672 thoughts on “My Body’s Reactions to Gluten, Dairy and Sugar”

1. I had to wonder reading your food symptoms lists how many people experience nervousness or anxiousness that may be exacerbated by foods, especially sugar and coffee? I had a relative with a mental illness and their symptoms improved drastically by omitting gluten. I’m sure the future will document how common foods, many of which are considered healthy, are actually not healthy at all. Why wait for research (which could only confirm what our bodies are already feeling), when we can listen to our bodies now.

2. There are many foods in this world that are not supportive to the body, in fact what does it say of the intelligence of humanity to have many foods and drinks that are not only unsupportive but can actually deeply harm?

3. Cherise, this is a whole new ball game, ‘body’s reaction’ to substances. Research does not account for how a body’s response is important, then “tests” that prove otherwise. We need to be open to all and not discount an individual’s responses or reactions.

   We need to be open when a person says they can’t eat certain foods because they have honoured their bodies. And there are plenty of foods that can nourish the body and support it.

4. I love your chart that you have put together, Cherise. When all these symptoms are so clearly defined, its a wonder that we ignore them expertly well, for so long.

   1. I agree Rachel, this chart needs to be used more often. And if we presented this to people, many would agree they have most of these symptoms listed. So what do you do afterwards is the question…

5. ‘..as human beings we always have the opportunity to research and feel for ourselves if a certain food sits well in our bodies.’ We give our power away so early to the intellect and received knowledge and we forget that everything we need to know or understand can be felt from our bodies if we are connected to them. Supporting ourselves and our kids to feel first and express what is felt should be in our basic education, way before we learn the alphabet.

6. “Food has the potential to support us to live our natural way of being, with true vitality and good health.” It so does, food can either harm or heal and it is with this awareness we should bring to every mouthful.

   1. To be honest, I am not so honest about the energetic state my body goes into when I eat foods that my body no longer needs – because I have said goodbye to gluten, dairy and sugar there is a part of me that is a little complacent. We are deepening all the time and we need to keep refining.. there is still a part of me that has got comfortable with where I am at and doesn’t want to look at the energetic outplay of my food choices.

      1. I understand what you’re sharing here Michelle. I am aware also that as each of us changes and deepens back to where we all came from then all of our choices need constant refinement. Sure food is an obvious one but our relationships is another, as is the way that we move, the tone and quality of our voices, the way that we work and the way that we parent. Nothing in our lives can stay the same if we ourselves are deepening.

      2. Agreed. It is easier perhaps to isolate food choices than the way we express but all of it counts. One thing that is really important however is to understand why we make the choices we do and to nominate them. In the nomination we give ourselves space to understand why the choices play out as they do and in the honesty it is much easier to address the root cause.

      3. “It is easier perhaps to isolate food choices than the way we express but all of it counts” and in truth our food choices are an integral part of our expression.

7. The fact that we have the term ‘junk food’ shows that we know that some things we choose to put in our mouth are not supportive of our body.

   1. I know Mary we know we are eating ‘junk food’ and yet we continue to eat it, at the same time we believe humans to be the most intelligent species on earth? How intelligent is it then to eat ‘junk food’?

8. That’s quite a list of symptoms for all those foods, which makes me wonder how many symptoms that people suffer could be avoided if more attention were paid to what was being eaten. This would be a great piece of research and could potentially save the NHS and the whole medical system vast amounts of money.

9. There is a kind of genius in that we keep eating the food that doesn’t really agree with us and therefore/ because that very food is the one that numbs and disconnects us from knowing what is going on with our body so we do not even register that certain food is not supporting us.

10. Despite the fact that all those symptoms can be experienced I can speak for myself that I too carried on eating what didn’t agree with me simply because everyone else was doing it. These days it happens less as I’m not afraid to say I don’t eat certain things because going against my body would be far worse than upsetting someone for not eating cake.

11. Making simple changes to our diet can have amazing results, I simply chose to stop eating bread and I felt far less bloated, and from there I continued to make changes with other foods, and now I feel far more joyful and vital.

12. Looking back over my life, and all the ill-health I seemed to continually suffer from, I can see so clearly, that just like you Cherise, “I had become an expert in overriding what my body truly felt.”. And I can also see that I was not alone as growing up in the 50’s and 60’s there was little knowledge, or wisdom, of the impact of certain foods on the body. But also like you, once I removed gluten, dairy and sugar from my diet my health, and naturally my life, changed beyond anything I thought possible. These days, my body speaks and I listen – well, most of the time!

13. Our body is a great guide when it comes to food, when we allow ourselves to feel the connection between what we eat and how we feel, there are foods that make us feel bloated, tired, restless and through Serge Benhayon’s presentations and experiencing how food feels for myself I have made changes to my diet that have supported me to feel better, and have more energy through the day.

14. Thanks to Serge Benhayon who simply shared by his own experience that there is another way to life; eat, sleep, walk, talk etc. That we are inspired out of the constant motion we all life in, that there is another way existing, that this is not it.

    1. Everything that we do impacts on our ability to be in step with God. Pretty much all of life as it is currently lived jars our bodies and makes them incongruous with Life and therefore God. So it’s a case of looking at everything that we do and the way that we do it and allowing ourselves to do it in such a way that we settle back into the Life that we’re naturally a part of.

15. We can only truly change and make lasting changes in our lives when we understand why we do what we do, and begin to see the triggers / patterns we can fall into, and see what it may be we do not want to feel in those moments – and the more we are willing to feel, and the more we are willing to see the consequences, we eventually get to a point where we ask ‘is it worth it?’ and ‘I don’t feel myself’ … I know that’s how I quit smoking, I saw how I was being over time and I didn’t like it and eventually one day I decided I didn’t want to be that way anymore and so I stopped smoking. Our bodies are remarkable, they always show us the impacts and they keep doing so, until we listen.

16. Overriding what our body truly feels is so commonplace. Not until we feel terrible cos we’ve overeaten or drunk too much do we take notice. And even then we can conveniently forget just how awful we felt and do it all again. All of which is madness, but we tend to do it anyway.

    1. It is true, we let things creep back into our diet believing that because we are well that we will stay well until we get sick that is. It doesn’t make sense that we would identify something we eat as contributing to our ill health and then have a period of being well only to go on and eat the offending foods again.

17. Medical testing is I am sure very helpful, but as a first port of call how much do we notice our own bodies’ reactions to foods and drink. I know I ignored hangovers for years, or the mild depression I’d get after sugar excess, or the bloating after certain meals. We can feel a lot of it no question, it’s just whether we want to?

    1. For some people they have to be told that they are intolerant by another person rather than asking their body. But then I’ve met people who when told relate to it as a restriction and begrudge having to cut that certain food out. Yet that medical professional is only saying what the body has been communicating originally as an act of love rather than restriction.

18. What a great list! What if these warnings were required to be put on products? But then, how successful have the horrible photos that are required to be on all cigarettes been?

19. It’s wonderful to read this check list … it’s like a pilots check list before take off… and so we can, if we are diligent and honest enough, really start to take off and not be weighed down

    1. How apt about being ready to take off! After the bottle rocket made of sugar takes off that then crashes back to earth!

20. We can eat to our detriment or we can eat to support our vitality and health – either way it’s a personal choice that should not be judged or critiqued.

21. Before coming to Universal Medicine I was already experimenting with my food choices but my so called healthy choices never lasted. I needed to come to more love for myself and my body first to be able to renounce certain foods like gluten, dairy and sugar.

22. The more there is to feel and respond to, the choice is there to dull my self with heavy foods and dull my awareness at the same time.

23. Compared to how we eat to tantalise our tastebuds, for comfort, to stuff down emotions, and to numb ourselves from life, it’s certainly a very beautiful step for our health and the wellness of our being when we can “eat foods that support, build, nourish, confirm and truly complement the amazingness we already are and the bodies we must live with every minute of every day.”

24. I can completely identify with all the symptoms you list here Cherise. Having given up the same substances I am continually amazed at how well I feel today and quite stunned at how awful these foods made me feel. I have been very blessed to receive the Universal Healing Modalities, as they have helped me break the Catch 22 situation of reaching for the very foods to comfort me in my depression that were actively contributing to my ills.

25. It was incredible for me also that I did not believe I had any major intolerance or allergy to certain foods like gluten, dairy and sugar as I just accepted the symptoms in my body as normal but when I cut these things out of my diet the positive changes in my body were enormous and very obvious. So sometimes we don’t notice these things until we give it a go and see what happens.

26. I love your realization:
    ‘I couldn’t make a change without first being willing to understand and heal the reasons why I chose to be unloving with me in the first place, which then lead me to override what I truly felt.’
    We think the ‘benefits’ these foods offer us can be more important than the negative effects. With realizing the preciousness of my body and how it actually is my most important radar to read energy and discern whether something is true or not I have allowed myself to go a level deeper with the foods that the support and the foods that don’t.

27. People often ask me why I don’t eat gluten and dairy and the simple answer is that I know these foods dull me which is no fun so why eat them? Food is medicine just as many other things in life are so why not use medicine that supports the body instead of dulling it?

28. ‘…as human beings we always have the opportunity to research and feel for ourselves if a certain food sits well in our bodies’. Yes, our body is a very clear reflection of our food choices and as such, we can always observe the origin and the consequences of what we have chosen.

29. The True Understanding that have been shared by Serge Benhayon were felt in my body before I attended Universal Medicine events and therefore sugar, gluten and dairy were eliminated from my diet years before I even listened to anyone talk on the subject as my body shared what was not working within it.

30. I get a lot of confused looks when I tell people I don’t eat gluten, dairy, refined sugar, yeast, caffeine, alcohol, mushrooms or aubergines (the last two I have never liked!) the first question is “what DO you eat then?” and I reel off a list of meat, fish, egg, nuts, veggies and spices and water or herb tea. But it’s not rigid or set in stone and changes regularly based on how they make me feel. Sometimes I crave liver for 2 days then can’t stand the sight of it. My diet changes as my life goes through the motions and being aware of how I am feeling helps to make supportive food choices. Reintroducing junk foods or snacking is a warning that I am feeling something unsettling.

    1. I am noticing that so much more, processed food feels dead when I compare it to something that has been made by someone or myself who has been present with themselves while making it. It feels different and what goes into it is different as well. Because if I am off my game and disconnected I go for salt and sugar or don’t bat an eyelid at buying processed foods.

31. Experimenting with how certain things make us feel – whether it’s a food, emotion, activity or relationship – is what brings about true and long-lasting change that can inspire others to feel what’s true for them too; not deciding on something based on what we’ve heard from someone else.

    1. When we start to notice that our emotions are a key source in how we eat we will no longer need the diet industry.

32. …”so why don’t we all choose to eat foods that support, build, nourish, confirm and truly complement the amazingness we already are and the bodies we must live with every minute of every day?”
    Because it requires a bigger YES to you and your essence, which most people have disconnected from so much. The gap between themselves and what and how they live would require the openness to feel all their past choices which most people avoid. And best way/ fastest solution to avoid feeling is numbing yourself with food.

33. “Without self-responsibility and the willingness to take a more caring approach with me, I was living in a cycle of abusing my body and used food as a harmful form of medication to distract me from whatever I was feeling.” I love this sentence – it really brings it home our responsibility in looking after ourselves, in fact I super love this whole blog, I can so relate to all the symptoms you mention here.

    Why would we want to feel anything less than amazing?

34. Sometimes it’s not until we stop eating something for a while that we realise just how much it was affecting us, it’s really worthwhile bringing our awareness to how our body feels and experimenting with what works for us, which may change over time and be different from what works for other people.

    1. That is how I renounced many foods that did not agree with me anymore. I gave it a try not eating it for a while- then feeling how much greater I felt without it. Like this it was much easier to let go of tasty foods. The effect eating something again, after haven´t had it for months is just mind blowing and exposes how much we get used to things, that are absolutely not healthy and beyond tasty for our body.

       1. Yes and what’s interesting is that when we don’t have a certain food for a while and we come back to it we often don’t even like the taste of it anymore let alone what it does to us.

35. It is so powerful to explore why we choose things in the first place and to also sit with what our body says to us when we do something. The fact is it can be very black or white – our body agrees with something or it does not – the key is if we listen and respond.

36. The more we become aware of how the food we eat impacts our digestion so do the ways in which we eat. The rushing to eat can be just as harmful.

    1. Absolutely! I am very much aware how I move and prepare my body before and whilst I eat. Not checking out, when you are on your own, and when you with someone sharing a meal to focus on conversations that engages your body in presence and in an enriching way.

37. Looking at the table of food and its effect here, I realise how I have been substituting these foods with something else in order to satisfy the same need and I am still experiencing all these effects, and I have yet to fully call out and deal with what is truly going on for me.

38. It really is crazy even when our body speaks loud enough for us to experience physical pain, looking at what and how we eat seems to be the last thing we want to do, but instead we reach for a painkiller.

39. Before I came across Universal Medicine I also had discovered how much more vital and clearer I felt in my body from not having gluten, dairy and sugar in my diet. I had not been consistently honouring this for myself as when I looked around I could see that this way of living was not ‘normal’ and I did not fully understand why I was reacting so badly to these foods. I am not a coeliac but I do know when I don’t feel well, as it is not a feeling I enjoy.

    Through the presentations of Universal Medicine, I have been inspired to honour the messages from my body that support my well-being, and as such now live knowing and experiencing how this is true medicine, and as a result I have never been healthier, never felt more vital and live with greater connection to my being than ever before.

    1. I think it’s really important not to dismiss what we notice and have felt or experienced in our body with regards to food, with what works for us and what may not, by not comparing with what is considered to be the ‘norm’ but through honouring what our body has shown us and this is something I’ve found Universal Medicine has truly supported me with as well.

40. Thank you for listing your body’s reactions to these 3 commonly consumed ingredients – I have also experienced many of the same symptoms but for years overrode what my body was clearly telling me and in the case of gluten a knowing for over 20 years before I finally gave it up that it was contributing to my feelings of unwellness but not even alternative practitioners seemed interested in investigating because my symptoms were not extreme although I knew clearly that something was not right. Now that my food choices are generally so much more supportive my body feels vital and so many of the symptoms you describe above have disappeared or considerably lessened and life is so much more enjoyable and productive.

41. Sometimes it is not until we have given something up and allowed its effects to clear from our body, that we truly understand how damaging it was to consume.

    1. This is very true, I know from my own experience and that of others yet reading your comment today I realise that it also inspires me to drop some substances from my diet that I feel are not really supportive although they are regarded as highly nutritious. I realise that sometimes I think I have to eat something because of its nutritional value or how I think it will positively affect me, rather than feeling the quality that it presents energetically. I have noticed some symptoms returning recently and the chart in the article concurs with my own feeling that giving these foods a long term rest would enable me to see more clearly how they really impact on my way of being.

    2. Are we willing to run the experiment?

42. ‘Food has the potential to support us to live our natural way of being, with true vitality and good health’ this is so true yet currently on the whole food is not used this way, it is used to numb, distract, deny, dull ourselves and our light. I am still learning with this one but am feeling more and more in my body how this needs to change.

43. The more we connect to our body the easier it is for us to feel what foods feel light and supportive against those that feel heavy or damp which takes our digestive system into overwhelm as it tries to break them down.

44. Listening to my body is now my greatest guide as to what to eat. If I listened to my mind I would be a stone overweight and probably feel terrible! As I still have a sweet tooth to some degree…….

    1. I too have learnt and experienced how my body is by far the sharpest, truest and most instantaneous guide to knowing what supports my body and being and what does not.

45. “…. as human beings we always have the opportunity to research and feel for ourselves if a certain food sits well in our bodies” I agree, but before I became aware of what such foods were doing to me I ate them without being conscious of the consequences in my body. Basically I had numbed off my body to a considerable degree. Could this be why so many people eat such foods – and continue to gain weight etc? The more sensitive folk become aware of the impact more quickly.

46. “Universal Medicine and Serge Benhayon have never told me what foods to eat or avoid, but they have greatly inspired me to be more aware of making loving food choices. ” This is so important, when people tell us what to do, we tend to listen with our mind and not feel from our body if it is true for us or not and so we change our diet out of reaction to what someone has said. Listening to our body and all the many signs it gives us in the way of bloating, headache, skin rashes is the only way we truly know when to give up a food that is no longer supporting us.

47. I stopped eating gluten and dairy ages ago but recently had a period where I was tempted and didn’t resist eating biscuits – dairy and gluten. But I didn’t get away with it, after eating just a few biscuits my stomach was severely bloated. Interesting about your experience of back ache from eating sugar… I’ve been eating more fruit than usual and have had backache too…

48. The basis of this article is beautiful as it brings into our awareness why it is that we ignore the blatantly obvious fact that our body is constantly reflecting to us what makes it feel vital and what doesn’t. The simplicity of loving ones self enough to listen is the deeper lesson to understanding and altering food and behavior choices.

49. Considering the amount of Irritable Bowel Syndrome, bloating, reflux, yeast build up and many other conditions that we as humanity endure and accept as part of life, are so prolific. Could the foods we eat be part of the equation to such high rates of these illnesses? And could these illnesses be precursors to more serious illnesses in our body? There is much to consider in how we live and what we eat.

50. “Food has the potential to support us to live our natural way of being, with true vitality and good health, so why don’t we all choose to eat foods that support, build, nourish, confirm and truly complement the amazingness we already are and the bodies we must live with every minute of every day?” Such a great point Cherise, yet so many choose otherwise, preferring the short taste in the mouth of something sweet, starchy or salty – that doesn’t truly satisfy and leaves you wanting more, and could contribute to illness in the long term.

    1. Most of us don’t feel the ‘amazingness that we already are’ hence the desire to feel something else, be that buzzed up or numbed out, we think it’s better than feeling the restlessness and anxiousness of not feeling great.

51. Most of us don’t want to know that our favourite toasted bread or tasty ice cream are affecting us. In fact we will deny it so that we can continue with our habits. It is only be being willing to try it – not eating gluten for 6 months or more and then having it again – that we really get to know the affect it has.

52. The fact that it takes scientific research to prove something that our body has long been telling us very very clearly shows just how disconnected we have in general as a species become from our body.

    1. Once we have disconnected from our bodies then anything can happen to us and we won’t have much conscious awareness of it. We can thrash around in emotions and not realise that that is what’s going on, we can gorge ourselves on food to take ourselves out and not realise that that is what’s going on, we can take drugs that make us vomit and not twig that our bodies are vomiting because they’re being poisoned. Once that gap between us and ourselves comes in then it really is incredible the range of things that we can engage in without having any conscious awareness of what’s going on.

53. Thank you for this reminder – “But we can always change or re-imprint the cycle that we may find ourselves in, at any time.”

54. An experience like Cherise’s seems to show just how impactful these food choices can be for individuals. Clearly, responses differ between people and it may be useful to know when and how they differ.

55. Cherise I always used to fight my body, not listen to it because hey I wanted to eat what I wanted. Then my body got sick, I still fought it and eventually I realized (well was shown quite clearly) that I needed to change my diet and also how I am in all of my life – the result – my body is vital and no longer sick with IBS like I was before. To me that speaks volumes for Universal Medicine.

56. It is interesting to read your extensive list of symptoms that are related to certain food types Cherise. No doubt alot of time and money could be saved if this information was more widely available and equally accepted by society in general, thereby reducing the need for countless tests, examinations and even medication in an attempt to improve someone’s health. When it could be as simple as making a few dietary adjustments.

57. A couple of years ago my Dr wanted me to be tested for coeliac disease, with this test I had to eat gluten for a week. I politely declined and said I don’t need a test to confirm what my body already knows. In the past I have suffered with exhaustion, bloating and weight issues from ingesting gluten, and now being free of gluten for quite some years I never experience the tiredness or mood swings etc I did when I ate gluten. Our bodies are constantly communicating with us how a food truly feels in our body, listening to and then acting on this awareness is key to true health and vitality.

58. Being aware of how certain foods make us feel is not something that most of us want to admit too as it would involve giving up so many of those foods that we love to indulge in. But when there is a willingness to feel the true impact of certain foods on our body, and then change our eating habits, it soon becomes apparent how much better we feel and how supported we are by paying more attention to our diet.

59. I like the invitation to become the scientists of our own bodies here.

    1. Yes, it is a very illuminating and value strategy to look for cause and effect and can make a big difference in our life.

60. Just the idea that food can actually support us, can be a foundation for a rich and fulfilling life, rather then a series of endless indulgences, is something that is so outside the lexicon of our normal life.

61. A key factor in revealing the truth is the allowance of space. We can continue to dose ourselves up with poison proclaiming it’s great but when we stop and simply give room, our body speaks. No wonder modern life is so jam packed! It allows us continue down the same old tracks. Thank you Cherise.

62. We have so many uses for food these days – comfort, distraction, satisfaction, numbing what we feel, for false bursts of energy – we forget that food is actually designed to nourish and support us. It makes a big difference to how we feel if we eat according to what feels right for our body and avoid the foods that bring us down or make us heavier.

63. ” there are times when I know I have ‘been here before’ or have ‘made the same mistakes twice’ – if not many times over. But we can always change or re-imprint the cycle that we may find ourselves in, at any time. ”
    This is so important to remember we can always change or re-imprint out previous choices. Even the slightest change to support our body will have a dramatic change.

64. If we eat to support what is needed for each day it is interesting to notice what drops away that is not nourishing. Everything else tends to be eating in reaction to what I could not deal with in the day.

65. The fact is we have an investment in every vice and every misstep we make. They all have a short-term pay off. It’s only when we see and admit that this exists, that our life truly changes. There is no mistake in what we do, just in our choice to pretend we are dumb and push through. Thank you Cherise for sharing here how the journey of becoming honest was for you.

66. Our bodies love that we honour and respect them. They never stop letting us know what really nourishes, nurtures and supports them and this we can feel by how light and lovely we feel, not in our heads but in our actual bodies. It’s like all the parts join up and we begin to feel ourselves as whole people and move as one, no longer disjointed, one sided or top heavy for example. In my experience though this is not an end point for the body is communicating all the time and as things come up to clear there can also be pain and discomfort and this is all part of the process.

67. Often we don’t fully understand how a food or behaviour is making us feel until we experiment with cutting it out, e.g. how we think our skin naturally looks might be completely different to its true make-up because all along we have been eating/doing x, y and z, which is why really paying attention to the signs our body puts out and having the willingness to explore different options is so crucial and an amazing outlook to have.

