Health Is Not Just About What You Do

Guest post from Marc David, Founder of the Institute for the Psychology of Eating

When I first started practicing in NYC about 30 years ago, my high-powered Wall Street clients fascinated me. For one thing, they made gobs of money. How did they get so rich? They were incredibly motivated and educated, and they were all following intense workout and running programs despite long hours at work and a family at home. Many had excellent diets. Yet they all had some type of intense health complaint – digestive issues, fatigue, brain fog, mood swings, and low immunity. What especially caught my attention was that they were all shocked as to why they weren’t “healthy.” The logic was, “I’m doing all these healthy things for myself, so I should certainly look and feel healthy.”

We tend to limit health to nutritional, metabolic and exercise factors. And collectively, we haven’t quite made the connection that health is also given by who we are, how we think, what we feel and believe, how we conduct ourselves in the world, how honest we are, how authentic we are, our sense of spiritual connection, the degree of love in our life, of pleasure, rest, play, purpose, and so much more.

Health is not just about what you do (diet, exercise) – it’s also about who we are at the deepest place of our being. Can we be daring enough to go there?

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Marc David M.A. is the Founder of the Institute for the Psychology of Eating, a leading visionary, teacher and consultant in Eating Psychology, and the author of the classic and bestselling books Nourishing Wisdom and The Slow Down Diet. His work has been featured on CNN, NBC and numerous media outlets. He has held senior consulting positions at Canyon Ranch Resorts, the Johnson & Johnson Corporation, and the Disney Company.