30 neurotransmitters that are identical to those in the brain. (Serotonin is one of these.)
• Approximately 70 to 80 percent of your immune system is located in your gut. This makes sense because your digestive system has a big job. It takes in food, water, and bacteria from the outside world and transforms it into nutrients to grow, repair, and maintain the human body. This is the true definition of the old adage “You are what you eat.”
• Approximately 90 percent of the body’s serotonin is located in your gut. Serotonin helps regulate mood, sleep, and learning, and can influence your happiness and self-esteem. Serotonin also plays a critical role in digestion by helping to secrete enzymes that help you digest food.
• Your gut sends signals to your brain that directly affect feelings of sadness or stress, even influencing learning, memory, and your ability to make decisions. In turn, your brain’s emotions affect your digestive tract. Anger, anxiety, sadness, joy, and other emotions can trigger symptoms in your gut.

Today, more studies are showing that food affects mood and that gut health has a big impact on disease, including osteoporosis, autism, depression, and autoimmune conditions.

Here are three studies that further highlight the gut-brain connection:

1. What you put in your stomach can change your mood. A study by Belgian scientists found that eating fat has the power to lift our emotional state and make us feel happier.58 This is why people go for comfort food when they’re upset.

2. Chronic stress can create gut-to-brain cravings. Studies on mice showed that under chronic social stress (like trauma from abuse or bullying), mice would go for high-fat, high-calorie foods and gain more weight than their less stressed counterparts.⁵⁹ Additionally, researchers found that it was the gut telling the brain what to eat and not the other way around. Under stress, the brain produces ghrelin, a hormone that stimulates hunger in the brain. Ghrelin makes food more exciting to the brain, especially when it is high in fat and calories.

3. Your diet influences your gut bacteria, and your gut bacteria influence your brain. According to neuroscientists, the good bacteria in the gut, which they call “the gut microbiome,” act as auxiliary DNA. Essentially, what you eat controls the makeup of your gut bacteria, and these bacteria can change how your genes function. In other words, if you are eating a diet that promotes healthy gut bacteria, they in turn can influence a healthy body, regardless of your genetic predispositions.60

Another important takeaway from the studies in neuroscience is that your gut bacteria are constantly speaking to your brain. The gut microbiome influences how the brain is wired from infancy to adulthood, along with moods, the ability to learn, memory, and how to deal with stress. When the gut microbiome is healthy, it sends happy signals to the brain; when it’s unhealthy, it can send signals of anxiety. Because of this signaling, neuroscientists are starting to investigate how to manage gut bacteria to treat mood and stress-related disorders, such as depression, IBS, and IBD.⁶¹

In other words, what you eat matters. What you digest or absorb matters. Your gut is responsible for how you feel, how you act, what you focus on, whether you sleep or not, your overall health, and your overall enjoyment of life. When you take care of your gut, you take care of your whole body-mind.

Reaching Your Goals: How Your Gut Impacts Your Willpower

For years, Louise has been teaching that everything is thoughts and food. She has always intuitively known about the gut-brain connection because she experienced it herself when she changed her diet. When people come to her and say, “I’m having a hard time sticking to my affirmations. They don’t seem to work for me, so what can I do?” Louise’s reply is, “What did you have for breakfast?” (You can imagine the look of surprise on their face!)

What happens next is a very interesting discussion about how changing the person’s diet can support them to be at their best. It can support how they think, how they feel, how focused they are, and how happy they are. And guess what else it affects? Their willpower.

If you want to stick to something or reach a goal, your gut has a bigger role than you think.

Willpower is one of the most studied topics in social science because experts believe that in addition to intelligence, it is one of the most important attributes for success in life. Willpower is defined as self-control or your ability to overcome temptations that might keep you from achieving your goals.

A 2011 Stress in America survey showed that 27 percent of respondents felt like a lack of willpower was the most significant barrier keeping them from making positive changes.⁶² A separate study involving over one million participants asked about the human virtues they felt they had, and willpower came in dead last.⁶³

In the book Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength, research psychologist Roy F. Baumeister investigated how willpower could be strengthened. What he found is that willpower is not this elusive quality that only the lucky have. In fact, it’s something everyone has, but it needs to be fed and, like a muscle, needs to be exercised.