68. When I feel less than amazing, I eat less than amazingly. And I can see here that one of the key missing ingredients is appreciation as when I appreciate myself, others I feel much more amazing.

69. ‘Western medicine and science work persistently to research, perform tests and diagnose the body’s intolerances to certain foods, but as human beings we always have the opportunity to research and feel for ourselves if a certain food sits well in our bodies.’ When we connect to our body, it is so obvious what foods support us and those that don’t, the problem is we use food for comfort, and often override what our body is telling us.

70. Unless I am prepared to address why I choose the food to distract and numb me then I will never truly heal. To be willing and allow myself to feel that which I am avoiding,,, possibly a deeper level of responsibility! is what I need to address. It is simple no matter the doubts that enter my mind and I know I need to be completely honest with myself and say yes to the what is next.

71. “I couldn’t make a change without first being willing to understand and heal the reasons why I chose to be unloving with me in the first place” – this really stood out for me as I am finding myself keeping coming back to this very point yet again – and what a great question to ask ‘Why choose non-love?’ – I don’t think there’s any room for justification with this one.

72. I have heard a lot of people reporting similar things to Cherise but in normal life we don’t notice because we have all these things at once and so their effect compounds without an easy way to find out which is which.

73. We are so used to overriding our bodies the messages have to get louder and louder, as our medical systems are very much aware.

74. It sounds like you become a scientist of your own body, compiling your own evidence about your own body.

    1. Yes, once it is normal that we feel good in our body these investigations become easy.

75. I have noticed that there are a lot of young people who don’t want to do anything unless it is gaming. This can take over to such an extent that they don’t stop to eat and if they do, they grab the easiest and quickest packet of so called food that they come across.The food companies are quick to provide such foods making them cheaper and cheaper to produce with higher profit margins. This feedback loop is creating a society that doesn’t truly care for themselves at all and is the harbinger of much illness and disease physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually.

76. We need to change our understanding of food. We still think that we can eat what we like and it will not harm us. Gluten, dairy and sugar are now in most foods we consume these days, and we over loading our body with these products without taking into consideration the harm it is doing. When we start to listen to our body the symptoms you show become very clear and it then becomes our choice if we are willing to look at the foods we choose to eat. On a world scale it is shown that our health is diminishing and the types of illnesses we are getting are interwoven in their complexity, and food along with stress are some of the contributing factors. Anything we can do for ourselves to support our body has to be a positive step forward for both our own health and that of the over burdened health service.

77. Self-love is perhaps the greatest determining factor in what foods to eat, because it (self-love) leads each person to the door of a greater love, a unity with everyone where responsibility is known and is lovingly made the focus for each day.

78. Foods have a massive impact on not just our gastrointestinal tract but also how we feel in our day to day lives – it’s very worth investigating which foods work for you and your body and which foods leave you feeling heavy and tired or bloated or unable to concentrate – surely the quality of life we lead is more important that the instant gratification food brings.

79. I have so much more vitality and clarity since I started listening to my body and refining my food choices –enormously so.

80. Since I was brought up on all of those foods – gluten, dairy and sugar to me I felt normal and fine. It wasn’t until I decided to play around with it and take them out of my diet, not all at the same time but one by one and I started to feel different. After a couple of months without them I re-introduced and wow I had no idea the impact that they had. Since then I couldn’t do it to my body and being and I knew that this was a way of living with a quality that I had no idea existed.

81. Every moment we have a choice to make life about harmony and vitality and knowing that food is the source that supports this way of living is a responsibility that is offered for all of us to live. A simple yet often delayed way of living.

82. It’s really great to stop and consider what different foods, actions and ways of being do to us. It’s like a stock take and one that I feel I would like to do on my life, to explore the details of things that I do or don’t do that could bring a deep support to me.

83. Great diagram outlining the reactions you felt in your body Cherise. I could have written it myself, and I suspect many others would feel the same. The more we reject what’s on offer out there, courtesy of ‘big food’ and restaurants and the like, the more these firms wil be forced to accommodate what is surely a growing health trend.

84. Food intolerances and allergies appear to be escalating – are we listening and being aware of what is going on in our bodies to be causing this escalation?

85. The level of self-medication using food is so prevalent it has become normalised, and yet what it has produced is a humanity that walks through life in a numbed out fog, totally sold on the belief that it’s our life and we can do what we want because it doesn’t affect anyone else. We couldn’t be further from the truth.

86. When people are tested and get to hear there is an intolerance with certain food most of the times they feel that something has been taken away from them and although they feel better there can be a ‘poor me’ attitude. With feeling and experimenting for ourselves with food, we make a clear choice to listen what our body tells us and it feels empowering to honour what we feel.

87. It’s extraordinary how loud the body can be in its reaction to our choices, waiting for us to listen to what it is telling us is not true for us. It’s crazy that we give our power away for science to tell us of our intolerances when choosing awareness can make us our own expert.

88. We do know what does and doesn’t support the body and what makes us tired, lethargic and bloated or whatever, it’s whether we are willing to look at why we need those foods that don’t support us. People are constantly talking about food, either from what they love to eat, to how they feel heavy and bloated after pasta and so on. It’s great at those times when you can offer a suggestion or simply ask, have you tried not eating that for a while?
    At work late last year my Director asked me to do a presentation on self care, so I decided to offer up suggestions for trying one thing for a week either from the suggestions or something that they felt they would like to do. About 7 staff participated and one worker who was from agency at the time, asked could he do it so I said, of course. So he decided that he would cut out one meal per day which he did for a week and kept going after, losing something like 12 kilos in weight. He still does have one meal less every day and his family are doing the same. This for him he said has been huge and he feels so much better with much more energy.

89. Whenever people question the foods that I choose not to eat, I describe the symptoms you have played out for us and 9 times out of 10 the person agrees that is how they feel too! Just goes to show that everyone knows their body inside out.

    1. This is my experience as well Michael Brown. There is that knowing that it doesn’t sit well in the body yet we continue to override this feeling time and time again.

       1. Our food choices are governed way before we’re in the supermarket buying them. The types of food that we choose are governed by our movements leading up to that point and therefore if we don’t change the way that we walk, talk and think we won’t be able to change the things that we eat.

90. Thank you for sharing that it is not about just giving up the foods, but looking at why we are choosing to be unloving to our bodies in the first place. I have tried before to give up foods without doing this, and they have a way of creeping back in. But when we consider what we are avoiding, or why we are eating what we are eating, it becomes so much bigger than food – and the more I appreciate myself – the more I am able to make choices that reflect this.

91. Great question ‘so why don’t we all choose to eat foods that support, build, nourish, confirm and truly complement the amazingness we already are and the bodies we must live with every minute of every day?’ Because we eat what we want not feel what we need to eat to best support our body.

92. Gosh, I know why I choose certain foods that don’t support me. A moment of relief…like a drug. It’s basically medication for when times are tough, or I find myself in a tricky situation and I don’t know how to deal with it…so I comfort myself with food. Being more aware of this and catching the sneaky habit out has really helped me overcome some of these situations much faster than I had done in the past.

93. ..’ I couldn’t make a change without first being willing to understand and heal the reasons why I chose to be unloving with me in the first place, which then lead me to override what I truly felt.’ That’s why dieting does not work, it is trying to change a pattern that feels safe and comfortable without addressing the root cause of why we make food choices that are not supportive for our body.

94. To detox our body and food choices so thoroughly is so beautiful to do, and your words here Cherise are deeply inspiring for me to read. But not because I need to change what I eat actually, but because I can see this all applies to the emotions and thoughts I allow myself to absorb. It’s this that is the most toxic thing in a way, because the energy of being less is there well before any food is on my plate.

95. I could really relate to all that you have shared here Cherise, we tend to put up with what we think is normal in our bodies for a long time, when we don’t listen to what it is saying.

96. I haven’t been formally tested for gluten intolerance but had been aware for over 20 years that gluten did not suit me but overrode this feeling as it seemed too hard to eradicate it from my diet. As soon as I stopped around 10 years ago I felt the benefits and found it easy to continue. However cutting out sugar has been a much more gradual process as I was in much more denial about how I used sugar for example as an energy boost to overcome my varying levels of exhaustion. Being open to the effects of food on my body is supporting me to recognise where I am still eating things that dull me and cause unwanted side effects like constipation.

97. We have lost the trust to our own bodies, we cannot decipher its messages because we have not learned to listen and understand ourselves. Instead we have given this immense power we have to the outside, waiting to be told and waiting to be confirmed, in effect, we want another to take responsibility for our lives. But this is a very disempowering way to live, a continuation of being controlled. We do not need to live in disempowerment when we trust again that truth is within us, that before listening to anyone, we already know what is truth and from there we can reach out for support in discernment.

98. A brilliant presentation on how valuable our relationship with our bodies are. We all have the innate knowing of what feels OK in our bodies and what does not, however it is often the case that we choose to avoid the responsibility of the responding to the truth that is presented. We consider this as normal in society today. Being open to understanding how we medicate ourselves with food, to avoid being honest with what we are feeling, has allowed me to explore and deepen my relationship with truth, and as such allowed me to live with far greater well-being, vitality and connection to who I am, bringing more of me to life.

99. My feeling is that our bodies are finely tuned and innately harmonious. They offer us very ‘wise’ feedback whenever they are out of balance for one reason or another. If we didn’t listen to them we would be quite sick as a race of beings. But in my view we could be even more attentive and pay heed to these more subtle signs of disharmony. Perhaps then our bodies would lead us into a truly harmonious way of being.

100. ‘I couldn’t make a change without first being willing to understand and heal the reasons why I chose to be unloving with me in the first place, which then lead me to override what I truly felt.’ That’s why a diet does not work as it is a formula to follow without feeling into the body, going for an end result and this will never bring understanding and healing but burying even deeper what is causing the abuse with food in the first place.

101. “I was living in a cycle of abusing my body and used food as a harmful form of medication to distract me from whatever I was feeling.” I can so relate to this, I use to eat alot of salty food to keep myself in a racy state, it was like I did not get enough salt that I would add extra salt to my plate.

102. ‘The unpleasant symptoms I endured also included mood changes and feelings of frustration, worry, anger, fear, stress and sadness, accompanied by poor sleep patterns, nightmares, a feeling of endless hunger and the overall sense of disconnection to me and my own body – awful!’ Cherise, I think this paragraph sums up the majority of the population, tired, stressed and exhausted, wouldn’t it be great if everyone changed their diet just to see if it made a difference, it definitely made a difference to me.

103. Like a captain steering a seriously damaged ship, we desperately lurch along looking to plug the rapidly appearing holes, with anything that comes to hand. Any minute we seem to think we are going to sink. But is that actually true? And anyway, what kind of a way is this to carry on? We are so scared but the current course we are headed on is stressful and disastrous anyway. So isn’t it worth finally stopping the food we know we don’t need to eat, and the habits that harm, and finding out what comes next? It might not be as terrible as we think it will be. Thank you Cherise for this sharing and words of encouragement from someone who has stopped and come out the other side to see a settled and steady sea.

104. It’s absolutely incredible what happens when you start to become more aware of your own body. I’ve found that I am super sensitive to many foods since giving up gluten and dairy and (most) sugar. Many people have suggested that I’m only sensitive because I’ve re-trained my body to not tolerate these foods, although I see it as more a bringing my body back to its natural state, once all the inflammation created by the other food goes down that was basically numbing any potential sensitivity, my body is then able to respond to more accurately to what it does and doesn’t like.

105. Amazing Cherise… you were your own science experiment. Those three food substances have a significant impact on health and wellbeing and yet they are probably 3 of the most commonly consumed food items in a staple diet. It would not take much to turn around the health of a nation by simply eliminating them…

106. It is common sense that whatever we put into our body will affect how we feel and how the body will function. We all know that if we eat too much our body tells us very clearly that it does not like this and so it is with everything that we eat and drink.

107. Our body holds great intelligence that we sometimes wish to ignore. It knows exactly what food to go for to smother out what it does not wish to feel. It also has the intelligence to know what food to go for when it wishes to live the light of the soul. It’s our movements before that will determine what we listen to.

108. Coming back to this blog feels very supportive today as I found myself eating foods I haven’t touched for years. I can appreciate that I haven’t chosen to give myself a hard time and berate myself for such choices. Understanding that my body is feeling something I don’t want, or haven’t yet chosen to be aware of. But the beautiful thing about building a relationship with my body is that I feel less inclined to keep ignoring it or at least turn around from the numbing behaviours sooner rather than after getting full blown symptoms like I used to. In fact ‘full blown symptoms’ continue to refine themselves in my understanding of when to sit up and listen to my feelings.

109. In any given moment we can choose to attune ourselves to the wisdom of our body, or we can completely override it!

110. Its fantastic how the body is willing to say what works and doesn’t work for it. What’s even more fantastic is when we listen!

     1. The council of the body is always very simple and always incredibly wise. I love the wisdom of the body, I really do.

111. Truly listening to our body is the key – a diagnosis of any intolerance is fine, but if something makes us feel nauseous, dull and simply unhealthy, such as dairy did for me from very young, (although I was not considered ‘ dairy intolerant’) then it is imperative to honour that.

112. This is so true and something I am with at the moment ‘I couldn’t make a change without first being willing to understand and heal the reasons why I chose to be unloving with me in the first place, which then lead me to override what I truly felt.’ For example for me to look at what is the reason for me wanting to overeat? What is it that I do not want to feel? No big deal, no doom and gloom but there has to be something I do not want to feel or deal with. When we truly address the issue or energy behind the action, from my understanding this is when it truly changes and heals.

     1. So true Vicky, especially when we approach it from a ‘no big deal, doom and gloom’ perspective. Making whatever it is we don’t want to feel bigger than it is delays us from actually feeling it.

113. This has reflected the choices we make not to ‘research’ what we put into our body but instead the fact that we often choose what we eat according to the taste in our mouth. Going a bit deeper this also raises the consideration of what different foods do for us, and often the fact that we eat for distraction or boredom. There is so much to be learned from observing ourselves closely – not judging ourselves but lovingly allowing ourselves to open to what is there to be known.

114. ‘Food has the potential to support us to live our natural way of being, with true vitality and good health…’ I simple and true statement. ‘The potential’ being the truth part, but do we use food to nourish or do we choose it to dull us. I oscillate between the two probably almost daily.

115. A brilliant blog Cherise. I have certainly become much more aware of how certain substances cause challenges to my body and exacerbate if I choose to ignore them. I can relate to the list you share.

116. It is one thing to allow ourselves the grace to see the unloving behaviours we have set in place that inhibit us from living in a truly vital way, but quite another to actually put the movements into place that will help cease the ill momentum we have been choosing to run us for so long.

117. Initially I cut out gluten and dairy mainly because of influences from outside of me such as things people said about these two foods. I was already aware that dairy was an issue for people with eczema, and I knew people who were intolerant of wheat. It took me several years to wean myself off both but the results were so noticeable it became a no-brainer to continue. Sugar was a harder issue, it was my ‘Rescue Remedy’ for when I felt exhausted. I had already gone a long way towards de-stressing my life, but was in a physically demanding job in a supermarket and would often buy something ‘naughty’ from the gluten free section. Gradually as I refined my diet further I began to feel more the effects of sugar in my body in terms of my mood – it made me feel depressed, so I stopped eating anything with sugar in. More recently I noticed this same depression after eating carbohydrates, so even natural sugars were causing mood changes. My diet is something I continually need to refine but at least I am open to the awareness now and willing to change.

118. My experiences of eating gluten, dairy and sugar were the same Cherise. Choosing to not eat them anymore was one of the best decisions I made…cutting out gluten and dairy were easy, but the sugar was a challenge. I hadn’t realised how addictive it was when I was consuming it.

119. .’…, but as human beings we always have the opportunity to research and feel for ourselves if a certain food sits well in our bodies.’ It feels crazy we tend to override what our body is telling us, why would we not listen and be amazing, I know it’s a choice and it needs to be a self loving choice to start with.

120. The more I travel around the world, the more I am touched by how we eat food, not in a healthy supportive way, but more to ‘fill up’ and get through the day. For even when I have removed the foods you mention Cherise, I still go for the habitual dulling that food can give me. And what is this dulling really about? The amazing awareness we all naturally have. I wonder what our lives would be like if we nourished ourselves with our feeling senses first, instead of the food we have at first hand.

121. Until these symptoms are brought to our awareness many like myself were not fully aware of them! I have generally felt the symptoms in the past but just considered that I was just feeling off on that day but not known why. I appreciate your sharing Cherise.

122. Thank you Cherise for sharing a simple yet very supportive blog on how the body does react to diary. My experience started with dairy and before long the signs showed that gluten was not doing my body any favours as well. There is so much here to appreciate about how the body can move and feel when we choose to make simple and responsible choices with our food intake. The ease on the body is felt and anything that is short of this feeling rings out loud and clear with the body to bring it back to the natural state of harmony it shows us we can live with.

123. “I had become an expert in overriding what my body truly felt.”

     I can really relate to this. We are the masters of our own domain be that ill health or vitality. It is always our choice. Indeed, I am finding that true health comes not only from responsible and loving food choices but also from renouncing this incessant need to create; be it drama, illness, misery, elation or any other human emotion that feeds us a way to be that is not true to the essence of who we are.

124. Thank you Cherise. This blog is a real wake up call. When I go to the supermarket I’m shocked by the fact that 90% of the food in there doesn’t seem truly nurturing at all. I used to think bread was a healthy staple and now I struggle to see it as food at all. When I eat bread or pasta I feel absolutely terrible and I’ve come to see these foods as poison. I know that most people feel fine with gluten and bread but I honestly feel that you can only know the damage that food is doing to you (and how reliant you are on it) when you eliminate it from your diet for an extended period or when illness or disease stops you in your tracks.

125. What if the greatest symptom and side effect of our adventures with food is not one we admit? What if it is often completely missed off the list? What if the addiction we truly suffer from is not the substance per se but the blunting and absolute dampening of our feeling senses? What if we are so adept at this dance with numbing our senses, we don’t even know or readily accept they even exist?! Is this not the most absurd thing of all, when all we say is we want nothing less than a life of good health? It seems to me this only comes when we make our menu all about feeling truth, and our diet one of appreciation of awareness. Anything else will just continue to bring us junk as fast as any take away outlet.

126. That’s something we really miss growing up – learning to decipher for ourselves what feels right in our bodies and what does not. Instead we are told what to feel and what to believe, rather than being given the permission to discern for ourselves. This alone would hugely impact the state of our medical system.

127. I too have been inspired to give up gluten, dairy and sugar and have felt the benefits, I noticed how sensitive my body actually is to food, and how much easier it is to support myself by listening to my body.

128. Becoming aware of what I eat and how it affects me is a constant evolution. Equal to what I eat is how much I eat, the energy I eat it in, the energy I prepare it in, the quality of the food I buy, the timing of when I eat and many other factors. It is a very worthwhile investment to bring awareness to this area of my life and to stop or at least constantly reduce how much I use food for any purpose other than to support the physical needs of my body. Any level of food abuse brings me down and reduces my vitality and awareness and I prefer not to do that!

129. Great to read this confirmation of the effects of gluten, dairy and sugar – and especially from a gastroenterology nurse. I particularly liked the eschewing of the need to go and get tested: our bodies tell us much of what we need to know loud and clear – if we’re listening. And listening is the key – for it seems even gastroenterology nurses can override what their bodies are telling them! It’s an understanding we all need to arrive at, even when we work in the field.

130. it’s been my observation also that sugar has an effect far beyond the racy stimulus that we first get after having it, influencing sleep, mood, reactivity, nervous energy, an uncomfortable tension in the body and diminishing of awareness – some things that are only observable once we have eliminated it for a time.. Once the true effects are felt it is easier to make the choice to not have it – so never about a rule, but rather the choice to stay feeling great, or endure the consequences of having it… and so it gets easier .. 🙂

131. wonderful Cherise, this is true science and true medicine, science that holds within it love and responsibility that is at the heart of our being. and medicine that is the healing on offer with an embracing of that awareness and responsibility.

132. How many of us recognise that we have come full circle and find ourselves in the exact situation but only with different people. What I am getting to understand is that this happens all the time, and that these moments are there to look at and learn from, and to feel into the choices which can potentially evolve us.

133. Cherise early on in my life I found I could not tolerate Dairy and then later Gluten (although the symptoms of falling asleep after a loaf of bread were always there) anyway what amazed me most was how addicted and dependent I was on sugar, yet how much that contributed to my long term exhaustion. As I cut this out more and more I feel I sleep better, am more vital, less moody and a pleasure to be around!

134. Your list of symptoms from the consumption of gluten, dairy and sugar reminded me – I had constipation for years, no decades and it is so far in the past now that I forgotten I ever had it. Just goes to show what can happen when we start listening to our body and don’t eat what the body cannot digest or utilise, what doesn’t truly nourish it.

135. I love this article Cherise because of the beautifully scientific way (all observation) that you have approached the study of yourself. I love how you have reached that point within yourself that a particular food no longer sits well with you, so you no longer include that in your diet. So simple and when we look at the ‘diet’ and ‘food’ industries so potentially challenging to what they present but at the same time totally empowering for someone to take charge of what they eat and don’t based solely on listening to their own body. This would rock and shake the foundations of the current belief system and corrupt practices around food.

136. Cherise I certainly agree with your point “I now know how my body reacts to these foods and with the repercussions lasting for days afterwards,”, its amazing how loud the body speaks if we listen and look not only at food but the other things we take on be it music and emotions.

137. How pervasive is the corruption of nutrition in our society in general, and this is something where true integrity is most desperately needed, and articles like this are essential

     1. We think we know what is good for us, but really we know that if we allow the truth that our body communicates to us in relation to how we are sourcing it to run, we will no longer be able to ‘get away’ with the reckless driving we should have been booked for a long time ago.

138. I find it quite shocking that these symptoms you describe may simply not be connected to diet. Either this is completely wrong or it is really strange that these simple-seeming facts are not common medical knowledge. It could even be tested – give those who never had dairy some dairy and record their symptoms. The same with gluten though it would be harder with sugar.

139. I get what is being said here and with this, “With honesty and awareness of my body, I now know how my body reacts to these foods and with the repercussions lasting for days afterwards, I was left feeling far less than the amazing woman I otherwise naturally feel.” To be honest I would assume your body would’ve told you this every time or maybe not. What I am saying is that it’s not the food choice that was the issue or now that you have let go of it you are better. It feels like when it is said like this that you are saying you are in control of it and everything.

