Is achieving optimal health with ease and joy a pipe dream?

Busting the myth: “If you want to look good, you must suffer”

In Dutch there is a well-known saying: “Wie mooi wil zijn moet pijn lijden”, which quite literally tells us that suffering is a requirement to look good. What a horrible, torturous idea, no wonder so many people struggle to adopt and maintain a healthy lifestyle longterm! I want to challenge this theory. Furthermore, I hope to debunk it all together.

One of the key reasons that so many humans got it all wrong is that most don’t even have an accurate picture of what a “healthy lifestyle” really means. More often than not, the idea of a healthy lifestyle triggers mental images of starving ourselves, eating nothing but bland salads, and running for hours as though we are being chased by a lion. The good news is, it’s not your fault: the food and pharmaceutical industries and their toxic relationship have invested decades and countless big bucks to program you to get confused and buy their crap. Better yet, if you get sick, you will be a customer of big pharma for the rest of your life. The even better news is: feeling and being your absolute best is not that hard, in fact, it can be a journey of ease, pleasure, enjoyment, and (gasp!) delicious food. It’s not a pipe dream. But it does take time, and most of all commitment and consistency, to retrain your brain, and adjust your concept of what it means (and looks like) to truly thrive in a healthy body.

With modern life we humans have overcomplicated things and forgotten most of our human nature. Nature is not complicated – it just is. True optimal wellbeing is just that: natural & uncomplicated.

– Carina Wever

The Human Animal Nature

In search of the key habits that contribute to optimal health with minimal suffering, after years of studying and trial and (many) errors, I have come to the conclusion that it all boils down to reconnecting to who & what we are. Yes we are a Soul inhabiting a body. But what kind of body? At the end of the day, whatever your spiritual beliefs are, we cannot deny the physical reality of the Human Animal body and what it has taken to evolve to what it is today. More importantly, what it takes for that Human Animal body to be at its best. I have broken it down into a few key elements below.

Now let’s be clear: there are many little habits that together will create the right environment for your body to thrive. The elements above are the key categories and from the basis upon which the habits are stacked. True wellness cannot be achieve by only eating healthy or going to the gym – it takes a village! An orchestra if you will, all the little habits from the different categories playing together, joining forces to set the stage for you to thrive. The exact combination of habits can and should vary, and I am a fierce proponent of personalization: you cannot apply the same formula for maximum success to every human. Making it fun and enjoyable makes it infinitely more likely that you will stick to this lifestyle…. (the word lifestyle says it already) FOR LIFE. This, dear reader, is what HOLISTIC WELLNESS means to me.

True wellness cannot be achieved by only eating healthy or going to the gym – it takes a village, an orchestra of many little habits that join forces and create the right environment for your body to thrive. This is HOLISTIC WELLNESS.

– Carina Wever