Willpower needs to be fed because it—surprisingly—relies on blood sugar. If your blood sugar is low, you have less willpower; if it is stable, you have more willpower. Imagine the implications for dieters who are depriving themselves of food, even if they are getting hunger signals from their body. Blood sugar drops when you’re hungry, so if you eat when you’re hungry and raise your blood sugar back to normal, you are more likely to have stronger willpower.64 Baumeister stresses that what you eat matters, though. If you eat sugary foods that spike your blood sugar, you’re not creating sustained willpower; in fact, it’s more “boom and bust.” Just like your blood sugar can crash after a spike, your willpower can, too.

Now keep in mind that if you have malabsorption or gut dysbiosis, you may experience blood-sugar challenges even though you’re eating a healthy diet or at regular intervals during the day. As you heal your digestion, you will likely find that you also feel a greater strength of willpower emerging.

Of course, blood sugar is not the only factor when it comes to willpower. Baumeister notes that willpower is like a muscle and must be exercised to develop strength, but the challenge is that you use the same “muscle” to make decisions. So if you’re making a lot of decisions about whether to give in to temptation or not, you’re likely to fatigue the muscle and lose willpower.

German researchers found that people spend at least four hours per day resisting temptations in order to achieve their goals. The most commonly resisted temptation was the desire to eat. After that, it was the temptation to sleep, the urge to take a break for fun, and the desire to surf the web.⁶⁵ When the participants in this study tried to resist temptation, they succeeded only half the time. For this reason, Baumeister and his colleagues found that the most successful people structured their lives to avoid having too many temptations. One example is having only healthy food in the house—with no junk food around, these people had fewer temptations to overcome and could conserve their willpower muscle for when they really needed it.

Food and Weight: How to Move Into Slim Mode

In Chapter 2, we talked about how weight is not the main indicator of health, yet we know that many people strive to reach a healthy weight. One thing you have learned in this chapter is that a body starved of real, whole foods can suffer from cravings and overeating that lead to weight gain. And denying yourself food when you’re hungry, especially in restrictive diets, can blow your willpower and set up a vicious cycle.

So how does one become naturally slim? The first step is to love and accept yourself and your body, just the way you are, as you you’ve already learned. Another important step is to eat the foods your body actually needs to function properly. In other words, making choices about health is a combination of listening to your body and choosing real, whole foods that will support its needs.

When you count calories and follow rules, you are listening to other people, not to your body. You’re not taking into account special situations your body may be in that require more food on one day and less on another. Calorie counting and weighing food can also set up a vicious cycle of judging yourself if you eat more than what you were “supposed” to eat.

When Heather was recovering from bulimia, she had to learn to trust her body and her appetite. Before her recovery, she would meticulously count calories and follow all the rules about staying fit and thin. These rules made her feel like she was in prison, always checking to make sure that she was doing things right. Once she recovered, she began to listen to her body. At first, because of malabsorption and digestive issues, her body was very hungry. She had blood-sugar issues, so she ate more than she had in the past. In fact, her appetite was so voracious that it concerned her. She felt like once she started eating, there was no “shutoff valve” to let her know when to stop. However, she knew that she was making healthy food choices, and she decided to trust her body and see what happened. She knew that if she didn’t learn to trust her body, she’d never know what it was capable of. Affirmations and mirror work were key for her as she learned to trust the process.

It took about two years for Heather’s appetite to come back to normal. After more than a decade and a half of bulimia, her gut needed to heal, her blood sugar needed to stabilize, and the hormones that signaled appetite and satisfaction needed to balance out. During this time, she gained some weight; however, because she had researched the healing process, she knew that this was a normal part of how the metabolism heals.

