Lycoread

How I healed and began listening to my body.

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After healing from 10 years of chronic, ongoing health issues, I’m constantly asked about what I ate, how I healed, and how I learned to slow down, love my body, and nourish myself. After diving into an anti-inflammatory lifestyle while doing every protocol under the sun to “heal me,” I soon realized that all the kale in the world wasn’t going to “fix me.” I started to understand that when we can’t seem to make headway with obstacles in our lives, it’s simply an opportunity to practice gentleness with ourselves and to show ourselves kindness and self-love because being hard and disappointed in ourselves won’t do us any good. I had to take an honest look at the reasons why my body wasn’t healing and make different choices to learn how to love myself. I learned to take care of myself on a daily basis, start saying no to things and people that drained me, take quiet (alone) time for myself, and create balance in my life. I also learned that there was more to healing than food. While food was my entry point, I had to go deeper into self-love to truly heal my body.

Slowing down, connecting, and learning how to forgive ourselves and love ourselves are the main struggles I see with my readers and clients. We’re all rushing around trying to do everything and be everything for everyone, meet demanding deadlines, make everyone else happy and we push, push, push ourselves to achieve what we think is happiness. But when you look around, you realize that as a country, our health is failing. When we try to put a Band-Aid on our symptoms (which are a wakeup call to let us know something in our bodies is out of balance) with something, we numb ourselves by not looking at the root cause of the symptoms. So they often return and most likely get worse as time goes on. Our bodies are  constantly nudging us to slow down but we are too stubborn to try, and we’re scared to listen. I know firsthand. It took me 10 years to actually slow down, get quiet, and listen to my body. And that’s just what I did. Was it easy? No. But I made a promise to be gentle with myself throughout my healing process and to go at my own pace. I started taking baths, I said no to doing anything that didn’t light me up inside, I stopped trying to make everyone else happy, and I started to listen to my body. I stopped being so strict with trying to eat perfectly, I stopped going from doctor to healer to energy worker to workshop to book to try to fix myself and I started to just “be” and allow my nervous system to rest and reboot. This is what has truly healed my body and I’m grateful for this journey into deeper self-love.

A culinary nutritionist certified by the Institute of Integrated Medicine and the Drugless Practitioners of America, Lycored Nutrition Ambassador Amie Valpone specializes in creating easy recipes for all. Inspired by her own journey to detox her life, Amie is committed to helping everyone feel amazing through simple changes to their nutrition and lifestyle habits.