As a holistic psychiatrist, I have a reputation to maintain! 😅 Not only am I expected to help patients regain their health, they are also looking to see how healthy I am! So, there's some pressure to be a model of healthy living, if you know what I mean...
But if you knew how poor my diet was and how much I hated to exercise as a child, you'd know this has been no small task. For example, when I was a kid, my parents fed me Twinkies and Hostess Cupcakes for breakfast.
Today, I thought I'd share my personal journey towards a healthier life: where I came from and where I am today.
My Own Journey Towards a Healthier Life
From sugar to smoothies!
Lately, I've been excited about enjoying regular smoothies through Daily Harvest (get three free smoothies with this link). The food delivery program provides just what I need to help me easily create a variety of smoothies from many different fruits and vegetables, something that I recommend to all my patients to augment their nutritional intake.
Smoothies give us high-density vitamins, minerals, and living enzymes with minimal digestion. Despite my advice to patients however, I had difficulty making smoothies for myself because most of the time, fruits and vegetables rot in my refrigerator before I can turn them into delicious smoothies. Daily Harvest solved the problem for me by cutting, freezing, and putting the fruits and vegetables in a cup that I could turn into a smoothie in 1 minute.
Often times, I also like to add carrot juice, almond milk, coconut water, protein powder, Organifi red and green juice powders, and fresh produce like cucumbers, bananas, and apples to the smoothie. All together, they make a super healthy drink.
However, I wasn't always so health-conscious. Before I became a holistic psychiatrist, I was a conventional psychiatrist who had chocolate candy in my waiting room and office. Every time a patient took a chocolate, I did too. By the time I was introduced to holistic medicine, I was eating chocolate nearly every day. Energy medicine helped me to heal from being a chocoholic by eliminating my cravings for chocolate through EFT. Organic trail mix soon replaced the candies in my office, and agave nectar replaced white refined sugar in my kitchen.
Drinking smoothies has significantly improved my physical stamina--which takes me to another thing I have been working on for the past year or two.
Exercise. I couldn't make myself go to the gym or even work out at home despite knowing that it was good for me. When I was a kid, I had to get up every morning to do Tai Chi with my brother (my father taught us). This happened every weekday from age seven to 14. When my father no longer expected us to do it anymore, we stopped. I don't know about my brother, but I never wanted to exercise ever again after that.
As a holistic clinician, however, I was recommending a regular exercise routine for my patients. Intellectually, I knew that exercise had many health benefits and I wanted to exercise, but I just lacked the will power to do it regularly. My solution involved having someone come to my home to exercise with me. Being held accountable worked for me. At first, I began by exercising for an hour twice per week and then went up to three times per week.
That's how I knew that the smoothies were making a difference: I was exercising three times a week, and it made my crunches less painful.
I feel happy when I am able to follow the same advice I give to my patients. Even though I have been taking nutritional supplements since 2002, there is no substitute for healthy food and exercise. I know that from personal experience.
As I continue to improve my health, I hope to change a couple more habits: eating too late at night and being a night owl. There's got to be a way to fix these bad habits!
May my journey towards a healthier lifestyle inspire you to find new ways to live a healthier, more wholesome life as well.