What is primary food? How does primary food affect autoimmune illnesses? You may be surprised at how primary food is affecting you. Primary food is defined as everything else that affects your life other than the food on your plate. Examples include physical activity, career, finances, social life, and joy. Listen to the podcast episode below to learn more about this concept and how it can be used to improve your health and wellbeing and to help you heal from your autoimmune illness.
Primary Food Transcript
Hello ladies. This is AnnaLaura Brown, and welcome to another episode of the Autoimmune Rehab Podcast. Find, download, and listen to all of the episodes of this podcast@autoimmunerehab.com. There on my website, you can also grab my free copy of your Self-Care journal. I believe that self-care is one of the most important things.
Um, important in fact aspects to helping to heal on your autoimmune journey. So I’ve created this free download for you so you can go there again, autoimmune rehab.com and download it right away and take advantage of it. I’d also love to hear your feedback on it. And today’s episode, I don’t have a guest.
So today’s episode I am going to be sharing with you about the power of primary food and the role of primary food or the lack thereof. Can play when it comes to your healing from any kind of an autoimmune condition. So the first thing that I’d like to talk to you about is what primary food is and how primary food differentiates itself from secondary food.
And then I’m gonna talk with you about some of the different categories of primary food and how to each of these categories, Can have an impact on your autoimmunity and on your healing journey, and then give you some recommendations along the way as to how you can help heal yourself with, by recognizing where you need improvements in your different aspects of primary food.
Okay, so first off, what on earth is primary food? Well, primary food. Is a concept that I don’t know if he actually created the concept, but he definitely has promoted the concept and has written a whole book on it with Joshua Rosenthal, who was the founder of the Institute of Integrative Nutrition. This is an online health coaching school, and this is actually where I graduated and got my certification in health coaching in 2015.
And so I, you know, have studied, like I said, a lot of nutrition, health coaching, that kind of thing, and have read. Uh, verbal. The books that Joshua Roal has written, including his book on primary food, and basically the way that he defines it is that secondary food is actually the food that you find on your plate, whereas primary food is all the other aspects of your life that impact your health and wellbeing.
and if you’ve listened to any other episodes of my podcast, you probably know that one of the goals that I have with this Autoimmune Rehab podcast is to share with you a variety of different ways that you can heal and to really focus more on the primary food through this podcast than the secondary food.
We’ll notice that I don’t really have very many episodes talking about diet and food to help heal you, and that most of my episodes are about all the other ways that you can heal. and I plan to continue that down the road. There may be some additional episodes that we’ll talk about diet, but for the most part, the goal of this podcast and one of the distinguishing factors that makes this podcast different from a lot of other podcasts is that I don’t really focus as much on food and diet, but more, like I said, on your primary food or everything else, it impacts your health.
So what are these different areas? Well, there are a couple of different people. So Joshua Rosenthal on his. Has created what’s called the Wheel of Life that has these different aspects of primary food. You will probably. encounter other people calling it a circle of life, and they may have some, if not all, of these different aspects of primary food on it.
So you know, the concept of the Wheel of Life in these different areas that impact your health isn’t necessarily unique to the Institute of Integrative Nutrition or to the concepts of primary food. But these are the different areas. And so what I’m gonna do now is I will talk about each of these areas and how.
Lack of balance or your balance in those areas can impact your autoimmune condition and your autoimmune healing journey. But first, let’s go through just the list of what these different aspects are. So the primary food includes things such as your joy or your happiness, your spirituality. Your social life, your home environment, your home cooking or lack thereof, your physical activity, your education, your career, your finances, and your relationships.
So as you can see from this list, it’s a lot of these different things in your life. you do or don’t do, or to what extent? You know, you have balanced throughout your life because you can eat the healthiest food possible and you know, go or go on a lot of these different diets that are out there, whether it’s autoimmune, pale, or just regular paleo or keto or vegan or whatever diet you call, want to call it.
But if you’re severely out of balance in a lot of these other areas, that’s not really gonna help your health and you’re still gonna have your auto. So let’s start one by one with each one. So the first one is joy. . So you wanna think here, you know, how joyful are you? How happy are you? And as I’m going over these different areas, if you want, I would like to invite you to, if you’re not, if you’re driving right now while you’re listening to this, that’s a bad idea.
