The Path of Possibility - "This ish is expensive"
“It’s too expensive to be healthy.” How many times have you said this?!?
On the flip side, how many times have you heard this: “pay now or pay later?”
For those on the SAD (Standard American Diet), it’s not a question of if rather it’s a matter of when you’ll develop a chronic illness. Regularly eating highly processed foods, too much salt, sugar (and sugar substitutes), refined oils is the reason why so many people are sick.
I know much of the reason why folks eat the SAD diet is tied to lack of in-depth education on nutrition, lack of access to healthy food options, the economy, not to mention the very real diet-to-pharmaceutical pipeline. And the underpinnings of all this lack is rooted in oppressive systems.
With that said, we have to hold multiple, yet seemingly contradictory truths and find personal power and resolution.
Type 2 diabetes, hypertension, heart disease, cancer, fibroids, hormonal imbalances, ADHD, dementia, depression, anxiety, arthritis, autoimmune conditions like lupus and multiple sclerosis, and more can all be halted, corrected and/or fully reversed with diet.
I get it. We buy the same grocery items each weak and the cost keeps increasing. Organic does cost more than non-organic. What the eff is up with the price of grapes and bell peppers?? And after a long day of work, cooking a meal from scratch is the last thing I want to do.
But there’s also a cost associated with a diet that’s rich in toxins and deficient in nutrients. I can’t overemphasize this enough: our industrial food system cannot be trusted. The same pharmaceutical company that makes certain cancer treatments also owns the company that manufactures pesticides, known carcinogens! Make it make sense.
So do we pay the grocery store or do we pay the hospital?
Being healthy is not expensive, but getting healthy is.
The transition from highly processed to whole food and from fast to home cooked ain’t no joke.
It stresses your wallet - ironically the fewer the ingredients and the less the food is processed, the more it costs.
You also have to devote more time to shopping and cooking. A 15-minute run to the grocery store now takes an hour. And a 30-minute meal takes 90.
You can’t grab and go because you have to read ingredient and nutrition labels. You pack your lunch. And just when you think you have a solid grasp on the items on your approval list, the manufacturer changes the ingredients. This has happened to us more times than we can count.
While it is a lot of work and it seems like a lot of money in the beginning, I promise you it’s worth it. You are worth it.
The worry we experience when we don’t feel right takes an energetic, emotional, physical, and mental toll.
Preventable pain, illness, and disease whether subtle or chronic are the biggest robbers of our energy, time, money, joy, and motivation.
It consumes you more than you may realize. To be free of this worry and to be walking your way toward wellness is a mighty exhale and relief. It’s priceless.
Here are some of my healthy, budget conscious hacks:
1. Drinking daily nutrient-rich herbal infusions with plants like Oatstraw, Dandelion Leaf, Hibiscus, Stinging Nettle Leaf, Moringa (made a whole ebook with 25 family friendly recipes)
2. Filling our plates with more plants than meat
3. Keeping a small garden with easy to grow leafy greens
4. Making super-easy lacto-fermented foods because they are superbly beneficial for your gut health and therefore your whole health (here's a tutorial)
5. Checking the Environmental Working Group’s Clean 15 and Dirty Dozen list. The Dirty Dozen foods are those most heavily sprayed with pesticides, so if the organic price is ridiculous, like it is with bell peppers, we just learn to live without it or try to grow it.
Additionally, here are 22 free forms of medicine:
1. Sleep
2. Library books
3. Sunshine
4. Meditation
5. Fresh air
6. Talking to a friend
7. Hugs
8. Play
9. Visualization/Daydreaming
10. Decluttering
11. Breathwork
12. Dance/Movement according to your condition
13. Listening to music
14. Journaling
15. Laughter
16. Delete, Block, Mute, Restrict and Unsubscribe buttons
17. Breaks
18. Gratitude
19. Choosing ease when triggered
20. Reaching for more positive thoughts
21. Saying “no”
22. Minding your own business
Please do not underestimate the power of small, daily activities and conscious behavioral changes that ground you, help you pause, honor your capacity, reconfigure relationship boundaries, and reset your nervous system.
You may not be in a financial or life position to overhaul your entire diet right now. But consider the changes you can make and sustain.
If it’s drinking one less soda, or making one homecooked meal, doing a 5-minute guided meditation, or walking around the neighborhood, do that. Stop thinking about limitations and start focusing on what you can change.
Today’s herbal ally on The Path of Possibility is Stinging Nettle! My love for Urtica dioica knows no bounds. As implied in its name, let your leg brush across its leaves and you will feel the burn. Stinging Nettle has small hairs or trichomes along its stems and leaves that contain neurotransmitters, acids and other constituents that are quite helpful for increasing circulation and relieving arthritic pain.
You don’t have to worry about the burn when it’s cooked or infused. Stinging Nettle is one of our most nutrient dense herbs, containing chlorophyll, calcium, copper, essential fatty acids, folate, iron, magnesium, manganese, phosphorus, potassium, selenium, sulfur, zinc, fiber, vitamins B1, B2, B3, B5, C and E. It’s like a multivitamin!
A daily cup of Stinging Nettle tea will change your life. It will improve your mood, digestion, enrich the quality of your blood, help your body cleanse, and so much more. It’s medicine that’s easily overlooked, yet demands your attention. How often do we dismiss messages, synchronicities, and signs from the Universe? When we pray for something we often have an idea of how we’d like our desire to arrive, but rarely does it unfold the way we imagine.
You don’t need a side-hustle or second job to be healthy. Nettle invites you to pay attention to and use what’s within reach. It may be more beneficial to you than you realize.
See you tomorrow for stop #3 on The Path of Possibility!
With so much love,
Selima & Tami
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