By: Emily Oberg
Being healthy is not exactly an effortless act and requires some serious dedication and discipline for many of us. Unfortunately, due to the food industry, demanding schedules and our culture of “never not working”, we live in a day and age where many of us are sleep deprived, eat the wrong things at the wrong hours, crave chemical-filled foods, and stress ourselves out to the point of illness. But speaking from personal experience, I’ve found that no matter what type of health and wellness journey you’re on, you need to make sure you’re not stressing yourself out while doing it.
About a year ago, I started to get more into wellness than I’d ever been in my life. I became obsessed with blood tests, IV treatments, the perfect diet, food sensitivities and was taking just about every supplement imaginable. I couldn’t eat something without wondering what negative effects it could potentially have on my body, even if it was a fruit or vegetable. I started to become paranoid by being exposed to toxins and chemicals in our environment (which NO ONE can control by the way) and listened to just about every health podcast out there. But after a while, I started to realize that being so concerned with my health was making me feel the OPPOSITE of healthy and was starting to stress me the fuck out. And haven’t you heard? Stress kills. Literally. The World Health Organisation has classified stress as the “health epidemic of the 21st century” and an estimated 75-90% of all doctor visits are stress-related.
I knew that I couldn’t live like this for much longer without driving myself mad so, I decided that I needed to relax a bit and stop being SO concerned with my health and trying to prevent any and all disease and illness. Don’t get me wrong, we all need to make a conscious effort to lead a healthy lifestyle, but part of that is eliminating stress or at least, reducing it as much as you can. There’s no sense in restricting yourself so much that you feel deprived and as a result, unhappy. Our bodies are functioning their best when we are happy and loving life.
So eat healthy most of the time, get some light exercise, avoid toxins when you can but above all, enjoy your life and live! Eat some pizza, order dessert, buy your favorite candy— it’s OK to do these things sometimes! You’ve heard it a million times before- everything in moderation.