So wait until later. But if you’re not driving or you’re in a position where you can get out a pen and paper and write down and rate yourself on a scale of one to 10 with how well you’re doing in each of these areas, that would. It would be a good idea and maybe you could go back and do it later if you’re listening to this and you’re in a position where you can’t do that right now, but Joy, so where are you?
You know, if you were, for example, let’s say a one, I would say that that means you need some professional counseling and therapy and help, and hopefully you’re getting that if you are a 10. Then I would find that pretty surprising because it means that you really have a lot of joy and happiness above and beyond the average.
Normal. I would say most of us, especially if you have an autoimmunity, you could be expected to be somewhere between a five and an eight and. How does your joy or your lack thereof joy, how does that impact your autoimmunity? Well, there’s been a lot said, and I actually did the podcast episode that came out two weeks ago, which if you haven’t listened to yet, you really should about how your self, self-image and your self-love impacts your autoimmunity and.
There is a lot to be said about your self-esteem and the connections that those have with how you develop an autoimmune condition, you continuing to be sick, that kind of thing. And so if you don’t have true joy and at least happiness to some degree, you’re obviously not expecting to have it all the time, but you should have it at least part of the time.
And if you don’t, then you could really end. , you know, that could be one of the root causes of autoimmunity because when you have an autoimmune condition, it’s because your tissues in your body are attacking itself. And from an emotional standpoint, not being well enough balanced when it comes to joy and happiness can be one of the causes of an autoimmune condition.
So that is in, in a lot of ways, I consider that to be one of, if not the most important aspects of this whole primary food thing. So that’s definitely, if you’re, I would say if you’re below a five on that, you definitely wanna be focusing on it. And if you’re above aide but you’re not quite, uh, let’s say an eight or a nine, then you probably want to.
You know, maybe consider getting some help or setting some goals around that area as well. But maybe, you know, it doesn’t have to be your number one priority. . Okay, so then the next aspect of primary food is your spirituality. Now, sometimes when I say that people immediately go directly to religion, and that’s not what we’re referring to here.
You may or may not be a member of an actual church. Uh, personally I am, and personally I find that to be very fulfilling, but I know for some people that’s just. What they feel like they need in their life, but spirituality basically means how do you connect to your higher power? How are you? You know, involve that in your life.
So for whatever that means. So for me, I’m a Christian, so that means I believe in Jesus Christ and our Savior and our Heavenly Father. And to me, having a good relationship with those and being well-balanced and recognizing the roles that those play in my life and in my health and healing is really, really important to me.
And I haven’t really done it. Like I said, podcast episodes that focus specifically on faith and spirituality yet, but I’m going to be releasing some of those. So if that’s an area that you feel like you’re low in, um, stay tuned because by about probably sometime towards the end of this year, maybe going to January, I have plans to do an interview with a Christian based health coach and a few other things like that.
That should really help even further. But yeah, you really wanna be aware of, you know, how your spirituality and how you’re centered, whether that’s faithing, Jesus Christ, or it’s just whatever you define your higher power as. How does that impact your overall health and wellbeing, and how does that impact you if you have an autoimmune disease?
Well, the reality is like, if you have an autoimmune condition, you struggle a little bit with your self-image, and I know, at least for me, that I am a daughter of heaven father. And if I really, truly believed that, uh, with all my whole heart and believed that heaven father really was a part of my life and can help me heal, then you know, I would not struggle quite as much, you know, with maybe some of the autoimmunity, other things.
I would have more faith in Christ in his power to heal, heal me, for example. Example. So that’s one aspect of spirituality. So that is the second one. Then the third one is your social aspect. So how is your social life? , uh, aspects of your life impact your health? Well, it can impact your health in a couple ways.
So one thing, uh, social can mean the people that you hang around with, that you spend a lot of time with. And if those people, you know, don’t have good, healthy habits, you know, maybe they like to go out to eat a lot at restaurants that aren’t really very good for you, or, you know, engage in a lot of drinking alcohol or other things that are not good for you, or peer pressure and those kinds of things, then those can create a lot of problem.
