What is Integrative Nutrition?
“This approach is not about acquiring more self-discipline or willpower. It’s about personally discovering what nourishes you, what feeds you, and ultimately what makes your life extraordinary.” - Joshua Rosenthal, founder of the Insitute for Integrative Nutrition
What is Integrative Nutrition?
Integrative nutrition is a holistic approach to nutrition formulated by Joshua Rosenthal, the founder of the Institute for Integrative Nutrition [1].
Rather than restricting ourselves to unhealthy, unsustainable rules and trying every new fad diet marketed to us through mass media, integrative nutrition is about education, introspection, and whole-person health. Integrative nutrition is where we can utilize nutrition to boost our overall well-being sustainably.
Integrative nutrition can be broken down into 3 pillars: food as medicine, bio-individuality, and primary foods.
The Three Pillars of Integrative Nutrition
Pillar #1: Food as Medicine [2]
Integrative nutrition emphasizes the idea that “food is medicine,” using diet to treat illnesses.
We don’t often think of food as nourishing our body, mind, and soul. For many individuals, it is something that we crave, that we need, or that we fear. Yet, whole foods and superfoods have the potential to heal our bodies.
Prioritize:
Whole foods: Any type of unprocessed food
Fruits, vegetables, whole grains (i.e. oats, brown rice), beans, fish, eggs, etc.
Superfoods: Nutrient-dense foods considered especially beneficial for health and well-being.
Goji berries, blueberries, quinoa, chia seeds, cacao, bee pollen, spirulina, etc.
Benefits of both: Can boost our mood and immune system, provide ample energy and sufficient nutrition, protect us from chronic health issues, and lengthen our lifespan [cite book].
Avoid:
Processed foods: Cereals, junk food, packaged breads, pastries, frozen foods, etc.
Cost of eating: Can cause lethargy, headaches, chronic illness, weight gain, and irritability and low mood due to their indigestable and inflammatory qualities.
So how did we get here? How did we lose the true essence of and the right relationship with food to the point that we don’t even really know what is on our plates anymore?
Modern Food Culture
In modern-day food culture, our palette has shifted with the rise of industrialization, mass production, and the growth of capitalism. As a collective hustle culture, it is often our best, and sometimes only, option to choose the most convenient choice - super-sized portions for cheap or portable meals to last us all day. While these foods may seem unassuming as they often taste delicious, what we aren’t told is how food and beverage companies rely on cheaper and cheaper tactics to mass-produce food that harm our health and how they scientifically keep us hooked on their addicting, yet unhealthy products. And even when we try to cook homemade meals, many of our supposedly ‘safe’ ingredients have hidden chemicals. All of this is to say that it is not our fault that we have gotten to this lost place. The companies that are responsible for most of our food production do not care for our health; they only care for their profit. With this transition from whole foods and home-cooked meals, we have forgotten the healing properties of whole foods and are not educated on the dangers of processed foods.
At the end of this blog, I will provide some tips and tricks that can act as starting points for smart shopping, cooking, and eating to combat this money-hungry and viscous food market. What’s most critical, however, is that we take this as an opportunity to do our own research and understand which foods will work best for us.
Now that we have established what foods to prioritize and to avoid, another important topic of integrative nutrition is discovering which whole foods and superfoods work best for our unique biochemistry.
Pillar #2: Bio-Individuality, aka the Personalized Diet
Bio-individuality is the idea that we are all unique, and recognizing and honoring our uniqueness is the key to a healthy, happy, and sustainable lifestyle. This principle also applies to our nutrition, as what works for one individual might not work for another.
To explain why diets are not universally effective, let’s review a quick example. Some people may cut gluten or dairy out of their diet due to allergic or insensitivity reasons, while others depend on them for satiety and energy. It is not about avoiding gluten just because your friends do; it’s about doing what works for you. Practicing integrative nutrition allows you to tailor your food choices to your unique physical needs.
Food Journaling
In order to discover your unique bio-individual needs, curiosity is your friend. The only way to decipher between foods that do and do not serve you is to keep track of how certain foods make you feel before, during, and after eating them.
Questions to ask yourself may include:
Before a meal: Did I crave this food item during a stressful, emotional, or strenous event? What time of day did I eat this food item and why?
During a meal: Did I experience any discomfort while eating this food? Did I experience any discomfort while eating this food with other types of food?
After a meal: How did my energy levels change after eating this food? How did my mood change? Did I experience any discomfort or negative symptoms after eating this food, and for how long? Is this a recurring event?
Sustainable change takes time. The point of integrative nutrition is not to restrict, but to discover. By understanding what best serves our individual needs, we are much more equipped to take care of ourselves and others. Honor your journey towards self-discovery, and take your time!
Pillar #3: Primary Foods [2]
Primary foods encompass everything that is not nutrition but substantially impacts the health and well-being of our lives. This includes our environment, career, relationships, spirituality, finances, education, and physical and mental health. Sometimes we are fed not by food, but by the energy in our lives [6]. So when your primary foods satisfy your hunger for life, eating becomes a secondary priority [1].
