The Mindset + Gut Health Connection
Have you ever considered the connection between your mindset and your gut health? That’s okay, and it’s not something that is really “spoken” about in the gut health world, because often the focus is purely on the physical. The one fact you are abundantly aware of is that you’re trying different things to heal your gut and it’s not getting better. But what if your mindset plays a much larger role in healing your gut than it’s been given credit in the past?
Healing Your Gut Starts With a Dream
Before you can really heal your gut – you have to first know what that looks like for you. How you envision your most vibrant, healthy self may be very different from how your friends or family imagine themselves fully healthy. Your dream life is different from someone else’s dream life. So how do you know where you even want to get to, and what a healed gut looks like for you? You have to dare to dream. I actually wrote an entire blog post on this – check it out here!
Hiring the Right Gut Help
Now that you have your big dreamy goal in place, let’s take a deep dive of one example of mindset: hiring the right gut expert for you. Currently, the medical world is set up in our society that as patients we do not take responsibility for our health. Enter the victim mindset: “Oh, I just go along with whatever doctor my insurance tells me to…I do whatever the doctor says, don’t ask questions, and try my best to follow instructions”. But this thinking is limiting you from achieving the results that you want… and you can break free from it. Now is the time to stand up and take responsibility for your gut health and find the right person that helps you get excited to take control of your health. A professional that has the necessary training to help you get the results you need – because this world is counting on you to show up as your most vibrant, beautiful self!
Finding Healing for Your Gut
Here are three key points to be on the lookout for when choosing a provider:
Your Goals, not Theirs
A great practitioner will ask you what you want to accomplish together. If their plan helps heal your gut… but limits your diet so restrictively that you can’t enjoy life, that’s not going to work long term. When you hire the right gut help, you need to meet in the middle…what are you willing to change/not willing to change to have this impact? Dietitians are often seen as “food police” but that is the opposite of what many clients find me to be! In fact, a big goal with my clients is oftentimes to eat MORE types of food — not less!
Adjust the Approach
Your health practitioner needs to be willing to adjust their approach and take a clear look at what you have tried and what you haven’t tried. The definition of insanity is trying the same thing over and over and expecting different results. Do NOT seek out a practitioner who wants to keep trying the same things former practitioners have already tried. Try to remove the emotion from it and ask yourself “What have I tried, what haven’t I tried”. You need a practitioner that will help guide you in this. Nutrition is both a science and an art form. Science will show us what is most likely to work; but at the end of the day, you are unique and have your own body. What works for one might not work for another.
In it for the long haul
If you are having chronic gut symptoms, your practitioner needs to be your partner for the long haul. But because you’ve been having symptoms for a long time, one 45 minute session isn’t going to help you get better. Nutrition is a science… but it’s also an art form. Because nutrition is both a science and an art, your plan will require adjusting and pivoting along the way. Receiving a diagnosis of IBS and then a handout on a low FODMAP diet just isn’t going to do it. Telling you the “what’s” – what’s wrong, what to do… without telling you how to implement those changes into your life is robbing you of the potential for healing.
And in my book, that is not only just not helpful… it is causing harm to you. Because of this, whenever you are ready to hire the right gut help, and in order for you to achieve your gut health goals, you need someone to help formulate a game place and walk along with you through the journey.
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