     But why would or have you made the same choice over and over and now you don’t? Have ‘you’ got better at listening or has something else changed as well? It would seem to choose the same thing over and over would have made you realise that you weren’t running the show like you thought and you possibly still aren’t. For me this would say there are thoughts that come from different places, some support you and some don’t. How do you tell the difference, as you say by feeling and also trusting because we think we know which foods nourish and which foods don’t, but this is just a picture, as we are using food as a cover. There is a deeper relationship to be had here that food covers, yes by all means make what you say are supporting food choices but that’s not the answer or the key. This all comes from how you are with yourself, how you move, what your thoughts are and what you align yourself to and with.

     1. I have been observing myself for a while with sugar and this is the food for me that I have been most stubborn with. What I have found quite interesting is that my food choice influences how I am with myself, how I move and absolutely what my thoughts are. But as you say Ray, this has happened way before my physical choice. It’s like walking down the chocolate isle saying, I am not going to eat chocolate, I am not going to eat chocolate, I am not going to eat chocolate, Oh I ate the chocolate. And that is exactly what happens. What this highlights is that it is the choice in energy that I am living. Am I living, moving and thinking in a way that is all considerate and loving of me and my own body or am I being governed by my taste buds alone without any consideration for the effects on my body? – not loving in other words. Either way it’s all energy and what I am aligning to.

140. I know what we are saying here and I can’t say that we don’t care about ourselves. It’s more about who do we see ourselves as? If you see yourself as just a human being that has a choice to eat something or not and that it only affects you, or even further that you are just you, then you see life in a certain way. More on from that you choose things in a certain range in a certain way and in this you don’t see outside of it. So we can make food choices to nourish you, but for some that may be an orange a day and others it may be a wine with dinner and others still it may be fish with greens, but is one better than another? Of course depending on where you are looking you will say one over another, but where does it all start? There would have to be a point where this all starts before we get to a ‘choice’ on a food that we all have a different view on.

     Could it be possible it has nothing truly to do with food but this is just the end product we like to focus on, hiding the choice before? There is a choice of energy, ‘everything is energy’ and so if we arrive at any point especially with how we are with food and see better or even more nourishing, then I say you have already made a choice well before that and that is one of energy. You can look healthier to a point merely on the back of good and bad or nourishing and non nourishing foods, but like anything there is always deeper to go and ultimately it all comes back to energy.

141. The very fact that 95% of people in the world eat foods that adversely affect them is humbling. As this means 95% of the world’s population do not consider nor lovingly care for the body in which one lives. Humbling, because until this connection to and care of our body becomes our choice, then as a humanity we will continue to cause our bodies great harm, every day.

142. The list of each experience you had with Gluten, Dairy and Sugar is quite something, but what really made me stop was how frequently these three are blended together into some creamy delight. It may taste amazing, but the impact on the body is staggering.

143. When I first began to eliminate certain foods from my diet, it was a playful experiment to see what was possible. if I had stopped smoking a couple of decades earlier surely I could quit caffeine, alcohol, gluten, dairy and sugar. It took time to fully appreciate how these new choices have impacted on my body and sense of well-being. Now I’m fine tuning my relationship with food aware there are still foods I eat for the wrong reasons, and this is something I’m working on.

144. It’s a very useful exercise to make a list of effects to the foods that make our body react. My reactions were not exactly the same as yours Cherise, but most definitely along the same lines. From these observations I know that all kinds of choices and not just food choices, have the potential to leave my body feeling under par. But by staying aware of the correlations more and more gets revealed about what needs to be looked at more deeply.

145. ‘why don’t we all choose to eat foods that support, build, nourish, confirm and truly complement the amazingness we already are and the bodies we must live with every minute of every day?’ This is a great question and one we could pose every time we go to get something to eat. If the food is not answering all this for us then it is actually either keeping us stuck where we are or worse still dragging us down. When I practise this way of being in relationship with myself and the foods I am being drawn to to eat I learn a lot about myself and in choosing foods that my body truly wants I become more vital, more aware and have so much more clarity. With this comes an invitation to more responsibility in life and so it goes on, our choice to step up or not.

146. Food can be used to support our awareness, what we are feeling and what is happening around us, or to do the opposite, to numb ourselves so we are less aware and feel less. It is our choice by the energy we choose to align to, do we truly wish to evolve or stay in comfort?

147. One of the most important phrases here is the “ disconnection to the body” that happens when we ignore what the body is actually telling us. When we do stay connected to our bodies there is an extraordinary world to experience, there is just quite a bit of healing to take place before the doorway to this world opens to us.

148. It is quite remarkable to observe how often we have cravings to eat something that hurts our body and makes us feel sick. Often it is because there is a part of us that wants to be less aware whilst claiming the opposite!

149. Food can be a harmful form of medication- I can really relate to this, Cherise. At present my body feels like having green vegetables for breakfast. Now for many that is an odd choice and indeed it would have been for me a couple of years ago, but it feels so good in my body at present. My body tells me what is okay or not and in this way food becomes a supportive medication for me. At times override my body feelings but I can always feel this in my body soon after.

150. Food is indeed an interesting topic… When we can’t digest the world, or accept the grandness we in-truth are, then we reach very specifically for the exact foods that will alleviate us of the pain that arises from feeling all this. When we are ready to embrace more fully, our love and our light, we naturally reach for foods that will support our evolution in this. Therefore, our relationship with food is really a relationship with ourselves and with our awareness, in that whatever we eat will either support us to be more aware of exactly what is going on around and within us or, it will support the numbness we otherwise choose to not feel this. Before we reach for food, there is a first an energy we align to that determines the nature of the food we reach for. This can only be love or, all that is not.

151. When it is simply broken down and reported , as the writer does, it becomes simple and clear we really just should not eat some things.

152. “as human beings we always have the opportunity to research and feel for ourselves if a certain food sits well in our bodies.” And we have a choice to listen to our body. I have found when reviewing what to eat that when I say yes to eating what supports me rather than dictating to myself with no, you can’t eat that, then I am much less likely to over ride what my body is telling me.

153. It is a true science to listen to the wisdom of our own bodies and be supported in our choices from here. There is nothing that anyone else can tell us, about anything and of course what to eat or not to eat, that we must not feel for ourselves first and always foremost. If we are choosing foods to abuse our bodies or those that clearly do not agree with our digestive system then we are already choosing to be in an abusive relationship with ourselves and denying who we truly are; this is where our focus needs to be directed firstly so to bring healing to us. Such a choice will naturally bring about change in the way we eat as we may very well begin to choose to eat to celebrate who we are and not at all to bash ourselves.

154. It is well worth going on this exploration of the deeper causes of why we choose foods that keep us feeling less than vital and well. I have found it important to have a solid foundation of body awareness so when the urge occurs to have a certain food to ‘medicate’ myself, at that moment I allow space to understand that I have taken on some form of reaction to something in my day. Just staying with this as something to feel in my body in an open and receptive way allows a deeper sense of a hurt to surface. Holding space around this and allowing it to surface a little, it begins to feel as If I am bringing love to the hurt, a love that is more powerful than the craving or urge. All this only can occur if during this examination, I am holding a very tender movement and rhythm with what I am doing, but it now does not require that I stop what I am doing and there is no analysis in the process, just feeling and a deeper connection back to the love that I am, from the honesty that there is always a harboured hurt at the bottom of the need to medicate myself. Without dealing with the hurt, the craving can surface and take over and in a moment, the food can make me numb to this process of reconnection and ‘take me out’ for even a whole day.

155. Quotes by Hippocrates: “Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food.”
     “There are in fact two things, science and opinion; the former begets knowledge, the latter ignorance.” “Wherever the art of Medicine is loved, there is also a love of Humanity.”

156. “With honesty and awareness of my body, I now know how my body reacts to these foods and with the repercussions lasting for days afterwards, I was left feeling far less than the amazing woman I otherwise naturally feel.” Our bodies tell us everything, before I never use to pay attention to how it felt after eating, but now I am so much aware of how certain foods can make me feel awful.

157. The marketing campaigns behind food products are designed to tempt us to try, and by that we are made to feel we are missing out, even when we are aware of the outcome, like chocolate gives me pimples, or bread bloats me, we still want to just try it again. I’m intrigued by the amount of will power required, when in truth the body is clearly rejecting it and letting us know that it causes an adverse reaction. It’s then I know I clearly make a choice to either eat it and feel the pain or pimples or clearly say no which support my body feeling vital, clear and light.

158. Great question, it is familiarity with a way of eating and not really wanting to change that meant I held on to sugar for way longer than I should have. The harm it did my body is awful, the anxiety, the raciness, the way I used sugar to hide or numb how tired I was. Immense when I look back. ‘But we can always change or re-imprint the cycle that we may find ourselves in, at any time.’

159. So many of the symptoms you described are very common symptoms in society. Yet how many people are willing to look at the fact that is may be their beloved cheese, bread, chocolate…that may be the cause. We can go to the nth degree looking for the causes yet are we really prepared to look at the obvious and most simple?

160. This is great what you share Cherise, I am currently working on why certain foods have crept back in, knowing that they don’t support me and make me feel awful. Getting to this understanding is what will support me in letting them go and not having any desire for them. It is process of being honest with myself in what is underneath it all. I know it is possible as there are so many foods I have already let go off including alcohol and I have no more desire for them.

161. I agree with you Cherise – “Food has the potential to support us to live our natural way of being, with true vitality and good health, so why don’t we all choose to eat foods that support, build, nourish, confirm and truly complement the amazingness we already are and the bodies we must live with every minute of every day?” With a world obesity problem there is more going on why we eat certain foods and why we eat unhealthy. As I connect more and more to my body I feel how the food goes into my mouth knowing that it is not just the taste, it is how I remain and nurture that connection to my body that is important.

162. Understanding the impact food has on our body is actually not something that is difficult, even before being that aware of needing to take care of my body it was easy to pick up food or substances that had an effect. Yet as someone that liked all my treats I didn’t want to listen, yet when I choose to listen more closely the symptoms you describe were there for me and the louder the bodies reactions got to what I would eat the simpler the choice for me to make.

163. As an additional note, it’s crazy isn’t it – how we, as a whole, don’t take a real and truthful look at the abuse of our bodies that can occur with the foods and substances we consume. Many of our doctors drink alcohol (a poison), we see much of what brings immense sugar-dairy-gluten hits and more as ‘treats’ and ‘rewards’…
     We have become a society who has normalised self-abuse. We make it and sell it as ‘sexy’… It lines our supermarket shelves, our airwaves and our screens, as something to be sought after – largely in the guise of a momentary rush or high – that is completely neglectful of what then occurs to our internal organs, let alone our state of being. Ouch.

164. There is great wisdom in what you’ve shared here Cherise, thank-you: “I couldn’t make a change without first being willing to understand and heal the reasons why I chose to be unloving with me in the first place…”
     My experience also, has been to not only let myself feel the impact of particular foods, but deepen in my own process of healing, and reclamation of who I am. Saying ‘no’ to certain foods or substances (such as alcohol) by discipline alone hasn’t been the way, it’s been about addressing ‘why’ I would want to numb myself, or feel ‘less’ vital, joyful and passionate about life than I know myself capable of being. As these aspects have healed, the food/substance choices have been natural and easy – it simply becomes a matter of no longer wishing or desiring in any measure at all, a certain food.
     This blows the lid off traditional methods of ‘abstinence’, doesn’t it… What if, we have the capacity to reach a point where that once ‘to die for’ dark chocolate tart evokes no want, nor need for it whatsoever – the love in one’s body having become far greater than the momentary kick-back it once offered. I can say that this is natural for me today (who would have thought!), unequivocally, with many foods, etc I once craved and longed for.

165. What I find fascinating about our bodies is that the more we listen and make changes to diet and lifestyle based on what they tell us, the more sensitive we become so that something that seemed ok before might then become not ok. I’ve been noticing for a while how i can experience similar symptoms to those I felt when I became aware of how sugar was affecting my body, when eating other foods (even though they are ‘healthy’ foods such as almonds) in the same way as I used to eat sugary foods like chocolate ie. very fast with no regards for quality or quantity of the food being consumed. So now I’m looking at what is underneath this pattern of self-abusive eating – what is it I don’t want to feel?

166. As an adjunct to the comment I made above, what I feel happens and happened in my case is that I fell for the belief that these foods are somehow good for us in moderation as put out by the various governing bodies and so therefore should be consumed regardless of the reaction in the body. The thing is to always have our body be our guide and not allow the mind to take over and tell us otherwise.

167. I’ve had a similar experiences with these foods as well Cherise and since cutting them all out of my diet I have become much more settled, my digestive system thanks me and I’m no longer like a heroin addict in search of the next fix of sugar be it from chocolate or the simple carbohydrates or fruit. Universal Medicine helped confirm the effects of these foods – I knew it but for some reason needed the confirmation to make the final step in eliminating them from my diet, as though I need permission which seems ridiculous when my body was already clearly telling me.

168. Love the list you write of your personal experience when trying gluten, dairy and sugar again in your diet. And so say many of us……I am now learning if I have a penchant for something that I know doesn’t agree with me, to look at what energy I was in before the thought/craving occurred to me. Bypassing this is a sure way for me to ignore my body’s subtle message and fool me into thinking I need xyz….

169. Food is a great way to numb whatever we are feeling – a way of overriding what our bodies are telling us and suppressing the emotions or reactions we may be feeling. And yet if we were to listen to our bodies, it may not be the big deal we often think it might be – our body may just need to rest for 10mins, sit down for a few minutes or simply have a drink of water. Our bodies respond to these small but significant nurturing moments, and the more we take notice and honour these messages from our bodies, the more we naturally do them.

170. It is an insidious cycle when the very food we are eating dulls and disconnects us from our bodies and so we continue to eat that food unaware of the true impact it is having. It is only when someone suggests leaving out a certain food that we then have a conscious awareness around its effect on our bodies. When a naturopath suggested trying a fructose free diet I decided to give it a go, and after only two weeks my body felt so light, with no bloating and no gripey bowel pain, that I made the choice to remain fructose free. With such a marked difference in my body there was no way I could go back to old ways.

171. Food is one big way of keeping ourself numb to our feelings. And this not allowing ourself to be all that we are. And I came to see that when we start to truly be aware of the feelings in our body, we get to see the great effect food has on this awareness.

172. A long time ago, I stopped eating gluten and I couldn’t believe how well I felt after living with so many symptoms on your list Cherise. One symptom that was overwhelming for me was that I couldn’t go outside if the day was too bright. I felt harrassed like flies were all around in my face and I felt like I couldn’t open my eyes. I gave up dairy a few years after that and the itchy, tickling that was always on my face and body went away.. I was so surprised at how many things changed in my life.
     Apparently when I was little I was allergic to these things and was gradually weaned back onto them, as was a common practice in the 1960s. Even today there are injections we can get so that we do not need to listen to our bodies and can lessen the symptoms that are the body telling us what is true for it. It has become very important for me to be aware of how I am affected by food and other things, not to be fussy but because my quality of life is so much richer the more I care for myself.

173. Thanks Cherise for outlining your own experience with food so clearly. These symptoms were simply the norm when I was growing up as I ate a normal diet of gluten, dairy and sugar. Crazy really. Since my childhood I have tried and tested many different ways of eating from raw food to vegan to vegetarian always avoiding heavily processed foods but today after learning to actual listen to my body I once again eat fish and lamb and add some greens and I am done. Basically a very simple diet. And my body has never digested food better in my 60 years of life. Thanks to Universal Medicine introducing the fact that the body never lies.

174. Your list of symptoms caused by eating gluten, diary and sugar should be common knowledge made freely available to all through education and our health system.

175. I picked up so much from reading your article Cherise. Often we think we have a fairly good understanding on a particular subject matter but if we choose to look a little deeper there is always more to it than first meets the eye.

176. Firstly, I love Western Medicine but we have to get real about how primitive some of the testing still is. The intelligence of the human body is far beyond any machine the human mind has been able to invent thus fare. What came up after reading your blog was this funny visual….so I will share it. Imagine we relied purely upon a machine or test to find our life partner, to pick a match for us, because it would be more accurate, surely, with all my likes and dislike and theirs put into the system it would be surely a safer way to find love?
     Well maybe, maybe not, even when a machine does everything right, some things and some tests just don’t pick up on the unexplainable knowing that you have, whether its about someone you are attracted to or about a food you are reacting to. One day we are going to look back on relying heavily upon these test and laugh as the best test is how we feel and the best instrument to know that by is our bodies.

177. Wow Cherise what an amazing list of side effects from dairy gluten and sugar. Dairy I cut out a long time as i could feel the bloated effects, and sugar and gluten was soon to follow. As a result I have felt so much more vital in my body with more energy and much clearer thoughts, When I reach for something to eat that will be numbing I ask myself, not always, what is it I am not wanting to feel, allowing the body to speak in all it’s wisdom brings healing, if we but listen and observe, and make different choices.

178. What a beautiful way you inquired into the way your body felt Cherise. Your words inspire me to see that this does not apply only to the food we eat, but pretty soon we can extend the same scientific approach to the way we move, and the way we speak. It really is all interlinked. Thank you, for publishing these results of your loving research.

179. Cherise I have found my choices have naturally changed the more I am with myself in the way I move and think. I did make a choice to experiment with removing gluten and dairy from my diet, and that had an immediate health benefit, but I was still looking for gluten substitutes. At some stage I realised I did not need to eat toast, cereal or pasta, all I needed to eat was protein and vegetables or salads and let go the sauces and bring my own lunch to work. Life then became simple. All the fancy food we eat is a bit of a distraction from just enjoying the simplicity of life.

180. Hello Cherise and it doesn’t seem to me like I have really ‘given up’ any foods. It’s like I have moved in a way that has just made eating or doing something make no sense. It was like dairy, I didn’t just stop having dairy. I started looking after myself in a deeper quality, whether that be through the way I spoke, dressed, interacted with people etc. There was a change in the choice of how I was before the change of how I ate. It is like there is a way you can be, live and move that then renders things like some foods obsolete. There isn’t a choice so much or giving up it’s more and as I said it just doesn’t fit or make sense. This can be ongoing as the way you feel becomes lighter and clearer. You make you choice on how what ever you are going to choose makes you feel, does it leave you light and ready to go or does it wipe you out and make you want to retreat into bed.

181. Food is great way to distract or numb us from what is going on under the surface but in truth nothing ever goes away, so later, one day, we still have to deal with our stuff , only this time, there is a back log, so it can seem harder, once you clear out and catch up, dealing with things as they come up is a much simpler option.

182. I feel what you have shared here is key in true healing: ‘I couldn’t make a change without first being willing to understand and heal the reasons why I chose to be unloving with me in the first place, which then lead me to override what I truly felt.’ Otherwise we never really get to the root cause, it just stays in the body. This is something I am discovering more and more. What you show here is that although we can get intolerance tests done, all we need is dedication and committment and we can be our own loving scientists and find out this for ourselves by taking note of how the body responds or reacts to foods and drink.

183. It is interesting that when I look at the list of symptoms in your blog Cherise, many that I had experienced through out my life are also symptoms that many people would experience, but are either overlooked, ignored, claimed as hereditary, getting older, or just how it is, as in everyone gets a sore throat or headache from time to time, all the while ignoring or denying what our bodies are showing/telling us. It seems to be a very ingrained and accepted belief that being sick, unwell and less than fully alive is a natural part of life, whereas the truth is so far from that, as your blog shows it can begin quite simply with listening to and feeling the body’s reactions when it comes to food and then making the choices that will support a greater wellbeing. Making loving choices, with consistency, will bring about incredible changes in ones health, wellbeing and over all life, I know, as this has been, and continues to be, my ongoing experience.

184. Well said. My body is way more honest with me than I want to listen to sometimes and pain is its most effective tool. Yet the warning signs before the pain are highly effective if we pay attention. For example the symptoms you have listed above, none of them are exactly nice. I am learning very fast that it is really important to start paying attention to the small stuff and not wait for the big crash.

185. That is a great outline of symptoms related to each of those foods Cherise… and fits very much with not only my personal experience but what I see clinically every day.

     1. It fits my personal experience as well.

186. In conversation with some colleagues recently we were talking about our eating habits and it became clear that eating is often used as a form of comfort. The discussion also turned to food as a source of energy and I observed that there is an assumption that food is our main source of energy. But is this true? I eat so much less than I once did but find I have more energy. We surely need a certain amount of food but there comes a point where we overeat and over burden our digestive and other systems with having to deal with the excess as well as the elimination of waste products and poisons. This can have a detrimental affect on our energy levels. And is it possible that we also have an innate source of energy that is not derived from food? One that can be nurtured and optimised with the wise use of nutrition rather than hindered by our choice of what to eat? Worth a ponder in my view.

187. I have chosen to change my diet significantly over the past few years in the awareness that the ‘endless hunger’ I felt was not related to how much I was eating. Believe me, over the years I had tried eating my way out if it – but it never worked. So I had to conclude that it wasn’t hunger I was feeling – at least not hunger for more food. There was an empty feeling inside me but food could never change that – other than to numb me from it for a short while. The emptiness was more about feeling disconnected and alone in the world and it was this I needed to address more than anything related to food. In fact, having realised this and learned how to reconnect to who I am and to others, my need to eat has reduced and I have lost all the excess weight I once carried. I eat much less than I ever have in the past and I have more energy as a result. It was very simple really – but the key to it was recognising that the apparent ‘hunger’ within was not hunger for food but hunger for connection to who I am and through that to others.

188. So true Cherise, we do not need scientific proof that the human body can handle or is suffering from certain types of food. We empower ourselves enormously if we allow our bodies to speak and give it space to communicate to us how it feels after eating different types of food. Our body does know exactly what it needs so also what it does not need and that to me was a new approach of conducting my life but which I found very supportive and empowering to my being.

189. What would happen if we contemplated for a moment that the foods that we eat make up an equal component of our greatest responsibility in life? That as what we do affects everything and everyone, so too does what we put in our mouths and our bodies.
     We have this great potential in life to live the lightness and joy that we are and the foods that we put into our bodies have the potential to either dull or harm this light or nourish and confirm us throughout our next activity. This is pretty huge and where the responsibility part comes into play; as what would our life be like if we ate in a way that held a purpose about other people and our lives and reflection with them and actually had nothing to do with ourselves? Would we really get away with or be able to live so irresponsibly with our own bodies if this were the case.

