Make the Spirit and Food Connection

Did you know our relationship with food directly impacts our spiritual foundation?

Nourishing the body is critical when beginning a spiritual journey or during spiritual growth. The body is a vehicle we take with us on our path in life, and nutrition fuels mental, physical, and spiritual growth. For example, eating highly processed foods produces low energy, which can

impact your ability to interact with the world around you.

Eating whole foods such as fruits, vegetables, and proteins and maintaining appropriate hydration levels sustain your overall energy, increasing consciousness and mindfulness. In essence, how you experience food is also how you experience life; a person who deprives themselves of whole foods may also deny time to exercise, recover, or practice mindfulness. Our habits influence all aspects of our lives.

Commercial diets are where people turn for weight loss, increased athletic performance, or disease management. The challenge with these diets is that they do not allow you to experience food from the perspective of feeding the body, mind, and spirit. Through mindfulness activities, you can decrease the mass amounts of poor nutritional information and listen to your body about what it needs to survive and be well.  

Challenge yourself to journal how different foods make you feel mentally and physically and note how they impact your spiritual well-being. Over time, you can make lifestyle changes specific to your needs, such as increasing the number of meals you cook rather than eating out, prep meals as a family, eating with other people, and developing a meal plan for the week. 

The overall goal is to make positive changes and take mental notice of what makes you feel good from the inside out.

For more information, connect with your installation’s Health Promotion team.