Or you know, maybe your lack of social life can also make. so that you know, you feel like you’re a little bit more recruited, you don’t spend as much time with people, that kind of thing. So you wanna just really think about how your social life is going. You know, do you have a social life and is it strong?
Do you have some good friends, some accountability partners in life, people like that, that can really be there for you and help support you. And this can really play a role, especially when you do get into like the secondary food and the diets and that kind of thing, because you really. , in order to heal fully from an autoimmune condition, you are gonna have to do some kind of work.
When it comes to changing the diet and that kind of thing, you need to have in your social environment some good friends or family members who will support you in that and who won’t, you know, mock you or make fun of you when you have to go on a strict diet.
Okay. Then moving on to the fourth aspect. So the fourth aspect is your home environment. The, so this, you know, can mean not if you don’t live in an actual home. Of course it would refer to your apartment or wherever it is that you actually live and call home. and everything that you have in that home. So whether it’s your furniture, whether it’s, you know, flowers that you have there, whether it’s a garden outside, whether it is, you know, your living spaces, all of the different things that you have in your home environment, and those can all have a really good impact on you, or they can have a really bad impact.
and if you are really struggling with as aspect, I invite you to go back and if you haven’t found it yet, to listen to the podcast episode that I did with Jillian, who is a Feng Shui master, and really take note of that and maybe even consider hiring her to help assist you in the management and the creation of a better and more improved.
Higher quality home environment. I definitely have no doubt on my wishlist to consider hiring her as well because that can really, really help a lot. And like I said, your home environment can really impact your health in ways that some of us sometimes aren’t even aware of. . Okay, so then the next aspect of this is home cooking.
And by this, what this means is to what extent do you cook your meals at home as opposed to going out and eating at a restaurant. Now, obviously this relates, you know, of course a little bit to the secondary food with the idea of the actual food you eat, but the reality is that. Most of us, especially if you have an autoimmune condition, you should be cooking most of your food at home rather than eating out at restaurants all the time.
Partly because it can be really difficult to stick to any kind of a really healthy eating diet and to avoid things like inflammatory oils and, and processed foods and things like that when you eat out. And even some of the healthier restaurants, if you eat out too much, it’s just not good. . So this aspect of primary food just means, you know, how to what extent do you cook at home and do you know how to cook at home?
And you know, in this day and age with blogs and other things, there are tons and tons of really good, healthy cooking recipes and things like that. So there’s really no excuse for you not to make home cooking a priority. And how can this impact your autoimmunity? Well, like I said, it relates to secondary food and the food that you eat.
If you eat out all the time, you’re likely to be healthy, and it’s just really good practice for you to be engaging in home cooking. Okay. The next aspect of this, which you probably knew it was coming at some point, is physical activity. And physical activity is, you know, of course refers to exercise, but it can also mean walking, getting up, moving, all different kinds of things.
Like personally, I have a goal to do now at least 8,000 steps per day on pretty much every day of the week, except for Sunday. And, you know, I typically do at least one 30 minute session of actual physical activity, whether that’s dancing to my Nintendo Switch, doing Zumba, yoga, uh, bike riding, walking, ice skating, even sometimes in the winter, that kind of thing.
but you really gotta get up and move and do physical activity. And personally, I found having hash motors, the autoimmune condition, I have noticed that if I don’t move as much, you know, that I definitely feel sicker. I don’t have as much energy, that kind of thing. And in fact, I have an alert on my phone with my aura ring, which I actually talked about in another episode.
So if you’re curious about that, you can go back and find the episode on Aura Rings. But anyhow, um, I get an alert on my phone every hour. If I’ve been sitting for more than an hour, the phone goes off and lets me know that, Hey, you’ve been sitting for too long, so get up and move. And I found that this really, really helps and I have a lot less pain and I’m a lot less rigid to that kind of thing when I actually make a concentrated effort to get up and move a lot more.