190. “The unpleasant symptoms I endured also included mood changes and feelings of frustration, worry, anger, fear, stress and sadness, accompanied by poor sleep patterns, nightmares, a feeling of endless hunger and the overall sense of disconnection to me and my own body – awful!” What a great summation of how gluten, dairy and sugar affect us if we are willing to go there and truly feel what is going on rather than clobber ourselves with more of the same. It is a bit like smoking tobacco: if we do it every day it is seemingly fine but if we don’t for a while and then light up, the feelings of dizziness and disconnection cannot be ignored. And the same with alcohol: drinking every day raises the tolerance threshold but when we haven’t had a drink for a while and then go back to alcohol, its effects on the body can be felt immediately and very strongly.

191. Thank you Cherise for this clear list of the effects that you could see certain foods have had on your body, physically as well as emotionally. We are very much influenced by the rhythms that we live and the food that we eat, and understanding and accepting that is a great opportunity to be our own science study to learn through observation and experimenting what works for us and what not.

192. This blog really does expose once and for all how irresponsible we are with food, as everyone without exception can feel in their body when they have eaten something that does not agree with them. All the symptoms you describe, Cherise, make us seem crazy when we continue to harm ourselves and feel awful for days afterwards. Learning to eat in order to truly support the body should be on the curriculum of every school, as it has a huge effect on our physical, emotional and mental health.

193. Food can be used in all kinds of ways, to dull or be less aware is a big one, but the only true reason to eat is to support our body, I found that seeing it in that way it is much easier to let go of certain foods. Embracing my body in full, letting it show me what I need, not what I need to cope with the things I not choose to cope with..

194. The choice is ours we can use food as medicine in a positive or negative way. I never cease to be amazed at the constant refinements revealed about my diet as my body speaks to me more and more clearly and by the resistance I can still demonstrate to listening and therefore having to endure the consequences of eating something that no longer supports me.

195. Beautiful Cherise, your observations of the effect that certain foods have on your body is science in action with a scientific result that nobody could possibly argue with as you are the living experiment. I know that this works for me also. It seems our bodies have a lot to say about what goes into them if we care to listen.

196. Someone recently shared with me how when we deepen or expand our awareness we begin to see and feel (become more aware) of things in life that are painful or difficult to see. Be that the behaviours of others around us, the choices we ourselves have made to hold back our own truth or the constructs and set-ups of society and how they are built on loveless foundation, made more so about economy or success than they are about people. When we see this we have a clear choice to go deeper within our connection to ourselves and thus bring a greater understanding to whatever situation is presenting OR to choose our long-lived distractions (such as food) to override what we have felt and not feel any further. One way supports us to support ourselves and the other only hardens our bodies, creating further complication that now has us needing to deal with the implications on our bodies AS WELL as the hurt we initially felt. When this is the case, is eating or choosing foods from a place that harms us really worth it? Or is it far more simple to choose love, to choose us and to move with our chosen depth of connection from there…

197. Really great points you raise here Cherise, why do we not see food as medicine and that we ourselves through our choices can either harm or support our body. Self-responsibility is so key in what you share, it is not about following a diet or eating what is there, it is about making clear choices around food knowing that what we eat does have an impact on our health, vitality and overall wellbeing and who better to make those choices than us. For no-one knows our body better.

198. This is an awesome example of the intelligence of the body being light years ahead of the so-called intelligence of the mind. We have developed tests to determine whether we have intolerances to certain foods, and yet, even with evidence contrary to the results ie. a very clear knowing that these foods do not support us, we can use a negative test result to then go ahead and override the true intelligence of the body. It’s a good excuse to stay in comfort and irresponsibility, not facing the underlying reasons for why we might be reaching for gluten, dairy or sugar.

199. I completely agree with your observations about the effect of these foods. It is amazing (crazy) how we seem to take pride in overriding our bodies and harming ourselves. It reminds me of when I was younger and used to smoke. The first time I gave up smoking I managed for a few weeks and then had another cigarette. When I had a cigarette after not having one for a while I nearly choked, had a coughing fit and it was absolutely ghastly, stunk and tasted completely foul…. however, prior to that I must have trained my body not to choke or react to the harm I was inflicting on it. Same with poisons such as alcohol and sugar.

     1. In relation to taking pride in harming our bodies we have a whole culture of this. We REWARD and “treat” ourselves by drinking champagne or other forms of alcohol and eating cakes and other concoctions full of gluten, diary and sugar – all things that hurt and harm us. Not only do we inflict this harm on ourselves but very often a group will try and force others to join in – oh go on just have one drink or one little piece etc etc, it won’t do you any harm (not true!).

200. There is such a lot we can learn from the body – including how, what type, and when to eat, food. For a long time, I thought I was healthy because I ate ‘healthy’ foods (ie low fat, organic, whole grain or according to a prescribed diet etc) but I never stopped to consider how these foods actually felt in my body & the fact that many foods left me feeling tired, bloated, racy, heavy etc. I still have a lot to refine in this regard and sometimes override what my body is actually telling me, but I’m very appreciative of having much more awareness that my body ‘is’ speaking and that all I need to do is listen!

201. I recently read an article on gluten and its link to certain mental illnesses. I am not surprised at all. The food we eat has a very big impact on how we think and feel. The link is here for anyone interested http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4517012/

202. One of the great things about paying attention to your reaction to food is that your body makes it very clear what feels good and what doesn’t. As I get older my diet has naturally changed because there are certain things that just no longer feel right. Since I have stopped dieting and started to tune into my body, it has shed its excess pounds and I have managed to keep to my natural size for the past 10 years.

203. We can learn so much from children. Have you ever watched a child eat. I work with 3 and 4 year olds. Those who are still in tune with how much their body needs eat slowly and take small bites, and they never over eat, often saying they have had enough. This is a beautiful reflection of eating to nourish and not to stuff or numb.

204. Imagine if television cooking shows were all about tuning into yourself and your body to sensitise yourself to what you should be eating to engender harmony within… now that would be a program worth watching.

     1. Agree cjames2012. Revolutionary, but much needed.

205. Finding out the benefits to removing gluten, dairy and sugar from my diet has been huge and life changing. I would say I’d be very overweight and unhealthy by now, as my body just couldn’t cope with the processing of such food types.

     1. Yes same here Kevin, had I not changed my diet I also would be hugely overweight as I did indulge in all those sweet, creamy, sugary products. But as you get older, you slow down, so it becomes important to re-assess and re-fine one’s diet otherwise it is letting our mouth and tongue rule.

206. My relationship with food is an absolute reflection of my relationship with myself. I ate some chips today and saw that the bag they were given to me in had ‘getting away with it” written on the side. An hour or so after eating them I was left with no doubt that I was not ‘getting away with it’ as I ended up with a lot of the symptoms you describe in the ‘sugar’ list. I can be this way with many things in my life, thinking that a gossipy sentence or moment of disregard can be swept under the carpet. My relationship with food shows me that this is not the case.

     1. My relationship with food is an absolute reflection of my relationship with myself. Wise words Leonne, and something for us all to ponder on, and certainly for me as I am feeling to make my portions a little smaller.

207. Making changes based on our bodies and being willing to understand and heal the reasons why we chose to be unloving in the first place means lasting true changes.

208. Cherise your description of the effects that some foods have on you is very accurate as I also suffer similar symptoms when I consume those foods.

209. “Why don’t we all choose to eat foods that support, build, nourish, confirm and truly complement the amazingness we already are and the bodies we must live with every minute of every day?”- Indeed this is a question to ask. And honesty and self responsibility is the step forward.

210. Instead of ‘creatures of habit’ you mention Cherise, what if we considered ourselves to be made of light? What if we ate not out of patterns but in respect to our quality of energy? Considering this has helped me see that all sorts of foods can ‘deaden’ me or equally spark me right up.

211. Thank you Cherise, I can relate very much to your experience and observations. Its true too that these foods (Gluten, Dairy, Sugar) come with numbing and deceiving side effects. When I stopped eating them I did not feel better right away. In fact I felt terrible! As I got to see just how I had been using them to avoid feeling me. It is worth noting for anyone experimenting with living without these foods that through initial withdrawals and symptoms, choosing the truth about your body is so very much worth it. Today I am very glad I chose to persevere.

     1. I can relate to this Joseph as when I would stop having sugar I would really experience the ‘come down’ quite painfully, in the sense that I noted how much my body was feeling addicted or craving it and the physical symptoms plus the fogginess I had. Staying with the process of eliminating a food is very exposing of the neediness that has been lived as well as the comfort choices being made in the first place. There is a clarity at the end of such a detox and a science within our bodies that is allowed to voice and give marker to what it is to feel truly healthy or vital in our bodies and not overrun by the effects of any foods or emotions.

     2. I remember giving up gluten for 6 months and not really noticing any difference. Looking back, I am not surprised since the effects were probably masked by all the sugar, alcohol and dairy I was still consuming. I did gradually give up all of those foods and feel the huge benefits, but it wasn’t an instant quick fix.

212. Yes! Finally someone writes about diarrhea medicine for adults.

213. How amazing… That something so ubiquitous as food can be the most profound medicine for us all… And it is totally within the reach of all of us to be self medicating in such an informed and significant way.

     1. Food and eating is something that affects each and every human on this planet, it is something we all have in common and something we use for many different reasons. We can use it to indulge, self-abuse or self-harm and we can use it to control, manipulate or play-small.
        Its true potential, what we all can use it for however, is to support us to live in a way that connects us all to each other and keeps us connected to our greater awareness and presence here on earth.

214. I grew up with a very simple diet and then I was introduced to gluten and diary when I was 7 years old. It took me a while to enjoy eating this new diet but I persisted as I was told it was good for me. After a while I developed a taste for gluten and diary but it took years. I was also aware how I felt especially after eating diary but I chose to not listen to my body. I was very aware of what food made me feel grumpy, irritable and sleepy but I often override the messages my body was giving me. I had made unloving food choices to seek comfort in eating. Why I chose to feel like this was to dull my senses and to not feel how amazing I actually am. I realised I was using food to hide who I am, to make myself feel heavy and dull. Now, I no longer do this, it feels amazing to allow myself to feel light, energised and feel more of who I am. I never thought food had such an impact on me but it makes sense how we care and nurture our body is by understand what quality of fuel we choose to put in. Food is our fuel and quality does matter, physically and energetically.

     1. I would say this is a common experience for many people and it is interesting that we don’t see the lethargy, tiredness and sluggish ways in our body as absolutely not normal. We also put them down to the situations and experiences of life, be that work or anything else that leaves us exhausted.
        What we don’t often admit however, is just how vital, awake and alive we can feel when we make the choices to feed our bodies nothing but supportive foods, after this, eating anything that leaves us feeling less than truly amazing stands out like a sore thumb!

215. My body is absolutely loving having such attention, its celebrating every step of the way as we walk in and with responsibility .

216. I have come to notice that not only are my food choices a tool of self-nurture or self-harm, they are very intimately connected to my purpose here in life. When we become rebellious or do not want to stand tall in the presence of grace and beauty that we naturally are, we delay our purpose and thus our evolution; food is a great tool to assist us with this. On the contrary, when we make the choices to go with our natural flow of movement and life and be in the full appreciation of ourselves, our food has a sole purpose to support and to serve the bodies we walk around in and to ensure that we fulfil what we are here to do ~ be ourselves.

     1. Cherise that has taken our choice to not eat certain foods to a whole new level of responsibility. Recently I had a commitment to produce a certain quota of work by a date, this I accepted but as the commitment went into the final weeks and the date was looming, I realised now I was in very low level of anxiety, so low I didn’t detect it. What I did detect was a need to eat, and would find myself looking for something to stop a feeling, I knew it wasn’t hunger but it helped to distract. Once I fulfilled my commitment I realised that anxiousness was the issue, once nominated the need to mask it left along with my desire to cover up the feeling with food.

     2. Love what you share here Cherise… there is a greater, grander purpose to our lives than just putting food into our bodies to keep them alive.

217. Coupling this learning Linda with the observations of why it is we have chosen the food we have brings a clarity to the tool that food can really be. One of nourishment or one of protection, it’s a simple equation and yet very profound to begin to learn the vast difference between them both.

218. So true Cherise … We think we are creatures of habit but in fact we are living in cycles. When we address how we are living and become honest with ourselves what is driving us to eat foods that do not truly support us and nurture our bodies. This is the blessing of cycles, we get to revisit everything we have chosen for ourselves. As you say “I couldn’t make a change without first being willing to understand and heal the reasons why I chose to be unloving with me in the first place, which then lead me to override what I truly felt.”

     1. I agree Suzanne, it is brilliant how our cycles work. When we understand this then we can lovingly make new choices to love and support our body with no regrets or judgement but acceptance and letting go.

     2. The belief that we are creatures of habit allows us to continue being irresponsible, as though we can’t help being the way we are – and we are so not helpless!
        The beauty of cycles, and why we don’t want to know about them, is that we keep coming back to our choices, as you say Suzanne, “…we get to revisit everything we have chosen for ourselves” and in that we have to take responsibility for our every choice.

219. Great article Cherise in that it offers us all a moment to truly consider the way and why we eat the way we do. Looking at your list of side-effects I can relate to having been similarly affected by such foods and know full well that if I choose to eat those foods now my body very quickly exposes to me how unsupportive they are. I find it interesting that the more aware I become of my body and it’s needs the more sensitive I am to the foods I place within it. I cannot ignore the fact that my body is communicating to me louder then ever before, or perhaps I have just made the choice to listen to it.

220. Humanity are masters at overriding, avoiding, and not listening to the messages of the body, and until this momentum is arrested, we cannot help but continue along the calamity filled path until ‘big stops’ force us all to listen .

     1. It’s interesting how the ‘big stops’ come in so many forms these days that they too can be dismissed or ignored until something becomes so life threatening that there really is no other choice but to stop.

221. I love your list of what Gluten Dairy and sugar do to us Cherise, reading this list it is easy to see how many illnesses can escalate from eating food that our body can no longer handle or tolerate.

     1. I have noticed the more my body is healing and getting stronger, the more it is unable to handle or tolerate some foods. If I eat the food, straight away my body gives me a signal that it was not right for me. It’s fascinating how our bodies communicate with us, how to maintain a healthy body.

        1. Hi Amita, I love that you have written as your body is healing and getting stronger, it is unable to tolerate some foods. As my diet has refined over the years, I have had people wonder how I can function with such sensitivity. The difference is my focus is to honour that sensitivity rather than override it and ignore it.

     2. Yes, Cherise’s list is great, the symptoms are huge signs telling us something in our body is imbalance and we often take medication to mask the symptoms and not willing to look at the cause.

222. Food supports us to live what we choose, no matter what the choice there is a food for every occasion. I too have cut out gluten, dairy and sugar also salt and realise from reading your blog Cherise that I am less likely to be driven by my emotions and am able to sustain a strong connection with myself. Life is indeed more joyful no matter what the day presents.

     1. I too chose to eliminate gluten, dairy and sugar from my diet 3 years ago and since then I realise how much I was affected by certain foods. I can change in a matter of 15 minutes from being connect to myself to a completely different person when I ate food that was not supportive. I can now trace back to what I eat and link it to my irrational behaviours. I also notice certain foods can escalate stress and anxiety. Every food choice affects how I feel, so I choose carefully what I now eat and I know what foods to avoid. I feel most behavioral problems stems from food choices and of cause other factors too but I know for myself my food plays a major role in how I feel.

     2. I agree Suzanne. The vitality in my day and the ability to work longer hours has increased due to the food choices I’ve made.

223. That we live in cycles means we always get the chance to address a precious cycle that wasn’t self loving. It may take a greater effort to address a cycle that’s had many revolutions, but this is no matter as nothing is ever too late. How amazing is that?!

     Great if you’re prone to giving up because you’ve tried so many times before, or are giving yourself a hard time for making the same choice over again. That choice can be different this cycle and so on.

224. The thing with food choices is that we never truly know the difference removing something from our diet makes until we have actually done it and experienced it for ourself. Once we have, then it is easy to know the difference. If we haven’t we are effectively guessing and speaking without any real knowing.

     1. That is so true to me Vicky, that we have to learn it for each and every one on our own what eating of the different foods actually do to us. i can feel the importance of that and I can say that I have missed this choice in my growing up. What was presented to me was that i had to eat what was there without the choice to consider for myself what was good for me or not. I can feel that my life would have taken a complete different way if the consideration of the influence of food to my body was taught to me when I was young.

        1. I can relate to what you share here Nico…I wasn’t allowed to leave the table until I’d eaten everything on my plate – irrelevant of whether my body needed it all, or wanted that particular food at that time, which actually sets us up to totally override and or disregard what our bodies are telling us when we are eating. Although I have been able to give up gluten, dairy, sugar and am now on a low fructose diet because I could feel the negative effect of them on my body after eating them, I am still working with honouring when and what I feel to eat, and how present I am when I eat the meal I have chosen.
           To learn from a young age to honour ourselves and our bodies is to support loving food choices throughout our lives.

        2. That would be a great thing to learn from young, Paula, and will support us tremendously through the rest of our lives, as we will have more healthier and vital bodies not loaded by foods that numb and distract us from living our lives in the full glory of who we are.

225. I stopped eating gluten and dairy 17 years ago way before I became a Universal Medicine student and at the time it was a temporary measure, because I had serious digestive issues. However I felt so much better and many other health issues dropped away that before I had considered as ‘normal’ I then continued to not eat therefore not needing any tests as my body showed me very clearly what it didn’t like. It was when I met Universal Medicine that I understood why my body didn’t want it and I could then refine my diet more as I questioned why I was eating other foods like sugar.

226. Awesome blog Cherise, it’s been the same for me; my body (which means me) so clearly feels better without gluten or dairy and the sugar in my ‘diet’. “Diet” – this word reminds me of my youth, always trying to lose weight, trying different diets, but actually hating them. Now I have nothing to do with that word; I don’t feel at all like I’m on a ‘special diet’. I eat the most real and awesome tasting, simple foods, easy to prepare and so supportive to my body. I love it

     1. ‘Diet’ to me reveals so much about ones’ self worth, as if we are in full knowing of the love and beauty that we are we would never want to starve ourselves from anything. The word ‘diet’ also brings a clarity around the controlling nature that we can have with food, it is a relationship we have after all and if we are not honouring ourselves we will not make honouring food choices, that’s pretty simple.

        1. This is the bottom line when it comes to food…”…if we are not honouring ourselves we will not make honouring food choices” – it truly is that simple.

227. I have also never been tested for any food intolerances but the evidence is very clear from observation and experimentation with my diet that there are certain foods that do not support me and my body. The difference is so remarkable that for me there is no way I would go back to eating and drinking the things I used to simply because I just feel so awful when I do, and that is a no brainer.

     1. Same here Andrew. People ask if I have been tested for intolerances and when I say ‘no – I just know the difference when I eat these foods’, some are quite accepting and ask more questions, while others appear to react in some way or another. But for me there is no going back to my old dietary habits – it makes no sense to abuse myself in that way.

        1. Yes, it is interesting the responses Helen when we say we haven’t been tested for intolerances but choose not to eat these foods. Many need a medical reason, a justification from a test, something outside of themselves to give credibility to their choice, and so when we choose from our own experience it is as though that isn’t enough evidence or reason to give up these foods.
           I find the response is often one of being a ‘fussy’ eater, when it is in fact one of honouring what feels true for you and your body. Our bodies live with the consequences of our choices every minute of every day, and therefore have great wisdom to share with us in what is supportive and what is not for our own unique health and vitality…certainly a loving choice for each one of us.

     2. I have been tested with a strong reaction to gluten but I may not have an allergic reaction to, say, caffeine but one sip feels like a punch in the face. Even with decaf, drinking half a cup makes me feel racy and strongly out of sorts. Then why have it?

        1. When we honour our own bodies sensitivity Christoph it presents us with the choice of what to put into it and when this honouring continues through the process of feeling, choosing and taking action, the choice to harm or bring disharmony ceases to be a viable option, in fact it ceases to exist.
           Honouring is the new black! and we don’t need a physical test or physical reaction to honour whatever is true for ourselves and our bodies.

     3. Andrew that’s the key if we recognise how awful we feel after eating or drinking something, why would we go back and do it again. I know I have eaten and drank things even though I never liked it just to fit into groups, not too look odd, a form of comfort. But in truth all it did was harm my body and it was not true. Now I am working on honouring the messages my body is giving and not abusing it with foods and drinks that don’t agree.

228. Food has the potential to support us to live our natural way of being, with true vitality and good health, so why don’t we all choose to eat foods that support, build, nourish, confirm and truly complement the amazingness we already are and the bodies we must live with every minute of every day? Is the question to be asked indeed!

     1. Good question jacqumcfadden04, why would we eat foods that don’t support us, that actually overwork our digestive systems and the liver and the other organs? Once we give the body a bit of space to give us feedback, it doesn’t take long for it to show us which foods are healing and which are harming.

     2. Well, this question brings up many different things for everyone, the reasons we can choose to dull down, dampen or make heavy our bodies are varied and yet often have one thing in common; they come from a lack of acceptance in who we are and thus support a way of living that ensures we don’t be ourselves. It’s interesting really, to ponder upon and to realise that the choices we make are our very own responsibility and with this we make choices to light up the world with our sparkle or to hide away and contribute further to that which feels heavy around us.

     3. Yes that line stood out for me as well. It is quite a change to eat to nourish the body as opposed eat to fill it/taste it/numb it. My body does a little dance when I eat to nourish it and not so much when I don’t – it lies on the couch actually – aching.

        1. I love this analogy of the body dancing Sarah (or ‘not’ as the case may be!) depending on our food choices. The important thing for me in working on this area has not been to follow any prescribed diets but to simply listen to my body’s own feedback – I’ve found this to be more accurate, individual, supportive and producing more lasting results than any diet plan or book could ever provide!

     4. Great question! Perhaps it is even too revealing to consider that food could also be used by many like an addictive drug. In truth it is no different when used in ways that do not truly honour and support our body.

229. Michael it is crazy how we can get caught in the spin of food, we know that they make us feel tired, bloated etc, but we get caught up in our day and grab something to eat that just makes us worse. This is a great reflection of how are we living daily, how is our daily rhythm, are we not creating moments of stop to honour and reflect. Definitely I feel the whole daily rhythm is what’s going to support the change, by allowing moments to stop and appreciate and in this space, allow our body to feel. This will support to create space and time for us to be able to make choices for our food and time to prepare.

