Your Body Has Rights Too

“My daughter has always been an overeater all her life. Ever since she was two, all she did was eat!” This was the statement made to me by the mother of a very depressed and mal-adjusted 21 year old woman. My face contorted as she told me about the lap band surgery she allowed her to have at 18 years old, her constant depression, body aches and inability to have friends or boyfriends. My first reaction (that went unspoken) was who fed her so much? Did she waddle, diaper-clad into the kitchen as a toddler and start making pasta?

My frustration is constant lately. We, as a nation, are not getting it! Food and over-eating are destroying us in so many ways, and we are purposely ignoring the devastation because we don’t want to feel deprived. I don’t want anyone to feel deprived either, but let’s change our minds about what we want! If we keep closing our eyes to this reality, we will be depriving ourselves of health and wellness, of the liberty of a free life, of goodness and peace of mind and most probably, self love.

When this woman spoke of her daughter’s mental illness, the drugs she was on and the special school she needed to attend as a teen, my heart was breaking. Why? Because I felt deep down that I could have helped them prevent almost all of it. This girl started out life with a disadvantage. He mother wanted to love her through food, but unfortunately, food is not love. Food is chemicals on a plate, and those chemicals can either help us or hurt us depending on our body’s foundation. Her daughter may have had a genetic factor or predisposition to depression and obesity, but that didn’t have to determine her life’s path. DNA is only a blueprint. I feel certain that with the right diet and amino acids, fine tuned to her needs, so many of her symptoms could have been avoided.

Throughout my time as a wellness coach, I have seen so many diseases and symptoms reverse, or at the very least, lessen in severity with diet change. Conditions like hormonal imbalances, depression, addictions, OCD, diabetes, even learning disabilities. Did you know that over 80% of rheumatoid arthritis is due to a gluten and/or dairy intolerance? So many aches and pains can be avoided by eliminating foods. How easy it is to just not put something in our mouths? Yet, we Americans can’t seem to stop ourselves from eating what we deem pleasurable. My question is, “How pleasurable is it to feel sick?”

Hippocrates, the father of medicine said, “Before you treat a sick person, first change their diet. If that doesn’t work, treat the illness.” He lived over 4,000 years ago and he knew then what doctors now haven’t even been trained to understand. But to tell you the truth, we don’t need them to tell us. We should understand this ourselves since we are the ones shopping for it, paying for it (in more ways than one), cooking it and eating it! Instead of believing the ads and the ignorance, we need to believe in our symptoms, which are our body’s way of telling us, “This is not good for me.”

The US Constitution states that it is your unalienable Right to pursue life, liberty and happiness. So what are you doing for your body’s constitution? What rights does it have? How can it stay beautiful, athletic, expressive, supple, young and disease free if you don’t make a conscious effort to take care of it? No, you are not having a bad day or a bad life. You are having a bad diet. We need to take responsibility for the state our body is in, and when we do, it gives us control, and when we take control, we can finally create change. Love your body. It is all you have in this world. Without it, you’re out.

Written by Donna Martini, March 26, 2012