In her book The Schwarzbein Principle II, Dr. Diana Schwarzbein explains that when you have damaged your metabolism, you will likely gain weight as you heal your body. She explains that as you eat healthier food, your metabolism will heal, and you can more easily reach your ideal body composition.66 No longer bound by calories and rules, Heather began to feel free to allow her body and her natural appetite to guide her.

When women have babies, they often feel pressured to lose weight right away. This kind of thinking can actually damage the metabolism. From conception to birth, women’s bodies go through a lot of changes, affecting every system of the body. When a baby is born, moms tend to get less sleep and are focusing on caring for this precious being around the clock.

In Chinese medicine, one of the key concepts in digestion and healthy weight is qi (pronounced “chee”), which means energy. All bodies are different in the need for qi, and some women’s bodies may have a good reason for losing weight more slowly after birth: to conserve qi and allow for better health in the long run.

Knowing this, Ahlea focused on eating healthfully and building energy after the birth of her baby. Instead of giving in to the external pressures of society for weight loss, she did her affirmations and focused on how miraculous her body was at producing milk to feed her baby and staying healthy after many late-night feedings. Her weight loss happened naturally, which allowed her to appreciate her body, rather than feel uncomfortable in it.

The key here is that the body is both mysterious and miraculous. When you love it and make loving choices, it responds in the time it needs to create sustainable, lasting good health and a naturally slim body. Take exercise, for example. When you start to exercise, there is a period of time when your body is building muscle before it releases the excess fat. During this time, you can feel as if your clothes are tight and you’re gaining weight. If this creates fear, you might take drastic measures or stop exercising altogether, missing the moment that your body balances out and is more lean than ever.

Remember, never use your body as a focal point for self-hatred. Instead, look upon yourself with love. Louise teaches that being overweight represents a need for protection—an overweight person seeks protection from hurts, slights, criticism, abuse, sexuality or sexual advances, and life in general. Louise had observed in her own life that when she would feel insecure and not at ease, she would put on a few pounds. Then, the excess weight would go away when the threat was gone. She realized that fighting fat was a waste of time and energy, and she watched over decades as people tried and failed at different trendy diets.

The exercises at the end of this chapter will give you better solutions to focus on. Loving yourself, feeling safe, trusting your body, and trusting the process of life will enable you to make loving choices for your body.

Client Stories

Ahlea’s ability to listen to the body and organs has allowed her to see, hear, and feel what is happening in her clients’ bodies when they are not making loving choices in their food, thoughts, and lifestyle. Some of the most common patterns she sees are:

• The liver gets sucked up into the diaphragm and becomes dry as it struggles to do its job. When the liver is dry, it creates a dryness in the duodenum (the first 12 inches of the small intestine), which puts an extra burden on the digestive process.
• Sphincters (the rings of muscle that work to open or close a passage in the digestive system, such as the stomach or anus) tend to hold on to things, losing their natural ability to allow digestive material to flow easily through the body (for example, things like acid reflux can occur when the lower esophageal sphincter loses its ability to function properly).
• Feces becomes hard, dry, and impacted in the colon, which can contribute to challenges like constipation and bacterial overgrowth.

As Ahlea works on her clients’ bodies and teaches them to make loving choices, the body responds. She’s noted that after about ten sessions, her clients’ organs begin to heal and thrive. The body is miraculous, and Ahlea has seen how beautifully organs respond when they are listened to with love and treated in loving ways

The following stories will show you how the digestive system responds to loving food, thoughts, and lifestyle changes.

Carter: Depression, Mood Disorder, and Chronic Fatigue

Carter, a man in his 70s, came to see Ahlea for depression, mood swings, and chronic fatigue. He was in relatively good health otherwise, but wanted to feel better and age healthfully. Carter’s diet was actually quite healthy, so Ahlea listened to his organs, found out what his body needed, and focused on supplementing his nutrition with herbs and an exercise routine that would support his body energetically and structurally.

Carter was enthusiastic about making changes, and he had great progress, feeling happier and more energized, and developing more physical strength and muscle tone. People commented that he looked healthier than they’d ever seen him look. There were still some challenging mood swings he wanted to smooth out, though.

