Looking Forward: Creating Your Best 2021 by Nikki Burnett
Nutrition Editor NIKKI BURNETT MS CNTP MNT is a Functional Nutritionist at Taste Life Nutrition. Nikki works with ambitious professionals to help them overcome hidden barriers to both health and success. Challenges such as chronic stress, brain fog, low energy, and stubborn chronic issues frequently have their roots in unhealthy foods and unknown inflammatory conditions. Functional nutrition is based on the science of functional medicine. The goal is to understand the body through functional lab testing, genetic testing, environmental factors, stress, and lifestyle.
Editor’s Note: This article is for information purposes only. Please check with your medical provider before beginning any treatment.
PHOTOGRAPHED BY KALEN JESSE
I can’t believe the holiday season is already here! For me, this time of year offers the opportunity to reflect and prepare myself for the new year. I believe this is especially important this year. While there are some things out of our control, there are MANY things we can control and focus on moving forward into 2021.
What does your holiday season look like? Take a moment to imagine yourself unwrapping the most beautiful gift you’ve ever seen. When you open it, you find that it’s filled with YOUR health. Inside, you find a plan that inspires and empowers you to find YOUR truth for what YOUR body needs to be its best.
For New Year’s Day, many of us create a list of resolutions. But, they never last long. New Year’s resolutions are difficult to keep, because they are designed for self-discipline. When we suddenly must change a behavior that is ingrained in us, we may beat ourselves up for not sticking to our resolutions. The negative self-talk, frustration, and shame lead to stress, which is inflammatory and even shrinks the brain. Inflammation then creates disease.
Instead, let’s discover the right information, motivation, and support to meet our health needs this holiday season. Keep in mind that we are each unique, making our individual needs unique as well. So, how do we find out what’s best for our bodies so we can create a plan and build on our health?
Here’s a little list I’ve put together.
1. It’s important to understand any and all of the symptoms you may be dealing with. Sometimes we don’t even recognize certain discomforts or conditions as symptoms! Are you ignoring and brushing off any symptoms as “normal for you,” “age-related,” “bad luck,” or “genetics?” Things like chronic or periodic pain (in one location or multiple locations), heartburn, bloating, itching, swelling, redness, fatigue, brain fog, anxiety, depression, fear, lack of focus, sexual dysfunction, and heart palpitations are all symptoms that need to be addressed by finding the underlying cause.
2. Define your goals, your vision, and your purpose. Make sure they align with you and no one else. This is the time to make YOU the most important person in your life.
3. Begin to learn what your body needs—the types of foods that make you thrive, the exercise that is the most inspiring to you, the stillness that best allows you to find your peace and brings you guidance, the people who bring you the most goodness and balance, and the activities that rejuvenate you and clear the clutter.
4. Eliminate the things that do just the opposite of all the above.
5. Be curious about your body and your surroundings. Curiosity makes the process of learning about your body and its needs more fun and inspiring. Your body is beyond amazing, and its only goal is to keep you healthy. Understanding what it needs is a blessing. Your surroundings also can be inspiring or damaging. Keep clear of toxic cleaning products, body care products, and yard chemicals.
6. Don’t follow what everyone else is doing—do you. This is a trap many of us fall into. Just because the new fad diet/supplement/exercise works for your best friend or spouse, doesn’t mean it’s for you.
7. Eliminate negative self-talk. Your body will react negatively to it.
8. Challenge yourself. Challenge creates growth, whether it’s muscular or neural pathways.
9. Know that every part of your body is connected. You can’t expect to make a change in one place and not have it impact other places. Just as all parts of your body are connected, we are also connected with our environment, people, animals, and our universe.
10. Celebrate you—your victories and your failures. If I’ve learned anything in life, it’s that our failures are often what create the best victories.
11. Find guidance that works for you. None of us are experts in everything. Some of us need more support, while others need less. Some need one-on-one guidance, and others need groups. Whatever it is, accept it, and take it to heart.
This holiday season go easy on yourself. Don’t continue the stress of this year through the holidays, which is a time of blessings and gratitude. Be aware of yourself, but most of all, start planning your strategy and creating a mindset of success for 2021. Allow this to spill over into your family, and then into your community.
Blessing to all of you! Eat good food that feeds your body and your soul…and Taste Life!
TASTE LIFE NUTRITION // BE EPIC COURSE INFORMATION
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Nikki Burnett: @tastelifenutrition // info@tastelifenutrition
Kalen Jesse: @kalenjessephotography // KalenJesse.com