     1. This is a good point Amita that often we can get caught in a cycle with food where by we eat something that makes us heavy, bloated and subsequently lethargic and then we don’t like this feeling so we then seek another food to pep us up or dull the original feeling which only makes things worse! And so it goes on. Until I decided to see what would happen if I eliminated certain foods from my diet, I did not know any different because I was constantly tired, bloated, congested, moody and racy and I just assumed that was normal.

        1. Yes, this is a merry-go-round and to add to this when the heaviness has not worked for us we not only want to make new choices there can be an associated frustration; due to us feeling, sleeping in and walking around in the choices we have made. This however is not a time for self-bashing but to bring true compassion to ourselves in understanding what it is that we have chosen and an opportunity to learn why.

230. Cherise what a timely read for me, I can relate to eliminating gluten, dairy and sugar, but when I have gone to my old ways when I was not feeling like myself and I ate foods containing gluten, dairy and sugar. My body has also suffered, with bloating, gas, tiredness just to mention a few. The tiredness is the biggest one for me as it takes me out for days.

     1. I have had similar experiences also Amita – on those occasions when I returned to eating things I had previously removed from my diet, my body spoke to me loud and clear and let me know it did not want them back!

        1. Yep! there is an arrogance in thinking that we can make a choice in the moment and think it’s not going to affect us now, or for days to come… and sometimes we can make the choices knowing perfectly well that it will take us out for days, this to me proves the science that we know everything and that if we do not take responsibility for our choices there is a part of us that wants to be taken out for days, knowing full well that we will be delaying ourselves a little longer from living the absolute glory, love and heaven on earth that is possible and available to all of us equally at this time.

        2. I agree Cherise – for me in truth the choice is always a knowing one. I have found that as I have continued to build a foundation of loving choices I have not felt the need to return to old choices and instead continue to refine what I eat as I feel to.

231. Sometimes as you say Cherise we can be so used to eating certain foods that we are unaware of the impact that they have on our body. Bringing our attention back to how we feel in ourself and our body after eating is a really helpful way of re-awakening our awareness to this impact and being more discerning about what really nourishes us.

     1. Absolutely Fiona, and supporting us to diminish any rules that we may have accumulated along the way about how it is we think we need to eat or what.. When we listen in the moment and ask our bodies a clear question it can’t not provide us simply with the answer, it’s a quality of learning to listen to what our bodies ‘feel like’ as opposed to our heads which can easily override what our bodies are speaking or ignore them completely.

232. Cherise, what an interesting blog to read this morning. I know completely why and how certain food substances have affected me in the past. Consequently I too have eliminated gluten, dairy and sugar from my diet. Recently however I have been experiencing back pain, and couldn’t work out what this was about. I will experiment and feel into wether this could be related to my absorption of natural sweetners, and whether this is time to further refine my choices and support my body further.

     1. Experimenting with our own bodies and the way in which they communicate with us is absolutely necessary in brining ourselves back to living in our bodies from a way of allowing them to have their say and be heard. From listening and experimenting with the science that is our digestive system, our nervous system and the interrelated activity of our entire physical existence we will never stop learning and refining what it means and feels like to know ourselves. Thanks for sharing Jenny.

233. It is true our bodies have so much to share with us, if we are open to feeling what is being offered. Our body lives with the consequences of all our choices, so it comes with an authority in knowing what it needs or not. I knew from a young child that I didn’t like plain milk and that milk didn’t like me, but I continued to drink it in hot chocolate and use it in cooking where the taste of it is ‘hidden’ by other flavours, but in doing this I was totally ignoring the effect it was having on my body – I didn’t want to look at that part for years. I tried giving up gluten 18 yrs ago but couldn’t live without bread (‘proper’ bread!) – again never mind the effect on my body.

     It was only through what was presented at Universal Medicine that I decided to eliminate both, to give it a go out of curiosity, and see how I felt. Gluten just fell by the way side – I just didn’t want it and there were plenty of gluten free products available; dairy – specifically cheese – took a little longer to let go of. However my body very clearly showed me how they had been affecting me, and the way I felt without gluten and dairy was just too good to go back. So in answer to your question Cherise…’why don’t we all choose to eat foods that support, build,’etc…I guess it all comes down to whether we are curious enough and willing enough to make the changes.

234. I loved the blog & have learnt a few new things from the comments; about the possible causes of tonsillitis & green snotty noses! I too have a diet free from gluten, dairy and refined sugar, however I can feel how I have delayed further refining, which I feel my body calling for, because of the (false) belief that it will be hard! In effect I have only been delaying my own joy.

235. Our body is an amazing barometer that is in constant dialogue with us. We only need to listen.

236. When I read the list of symptoms that happened as result of eating gluten, dairy and or sugar it seems that everybody has 1,2 or more of these symptoms that’s before getting to the emotional stuff, yet so many of these symptoms are accepted as normal and because we like and enjoy the food we think we need we are usually unwilling to see that it could be the food causing the problems!! I know when I dropped gluten and diary from my diet many, many years ago because I was seriously ill and to just see what would happen I had lots of minor ailments stop which I wasn’t even paying attention to as I accepted them as ‘normal’.

237. Many people rely totally on the medical industry and medical tests to diagnose and magically fix their ailments with a pill, and whilst this aspect of medicine is an essential part of taking care of our health, if we give our power away to this process we are denying ourselves the enormous role we can play in supporting our own well-being and the opportunity for truly listening and understanding what the body can tell us about the way we are living. Being attentive to this and taking responsibility to live honouring this guidance can take us to a whole new level of awareness and appreciation of how we can live.

238. You clearly show the ease with which we can make huge changes to our health and wellbeing Cherise, by easily listening to our bodies to determine which foods serve us. No need for any extensive testing, just a commitment to taking responsibility for our own health. Once the benefits are felt, and they are many, one cannot deny what the body has been communicating all along, and there is no going back.

239. The influx of reality cooking shows on TV has sparked people’s interest in food and cooking. Imagine what a reality cooking show would look like if the contestants were asked to stop and check with their bodies before setting out to cook their various dishes. I suspect we would see a whole different range of menus being offered and the ripple effect out to viewers could be quite transofrmative!

     1. This is a really interesting concept you have shared here! What if we had reality TV cooking programs with people creating meals (not from recipes) but from their own bodies, there could be no recipe books made because no two meals are ever actually exactly the same. I certainly find this when I cook a meal, they’re always one-offs never to be exactly recreated!
        It would also be important to see such a show delivered in a way that wasn’t time orientated and rushed to complete the task, where people burn their hands, drop food and make mistakes because they feel pressured and outside of their body’s own natural rhythm.
        Ooh and also! the show would have no competition or scoring, because how could you ever compare two people, their own quality and the way they prepare food for themselves and their bodies comes from a natural flow within themselves and is incomparable. Some might think this isn’t entertainment and they would be right! Instead of delivering a TV show that sends nervous tension and stress through the television screen, it would actually inspire stillness and new choices for people around the world and this would be a very healing thing.

240. I found that I was reacting to some foods long before I ever attended a Universal Medicine event. I saw numerous doctors and had all the tests and was told that I did not have coeliac disease and was fine to eat gluten. I did an experiment anyway and stopped eating gluten – within a week I felt less tired and bloated. I stopped eating dairy and felt even better and my eczema had started to settle. Years later I would start attending Universal Medicine events and what was presented was that it is not only the food that we eat, but the way that we eat that can have an effect on how we feel. I continue to refine my diet and also the way that I eat, based on how I feel this affects me. This is an ongoing experimentation and learning. Thank you for sharing your experience Cherise.

     1. This is a great way to look at it Lee, thank you. I have found that even though I really want to eat light, I have still overridden this and consequently chosen to feel heavy; the biggest learning for me has been to not be hard on myself for this, especially as it can take me a couple of days to start feeling light again as my body digests. I am learning more and more that the food choices I make to feel light and beautiful in my body have a very important purpose – not to just feed me at the time, but to support my body with whatever is happening next in my life.

     2. I love what you have presented here about the way that we eat, and the effect that can have on how we feel. This has given me much to ponder, thank you Lee.

241. I’m inspired by how lovingly you listen to your body and how dedicated you study its reactions not only to food, but also to how you treat it. There are not many places on earth, where people have such an approach without ideals and beliefs driving them. Thanks for sharing, Cherise.

242. Around the age of 25 I stopped eating dairy products. And after stopping I actually noticed how much slime I always had when consuming milk, cheese, etc. That was for me ‘normal’ and I used to say that I loved my cheese, milk, cookies, pies, etc. How ignorant was I to my own body. No wonder that my tummy was like a round ball full of slime… I’m so glad that somebody gave me the advice to stop eating dairy!

     1. I can relate to this Floris, it’s kind of like being unaware of there being any other way around it or any other way of living. To hold our bodies as their own living science and wisdom and purely experiment for ourselves is very empowering, then when we walk around in a life that doesn’t choose to eat certain foods it’s just no big deal – it becomes simply what is normal for oneself and after all, isn’t that what a living way in true religion to yourself is all about.

        1. Beautiful Cherise. I often get asked if it is difficult to maintain the diet that I maintain, as I don’t eat gluten or dairy and have little to no sugar. Over the years I have done many food experiments and I know how I feel when I eat certain foods. There is no discipline in my current diet, simply a choice as to how I want to feel – if I want to feel light, lovely and energized then I eat these foods, if I want to feel slow, bloated and tired then I eat these foods. Everything we put in our mouths is a choice, no discipline required, just a simple choice.

     2. It’s not until last few years that I stopped eating dairy and what I noticed the most, I was no longer getting the runny nose, the colds and sinuses that I use to suffer every few months. Having understanding that dairy was causing the mucus, it was a great relief to no longer suffer. If I eat any dairy now my sinuses and my heavyhead gives me messages straight away.

243. Cherise listing how you felt within your body when choosing to eat gluten, diary and sugar brought such a honest reminder that our bodies don’t lie.

244. It makes sense that if we’re used to overriding our body, then we’ll be mostly unaware of the effects of foods that we’ve been used to eating, and so being open to reconnecting with our body and how it feels after eating is a great and important step in developing a healthier relationship with food.

     1. Fiona I agree it is about being open to connecting with the body and how it feels after eating, to develop a healthier relationship with food. When I was a child I would just eat what was on my plate even if I did not like it, because that’s all we had to eat, with this I just numbed myself from connecting to food and started to just eat for taste. Now it is taking me longer to connect to foods that feel good and not get caught up on in the tantalising taste.

        1. The other aspect I recall to this and from childhood, is the association of food with money, eating what one could afford or not wasting anything that was bought and paid for or made for you. This continues to be a process that keeps one seeking outside of our own authority within our bodies and looking ‘outside’ to follow the rules or behaviours.

245. ‘I couldn’t make a change without first being willing to understand and heal the reasons why I chose to be unloving with me in the first place, which then lead me to override what I truly felt.’ Cherise, what you say here shows how important it is to get to the underlying cause of any symptom in order to heal it. Choosing to be unloving to oneself leads to all sorts of behaviours, and by cutting out the foods that do not support the body we gain more clarity and are able to become more aware of how our body truly feels when we are unloving to ourself. If we are aware of this feedback from the body we are more likely to make self-loving choices.

246. Great advice. After all, who has the time to wait 20 years for the right double blind randomised test to provide the proof, when we can just as easily listen to our bodies to determine which foods serve us.

247. Thank you, the symptoms you have described here are quite extreme- and I am sure that this would be a great exercise for us all, to write down our feelings and reactions to foods, and to possibly realise, “something is not right here”. I get blown away when thinking about how our bodies truly support us, but are we supporting them back? I know I am learning to.

248. Something I’ve realised lately is that if people have eaten certain foods all their lives, probably since they were babies, they have probably always been intolerant to those foods and have had symptoms to some degree or another. And so, for example, if someone has always been bloated or has wind, then they don’t necessarily question it – it’s accepted as a normal part of digestion. It’s only when the symptoms worsen or they affect their quality of life in some way, that it is questioned.
     AM for EM

249. During a conversation with a lady recently, we shared how we both no longer have gluten and our reasons why. Her story blew me away. She was on strong pain killers for carpal tunnel syndrome and experienced numbness in her hands and arms. She shared how she reluctantly gave up gluten on the recommendation of a complementary health practitioner and discovered that the pain she was on went, she came off the pain killers and as a bonus her hay fever cleared up.

250. I shared this article out loud with family recently as a discussion point. It was hilarious to watch them point at each other when I read each of the affects gluten, diary and sugar have on your body. They knew within themselves and each other these affects. Needless to say, this article offered a great turning point and inspiration for them to change their diets and the way they had been using food as a comfort or reward rather than to truly nourish. Thanks for sharing your experiences Cherise as they are similar for many others.

251. Thank you Cherise for this great blog. I was struck by the list of symptoms that you described. I experienced very similar symptoms and was struck while reading your blog that I managed to override these for so long numbing myself to their effects. I was struck by how far away from our bodies we can live and how deeply connected we can become when we begin to make practical loving choices.

252. I love the space in your blog Cherise. You’re sharing your own digestion on food changes, but at the same time you’ll leave people to make their own choices. This is inspiring. Food to me is the most obvious subject in my life where I can see myself struggling with accepting other people’s choices around food. There’s a huge resistance towards people making so many food choices that (they know) do not support them. And I feel with every cell in me that they’ve got the right to choose themselves, but as well I can feel my own resistance in accepting. I can feel now as I’m writing this that I need to give myself understanding and space to accept the resistance first rather than me fighting the resistance. I’m feeling still and sadness underneath. And, there’s more to explore…

253. Reblogged this on florisvanderschot's Blog and commented:
     so why don’t we all choose to eat foods that support, build, nourish, confirm and truly complement the amazingness we already are and the bodies we must live with every minute of every day?

254. Great article Cherise. I was very surprised by the symptoms that either abated or disappeared once I gave up gluten and dairy. The greatest gift was knowing what I wanted to eat. When bloated and feeling dull and sluggish it is difficult to feel what the body needs for nutrition, and I would reach for something light and often sweet to make myself feel better, and a coffee to give myself a lift, all of which took me further from knowing what my body needed. The change from being disconnected from my body to a much finer awareness has naturally led to healthier food choices that are easy to maintain – without the temptation to seek the highly comforting foods, especially dairy, to which I was strongly attracted before.

     1. The disconnection we are speaking about seems to be the greatest key of all, for it matters not what the food is we have chosen ~ what if it is actually about the choice that was already made before food was in the equation?
        To hold back, to hide, to not feel something or be aware of our situation, to not take stock or responsibility, to deny our sensitivity or vulnerability or cover an anxiousness in allowing more of ourselves to be seen…

        There are so many hurts and reasons for us to specifically unravel for ourselves when we make the choices that we do and to ask ourselves the question of ‘why?’ is extremely honest and therefore very powerful.

255. “I couldn’t make a change without first being willing to understand and heal the reasons why I chose to be unloving with me in the first place, which then lead me to override what I truly felt.” – This sentence alone is Health and awareness at its core. To bring an understanding to why we make certain choices is huge. I find that without this, there will always be a substitute. eg. when I first stopped drinking because my close family told me how bad it is, I immediately found that my sugar cravings increased. and I would use that as a substitute. But when I was honest with how alcohol felt in my body, as well as sugar, and really felt the difference with and without them, only then was I able to make a true change with my whole body and not from my head.

256. The effect that gluten, dairy and sugar had on your body is quite extraordinary. It is remarkable that with all of these symptoms you don’t actually medically test to be intolerant and yet the effects are clearly undeniable. You and your body are your own living proof highlighting the importance of taking responsibility for our choices and honouring what you feel.

     1. Someone said to me only yesterday that they can’t understand how people could choose a gluten-free diet out of choice and not because that have to. But as I have learnt for myself, there is nothing to prove when the proof is lived and felt within my own body and if we allow ourselves to really feel the reaction that any food has on our state of being it becomes never about what we think we have to do and more about the self-empowerment of making our own choices to support ourselves.

        1. Cherise I agree there is nothing to prove, when the proof is lived and felt within our body. The deeper we listen the more our body tells us what is supportive or not to our body. I know when I eat something I normally wouldn’t, then my body gives me the signs quickly, mainly in the form of tiredness and bloating. If I ignore them I feel so awful within my body and my energy levels drop.

257. “I had eaten these foods all my life leaving me unaware and numb to their compounding symptoms in my body. I had become an expert in overriding what my body truly felt.”

     I didn’t know I was an expert in overriding what my body really felt, it’s just what everyone did, which included expecting the body to just deal with it, as it would – I didn’t even think about it. And so I was anaemic all my life, lacked energy and joie de vivre, our family had sinus, asthma and ear problems – and none of us dreamt that our diet was a major factor in these symptoms!

     It wasn’t until I started learning from Serge Benhayon and the Universal Medicine work and practitioners, that I realised I’m actually intolerant of gluten and dairy. How unaware and numb was I?!

258. “so why don’t we all choose to eat foods that support, build, nourish, confirm and truly complement the amazingness we already are and the bodies we must live with every minute of every day?” Great question Cherise and one that I ponder on almost every day in my workplace within the Health Service. Patients and co-workers alike seem to be either unaware or uninterested in the connection between what we put into our bodies and how we feel in that very same body after. The other curious aspect of the three foods that you have mentioned in your blog is how they have become associated with celebration and ceremony? Barely a day goes by without either attending or seeing photos of a celebration or special occasion somewhere in our health district where the main event seems to be the “cutting of the cake”, which is usually rather large and covered in very sweet icing. Generally the cake is the only thing on offer to eat, and the only beverages are tea and coffee. Likewise, unlike the old days when friends and relatives would bring a bowl of fruit, flowers or a thermos of soup to a patient in hospital, these days the most common offerings are chocolates, lollies, cakes and coffee together with the Get Well Soon cards or wishes. Interestingly, when standing at these events and saying no thankyou to a piece of cake, there will always be several people who’ll be interested in why I chose not to eat gluten, dairy or sugar. So the amazingness I feel gets a chance to reflect their choices to them right there with the cake in their hands, how cool is that!

259. Often it is not until we remove or otherwise stand back from and objectively observe the effect of any stressors in our daily lives – be that foods, people or life events, anything that is negatively affecting and impacting our bodies or lives, that we actually realise how unhealthy they are.

     1. Ps Wasn’t it Hippocrates that said ‘Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food’? When you consider modern societies massive increase in obesity statistics and the subsequent health issues this obesity induces such as diabetes, cardiovascular disease and hypertension that all proportionally continue to escalate with these obesity statistics people being more aware and responsible to what we eat and actually considering food as medicine sounds like a pretty top tip to me.

     2. So true Suse, as you say “Often it is not until we remove or otherwise stand back from and objectively observe the effect …” and I feel I am still learning that even that act of standing back and observing comes from a choice to do so for whatever reason. It seems that ‘choice’ plays a huge part in our everyday lives, our health, wellbeing, our behaviour, thoughts and rhythms – what an amazing revelation I feel that to be – that in every breath and moment we are making a choice, so for me choosing to feel what the body is endeavouring to impart to us as a wisdom is key as to what actually goes into the mouth. I do not necessarily always find it easy – but it sure appears to be simple, and I feel of huge benefit to the body.

260. It is great that you have taken the time to see and feel how these foods affect you, I definitely feel the same about many .. Gluten/wheat tired bloated and lethargic. Dairy .. even no dairy but soy affects sinuses and mucous, sugar makes me racy, wired nervous system and racy mental thoughts. You are right ‘as human beings we always have the opportunity to research and feel for ourselves if a certain food sits well in our bodies.’ But why don’t we want to do this? Only the other day I was speaking with someone who had irritable bowel syndrome and even though she knew how bread affected her still ate it as she loved it!

     Good question … ‘So why don’t we all choose to eat foods that support, build, nourish, confirm and truly complement the amazingness we already are and the bodies we must live with every minute of every day?’ Maybe we need to connect to the true amazingness we are first? What is the reason?

261. Cherise, I like how you are encouraging us to honor western medicine AND to respect also the signs our body gives us. Both have a place in healing and both are a form of medicine.

262. Thank you Cherise for sharing this great insight into what we loosely call food, as you have said time and time again we revisit what we eat and how it makes our body feel and we actually already know what the effects are going to be but somewhere we over ride what we know and go to relief of a tension we are in, and so holding us in the same cycle. What if we dealt with the tension there would be no need for the relief or the so called food that comes with the list of ills you have lovely presented.

263. True Chris, as an everyday shopper I would estimate that 70-80% of the items in an average supermarket are processed, ready-made, chemically composed meals and food stuffs. Sugar, dairy and gluten seem to be in just about everything, god knows why.

264. There cannot be too many articles written on the connection between what we eat and how we experience our lives… With the plethora of TV shows on food, competitions, fast foods, supermarkets filled with ready-made chemically composed meals, there needs to be an ongoing reflection of the possibility of what it is like to eat in tune with our body rather than eating to the advertising of the world.

265. It seems that many people will not trust their own experience enough to be an authority of their own body. Many have to be told by a doctor what needs to be done for their health. Perhaps they don’t really want to know. It seems that not many doctors would suggest cutting out these food groups. It’s been my experience that most doctors don’t take those symptoms of discomfort particularly seriously. I have struck the attitude of “surely a small amount won’t hurt.” from people who should have my best health outcome at heart.

266. “…as human beings we always have the opportunity to research and feel for ourselves if a certain food sits well in our bodies.” This is such a great point, I have given for a long time my power away to what everyone else did or to what scientifically has been proven or not. Which is totally understandable. With attending courses and presentations from Universal Medicine and Serge Benhayon I became more open to feeling in my body what effects foods have on it. It has been very empowering to do this as I now know what foods go well in my body and which don’t. I also noticed that it is a constant refining too as my body feels different at different times. Thank you for sharing Cherise, this is a great subject to talk about!

267. “Why don’t we all choose to eat foods that support, build, nourish, confirm and truly complement the amazingness we already are and the bodies we must live with every minute of every day?” – a great question, Cherise. So true – food used to be simply something that sustained and nourished our body, but now we want food to bring us other things as well – such as rewarding/numbing/stimulating factor – and for me it was perfectly normal to have my sinus blocked up most of the time; feeling heavy and sleepy after meal was normal; getting through a day with a help of a sugar hit was just the way it was. Until I started experimenting, I had no idea my body was actually intolerant to these foods, and there was in fact a far better way of being that I could live if I so choose to. I am so chuffed to have reconnected with the sensitivity my body holds.

