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You can create your own healthy lifestyle, and in doing so, your circumstances can change. 

This post was originally published on January 4, 2012. At the time, I was studying through The Institute for Integrative Nutrition – beginning with their foundations course, The Health Coach Training Program.

In 2020, I would then go on to study with them through the Gut Health Course.

As of today, late 2024, I am currently taking the Chopra Ayurvedic Health Certification Program.

The information contained in this article today reflects a deeper look into the lifestyle component of healing.

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Create Your Healthy Lifestyle

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The core principles of what makes a healthy lifestyle are fairly standard across the board.

So before I dive more into the Ayurvedic way for a healthy lifestyle, let me first share some basics. 

At The Institute for Integrative Nutrition we learn about Primary Foods and Secondary Foods.

When you place everything into these buckets, it’s much easier to create your healthy lifestyle on a highly personalized scale.

Primary Foods Include

• spirituality
• career
• physical activity
• relationships

Secondary Foods Include

• grains
• vegetables
• fruits
• oils
• proteins

In other words “lifestyle” mixed with food, but lifestyle outweighing food, which is not what most people typically think of as a healthy lifestyle.

People aren’t unhealthy and overweight because of food.

They are unhealthy and overweight because of the underlying issues which lead to an unbalanced relationship with food.

At the core of a healthy lifestyle is bringing these issues and imbalances to the surface.

Ayurveda and Lifestyle

This week I began Week 7 via the Chopra Ayurvedic Health Certification Program through the Institute for Integrative Nutrition.

And I got to listen to Deepak Chopra speak (which, by the way, was fascinating in and of itself).

Anyways, during this week we are focusing on how we intend on using the information from the course in order to better serve our clients, speak to audiences on the topics, etc.

Since my whole platform and message into the world surrounds gut health, I am really thinking about how these two world collide.

I set my intention:

To show people that all the answers are already within us.

Shortly after I set that intention, we talked about things like:

• Ayurveda is experiential, which means that the choices we make about our experiences change our bodies—including our choices about food, personal relationships, sensory experiences, sleep, work, social interactions, and daily routine.
• Ayurvedic medicine returns us to wholeness. The goal of Ayurveda is to help us return to our natural state of health and to realize that our true self is pure consciousness, which is never born and never dies.
• Ayurveda is personalized. Understanding our mind-body type, or dosha, gives us valuable information for nurturing our body’s inner intelligence.

And my favorite one, which directly correlates to “create your healthy lifestyle” —

Ayurveda is preventative. Studies have shown that approximately 95% of chronic illness can be reversed and prevented by our daily lifestyle choices.

The Lifestyle Factor

Early in my gut-healing journey I focused on only these two things:

1. Diet
2. Supplements and/or medications

I thought they held the key to my healing, and that if I could just be the best student in their teachings, I would heal.

But I didn’t.

Note: I did need a specific diet, supplements, and medications, but if those were the only things I needed to heal, it would have only taken me a month – not a decade+.

In case this is your first time here, you can see the decade+ long journey I went on.

……Because Lifestyle

Once, and only once, I started looking outside the boxes which tightly hold diet and supplements + medications, I started to heal my gut.

Dr. Suhas Kshirsagar said two things that left me sort of speechless:

He then went on to say (with regards to how we tend to approach our everyday lives):

Just let those both sink in for a minute.

Ayurveda

Ayurveda offers a body of wisdom designed to help people stay vibrant and healthy while realizing their full human potential.

It teaches us that in order to be truly healthy, we cannot just take care of the physical body—we need to address the health of the mind, body, spirit, and environment so that we can experience a state of wholeness.

And it celebrates the fact that we can focus on the individual vs. the disease.

How?

Through the 4 P’s of Ayurveda.

And here’s something you might not have known, but that directly relates to the gut: the subdoshas principle locations are all within the digestive system.

In previous Ayurvedic articles, I have discussed doshas – the primary doshas – at length.

Here is where they are located:

• Vata: colon
• Pitta: small intesine
• Kapha: stomach

The digestive system holds and stores so much.

So much, in fact, that when we are not in alignment with the lifestyle factors and how we should strive to live, we stay sick.

The Original Lifestyle Medicine

Ayurveda is the original lifestyle medicine.

Therefore, IF we are to fully and completely heal, we must create a healthy lifesyle that incorporates more than diet, supplements and/or medications.

I often find, in working with thousands of women worldwide, that LIFESTYLE is the very last thing they want to approach.

Perhaps it seems to “woo-woo.” Or perhaps feels “too hard.” Maybe it’s just the understanding of “what does lifestyle exactly mean?”

Regardless, as a general rule of thumb, we fail to focus on the most important piece – lifestyle.

Making a Change, Through an Ayurvedic Lens

Make this the year, the month, the week, the day, the moment, you will create your healthy lifestyle by looking to things other than just food for true results.

Because you can’t diet harder.

Understand that you will not change because you know you should, but instead, you will change because you desire to look at the big picture in a new light.

Focus on your lifestyle and those primary foods.

The Full Ayurvedic Series

This article is part of my full Ayurvedic series.

In addition to the hundreds of articles and thousands of hours I’ve spent in the last decade devoted to all things gut health and gut healing, I am working on becoming a certified Ayurvedic practitioner, so that I am able to give my clients the best, most comprehensive guidance for healing – 100% on an personalized level.

If you’re interested in working 1-on-1 with me, you can sign up HERE today.

Here are all the previous articles on Ayurveda you can binge-read now:

1. What is Ayurveda – [The Ultimate Beginner’s Guide]
2. Ayurveda for Balance
3. Ayurvedic Food List
4. Mindful Movement Exercises
5. Yoga vs Meditation
6. Emotions Worksheet
7. Printable Self Care Activities
8. Kitchari Cleanse Recipe [One Pot Kitchari]

I have also put together an ‘Ayurveda in Gut Healing’ Pinterest board where you will find a ton of resources.

Xox,
SKH