The Relationship between Nutrition, Body Image, and Emotional Eating
When the primary foods in our life are unbalanced, many of us turn to emotional eating as a crutch to avoid dealing with what’s wrong internally and externally. Emotional eating is eating when you’re not hungry and not stopping when your body is full [3]. In other words, it’s eating for emotional reasons rather than physical reasons [3]. We tend to turn to eating because it acts as a distraction or it’s associated with comfort since food is something that will never talk back, punish, or abandon us. Unfortunately, once we eat over our limit or we eat excess amounts of hyperpalatable foods - processed foods that are artificially addicting [4] - we feel worse. Add in poor nutritional habits and education and a negative body image, severe consequences may follow in the form of eating disorders, obesity, poor mental and physical health, strained relationships, etc.
When our primary foods are balanced through practices such as introspection and self-development, self-love and self-compassion, gratitude and faith, stress-regulation and empathy, we naturally discard emotional eating. As we discover which foods work best for our unique bodies, a balanced nutritional diet can only add vibrancy and vitality to our lives. And when we have the right relationship with ourselves, learning how to let go and surrender control of our lives, trust the wisdom and intuition of our bodies, and nurture our sacred temples, we naturally love and appreciate the way we uniquely look.
The relationship between primary foods and eating is vital and symbiotic, which is why we must nourish both. Our eating habits are a reflection of our internal state, which is further a reflection of our external state. Everything is created twice - first in the mind, then in reality [5]. When we balance the mind through integrative nutrition, a positive body image, and enriching primary foods, we balance our personal worlds and help to bring peace to the world.
Three Steps Towards Practicing Integrative Nutrition:
Pillar #1: Research and educate ourselves on foods that nourish and harm our bodies and minds.
Pillar #2: Get curious with ourselves - start a food journal notating what foods we ate and how we felt before, during, and after meals.
Pillar #3: Bring the lens of curiosity to all other aspects of life, self-reflecting on parts that are malnourished and taking action to balance it.
Now that we’ve reviewed the three pillars of integrative nutrition, here are some tools we can use in supplement to practicing integrative nutrition.
Tool #1: Conscious Buying (Pillar 1)
While we continue to educate ourselves on the best and worst foods for our bodies and minds, here are some recommendations to keep in mind when purchasing those foods.
Be conscious of how food is grown, how it is produced, and where it comes from. This knowledge can come from reading labels, asking the grocery store clerks/farmers' market vendors, or doing your own research.
Consider:
Buying organic produce over conventional produce if your grocery store supplies it - organic produce contains less harmful pesticides.
Buying grass-fed beef rather than conventional grain-fed beef: the nutrients the cow eats are the nutrients received in our body - corn has little nutritional value for a cow and cannot be properly digested in a cow nor other animals.
Buying cage-free & pasture-raised eggs
If drinking plant-based milk, drink milks that don’t have unnecessary gums and seed/vegetable oils in them
Always check labels for unhealthy seed or vegetable oils -
General rule of thumb: extra virgin olive oil and avocado oil are the best!
It is also better to buy foods locally as you are not only supporting your local community of farmers, but also you decrease the carbon footprint needed to transport foods across the country.
Tool #2: Eat with Gratitude and Present-Moment Awareness (Pillar 2)
To help enhance the eating process and bring awareness to how our body responds to certain foods, let’s dive into how eating with gratitude and present-moment awareness supports our bio-individuality.
A moment or two before eating, pause and give thanks for your food. Whether that’s to a higher power, to the people who grew, harvested, transported, and distributed your food or even to the plants and animals whose lives were sacrificed so that you could be fed, practicing gratitude while eating helps us maintain a humble and (self-)compassionate perspective on life.
If we experience discomfort from a meal, considering how and with what ingredients our food was made with can help us understand what foods/ingredients to avoid.
Additionally, we often still feel hungry when we are focused on something else when eating. Watching a show or scrolling on our phones takes our attention away from how foods taste and how full we are. This limits the eating experience, as we are paying less attention and we often eat too fast. This can leave us feeling still hungry or with feelings of discomfort as our mind and body try to keep up with one another.
Food is meant to engage all five senses - this is why indigenous cultures and cultures outside the US tend to eat with their hands still. So when eating, try to simply focus on enjoying your food - what each bite tastes like, and paying attention to whether you are full or not. This practice is also known as intuitive eating, or stopping your meal once you are full and saving your leftovers for later. In doing so, we learn how to trust our body’s intuition and listen when we should eliminate a food from our diet or finish eating to avoid discomfort.
Tool #3: Cook with Love (Pillar 3)
When our primary foods are balanced, we will have a natural inclination to continue infusing love and light into every aspect of our lives.
Being intentional about the food you are putting in your body is a nice practice to have with yourself. When you view food as nourishment, you take extra care with how you prepare it and it is even more satisfying when you eat food you prepared with such loving intent. You’d be surprised how different food can taste when it is made out of love vs. without love. This can also help to avoid overconsumption and restrictive eating.
Some helpful tips to remember [7]:
Reject the diet mentality
Honor your hunger
Challenge the food police
Cope with emotions with kindness, not food
Respect your body
Honor your health through integrative nutrition
References
[1]: https://www.integrativenutrition.com/about-us
[2]: Rosenthal, J. (2007). Integrative Nutrition: Feed Your Hunger for Health and Happiness. Integrative Nutrition Pub Inc.
[5]: Sharma, R. (2011). The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari. HarperCollins Canada, United States.
[6]: https://www.integrativenutrition.com/blog/2008/03/26/primary-food
[7]: https://www.nourishingny.com/blog/transforming-body-image