     1. This is great Fumiyo – “food used to be simply something that sustained and nourished our body, but now we want food to bring us other things as well – such as rewarding/numbing/stimulating factor”. It’s like we are using food to fill an emptiness if we have not been connected and with ourselves. As a society, we in general do not have this simple understanding or awareness of what it means to be connected. Food is just one of the many outer stimulants we are using to fill our emptiness rather than fill ourselves up with ourselves.

268. I am often disappointed at how often I reach for a new dairy and gluten free product on the supermarket shelves and find that, while it may not have cane sugar as an ingredient, it has sugar added in various other disguises e.g. corn or rice syrup. So people are still getting their ‘sweet fix’ but think that they are being healthy because the product is listed as a ‘health food with no dairy, gluten or added sugar’. With the food industry so firmly fixated on sales and revenue, it’s no wonder people are generally not aware that they are actually burying their issues further through their choice of even so called ‘healthy’ food!

     1. It’s an interesting point you make gilesch, I feel that advertising has much to answer for in the way that it does not have to deliver the whole truth. I can also see that we as the consumer have the right and the responsibility to ask for truth ourselves, and not allow the whole charade to go on. We have the right to ask, to know and be aware of what goes into our bodies.

        1. Great point gilesch and cheriseholt; I am amazed as I have no issues with too much weight, but I never in my life have eaten any ‘diet’ food products or ‘fat free’ products. I love my oils. The diet and so called fat free foods don’t seem to work with what I am observing around me.

269. “I am not just a creature of habit” – this sums it up for me… While I certainly have lots of habits and many of them involve food, at the end of the day there is a choice that I make…to listen to my body or not.

     1. This brings in our responsibility too Joel and a freedom to not be held by the choices we’ve made, no matter how many times over, but know we always have a choice to listen to our bodies.

        1. I like what you say here Cherise in that “we are not held by the choices that we have made, no matter how many times over”. I have used the fact that I have made ill choices many times in the past to control my next choice. It has only been since I have connected to and felt the absolute amazingness that I am that I am now making much more loving choices, through this connection I can feel when an old pattern (choice) presents and once felt make a different choice. This applies to foods as well as the level of care that I apply to my body. At times it is not easy to do this, particularly for those long held patterns that I have fallen back on as my way of protection or identification. One of these is very present in my days at the moment, but now it stands out and I feel that it no longer belongs to the person I am today. This is making it much easier to cut each time I feel it.

270. I love what you say here about choosing foods to nourish, support and confirm us 🙂 Food can change our bodies very quickly, so and we can easily use it to abuse and disregard our bodies. So why is it we make the taste or numbness of some foods more important than how we truly feel. We have become masters of doing this with food, and I have found such a huge difference in my body as I have started to be honest about this and look at why I choose certain foods.

271. Cherize, this is a great blog because it shows how it is possible for all of us to ‘research and feel for ourselves if a certain food sits well in our bodies’. Too often we tend to rely on the diet or the doctor’s prescription – something outside ourselves that we make an authority on our health. Your list of symptoms match my own when I used to consume these foods and there is no doubt that my body feels so much better without them.

     1. Well said Sandra, we rely on famous or the latest fad diets, but nothing knows what our body wants more than our body. My body tells me very clearly now. So it’s easy; do I want to feel bloated? I can just eat some wheat or gluten, do I want to feel racy? Give me some sugar, do I want to feel clogged up in my sinuses? Give me some dairy…. do I want to feel awesome? Yes, I get myself some great protein, awesome lamb or fish or eggs for example and some beautiful vegetables or salad, and I feel fantastic!

272. It is interesting how letting go of certain foods can appear hard at the beginning but once we experience life without them (that is all the affects and side affects), there is no turning back. Taking the first step is always the most challenging, then the steps thereafter seem to get easier and easier.

     1. I agree Vicky, there does need to be a willingness to experiment and see what life is like not doing this or that. I recently have done that and my body is so grateful to me for having stopped eating something in the quantities I was, and it took my body to make be stop it was yelling at me – “this is NOT OK” but I loved the taste of the food and just had to one day say “lets see what its like if I don’t eat them today” and then it does become a catalyst as feeling better in my body is far more enjoyable than those moments on my lips!

        1. I agree Vicky, It is challenging at first, I have found its consistency with your food choices. Once you get into a new rhythm with food it does get easier.

        2. It still blows me away how one small choice, like the one you have described Vanessa, just being open to ‘what is it like without this today’ and acting on it, makes the next choice that much easier. Then the next time we say yes to more love, it already feels different, like there is so much support there to make another loving choice. We are constantly being invited to accept more love.

     2. I agree here Vicky, and there is always another level to go with food. And enjoying how amazing you feel in the body is huge, really developing this as being normal and acceptable is super important as we too often override how amazing we feel and therefore we are always then at the mercy of trying to prop ourselves us with some substance.

     3. And that’s why it’s so important for us to feel what food does to us. I could never have ‘given up’ chocolate had it been a decision from my head and telling myself that I shouldn’t eat it, it’s not good for me, etc. I stopped eating chocolate after the last time I ate it I just felt so sick, sleepy and a bit numbed out that I got really honest with myself about the fact that this had always been the case. I’d been eating chocolate for 30+ years but hadn’t wanted to admit how it made me feel because I liked the taste and the lift it gave me. And so I didn’t give chocolate up, I just decided I didn’t want to feel that way anymore and so…bye bye chocolate. And yes, there most definitely is life after chocolate 🙂

     4. Vicky that is so true, taking the first step is the challenging part, but once we give it a go and feel the benefit, automatically our bodies start to support us in letting certain foods go. It is about allowing the body to talk to us, and us listening to the messages given.

     5. Very true Vicky; it’s like we have blinkers on; “but, what CAN I eat then??” Once we start with the change, the inspiration comes through and it helps to talk with like minded friends too.

273. I too have never been tested for intolerances – but as I am more aware of my body and how it responds to certain foods – I know that wheat, dairy and sugar does not agree with who I am. It’s so beautiful to know this and to feel the difference with and without these things in my diet – especially when a few years ago I was very worried about how I would survive if I couldn’t eat bread. Change is everywhere, all the time if we embrace it.

     1. For me the same, I have never been tested for any food intolerance but I feel so much more vital and connected to my body than before I stopped with eating dairy, gluten and sugar. I recently came to the awareness that as of a young age I was not able to handle dairy, and as a result I was ill at home a lot suffering from sinus, sore throat, mucous and nausea. This ended by the removal of my tonsils at the age of 5, as was a very normal thing to do in those days, and not to look at the root cause of the illness. The removal of the tonsils also removed the ability of my body to clear the abuse it experienced by me using dairy and allowed me to continue using dairy from that moment on.

        1. Nico, what an interesting thing to ponder on! I had never before considered that removing the tonsils may actually allow us to keep doing what we are doing that is causing them to become inflamed in the first place! Wouldn’t it be great if we were made aware of this first, and given the understanding and opportunity to make changes in the way we eat and live before considering surgery, leaving surgical removal as the last resort.

        2. Wow – it’s interesting how we choose to deal with a constant sickness – to fix it by removing something in the body rather than perhaps what we put into our mouths because food is normal. But now you are offered a greater understanding of what is truly behind reactions in the body – that they are the body’s way of communicating to us.

        3. That’s so interesting Nico that in medicine, they often remove the very organ or mechanism that is showing us that there is something we’re doing that isn’t working. As you’ve so clearly seen, by removing our tonsils it allowed you to keep having dairy and so your body would have found another way to show you it couldn’t handle it.

        4. I had my tonsils out at about 7 after recurrent bouts of bronchitis. I was also weaned at six weeks as by then I was being fed cows milk and it made me sick. Wow – looks like dairy was the root cause of that one too!

        5. I really love what each of you have shared here, especially bringing forward the understanding that by removing our tonsils this takes away the most immediate point in our body that gives us the message that something is not quite right in how we are caring for our body.
           I have never had tonsillitis, but I have had constant sinus infections and Asthma. I eliminated Dairy from my diet in my early twenties, because of the constant sinus infections, then in later years, after having kinesiology treatments, I discovered the my body could again tolerate dairy, so I began to eat it again. Yet never once did my asthma improve, until I completely gave up Gluten and Dairy. So even though the kinesiology numbed me in relation to the sinus infections, that my body was still speaking loudly through having asthma.

        6. Nico, this reminds me of a general practitioner who said she chose to have her gall bladder out as she did not want to give up cheese! It was a way to diminish the significance of having an organ removed and in this particular case to encourage a patient take the same attitude. To me this says so many things – how we abuse medicine, don’t like to be responsible for our emotions and lifestyle choices, avoid the healing that is available especially if surgery is necessary and also how much understanding Esoteric Medicine an offer conventional medicine.

        7. Wow, it’s crazy what we will do to keep our own comfortable behaviours playing strong. It could be easy for someone to say that anyone could give up cheese, but if a person is living strongly religious with cheese it is actually easy to see why they may have great difficulty giving it up.
           The key is to bring one’s awareness to the fact that a religious behaviour is actually occurring and the honesty to seek the reasoning why, only then will we stop abusing ourselves and our bodies at our own expense and stop protecting the hurts we hold just beneath the surface.

     2. It’s true, this is all so interesting. I recall a couple of years ago a friend sharing with me from an anatomy text book the purpose of our tonsils is to protect the body from foreign particles that are being ingested into it. How interesting, when we eat something that the body and our tonsils may be sharing loudly does not belong or is affecting us, and yet before removing the foreign body we remove part of our own body first!

        1. That is a great link you have all made, what astounds me is being surrounded by children who always have green snotty noses. Just yesterday my daughter said she wanted to eat dairy and I shared about snotty green noses and asked her if she had ever had one. ‘No’ was the answer, and that’s because you don’t eat dairy… it is so obvious the impact of dairy on people’s bodies, but we love the taste and that seems to be king! Once we let the body be king, choices of what we eat becomes pretty simple.

        2. Wow that is a huge point Cherise! I didn’t know that about tonsils but that ignorance is huge! We are pros at getting rid of what isn’t comfortable because we don’t want to deal with why it is happening to begin with!

        3. Great point Vanessa, snotty noses are a symptom of something.. .how important it is to fully expose the root cause of any symptom.

        4. Many people try to desensitise themselves from their allergies, which makes me wonder how this can be of any benefit.

        5. When I was learning Anatomy I understood that the tonsils were our first line of defence and were very important for the immune system. Interesting that when we take them away that we also removing that vital communication link and therefore no longer receive those signals.

        6. Thank you all. Great sharing in relation to the tonsils and how the inflammation and removal of these is not investigated further. Rather they are perceived as the problem without any thought of cause and effect… which as Nico says removes the ability of the body to clear the effects of the abuse that we inflict. This is just one example of the many instances that we choose to override what our body is showing us.

        7. I smiled when I read – “Let the Body be king” Vanessa…and then I felt into that more and it reminded me of the ‘Kingdom of God is within us all’ and the ‘Kingly Body’ and it become a deeper reminder and appreciation of our bodies and how we can be with them.

        8. Yes! Love this! I am also learning more about the choices I make to feed my body being actually about what is to come, the expansion and opportunity that is coming my way; instead of looking at my food based on what has just happened or analysing what I think I may have not wanted to feel. There is more and more (and more!) love and joy ahead the more that I embrace and accept it as who I am and the choices I make right now are just preparing me body for the light and love that I already am to be lived!

        9. Sarah I love that you mention a ‘kingly body’ – feels like gold. And Vanessa, that’s so true about snotty noses. It’s amazing that from a being a baby we are brought up to over ride our feelings in order to survive. We’re not given a choice of what to eat or drink when young. But I know I’ve continued patterns when I’ve had complete choice. The choice to build a ‘kingly body’ is so much grander than consuming food that clogs and halts the body.

        10. Cherise that’s interesting about what you say about tonsils being a communication link, telling us there’s something not right for the body. Reflecting back it feels like my body was communicating a lot with the foods I was given, at that young age I did not have much choice in what I could eat. My tonsils where flaring up a lot, so the Doctors decided to remove them. I wish this information was available then – maybe the foods given to me then would have changed and my tonsils would not have had to be removed.

     3. Same for me hvmorden – I’ve never been tested for intolerances, but only need to listen to my body to understand that I am, and that all the symptoms I ‘used’ to experience when eating these foods (such as bloating, feeling heavy, lethargic, racy etc.) were in fact not at all ‘normal’, but my body showing me that they didn’t agree with me!

        1. This continues to show me that there is nothing to prove or justify about the way that one lives or the choices one makes. Especially when these choices are aimed at self-nurturing and feeling great, how could this not be a supportive thing?!

        2. Yes it is incredible to think we can train our bodies so well to accept what will satisfy the mind. Ask me 10 years ago and I could tell you I had no problems with going out late, drinking, eating whatever I wanted, exercising until my muscles were pulled. There was an amazing tolerance in my body, an allowance if you like to let me understand fully what was behind choices I was making. How loving is that.

     4. Hvmorden you share something really important here about bread and the place it has in many people’s lives. I have heard all sorts of similar comments about removing bread from the diet including that it is downright impossible to do (it’s not). Bread is convenient and filling, it is also conveniently dulling of our feelings. Giving up bread is an adjustment that can require we re-consider what we are eating, often those that give up bread tend to increase the amount of vegetables they eat and even reduce how much they are eating overall as blood sugar levels stabilise.

274. I would have sworn I was fine with gluten, dairy I knew I reacted to…it wasn’t until I gave myself time off these products and allowed my body to adjust that I realised there was a ‘better’ kind of normal!

275. You became an expert in overriding what your body truly felt. I wore a tattoo saying “I do not want to know so do not even bother”(not true but this was the attitude). Luckily or not, my body did not get sick because of my choices of food. So, I had no objective reason why to stop eating what I was doing and how I was doing it. What I can only say is that the moment I became aware of what I was doing and what my attitude was, to drop gluten, alcohol and a few other things from my diet was a piece of cake. The difference between before and after is as stark as day and night.

276. awesome blog Cherise! I can really relate to what you said about not being aware of the compounding symptoms in your body from eating certain foods. It’s only now, 3 years after cutting gluten dairy and sugar out of my diet that I am starting to realise the magnitude of symptoms that I was burying with food as I was growing up. Now that I’m clear of those foods, I’m starting to become aware of certain feelings and ways my body works that I haven’t felt for a long time.

277. Hi Cherise, you have posed the million dollar question ‘why don’t we all choose to eat foods that support, build, nourish, confirm and truly complement the amazingness we already are and the bodies we must live with every minute of every day? Perhaps there is another blog in there somewhere!

278. Today I felt that I needed to read your blog again Cherise. I have allowed myself to avoid the true depth of how easy it is to persuade myself that my diet is supporting me. I feel from re-reading your blog I am now understanding that ‘ I couldn’t make a change without first being willing to understand and heal the reasons why I chose to be unloving with me in the first place, which then lead me to override what I truly felt’. It feels like an amazing time to make new choices and honour my deeper feelings. Thank you for your beautiful words of wisdom.

     1. I also felt the need to have another look at Cherise’s blog Susan, as I am finding certain foods that I felt I could take into my body a year ago are no longer working for me, resulting in a weariness that I could not fathom – so back to the drawing board, developing my awareness of my body requirements, listening a little more closely and lovingly and moving on from there, thus listening to the wisdom of my body.

        1. I agree Roberta – when life feels baffling it feels so lovely to go to the basic principles of life and the way we live it. There is a beautiful simplicity in the basics that cuts through the complications that I employ to avoid feeling the discomfort.

279. I really enjoyed reading your blog again Cherise. Previously, I have thought abuse was more physical but it is very clear from my own experience and from reading your blog that anything that is not made with loving choices means it can be harmful. I have definitely done this with food, by over eating and choosing food that made me feel awful. I often used to feel similar symptoms to you and would just ignore them and choose the same harmful foods again and again. For over 2 years now, I have started to choose food that is nourishing, supportive and energises my body. I feel amazing for it and similar to you, I feel less hungry and so much more myself. Gluten, dairy, caffeine and sugar is harmful for my body because I get side effects from eating them. It is clear that my body is communicating to me to avoid them, I don’t need to do any tests to proof that, the messages are simply very obvious.

280. Taking gluten and dairy out of my diet was simpel to do. Sugar was a complete different story. I recently heard someone say the addition to sugar is 8 times more difficult to let go of than drugs. Although my body would tell me and I experienced symptoms you describe in your blog, I kept coming back. Now I am on my way and don’t use it as reward, not feeling what is there to feel or as an energizer for my tiredness.

     1. Interesting point you make Monika that addiction to sugar is 8 times more harder to let go of than drugs. I have found letting go of sugar much more difficult. It really is addictive. But I am learning to feel why I want or need sugar – a reward, comfort or to override my exhaustion that I’m feeling. When I feel my body feeling racy and disconnected I then realise I have a choice to make – eat what is harming or not. In the stillness of my connection I feel yummy, so why would I choose to not feel this every day?

        1. I find this very interesting too. I can see why it is possible that sugar is much more addictive and harder to give up than drugs. I have been reflecting as to why I wasn’t as highly addicted to sugar as so many of my friends. I remember, when I was growing up we simply didn’t have money to by sweets/lollies. So, my body was used to having no sugar for very long periods. I was exposed to a little bit more sugar when I was about 7 years old onwards and even then my body rejected sugar in an obvious way. I felt sick, nauseous, had head aches and generally unwell because my body simply wasn’t able to cope with the extra intake of sugar. But with time I slowly added more and more into my system so my symptoms became less severe. I then become mildly addicted to sugar and would choose it when my moods were low. I realised, by introducing small amounts slowly my body was becoming numbed to it. When I decided to give up sugar I thought to give up gluten, dairy and caffeine all at the same time. I found it was easier to just eliminate everything that was not good for my body all together, so I can begin to feel the real benefits of making true healthy and loving choices. It felt so loving and supportive to know that I was doing this for me, not to please or to prove anything to anyone. I was simply making loving choices for my body and becoming more committed to life.

281. So many wonderful points made Cherise. My relationship with food and how my body either reacts or loves certain foods amazes me every day. It’s a constant developing relationship that will continue to grow and change as my body shifts and changes and I love that.

     1. I love that too Kelly. The messages my body gives me with certain foods are sometimes very subtle and if I don’t pay attention to them I could easily override them and become unaware. I am learning to be more aware of how I feel each time I eat certain foods and choosing to become more aligned to my body.

282. I was ignorant of the way my body was communicating until I was open to taking responsibility for my choices. Once I made that I choice, I couldn’t ignore its loud communications, even though I have over-ridden it many times for the sake of my enjoyment of a certain food, which I would inevitably regret later.

283. I am loving returning to a relationship with food that is more about nourishment than excitement. It is a work in progress but a welcome one.

284. Taking gluten, dairy and sugar out of my diet was no less than amazing in terms of how I felt afterwards. All the symptoms you share here Cherise of what would happen and how you would feel when eating gluten, dairy or sugar I can relate to — the bloating, heaviness, lethargy, cloudiness of thought, raciness and anxiety. Once I let go of these foods, I felt clearer, sharper, more vital and vibrant, I now sleep better, feel much lighter in my body, the list goes on. I was never tested for gluten intolerance — I didn’t need to. I could feel that my body was not reacting well to those foods, and letting them go has been priceless.

285. Thanks Cherise for outlining the variety of symptoms a body can experience from foods touted as “healthy”. Since finding Universal Medicine and utilising their esoteric healing modalities (including esoteric yoga) I feel much more connected to and able to listen to my body and as a result I could deepen my understanding of foods and their effects. One of the big surprises for me was realising the connection between emotional disturbances waking me from sleep and fermented foods like non dairy yoghurt. I have had some other insights as well, all of which occurred through the new clarity in my connection to my body allowing me to observe and discern quite a wide range of effects from foods. These were all unique to me and I feel very grateful for the support from Universal Medicine to now have a body clear enough to work out for myself what was not right for me to eat – which has contributed greatly to my physical and emotional wellbeing.

286. As I explore more deeply my relationship with my body I am finding that the way I feel in my body is now becoming more beautiful and less critical. As I learn to take care of it by considering the food that I fuel this beautiful and finally tuned engine the more responsive and beautifully it runs – I can change my car for a new model but not so with my body.
     My body is my greatest investment in this life so it makes sense to tend to it in a way that is loving and self-caring. All the more important to adhere to what my body tells me and to truly feel into what supports me in the way of food. It feels really supportive to have your blog Cherise, to remind me to deepen this connection and pay more attention to the detail of what I am understanding.

287. Great observations Cherise. I have been surprised and delighted at how different my body feels since I have become aware of the effect of some foods. I would never have taken my car to a garage and filled the tank with the must rubbishy fuel I could get away with that would clog the engine and make driving very unreliable but I often used to do this with my own body. Sugar was a big one with me and since almost eliminating sugar from my diet I no longer suffer a ‘busy brain’ at night that prevented me from sleeping. My body is a great teacher.

288. Cherise I’m currently going off sugar again. Before I went off it I could see my hair had gone dull, my face was going blotchy, I was going to bed late, not sleeping well, waking up tired, not eating right and finding it hard to engage in my work. Now that I am eliminating sugar from my diet, it’s incredible how it takes a few days for it to leave your system. It’s not the sugar I’m craving, it’s my brain thinking it needs more food, and when it does feel like a craving I’m learning it’s my body actually requiring nourishment.

289. I totally agree Cherise Holt that food can be used as a form of medication to numb what we don’t want to feel. They can become addictive even. It seems that science is just starting to realise the harm that certain foods in our diets are doing to our bodies. But as you say we don’t need to wait for science to tell us what to do we can start today by being aware of our own bodies reactions to food.

290. My old cycle:
     Wake up exhausted
     Large cappuccino with 2 sugars accompanied by a brioche for breakfast.
     Eyes finally opened properly…ready to face the day
     Upper gastrointestinal pain until noon
     1 pm lunch, normal sized cappuccino, 1 sugar, foccacia filled with something + cheese
     3pm slump, how on earth am I going to make it until 6pm???
     Upper gastrointestinal pain until 6-7pm.
     Everyday I did this for too many years to count. I have left out the chocolate interspersed throughout to keep me going through the slump too. 🙂 Dairy based…of course.
     Dinner was whatever appealed. Lots of pasta, lots of cheese.

     My new cycle: No cappuccinos, no dairy, no gluten, and no sugar. No chocolate!! No upper gastrointestinal pain. I still get slumps, but the loveliness is that I can track what I have done that lead to the slump….in the old days I lived in such a fog of possible causes that I couldn’t tell if a drop in energy was dietary, or emotional, of if I had done something physical. Now I know if I have put myself under too much pressure or reacted to something at work, because I am not dealing with a belly full of foods I cannot digest.