Since Ahlea and Heather consult with one another on many cases, they felt it would be a good idea to have Carter’s methylation pathways tested. Not only does this help with mood issues, but they felt they could design a protocol for healthy longevity as well. Through genetic testing, they found that Carter had MTHFR. With some dietary changes and a protocol of vitamins, minerals, and herbs, Carter was able to smooth out his mood swings. His friends and family noticed changes very quickly and were very excited about his progress.

Carter is a good example of how a genetic condition that is expressing in symptoms can be shifted with good nutrition, improved lifestyle, and supplementation.

Becky: Bipolar Disorder

Becky, a woman in her early 50s, came to Heather to address a recent diagnosis of bipolar disorder, which is a major affective disorder with severe ups and downs in mood, energy, and daily activity.

Becky was on three different medications and following a vegan diet. An admitted workaholic, she had very little time to prepare food, so her diet included a lot of bread and junk food. In addition to her mood symptoms, she experienced bloating, excessive gas, constipation, terrible PMS, cravings, binge eating, and low energy. Becky felt hopeless because she thought that something was wrong with her brain, and she’d have to live with bipolar symptoms forever.

Heather told Becky about Dr. Natasha Campbell-McBride’s research showing that people who suffer from issues such as bipolar disorder, depression, ADHD, schizophrenia, and obsessive-compulsive disorder all have digestive problems. Heather also shared recent research about the links between bipolar disorder, mineral deficiency, and methylation. This immediately resonated with Becky, and she became inspired to make some changes in her life.

The first step Heather took with Becky was to change her lifestyle, starting with a more reasonable work schedule, better sleep, affirmations, and more self-care. This gave Becky more time and energy to take action with her new eating habits. Heather helped Becky slowly incorporate a healthier diet and supplements to enhance methylation so that Becky’s digestion, moods, and nervous system could heal.

One of the keys was making sure that Becky kept her blood-sugar levels stable and supplemented with vitamin B₁₂ and zinc, since she was not getting these nutrients from her vegan diet. Over time, Becky was willing to add some animal protein, and she noticed bigger improvements in her health and mood stability.

Within three months, Becky was feeling better. She began taking more time for herself and working less. Since she was still on medication, she included her doctor in every change she was considering. The good news is that he had heard about how genetic mutations could be behind Becky’s condition and was very supportive. Over the next year, Becky was able to make big changes in her diet and get off her medications. She felt so much better that she was committed to treating her body with love and following the methylation protocol that helped her recover.

As someone who travels a lot, Becky still has challenges sticking to her healthy diet and remembering her supplements when on the road—but she is gentle on herself, because she knows she’s still learning and trusts that she will get better with practice.

Cara: Cushing’s Disease and Eating Disorder

Cara, a woman in her 30s, came to Ahlea with Cushing’s disease and bulimia. Cushing’s disease is a condition that creates too much cortisol, the stress hormone. This excess cortisol contributes to extreme pain and symptoms such as acne, upper-body obesity, easy bruising, weak muscles, and thinning bones.67

Cara was full of pain throughout her body, including her joints and digestive system. The only food she felt safe keeping down was yogurt and diet soda. As Ahlea listened to Cara’s body, she could hear the fear in her organs. She also saw that Cara’s body was carrying resentment toward her husband.

Ahlea realized that this woman needed to start by feeling safe digesting life, so she gave her affirmations for mirror work. She also worked with Cara to design an initial nutritional program that Cara would feel safe following, to get some important nutrients into her body. Cara did agree to give up diet soda as a first step and replace it with water with fresh-squeezed lemon and a couple of high-quality green drinks each day.

Over time, Cara began to gain strength and energy, and her pain started to dissolve. As she felt stronger, she was ready to face the resentment she was carrying about her husband. Ahlea supported Cara in making lifestyle changes and communicating her needs to her husband.

As of the writing of this book, Cara is making wonderful progress and feeling better than ever as she continues her health journey with Ahlea. Part of this includes a methylation protocol to support the next level of Cara’s recovery.