Okay. Then the next one, moving on, is education. Now, this may seem like a little bit of a strange one because if you’re listening to this, you probably aren’t a student anymore. And so you’re thinking, what? I’m not in school anymore. Well, I haven’t been in school now for, well, let’s see, more than 10 years, but officially.
But the point of this is that a lot of us need to engage ourselves in lifelong learning, and we need to always be making an effort to learn more. And so education here means do you read on a regular basis? Are you always learning, growing, that kind of thing? And when you have an autoimmune condition, it’s really important that you’re constantly, always learning and growing to discover, you know, what’s out there that can help you improve your overall health and wellbeing.
And I know it’s been a really big journey for me. , educate myself about hashing motors and thyroid conditions and autoimmune to help on the journey of healing. And you always want to evolve in lifelong education in order to keep your brain active, that kind of thing. So that’s how education can play a role.
And the next moment, here’s your career now. Well, statistically speaking, they say that more than half of us hate our jobs. We really don’t love our jobs. We don’t find them to be fulfilling and. Personally, I’m unfortunately stuck in a job. Well, I mean, I, I guess not totally stuck, you know, I could try to move, but apparently I’m in a job where that’s pretty much the case for me.
I’m doing some things to try to change that, looking into, you know, what are my options over the course of the next year or so to move on and do something else. But you know, a lot of people spend. Their entire career lives at a job they hate. And the only thing I have to ask for that is why, you know, that really impacts your quality of life, can make you really hate yourself, that kind of thing.
And especially if you’re in a career that is really, or a job that’s really, really stressful. I’m lucky enough, my job isn’t really that stressful. It’s. If anything, it’s rather boring, which is one of the reasons I don’t really enjoy it so much. But if you’re in a job that has a lot of stress, stress has been shown to cause all kinds of health issues, including autoimmune issues.
And so this is again, where your choice of career can really impact your stress levels and overall your autoimmunity. So you really wanna think about it if you have an autoimmune condition, you know, are you in the right career or do you need to make some moves to potentially do something different?
and then finances is the next one. Now, finances can be a really big one, especially when you have an autoimmune condition, because if you’ve had that autoimmune condition for any length of time, you’ve probably become pretty well solidly aware of it. Yeah, there are a lot of things that you need to do or really should do for your oral health and wellbeing that are unfortunately not covered by insurance, and therefore are something that you really need to pay for out of pocket, and there are a lot of different ways to pay for this.
I did a video on my YouTube channel that you’ll find linked in the shown notes. Couple weeks ago, it talked about some different ways to pay for expenses for an autoimmune condition, health expenses, without having insurance. And you know, like I said, even if you have really great insurance that covers some things, it can still be really, really expensive.
And. I’ve also said that poor finances can also really have a pretty big impact on, you know, your self-image, your autonomy, and other things like that. So, you know, it doesn’t necessarily mean you need to be rich, but you definitely wanna have, you know, enough money to live on and that kind of thing. . Then last but not least is your relationships.
So this could include a romantic relationship with a partner or a spouse, or this could include, you know, like again back to some of the social with friend relationships, also family relationships, that kind of thing. Do you have really good, strong relationships with people you value and people you trust and people that can hold you accountable in your healing journey?
That kind of thing. You know, do you have the opposite? And you know, maybe there are some relationships you need to mend, heal, and move on from, or maybe there’s some you just need to get rid of or you need to find some new ones. But the reality is that the people in our lives can really have a big impact on us, and especially when we have an autoimmune condition.
You know, you want relationships with people who are understanding and loving and caring, and are there for you. And you know, if you don’t have those, that can really cause some problems. So anyhow, let me go through these areas again so that you can think about them. And like I said, I recommend at some point try to rate yourself and give yourself some ideas about what you can do to improve.
So, joy, spirituality, and a social home environment. Home, cooking, physical activity, education, career, finances, and relationships. So I hope you found this episode helpful. If you would like to gimme some feedback or would like some help and would like to have a conversation, you’ll find that information in the show notes here.
Please don’t be shy, reach out, share this episode or any of the other podcast episodes with anybody else. Would also love it if you’d leave me a review if you find this podcast helpful. Take care, and I will talk to you soon on another episode of the Autoimmune Rehab Podcast.
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