     A routine colonoscopy/endoscopy 2 years ago confirmed what I always knew, lactose intolerance. As for gluten, I do not need any more confirmation than that which my body has provided. I feel like am entirely different human being, and that is enough for me.

     1. I used to eat in a similar way Rachel. A coffee and wheat and sugar based cereal every morning just to get me started and a baguette and a snickers bar for lunch. And I used to wonder why I was nodding off at 3pm at work! I used to also notice that my belly swelled up like a balloon after lunch and breakfast but just considered this normal! When I decided to quit gluten, dairy and processed sugar from my diet I felt so much better and then realised that all these symptoms were not normal at all.

291. Love this blog Cherise. It puts into words my own new-found experience with food and the true support and care it can be for us.

292. Awesome blog Cherise, the question towards the end you raised is a great one. For me, the first 7 years of my life I was gluten, dairy and almost sugar free. Lollies were out of the question because we simply didn’t have the money to buy them. When I moved to England I was introduced to dairy and gluten instantly, as a child I was told it was good for me to eat it. But my body was telling me something different. With dairy it tasted revolting, but I listened to the adults and persisted to eat it. My body felt, lethargic, heavy and my mood would also change. I felt all the alarming messages my body was giving me but I chose to override them because I thought that the messages I got from outside of my body were the better ones to listen to.

     Now I realise that no one can know what food is good for my body except for my body itself. I have really started to appreciate my body and the messages constantly communicated to guide me to let me know when and what I should eat to love, to support and nourish it.

293. Yes why oh why?! I love the idea of the cycles simply being an opportunity to see the pattern and make a different choice.

294. Cherise, it is a very important question you raise there at the end. Why don’t we eat to honour the amazingness we are? There are so many reasons why this can be!
     For one I can feel how if we don’t actually connect to and appreciate how amazing we are then we are more likely to do things that confirm the opposite – ie eat things that make us feel gross, bloated, distracted – the list could go on. My feeling is more education about how we can truly feel in our bodies is needed so people can start to make more fully informed choices about what is going into their bodies, and see if that matches with their actual amazingness or not.

295. When you think about it any diet must be customized for you. Testing how you feel after eating as Cherise has shown us is something anybody can do. The more honest you are the more your body will love you. I am finding I have to be open to the fact that my nourishment requirements are ever changing. What was good for me last month may not be right anymore, or at least not so much, or not at that time of day.

296. Love this blog – thank you Cherise. Responsibility with food really determines how I will feel throughout my day. These choices are very important to me and worth taking whatever time is needed to support the quality of my day and my sleep. From how I plan the week with food, to how I shop, the ritual I cook in, the ceremony in how I eat, to even how I cleanup and order my pantry and fridge.

297. I love this blog very much to return to, as it shows so clearly and simply the effects of the different foods, which I really relate to as is my experience too. When I feel drawn to sugar this is a great reminder of the consequences and helps me look at why I am feeling drawn to this . Often a simple short rest is what I really need instead, or to look at what I am feeling underneath this craving used to numb it.

298. The stomach itself is such a delicate and very flexible part of our body, I recently had the chance to examine one. It is surprisingly thin walled, which I mean is not thick at all, yet it is super strong and elastic. When I saw this organ, I can only be amazed by it and what it is capable of, yet we have such a disconnection to it. We treat it like a rubbish bin, depositing anything and everything into it, then expecting it to operate without fail, which is does. It processes everything we eat, but we jam as much as we can in this tiny, almost fragile sack and say ‘get to work’. If the stomach could speak in words I’m sure it would look up and say’ oh not this again’.

     1. So true Matthew, if our organs could speak – how interesting and matter of fact it would be to listen. I see the inside of the bodies intestinal tract everyday at work and when it is empty, crisp and clear it is beautiful, from it’s natural waves of movement to the delicate lining you also speak of. But just because we can’t see this in view for ourselves each day doesn’t mean we can’t connect to it. This has been a great comment, thank you.

     2. Being able to see one’s stomach would certainly help a great many people to change their food consumption. We take great care with our car, with oil and the right fuel for optimum function yet we can use our precious stomach as a rubbish bin! This image will help me keep on the right track when choosing food. Thank you Matthew and Cherise.

     3. What a lovely observation Matthew. I wonder if this would make a substantial difference to most people – if they could actually get to see our organs that have to deal with the food we eat? I recall seeing a fatty liver as a student. It was in a specimen jar, not a human being, but just the same it was shocking to see this rich, deep bluish red organ almost completely changed to a white colour. Virtually every cell was filled with fat. What shocked me even more was the fact that this change was possible with one night of heavy drinking. The fact that the liver recovers is a testament to its capacity to heal. The fact that we keep drinking is testament to our stubborn adherence to cycles that don’t work for those organs.
        Seeing those organs may be a gateway to us all developing a relationship with the amazing processes happening underneath our skin, and a reminder of the fact that the feelings we experience are actually a small voice reminding us to take greater care.

299. I really appreciate your contribution Cherise concerning foods and what they do to our bodies. I realise that some of these symptoms come from other foods I have eaten also. Thank you for the valuable blog Cherise.

300. Cherise, it was great to read your article again, reminding me to go deeper with my awareness of how the foods I eat affect my body, because this seems to be always changing and I feel that it is important to change with it.

     1. I too experience this, now that I have learnt to listen to my body with regards to food, the messages I received from my body constantly changes. It’s like layers of messages, once I have eliminated the first layer of food that my body doesn’t need, it moves to the next layer for me to eliminate, another type of food that is clogging and harming to my body. Now for me, I eat food that is non processed and highly nutritious. I change the way I cook to become easy, simply and tasty. I don’t overload it with sugar or salt anymore. I can actually appreciate the taste of the natural sweetness in vegetable and meat, allowing my taste buds to do it’s thing without stimulating it with additives. I feel amazing for it, energised, clearer and feeling more myself.

301. It is a fascinating thing that we choose to eat foods that make us feel sick and that is something that we accept is OK. When we have a cold or flu or feel ill with illness we generally understand that something not correct in our bodies and we need rest or medication or both. We know to be wary and stay away from people who might be infectious. If we get a sore tummy from eating bread or diarrhea or a runny nose from eating dairy or a headache because we are having sugar withdrawals we tend to read those messages from our body in a different way – but our body is actually giving us the same message – this is making me sick and I need it out fast.

302. Thank you for sharing Cherise, sharing the symptoms that you have will help me be more aware and share with others so they can have something to consider. How exciting it is to start hearing our bodies more and all the different areas we can support to help this… food being a big one needing & needing constant refinement. I’ve been aware my diet is in need of that refinement lately, thanks for the encouragement.

303. Thank you for such a great understanding and sharing of what food really does to our bodies. True health and healing is very much associated with our diet and loving lifestyle choices. So many people can share the simplicity joy and true health by living differently and purposefully and learning and feeling this it really does make sense.

304. The list you provide Cheryl for the symptoms relating to each food choice is extensive, it would surprise me if there were not a great many people who have experienced at least a few of these reactions. My own experience of eating gluten and dairy was long and harrowing, looking back I should have stopped eating these foods long before I did, but got swept along by the myths that surround dairy and gluten and the supposed important role they play in good health. My health is far better without those foods and I would say it is well worth experimenting and paying attention to what foods are healing and what foods cause our body distress and harm.

305. ‘In the field of Gastroenterology patients present with symptoms ranging in severity and always with a knowing that something is ‘not right’ with their health and in their own body.’ I definitely had this experience, I spent years ‘not feeling quite right’, I had many tests to find out what was wrong, but they were all inconclusive, I had loose stools and knew there was something wrong. In the end I found a nutritionist who suggested I cut gluten, dairy and sugar from my diet and this was the start of me returning to health.

306. Reflecting on my relationship with food – it has always been about the taste and the rewards when I put it in my mouth, disregarding the outcome and telling myself it will pass. To stop and ask ‘Whats going on?’ and to truly listen to the body’s response, might mean in that moment I go ahead but I can never not know what I discovered in that moment. Soon after that, the food drops away from my diet and the long term outcome is feeling more and more amazing. Deeply loving me and giving my body ‘a say’ in the choices I am making, is reducing the ‘needs’ that have driven me in the past. So many of my foods, relationships and choices have changed in this awesome life – In appreciation.

307. It was inspiring to read your blog Cherise, thank you.
     I loved the end part, which leaves us much to ponder on:

     “Food has the potential to support us to live our natural way of being, with true vitality and good health, so why don’t we all choose to eat foods that support, build, nourish, confirm and truly complement the amazingness we already are and the bodies we must live with every minute of every day?”

     1. I agree Thomas. I loved it too. Great blog Cherise, Thank you.

308. Yes Cherise I could so relate to your list when dealing with the side effects of dairy for over 5 years and being told by my doctor it was all the to do with “my allergies” which strangely enough I had none! The difference to my health and well being from this slight diet change has been remarkable. Gone are the constant stack of klennex tissues.

309. Hi Cherise I loved your list. It is really supportive to be reminded of how our body feels after eating these types of food. I was listening to the radio yesterday and a mother was talking about how her daughter struggled at school and couldn’t keep up with the lessons and her homework and was always tired, she then got glandular fever that affected her for several years and eventually her mother, at her wit’s end to know what to do, took her daughter to a place that diagnosed coeliac disease. It took 6 months for things to begin to change, but it turned her daughter’s life around. What we put in our bodies affects us much more than we allow ourselves to know and feel.

     1. I loved the list too, it was like lightbulbs going off, many symptoms I have clicked but some of the others I hadn’t linked to those foods, I am inspired to pay much more attention to how I really feel when I eat foods etc.

310. I just loved reading your blog again Cherise – much ‘food for thought’ and so clearly offered in your final sentence “why don’t we all choose to eat foods that support, build, nourish, confirm and truly complement the amazingness we already are and the bodies we must live with in every minute of every day.”

     1. I have found this to be an open-ended question Roberta, appearing in so many situations throughout life – why is it that we would make any choice to not support ourselves and our bodies? For me it comes back to acceptance of who I am and an acceptance that life is about healing (over harming) and love (over that which is not).

        1. I loved this question too – it asks us to feel very deeply about our food choices and what they really do symbolise. Most people in the world knowingly make choices to eat what is harming to their body and so it is very rightly something that needs to be explored. If ‘everyone’ is doing this at some stage in their life, there must be a common factor in the way we see ourselves. Do we not know the amazingness that we are, or do we deeply know and not want to feel it? Serge Benhayon has presented much on this very topic, and about how what we eat and how our body responds very much has to do with our levels of acceptance. This is something I love learning more about and uncovering more ways I can be ultimately self-loving and accepting in the food choices that I make.

311. It’s a well researched and known fact that an alarming number of major disease cases worldwide are causally contributed to by lifestyle choices, including diet and alcohol consumption. This makes you question “… so why don’t we all choose to eat foods that support, build, nourish, confirm and truly complement the amazingness we already are and the bodies we must live with every minute of every day?” very disturbing. Do we, humanity, have an epidemic of self-disregard and lack of self-love on our hands? As Matt Jossefson says, we are not taught as children to feed ourselves to honour our light, but we are also not taught as children to love ourselves and honour our true feelings. Could that be partly because of the way we are fed? This could be a huge topic for pubic health department to study towards reversing the decline in worldwide health. You Cherise and the other contributors to this blog would be a great place to start the research.

312. The elimination of certain foods has given me more energy and clarity and showed me that the responsibility is mine to make the right choices on a a daily basis. Like a musician with his instrument we can fine tune our body to produce the best sound possible.

313. A brilliant article Cherise. You have clearly reflected through your experience how choosing to be aware of how our bodies are feeling, and from there making loving choices that support us as we live, has a massively positive impact on health and well-being. And I love how you say – “Food has the potential to support us to live our natural way of being, with true vitality and good health, so why don’t we all choose to eat foods that support, build, nourish, confirm and truly complement the amazingness we already are and the bodies we must live with every minute of every day?” Beautifully said Cherise.

314. Sometimes it feels like the world is just a giant stomach… With everyone just eating eating eating, because there is just so much not to feel. The abundance of cooking shows, people becoming more and more extreme with food, from Michelin stars to McDonald’s, when Universal Medicine just simply and quietly keeps presenting, hey start to tune into your body and it will really let you know what you need to eat. It’s that simple.

     1. I really love the way you write cjames, it makes so much sense.

315. Giving up gluten, dairy, sugar and even salt have led me to feel lighter and clearer compared to when I ate these. Now having this awareness, I make self-loving choices to eat foods that support me in feeling my connection to and with my body compared to eating foods that dull or numb me.

     1. Very inspiring Donna. It’s fascinating to observe the bodies reactions to sugar and salt (well of any food actually!) but so interesting to see the levels of fogginess or dulling that can be so evident afterwards. It can be a very subtle change and yet the more we are aware of it and found a marker of ourselves of how divine and lovely we can feel without it, the marker is as subtle as a sledge-hammer; reminding us that the lines between what is normal to feel in our bodies and what it feels to be imposed on or altered is a vast contrast.

316. I agree Cherise, there is such a different quality to my body and how I feel now that I have eliminated certain foods I was using to numb and not feel my body. As I am discovering this is a continual refinement and my body is consistent in its feedback in sharing what its nourishing, nurturing and what is not. I cannot hide from my body. : )

     1. Continual refinement is so true Marcia, I am finding this all the time too and I love what you share about not being able to hide from your body – and who would want to? Not when there is so much to learn from and feel good within it.

317. My body was telling me for many years that there were certain foods it did not like and most of the time I did not listen. Instead I lived, or just existed; with all of the symptoms you listed Cherise. I just thought that it was normal to feel like that. Every now and then I would listen to my body and remove one of the foods from my diet, would feel a little better, but then eventually go back to eating it again. Since I have permanently removed the main culprits; dairy, sugar and gluten, from my diet the change in how I feel and the energy levels I have, is amazing. And I have also learned about why I choose to eat some foods; usually because I am tired or in some form of emotion. My understanding of my body has increased tenfold in the last 15 years, and I now know that if I ignore what it is so clearly telling me, I do it at my peril. I definitely am my own food doctor.

     1. I love this Ingrid, I am my own food doctor too! and ‘I now know that if I ignore what it (my body) is so clearly telling me, I do it at my own peril’ – this reminds me that indeed every choice is our own and it is our own responsibility to make such choices with an understanding of what the body naturally requires and without doing this we cannot deny that we have to feel the consequences.

     2. Yes Ingrid I too have chosen to be my own ‘food doctor’.

318. The body is definitely the marker of truth. It lets us know if a food substance is good for us or not, if we are willing to listen to it and not override our feelings.
     A lot of food items we choose to eat is based on our taste, ideals and beliefs around what foods are good for us or not, “to fit in”, culture or religion, and latest research which always seem to change – but are these true findings for our body?

     1. Very true Loretta, we can make these decisions to put food in our bodies that are not based on what our bodies need or are asking (loudly) for if we but stop and listen. I am finding that the key is in the stopping prior to making my next choice, before eating and during.

319. A point not very discussed is that the light we carry within us needs a body that is light for it to shine through. So could it be that the way we eat is a way to control how much light we’re letting out? Totally makes sense to me. Also explains why we cannot hold diets and it also could be a relief for those that are bashing themselves for not sticking to a diets. It’s not that we’re dumb, we just haven’t been encouraged to be the light that we are.

     1. This is an interesting point Matts, are we eating to be light or dull? are we eating to be the light and love we naturally are?

        1. Such an interesting point Matts, most people have not been encouraged to be the light that they are. We rather choose to eat foods that numb the fact that we miss that connection to the love inside us all.

        2. Exactly Cherise and Carmin, so the interesting question is more towards if we are encouraged to be the light that we are from young and not so much why and what we eat, since what we eat is a reflection of how much light we will allow to pass through our bodies.

        3. Awesome point Matts!

        4. We most certainly haven’t been encouraged to understand what food is truly for, or its true impact on our relationship with our souls. When I was describing to a friend the reason I let go of eating certain foods that were stimulating or heavy, so my soul could communicate with me easily, my friend said “It just sounds like your doing right by your soul” and indeed I am.

     2. Makes sense to me too Matts!

     3. Matts, it makes a lot of sense what you have written here. It also led me to wonder what it would be like if we tackled the rising problems with diet and eating disorders using this information as a basis for research and discussion. Granted, it would require a big shift in perspective and wouldn’t be accepted by everyone, but I think a considerable number of people would be relieved to understand these issues from a broader perspective than what is currently being offered to them.

     4. I love your point here Matts – we’ve not stupid, we just haven’t been encouraged to be the light that we are. Now I’m an adult I can choose to live this light without any encroachment other than me limiting myself.

        I can also heal the hurt of my clinging to these hurts like they are a security blanket by letting them go and being loving with my food choices.

        1. I agree also Matts and how often to we on some level eat purposely to dull that light.

        2. Great point Karin and kevmchardy, we can purposefully choose to dull or sabotage our light .. but why? When you say Karin, we are certainly not stupid as our bodies are highly intelligent in their design (that’s a fact) and yet we hold these ideals and beliefs in our mind about how life should be or what we should be like and then in our reaction or tension to not allowing ourselves to live without these limitations; we can find ourselves believing we just can’t ‘be ourselves’ and so choose to dull or hide us away.

        3. Cherise what you raise about expectations of how life should be and the resulting tensions and reactions is really helpful. I can see how I create these tensions myself – I base expectations of myself on what I see around me and try to fit in so I feel I can survive. This sets up a constant anxiety in myself because I am looking outside of myself for confirmation/ recognition that I am doing an ok job and will keep my job, my accommodation etc.

           This choice to focus on what is outside of myself is a great trick I play on myself. I keep myself in anxious tension this way and fool myself into thinking I cannot come back into my body to feel what it is saying because I think I’ll get overwhelmed by anxiety. This isn’t true because now, whatever is happening, I can always connect to a beautiful stillness beneath whatever is happening on the surface. What a beautiful place to start.

           Thank you for your wisdom Cherise.

     5. This is a great point Matts, are we in constant reaction to the divinity that we are and is it possible that are we using food to measure how much of that light we get to embody? something to ponder.

        1. The answer to that right now would be a yes for me so I’m having that in consideration and move forward with that knowing, knowing and experiencing that the light within me and the will that I have is bigger than the will to keep myself small. I feel like I’m parenting myself towards, or back, to my divine origins, taking in consideration the resistance I might have but not letting that to take over.

320. Giving up Gluten, Dairy & sugar was important to me as my body was not liking them at all – my body was very clear in letting me know it didn’t want to have them. What I find difficult is looking at why I choose alternatives to these foods and taking that deeper to understand what has been playing out in my day to go looking for the alternative in the first place. But in saying that I can really appreciate the fact that I am aware of this now and that I am able to feel how my body reacts to certain foods and want to go deeper in understanding all that my body is telling me.

     1. Christine I too have felt the enormous changes of taking gluten, diary and sugar out of my diet. Over the years I noticed that I would eat heather options but still fell into the trap of overeating. When I linked in the emotional aspects of my life that I didn’t want to deal with the answers became even clearer and allowed me like yourself to “go deeper in understanding all that my body is telling me.”

     2. Christine, what you have shared about appreciation is so important to our continued development and nurturing of our awareness. For there can’t be a hardness on ourselves for the choices we make when we really appreciate the fact that we are students of our own science and choices and even when a choice is made that is not so loving for our bodies, we are given an opportunity to learn and become more aware.

321. We can be our own living scientists of how different foods affect us. Could it be possible we don’t realise how certain types of food affect us until we stop eating them and then maybe feel the difference, sometimes straight away and sometimes it takes a while for the effects to leave our bodies. Of course we can override what we feel because we are hooked on the taste. We surely don’t need a medical diagnosis to say we are intolerant to gluten, dairy or sugar, when if we choose to be honest with what we feel, we can feel if it is true or not for ourselves.

     1. Great point Deidre and I would say that it is that we are hooked not only on the taste but the feeling we know it brings to us (albeit temporary or illusionary) when we choose to eat it.

     2. Absolutely agree we are our own scientists. I experienced the same. Twenty years ago I was recommended to leave dairy out due to the symptoms I had and even though I never tested myself of dairy intolerance I immediately knew that I was dairy intolerant as my body felt so much better and my symptoms disapeared. Years later I did the same with gluten and it was amazing to feel the difference and how my bloating, tiredness, foggy ness and lack of energy disappeared. We know what we can eat if we listen to our body.

        1. We are without a doubt living in the most matter of fact experiment called ‘our body’. It will tell us loud and clear when we are WILLING to listen to what happens when we do x y or z. I really feel that is the crux of the matter – that if you are not willing to listen and be honest, then you are more likely to bury and hide what is felt and be numb to what is really going on.

     3. It was recommended to me to give up gluten and dairy – I had no problems giving these up, and in fact was not even tempted to go back to them as my body clearly was not addicted and fully appreciated not having them in it! However sugar was another matter and it took a long time for me to stop the cravings. It was only after I stopped eating it that I fully realised the effect it had been having on my body – only one taste now, or too sweet a piece of fruit, and the raciness is instantly felt. I can hardly credit that this raciness had been there all the time when consuming sugar but I simply was not in tune with my body enough to feel it!

     4. When I was a little girl I remember that food was often used as a remedy. If you were sick your body naturally refused food. You were given plenty of fluids and ever so slowly ‘gentle’ food would be reintroduced so as not to tax the body when recovering. Among country folks the healing nature of certain foods was well understood. With the abundance of manufactured goods we seem to have lost this wisdom. And yet we can test the effects of food on our health and consciously decide to reconnect with our tender and all knowing body.

322. Brilliant science, well presented. Eat something, observe its effects. Eat the same thing, observe if the same effects occur. Report observed effects. Simple science. Undeniable proof.

     1. PsychologyIinstillness,I like what you share here, our body can be our very own science laboratory…all the proof we require is there within us.

323. Thank you Cherise for a great article and reminder for me to continually be in awareness of what I eat. Sometimes I can be a bit dismissive where food is concerned but then when I feel the results of what I have eaten, I know the truth!

324. The point about cycles you bring in Cherise is for me becoming more and more a fact in life. Every day I have moments where it comes to my mind “I am doing exacly the same as yesterday” only slightly different due to the outer circumstances, but in essence the same, and then I question myself “ how long will I continue this way of living until I decide to stop it because it does not feel right to repeat this behaviour over and over again”.