Mindy: Weight Loss and Metabolic Healing

Mindy, a CEO in her 50s, came to Ahlea to lose weight and gain energy. She was a very driven woman who worked hard and ran a large corporation. She was used to taking action and getting things done.

As Ahlea listened to Mindy’s body, she heard her organs and tissues crying out for rest. Ahlea could tell that Mindy’s metabolism was damaged from over-work, over-responsibility, and a lack of rest and repair. Ahlea recognized that Mindy’s body was not going to cooperate with more action. At this point, Ahlea had quite a challenge. Her protocol for Mindy was one of rest, but she knew that Mindy favored action, believing that hard work and a vigorous exercise routine was the path to weight loss.

Ahlea asked Mindy if she was willing to trust that her body needed rest. Mindy wasn’t sure, but she agreed to follow Ahlea’s recommended protocol: to lie down and rest for their entire session.

Ahlea had Mindy lie on a yoga mat, and she did some energy work on Mindy’s organs. While Mindy remained skeptical, she kept coming back and agreeing to just rest. After a month, Mindy had lost ten pounds and looked fresher and younger. She was so excited about the changes in her body and mind that she was willing to move forward with the rest of Ahlea’s suggested protocol.

Mindy began to approach her lifestyle and her body with more kindness, realizing that rest, relaxation, and fun were important parts of a balanced, healthy life.

Exercises to Get to Know Your Body and Create the Foundation for Health

1. Tips for Improving How You Digest Life

Good digestion starts with how you digest life. When you are afraid of life or don’t trust it, you tend to focus on things that reinforce that belief. Remember, it’s only a thought, and a thought can be changed!

We have created a list of tips that you can follow to be kind to yourself, love yourself more, and learn to feel safe. Pick one thing that feels good to you from the list below and practice it each day.

— Continue your mirror work and affirmations (see the next section).

— Kiss your hand and say, “I love you.”

— Hug yourself.

— Tell your body how much you love it—when you look in the mirror, as you walk around during the day, as you exercise, or anytime you think of your body. Tell your body how grateful you are for how it supports you, how strong your legs are as they carry you from place to place. Pick something to appreciate, and tell your body how much you love it.

— Eat mindfully and stop multitasking. When you sit down to a meal, turn off the TV and stay away from your phone and computer. Sit in a quiet place, and focus only on your food and the sensory experience you are having. Give love to the food and your body as you eat. Truly enjoy your food! If you’re stressed, take time to breathe deeply and relax before eating, so that your body calms down and can digest your food.

— Fill your environment with things that connect you with the feeling of love. Write affirmations and post them on your computer, on the refrigerator, on your bathroom mirror, or in your car. Have keepsakes that you love in places where you want to be reminded to be kind to yourself.

— Choose to stop engaging with media that is violent or reinforces negative thoughts. Turn off the news, stop reading women’s magazines that focus on weight and perfection, and choose movies and TV shows that make you feel uplifted.

— Spend more time with friends who support you in making loving changes in your life, and spend less time with friends who are not supportive of your new habits.

— Practice trusting Life to take care of you. If you are afraid of something, repeat: All is well. Everything is working out for my highest good. Out of this situation, only good will come. I am safe. Say this as often as you need to in order to feel more comfortable and safe.

— Keep in mind that you are responsible only for yourself. Some people take responsibility for the stress, health conditions, and upset emotions experienced by their spouse, kids, extended family, friends, clients, co-workers, and anyone they care about. If you take in the stress and upset from others, it can have a negative effect on your own stress levels and health. You are essentially taking responsibility for their stress. Practice loving them instead of taking on their stress and burdens. You can do this by sending them a loving affirmation, such as, I lovingly release this energy. They are free and I am free. All is well in my heart now. Allow yourself to release the energetic stress and trust that the energy of love is the most healing of all.

— Ask Life for help. If you are feeling stressed or upset, notice whether you’re pushing to accomplish something. Move from pushing to allowing. Ask Life to help you make it happen, and focus on allowing it to be easy.

