The purpose of this newsletter is to provide you with succinct and actionable well-being guidance featuring one pillar in each edition: Mind & Body, Relationships, Career, Finances, and Community.
My goal is to stimulate critical thinking about that it means to live well on your terms — to examine your life and confidently take charge of your well-being.
Let’s begin!
Your well-being strategy empowers you to interconnect five thriving life elements that encompass a well lived life:
- Mind & Body: You feel good physically and have a positive outlook on life.
- Relationships: You have supportive and meaningful connections.
- Career: You are energized by work.
- Finances: You manage your money well.
- Community: You feel a sense of belonging where you live and work.
Seven months ago, I made the biggest change to my well-being since I started practicing yoga in 2011 and the quality of my life has significantly improved since then.
This one change could have the biggest impact on your well-being: Cut processed and ultra-processed foods from your diet.
Particularly those that contain the following:
- Refined sugars
- Refined grains
- Refined industrial vegetable and seed oils
Refined in this context refers to foods that have been significantly modified from their natural composition, typically done through processing that includes extremely high heat or other methods to create a substance that will last longer and/or is cheaper to use than the “whole food.”
Before I made the change in my diet, I was experiencing bloating, stomach pain, fatigue, brain fog, insulin resistance, low energy, depression, headaches, and body aches on a regular basis. The refined foods mentioned above cause a myriad of problems in the human body, a few reasons include:
- Whole foods are stripped of nutrients, resulting in empty / bad calories
- Processing the foods causes them to be high in omega-6, which is pro-inflammatory and too much omega-6 can lead to systemic inflammation in the body
- Consuming processed and ultra-processed food causes cell dysfunction, which can lead to chronic diseases
For scientific data to support this recommendation, I highly recommend reading Good Energy, by Casey Means, MD. From the book:
Refined added sugar causes astronomically more deaths and disability per year than COVID-19 and fentanyl overdoses combined. We need to see refined added sugar for what it is: an addictive, dangerous drug that has been included in 74 percent of foods in the U.S. food system for which the body needs zero grams in a lifetime…sugar shows up on labels in fifty-six different names and sneaks in everywhere.
We are experiencing a health crisis in American. I implore you to be skeptical about government "approved" ingredients, examine food labels and avoid anything that contains ingredients you don’t recognize (or can pronounce!), and choose whole, organic, and sustainable options with less than five healthy ingredients whenever possible.
It took effort and discipline to make this change in my life, but now I cannot imagine living any other way. The symptoms I experienced before have disappeared and I am mentally and physically stronger than ever, at age 53.
This month in two workshop formats I will share how to create a personalized well-being strategy and bring it to life through proven methods. Join us and kick start 2025 as your year of well-being!
- Jan 15, 22, 29 Community Call Series with interactive discussions, strategies, and frameworks to help you create a roadmap for your well-being strategy. Register here.
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Jan 25 Well-being Workshop in Kirkland, WA with well-being strategies and framework, plus an all-levels vinyasa / yin yoga practice. Register here.
Wishing you peace, health, and happiness!
-Sharman
