Whole-Person Nutrition: Cultivating Mindfulness

By Jody Smith HERWriter

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Dr. Deborah Kesten has experience with the reversing of heart disease through lifestyle change. She believes that her whole person program for wellness and weight loss can influence our emotional and psychological well-being. The release of hormones that calm and others that stimulate have a profound effect on our metabolism and physical health.

Dr. Kesten encourages us to make the shift to a deliberate mindfulness where nourishment -- physical, emotional and spiritual -- are concerned.

(Transcribed from video interview)

Deborah Kesten:
Whole-person nutrition is this model and program that I have put together based on about 15 years of research and the three books I have written. And whole-person nutrition tells us, it’s not a magic Deborah-diet, it is about the effect food has, not just on physical health, which is pretty much where most of us are focused in Western nutritional science, but food also has a profound effect on our emotions and psychological well-being. It releases hormones that can calm us and soothe us and releases other hormones that can be stimulating and keep us more alert.

It also, I won’t do a whole lecture on that right now for everybody, but food also has a huge effect on us spiritually. When we eat mindfully in the moment, instead of when we are distracted or under stress and thinking of other thoughts, it affects the way in which food is metabolized. I call that one element of spiritual nutrition, connecting with the life force in food, and another element of what I call “spiritual nutrition,” is eating from the heart, blessing food, which we have done for thousands of years and kind of getting away from that now, and also eating with love.

And the fourth element is social nutrition, eating with others in a pleasant atmosphere. So whole-person nutrition is what and how, with whom we have eaten for thousands of years but gee, we’ve gotten so far away from it now in our culture. We usually do not eat fresh whole food. We usually eat out of negative emotions. We usually do not eat mindfully with gratitude or love, and usually we eat alone. So whole-person nutrition is a modeling program for optimal eating for wellness and weight loss.

About Deborah Kesten, M.P.H.:
Deborah Kesten, M.P.H., is an international nutrition and lifestyle researcher and educator, with a specialty in preventing and reversing obesity and heart disease. She was the nutritionist on Dr. Dean Ornish’s first clinical trial for reversing heart disease through lifestyle changes, and Director of Nutrition on similar research at cardiovascular clinics in Europe. More recently, she has created the pioneering Enlightened Diet, a “whole person” optimal eating and weight loss program, the results of which were published in the peer-reviewed medical journal Explore: The Journal of Science and Healing. With more than 200 published health articles, she is the award-winning author of The Enlightened Diet, Feeding the Body, Nourishing the Soul and The Healing Secrets of Food, a comprehensive, evidence-based nutrition program about the power of food to heal physically, emotionally, spiritually, and socially.

Visit Deborah Kesten at http://www.enlightened-diet.com

Video:
https://www.empowher.com/diet-amp-nutrition/content/what-whole-person-nutrition-wellness-coach-deborah-kesten-video

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We value and respect our HERWriters' experiences, but everyone is different. Many of our writers are speaking from personal experience, and what's worked for them may not work for you. Their articles are not a substitute for medical advice, although we hope you can gain knowledge from their insight.