— Keep a gratitude journal. Since what you focus on expands, write down all of the wonderful things that happened in your day, as well as the things you are grateful for. Remember, one can have gratitude for seemingly small things, too, like a cat purring, a dog wagging its tail, a child’s smile, clean bedsheets, the healthy meal you had, a good book, and so on. If you do this each day, you can capture all the proof that Life loves you, which can help eliminate doubt. Also, you get to choose what you focus on, and gratitude is a very healing emotion that is so good for your body.

— Feed yourself love instead of misery. Throughout your day, ask what you’re feeding yourself. If you notice that you’re feeding yourself misery, shift into feeding yourself love with nourishing foods and positive, loving thoughts.

— Move from suffering to simplicity. Instead of choosing the harder approach, ask yourself how you can make things easier on yourself. Make it a game to find out how you can keep things simple and easy. Remember, there’s no need to suffer!

2. Affirmations

Have you been doing your mirror work consistently? This one loving act can set the stage for so many of your health goals. Here are two affirmation treatments to practice in the mirror, during meals as well as throughout the day. You can also use them as meditations.

“Accepting My Physical Perfection” Treatment

I am vibrantly healthy, happy, healed, and whole from the top of my head to my big toes. Every part of my body is in a state of perfection. My hands and arms embrace all of life with great joy. My nerves, muscles, and bones express comfort and ease. My mind and body are flexible and flowing. I have the freedom to move in any direction I choose. From inner to outer, my body is a joy to live in. My inner child is nourished, loved, and happy. I forgive everyone and everything I have forgotten to forgive. I see only perfection in my body and in my world. Life loves me, and I love life. And so it is!

“Healthy Body, Healthy Mind, Healthy Digestion” Treatment and Meditation

Close your eyes, take a deep breath, and quiet the chatter of your mind. Take another deep breath and tune in to your body. As you breathe, breathe love into your body and let it surround you.

Imagine yourself looking into your eyes with love. And now imagine having a conversation with yourself … allow yourself to let go, and affirm:

I am willing to let go. I release all tension. I release all fear. I release all anger. I release all guilt. I release all sadness and let go of old limitations. I let go, and I am at peace. I am at peace with myself and the process of life, and I am safe.

Now, see yourself talking to your body:

My body is a glorious place to live. I rejoice that I have chosen this particular body because it is perfect for me in this lifetime. It is the perfect size, shape, and color. It serves me so well. I marvel at the miracle that is my body. I choose the healing thoughts that create and maintain my healthy body and make me feel even better.

I cooperate with my body’s nutritional needs and feed it delicious, healing foods. I drink clean, clear water and allow it to flow through my body, washing away all impurities.

I deserve to be healed, and my healthy cells grow stronger every day. I am safe. My body knows how to heal itself, and I trust Life to support my healing in every way. When I need support, I attract the right people to help me heal. Every hand that touches my body is a healing hand, including mine. Every day and in every way, I am growing healthier and healthier.

I love and appreciate my beautiful body!

My digestion starts with my mouth. I love my mouth. I nourish myself by taking in new ideas. I prepare new concepts and healthy foods for digestion and assimilation. I learn to choose new foods that are delicious and supportive of my body. I have a good taste for life and for healthy food. I choose to eat slowly, savor my food, and chew well so that I can digest with ease. This is how much I love my body. I love and appreciate my beautiful mouth!

I love my stomach. It is with joy that I digest the experiences of life and the healthy, delicious food I eat. Life agrees with me, and I choose nourishing foods that agree with my body. I easily assimilate the food I eat at every meal. I chose the thoughts and the food that glorify my being. I trust Life to feed me that which I need. I am good enough as I am, and I am worth taking the time to digest my food. I assimilate this thought and make it true for me. I love and appreciate my beautiful stomach!

I love my liver. I let go of everything I no longer need, and I joyfully release all irritation, criticism, and condemnation. My liver knows how to cleanse and heal my body. Everything in my life is in Divine right order. Everything that happens is for my highest good and greatest joy. I find love everywhere in my life. I love and appreciate my beautiful liver!

I love my intestines. I am an open channel for good to flow in and through me—freely, generously, and joyfully. I create new habits of choosing foods that assimilate well in my body, keeping me energized, healthy, nourished, and strong. I willingly release all thoughts and things that clutter and clog. All is normal, harmonious, and perfect in my life. I live only in the ever-present now. I choose the thoughts that keep me open and receptive to the flow of life. I have perfect intake, assimilation, and elimination. I love and appreciate my beautiful intestines!

Next, see yourself sitting down to a meal. It could be any meal of the day.

I am so grateful to have this wonderful food. I choose the best food for my body, and I bless this food with love. I love selecting foods that are nutritious and delicious. Planning healthy meals is a joy, and I can easily make anything taste good. My body loves the way I choose the perfect foods for myself. Mealtimes are happy times, and my body heals and strengthens with every bite I take.

I am one with Life, and Life loves me and supports me. Therefore, I claim for myself perfect, vibrant health at all times. My body knows how to be healthy, and I cooperate by feeding it healthy foods and beverages, and exercising in ways that are enjoyable to me.

I listen with love to the thoughts I think about my health. I open myself to the wisdom within, knowing that Life will bring me everything I need to know to create new, healthy habits. I trust my body to guide me, knowing that whatever I need comes to me in the perfect time, space, and sequence for me.

The world I live in is safe. It is full of delicious, healthy options I can choose as I create new habits for my health. I choose to love myself with each thought I think and with the food I eat.

This is a new day. I am a new me. I think differently, speak differently, and act differently. My new world is a reflection of my new thinking. It is a joy and a delight to plant new seeds for my best health.

I have within me all the ingredients for good health. I now allow the success formula for wellness to flow through me and manifest in my world. I only need to do one thing at a time. I trust Life to guide me to each new step when I am ready. I am safe making changes at my own pace. My pathway is a series of stepping-stones to ever greater health, energy, and joy. All is well in my world.

I am not my parents, nor do I choose to re-create their illnesses. I am my own unique self; and I move through life healthy, happy, and whole. This is the truth of my being, and I accept it as so. All is well in my body.

I am open and receptive to all the healing energies in the Universe. I know that every cell in my body is intelligent and knows how to heal itself. My body is always working toward perfect health. I now release any and all impediments to my perfect healing.

I learn about nutrition and feed my body nourishing, wholesome, healing food. I watch my thinking and only think healthy thoughts. I release, wipe out, and eliminate all thoughts of hatred, jealousy, anger, fear, self-pity, shame, and guilt. I love my body. I send love to each and every organ, bone, muscle, and part of my body. I flood the cells of my body with love. I accept healing and good health here and now.

These affirmation treatments and meditations are incredibly helpful for loving and accepting yourself more and more each day. As you go about your day, make sure to pay attention to your thoughts, the choices you make, and any physical or emotional symptoms you have. These are indicators of your overall well-being and as you become aware of them, the idea is to make loving adjustments rather than judging yourself.

Natural Beings, Natural Foods

By now, you know that your body has two critical processes that rely on whole foods: digestion and methylation. So it bears repeating that if something doesn’t grow, don’t eat it! We are natural beings, and we run on natural foods. You have now seen why our food history is pockmarked with goals that have nothing to do with fueling our natural bodies and everything to do with figuring out how to feed a growing population. And you are likely very aware that many of us have come to rely on food that is fast, so we can get about our daily lives.

We invite you to take a deep breath in this moment. Put one hand in the center of your chest and the other on your abdomen. Breathe deeply for three breaths. Remind yourself that you are worth good health. You are worth investing time to relearn what we humans have forgotten in the past few centuries. You don’t have to do it all in one day. In this moment, all you need to do is tell yourself how much you love yourself and how much you love your body. Tell yourself you only need to take one baby step at a time, that you are safe, and that all is well in your world.

In the next chapter, you’ll learn how to listen to your body’s messages so that you can deepen your intuition and take loving action in support of your best health.

♥ ♥