     This connection with living in cycles helps me to become aware that I have to make choices to change my behaviours, otherwise they will continue to repeat themselves day after day, because they will become so natural to me that I am not aware of the existence of these repeatedly lived patterns anymore.

     Life is not to be lived in repetition, but has to evolve to a life that we live from our innermost in equality and connection with each other. Choices on food as you say Cherise and to to my experience, helps me for a great deal to return to living evolving cycles instead of the ill repeating cycles I came from.

325. Awesome blog Cherise, I love your honesty and willingness to explore how your body reacted to certain foods. I love that you listed how certain foods made you feel, I can relate to many of the symptoms you have listed and can add some different ones that my body experiences. I am finding the wisdom of the body to be such an amazing support when I allow myself to listen. For me the biggest deterrent to eating foods that don’t support my body is the way they affect my mood and my feelings about myself. I have noticed that when I eat sugar for example I am more likely to have negative thoughts about myself and feelings that I am not enough. I feel this is simply because the sugar makes me super racy and thus I feel disconnected from me. What I am also discovering is being me feels more yummy than any yumminess a food can give me 🙂

326. Gosh when I read the list of symptoms from eating those foods it makes me wonder why we consider it a “treat” or a “reward” to eat them. I sat next to a heavy woman on a plane the other day who was eating bread and when she heard I didn’t eat gluten she said she also stopped eating it for a few months. I asked her how that felt for her. She said it was amazing, she lost lots of weight, felt much lighter in herself, had more energy and never felt better. I asked her why she started eating gluten again and she said it was easier with her family. What a strange world we live in.

     1. It is topsy turvy when we look at it like this Nicola, our choices should and deserve to be our own and not for or in compromise of anyone else. And when this is the case, others in our family benefit from the vitality and quality of living that we are able to then share with them.

327. I love this Cherise. I too now listen to my body with regard to the foods I eat. I have eliminated foods that leave me feeling less than fully vital and light. This is not from any rules or being told what to do but from knowing that my body has an innate wisdom that is always speaking to me through symptoms similar to the ones you have mentioned.

     1. I agree Penny, and how interesting I am finding it that the more I listen the more loudly my body communicates to me what it does and does not want.

328. A simply written, honest and inspiring account of someone taking responsibility for their own well-being with something as simple as food. Considering the myriad of symptoms complaints and illnesses in the world today that comes from ill choices in what is consumed, this article, if it was frontline news, will be helping millions of people.

329. You ask a very good question Cherise and one I could continually ask myself as I cycle through life. What foods suit me now, may not suit me to tomorrow. I find even though I have made some significant changes to my diet and am benefitting from it, I am still inclined to slip into a groove and create a habit or routine with my new found choice, rather than truly honouring my body in the moment and being open to feeling more.

330. I used to take pills to remove or lessen the effects of eating and drinking things my body was clearly telling me it didn’t like, Crazy huh? So when I cut out the gluten, dairy etc., I instantly had no more need of the pills I had been so desperately dependant on.

331. Cherise I have found everything you have shared is what I have experienced with food in my own life.
     Since chosing to remove gluten, dairy and sugar as well as grains out of my diet, my energy, health and weight have all improved for the better. There are times when I react to something in my life that I don’t want
     to address and this will see me looking for something sweeter to eat. The great thing is that I am now aware that there is more going on with me when this occurs.

332. Cherise, food is probably the thing that most people use to not feel the unease that is inside them. Once we start to heal the hurt that each of us carries, then our food choices will naturally change. Without healing the hurt first, we are likely to substitute food for something else like exercise.

     1. This is very true Alexis, we can even substitute eating less or smaller amounts and be making choices to cover the hurts or to punish ourselves and our bodies too – and for what? – for being so truly beautiful. It’s great to hold the awareness that it doesn’t matter what the ‘doing’ or activity actually is, but what is important first is the beingness of who we are – the quality we simply are firstly, and the love and acceptance of this. As with you, secondarily the food choices begin to change thereafter.

333. You present such a common sense approach Cherise “…but as human beings we always have the opportunity to research and feel for ourselves if a certain food sits well in our bodies.” It makes absolute sense that each of us can feel exactly what our bodies need if we allow ourselves to be honest. Reading your blog I realised I have been eating many foods that are still causing reactions in my body because I have avoided being honest about what they are doing to me. As a result I am experiencing many of the symptoms you experienced when eating gluten dairy and sugar even though I no longer eat gluten and dairy. I feel reinspired to listen to my body and adjust my diet so it is more supportive after reading this.

334. Hi Cherise, your list of symptoms definitely rang a bell for me as to how I felt previous to giving up sugar, dairy and gluten. Actually, when I first heard Serge Benhayon present years ago with regard to these three substances I was surprised. When he said that it is not necessary or desirable to go on a diet to lose weight – simply give up eating gluten. I thought this was strange and decided to put it to the test. I lost almost 4kg in the first couple of months and on my new way of eating I have kept that weight off for years. My sinus problem is very much better since giving up dairy and cutting out sugar as much as possible has helped enormously with my feeling of well-being.

335. I come from a culture where bread and dairy are a way of life. It took me a while to be convinced that the enticing array of products could be bad for you. But my body showed me the way and although I still have a way to go with my choices I can attest that dairy and gluten are best forgotten.

336. I feel this blog nails the conversation on food. Listen and your body will tell you. Make the choices for yourself, not out of idealism, not our of ignorance and reap the benefits, like with any form of self loving. Great to see a list of symptoms in plain view too, for those who may read the article one day currently eating these foods – to assist them with gaining awareness of their body.

337. “The unpleasant symptoms I endured also included mood changes and feelings of frustration, worry, anger, fear, stress and sadness, accompanied by poor sleep patterns, nightmares, a feeling of endless hunger and the overall sense of disconnection to me and my own body – awful!” – I can relate to what you say here Cherise as I experience the same when I eat certain foods.

338. I love your question: “..why don’t we all choose to eat foods that support, build, nourish, confirm and truly complement the amazingness we already are and the bodies we must live with every minute of every day?” Something to ponder on more deeply, especially when I choose to eat things that do not truly complement my amazingness.

339. Thank you Cherise I loved reading your very enlightening blog about your experience with eiliminating the gluten, dairy and sugar from your meal times. I also used to have many of the symptoms of which you listed and had not realized just how many effects I used to suffer until reading your list – amazing when you think about it. I wonder why we have such a difficulty in listening to what the body so evidently is telling us, maybe it is the believed might of the mind over-riding what we intrinsically know in our bodies. Could it be possible that the body is more intelligent than the mind? I find I still have a challenge at times when I am tired or have pushed myself a little too far in a day – that’s when the mind says ” maybe a teaspoon of honey or 2 or 3″ – but there is then always the raciness to have to deal with following that choice.

     1. Great question Roberta, and to follow on from that – why is it that we don’t want to stop or at least slow down and take care of ourselves when we feel that way, why continue to perpetuate the momentum by choosing the next sugary pick me up? It’s not easy to stop and say no sometimes, especially when we can feel (but don’t want to feel) what we have been over-riding and how we have been running our bodies harmfully or without love.

340. I could identify with so many of the Symptoms listed and for a long time chose to live with those Symptoms, because l liked the taste or used them as a way to reward myself. I didn’t know any other way.
     Now I do not eat gluten or dairy and, while still working on the sugar, the change in how my body feels is amazing. I often ask the same question: ‘Why do we abuse our bodies when the alternative IS so life giving’? Deep down I do know – the truth is simple and it is all about Love. Love Yourself.

     1. This is a great question, why do we abuse our own bodies – the one that is with us in every moment of our lives? Especially when we are able to feel so much the opposite, light and joyful. There is an arrogance that comes in running our bodies in disregard and irresponsibility and it doesn’t feel to me to be my natural way of living – I’d prefer self-regard and self-responsibility any day.

341. I can feel how when I changed my diet, I had great benefits of leaving those foods out of my diet. It made my body feel lighter, and I don’t have the forever snottery nose any more. But those foods still give me a relief when I think I didn’t do well or have a dip in my day or week. This is a very special reaction, it is a reward as well as a punishment… great thing to look at.

     1. I agree Benkt, gone is my snuffled nose too! and good riddance.

342. It’s interesting how during the week I don’t eat salty junk food, but come the weekend I indulge in eating things that I know are not good for me and I pay the price by feeling flat or lethargic. It does show that my food choices of cutting out gluten, dairy, salty and sweet foods has come from a intention to be ‘good’, because I will eat some salty chips and say to myself that it’s not as ‘bad’ as eating a chocolate bar, therefore justifying my ill choice. I know that I need to get more honest with myself and make my choices about being true and not about trying to be good.

343. Thank you Cherise. I love how you say ‘ I was living in a cycle of abusing my body and used food as a harmful form of medication to distract me from whatever I was feeling.’ I can totally relate to that. Sometimes it can feel like there is a tidal wave in my body and I want to grab food that I know will just numb me and distract me from being able to go deeper with ‘what’s really going on’. The truth is, the signs were there way before this, but I chose to override them. As you say, our bodies hold immense power & wisdom, we just have to choose to tune in and listen.

344. There is so much attention on needing to stop eating certain foods to lose weight or not have certain symptoms that we do not like to feel…. however, there is very little out there presenting another way of looking at why we choose to eat certain foods that we know effect us detrimentally. Blogs like yours and Universal Medicine presentations have so inspired me to be truthful with how I am feeling and how my body reacts to foods I eat, stressful situations, running on nervous energy, being anxious etc etc.

345. David & Cherise I can relate to the sugary foods being the hardest to let go of despite the negative consequences. I haven’t had sugar for years and was able to let go of cakes and biscuits & sweets, but it didn’t occur to me until recently that the spoonful of honey I’d dip into several times a day was a little pick-me-up and a definite override. It might be healthier for the body, but it too creates a raciness.

346. Cherise I had all the same symptoms as you’ve described and whilst I am strict abut Gluten and Dairy (since I had lots of physical reactions to those substances) I still dip in and out of the sugary foods. The symtoms are still there though – each time I try them and I feel awful. In every case though my body knows and has always known – it’s just up to me to listen to it.

     1. I find it interesting David, that the sugary foods often appear the most difficult to not choose at times and can bring about repeated symptoms and cycles of choices made quite frequently.. I am wondering here, with the exhaustion epidemic that our world is experiencing, what more is there for us to look at with sugar and is it one of our greatest solutions chosen by humanity to override what we might be feeling in a moment? – and is it really worth the moments of consequence that follow?

347. That is a great way to describe how some foods left you ‘unaware’ and ‘numb to the compounding effects symptoms in my body’. I love that you also work in this field Cherise and are surrounded by all sorts of tests, science and research and you have actually got the simplest and wisest answer that is being mostly ignored ‘the opportunity to research and feel for ourselves if a certain food sits well in our bodies’.
     I have been extra aware these last few days how I am so full of information about nutrition and what the research is concluding about how our diet impacts health risks for many diseases, and how even this can taint and sway my food choices or create doubt, as I am learning to eat from listening to my body. This is a refining process and I am learning to eat foods and not assume from knowledge they are not good for me, but to bring it back to my body and feel.

348. “But we can always change or re-imprint the cycle that we may find ourselves in, at any time.” I love this line. We are not stuck, it is a choice at all times. We may have a momentum behind us that makes the choices difficult. But we do have the choice.

349. Many people feel sorry for me and often say that I am missing out on so much when I explain that I choose to not eat gluten, dairy and sugar.
     I was diagnosed as a coeliac over 25 years ago and a couple of years later lactose and fructose intolerance. Before the diagnosis I never had any energy and was tired and sick all the time. I thought everyone must feel like that. Once I removed the gluten, and in the last few years, dairy and sugar from my diet, I was amazed that I could feel so well.
     I did not lose out by removing these foods from my diet, but feel in truth I gained my life back.

350. Thank you Cherise – I love your blog…and your sensitivity and ability to tune into the symptoms that arose when you ate the foods that did not support your body. The key thing here is to give ourselves permission first to feel what our body feels like, but once we have that awareness, ironically it can still be so hard for many of us to then break the often long standing habit of eating that particular food.
     Here is where it is important to look at the driving force behind the ‘need’ to still eat those foods that we have identified are no longer good for us – why are we still drawn to alcohol? (perhaps some peer pressure and wanting to fit in), why are we still drawn to sugar? (perhaps a long term fatigue that we have not addressed in other ways), why are we still drawn to feeling dulled or heavy? (perhaps our relationships at home or at work are not so pleasant and it is easier for us to just numb how we feel than let ourselves feel how awful it is to live with that disharmony with our loved ones)…So much to explore and look at…

351. Cherise, this is a great list and most symptoms are quite diffuse – we can always explain them away when they happen, but to see it all in black and white is really helpful. Thank you.

352. Thanks Cherise, your blog has made me appreciate my transitional journey of food and my gradual awareness of how these very foods you have described use to sit in my body. It has been a process of elimination based on listening to my body rather than my mouth which has not always been easy and then all of a sudden certain items would drop away with ease. I find this is a continual process for me but I know my body and my state of being is a lot more physically, emotionally and mentally healthy than ever before.

353. Like you have Cherise I no longer eat gluten or dairy and it has had a major effect on my health. When I gave up gluten, within a week my constant exhaustion was replaced with energy that I hadn’t experienced since my primary school years. And when I later gave up dairy, the acne that I had experienced from my teenage years well into my forties disappeared within a few months. And so this then gave me confidence and an enthusiasm to start checking all of the foods I eat to see how they either dulled me or enhanced my life.

354. I can so relate to your list of symptoms Cherise and your words “But we can always change or re-imprint the cycle that we may find ourselves in – at any time” so true.

355. It’s a good question: Why we don’t eat foods that truly support our health, well-being and vitality? I am going through a process now where I am aware that I am eating too much, and am wondering why I am doing that, because simply by eating too much at each meal, I am feeling bloated, “stuffed” and heavy, rather than supported and vital. It’s really not a good feeling.

356. We are not so much willing to observe our non-loving patterns and there seems to be a force outside of us that wants us to keep running, searching, crying, swearing and so on. For me an honest moment is to allow myself the food, that something in me is craving for, and to observe where this need sneaked in. This might have been days or even weeks before.

357. Great question Cherise, why do we become slaves to our taste buds at the expenses of our minds and bodies? Could it be a welcome distraction from all the things that we feel uncomfortable about, but as yet are not ready to look at and work on like responsible adults?

     1. Another great question Zoe, as when the choice is made to override our feelings we are left with a further discomfort that tops the initial discomfort we may have already felt … but is it really more ‘comfortable’ to stay in the discomfort than it is to allow ourselves to feel, honour and deal with that which we initially felt from the beginning?

358. Great post Cherise, I can relate to so much of this. Yes, the body is our first counsel; the doctor our affirmation of that which we already know and feel within our body.

359. Such common sense Cherise, I love your blog. Like you, I didn’t need tests to tell me I was intolerant to dairy or gluten, my body spoke very loudly with its range of symptoms which when I stopped to notice the pattern, were quite obvious, such as feeling really sleepy and bloated after eating bread. So I always say that I didn’t give up foods with dairy, gluten or sugar, but they gave me up as it became so clear as to what was happening in my body that it was abusive to continue having them.

360. Thank you Cherise for such a great blog – so clearly showing what foods were not true for your body – a great stop for us in terms of what we are eating and why. I had many similiar symptoms as you – especially with diary. For years on diary I would be snuffly with mucous in the mornings, waking up sluggish and grumpy and that would take until mid morning to ease – what a waste of time and energy!
     Since I have given those food types away I have way more energy in the morning, no snuffles and no grumps – what a relief for my body – I’m clear to feel how light and gorgeous I am and my body is too.

361. “I had eaten these foods all my life leaving me unaware and numb to their compounding symptoms in my body. I had become an expert in overriding what my body truly felt.” I recognise that experience, it was deeply surprising for me to recognise how far I would go in the past to ignore what impact food has on my body. I still feel there are moments when I do this now but to a lesser degree. I am still learning and this is not an exploration that has an end date, while I am living, I am learning to listen and support my body to blossom. It actually feels great doing so. Your blog is so clear and supportive. Thank you.

362. I too have never been medically tested for intolerances to gluten, dairy and sugar but my list of symptoms when eating these foods were very similar to yours Cherise. Sometimes listening to our own bodies is the right medicine.

363. Thank you for another beautiful sharing Cherise. I too have been trying different foods and eliminating others to feel the effects they have on my body. It’s amazing what our body tells us when we listen. I had a gluten sensitivity test which, while elevated, was below the cut off for coeliac so was advised that I was fine to eat gluten, yet I feel terrible when I eat it. I trust my body and these days it speaks loud and clear, so I don’t eat gluten.

364. I have eaten sugar, dairy and gluten in the past and knew that they were heavy and clogging my body. I made excuses to continue eating them and never really thought about cutting them out. I didn’t think I could do without these foods, but once I chose to be committed in loving myself and my body it was easy.

365. I too have made a choice not to eat these foods, but my strongest reaction was to eating gluten. For years I suffered bouts of severe cramping followed by vomiting and diarrhea. These bouts would put me to bed for hours with stomach pain until such time that either the vomiting and/or diarrhea had passed. This would leave me lethargic and weak the next day.
     I was tested for celiac which came back negative, but when I heard of the symptoms of gluten intolerance, I felt this may be what was affecting me.
     I thought I would experiment and test out this feeling I had, so stopped eating gluten. I felt the results straight away because the bouts of vomiting and diarrhea ceased. The change was amazing for me and I am never tempted to eat things with gluten in them because of what my body tells me instantly and so strongly…’stay away’..

366. Cherise, attention to the smallest detail and a willingness to go to that length in loving yourself has brought results that have allowed a clearer you to participate in life and the world. To uncover and make the changes in my life, has asked the same of me and I am now living those choices everyday. When my diet and the cycle of my day included gluten, dairy and sugar – I knew I didn’t feel right but had no idea really that I was being unloving because at that time I had a skewed picture of what love was. Making changes has brought with it the understanding of what truly loving yourself is and what being love is. Thanks to the presentations of Universal Medicine and the Students living and sharing these changes I have started to look more deeply at my life and the amazing benefits of ‘that’ are now being lived.

367. I am inspired by how Cherise has brought assurance and clarity in this blog around a process of reclaiming and trusting her body awareness. It leaves me with no doubt that one does not have to have a diagnosed allergy to be motivated to avoid certain foods and how the sensitivity to do this is actually natural to us, as is the sensitivity to notice our rhythms, cycles to fine detail if we choose.

     1. Simon, I totally agree – why wait for a diagnosis of an allergy? Our bodies do tell us clearly what agrees with them, or not. It didn’t take me long to understand that my body could not handle dairy or gluten; the symptoms were just like for Cherise and very clear.

368. I loved the clarity in what you expressed, Cherise, as your living experience directly from the wisdom of your own body. The simple observation of your symptoms when those foods were ingested showed you that the body just didn’t like them. Why is it that we have lost this infinite source of true medicine? What could be more indicative of the fact that something is not quite right in the way we eat and live than our own bodies? When we start connecting more and more to the messages coming form our body, we become aware of the fact that they are loud and clear and that they have been for a very long time. We had just chosen to ignore them. The turnaround is so beautiful, though, and truly worthwhile as you pointed out, Cherise. Thank you.

369. Thanks Cherise for your great blog. To get past that point where we use food to distract us from the truth and focus on the effects it has on our body and does it support us in a day or actually makes a day hard work. Does it leave us with an ill at ease, keeping us in struggle, leading to disease and debilitation or an ease, a lightness, a freedom to live and express in a healthy body?

370. Thanks for a great blog Cherise, it certainly is very clear which foods support us and which affect us negatively, when we listen to and feel our bodies.

371. Great blog Cherise – I loved reading it and the list of symptoms, so clear. Food can be a huge distraction if we allow it to be but once I started to feel great in my body the food choices I make are becoming more self-loving.

     1. And they become more and more noticeable – originally I wanted to write ‘important’ but then I realised that I am more aware and therefore they feel important, but the wrong food didn’t do me much good in the past either – I just didn’t really notice.

372. When we listen to our bodies isn’t truly amazing the answers that come back.

373. We all know when we have eaten something that supports our bodies – it is a question of whether we have listened to it or not. This blog asks us to deepen our relationship with food and for me to question the fruit I eat which I have been ignoring for sometime!

374. I agree Cherise that when we’ve been eating these foods from a very young age we are left unaware and numb to their real affects and the symptoms that our body attempts to alert us with. It’s not until we remove them entirely from our diet for extended periods of time that we can see and feel the amazing difference.

375. I have been inspired and graced by reading your words Cherise. I loved how you shared your experience so matter of factly – as that is really all we need to do, to live from the fact of how we feel in our body.

376. It’s absolutely amazing how different you feel when you eat in a way that truly supports. I actually know exactly what foods align with me and which ones don’t. So it’s strange that I will at times maybe overeat or eat something that I know will not feel good. It’s a natural unfoldment that requires an enormous amount of love for ourselves, to put our well being and vitality as a priority over consuming something tempting that will actually harm.

377. I was diagnosed multiple allergic when I was quite young, and even though dairy was picked up, until I met Serge Benhayon and attended his presentations, no doctor or alternative practitioner ever mentioned gluten or sugar. Once I eliminated these from my diet, everything changed and my body started to re-build without the constant onslaught of eating foods that I was unable to digest. Along the way I re-learned to listen to my body and removed other foods that simply didn’t agree with me. It has been many years now, and I have no remaining food intolerance symptoms.

378. I have also never been tested whether I am allergic to any certain types of food but my body especially my stomach soon lets me know that its not happy when I put something in it doesn’t like or too much of what it does like.

379. This article is great Cherise. As you have highlighted, you don’t need to have a diagnosis to feel that certain foods don’t sit well with the body. The body call this out to us loud and clear.

380. I would say sugar is the most addictive substance I know. Studies are now exposing more and more the effects of sugar on our bodies. When I eat something that is too sweet for me, I notice I don’t really feel full and sustained – it leaves me wanting more of the same or something savoury to “offset” the sweetness.
     With obesity being a massive problem (see http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/dragana-brown/obesity-crisis_b_6574734.html), we are all slowly being forced to assess our sugar intake, and the reasons why we like to eat it.

381. I have always been aware that sugar did unnatural things to my body but more recently I have tested it on myself. What I found is that sugar ‘detunes’ my feelings very noticeably; instead of being very sharp and keenly aware of my inner feelings, the more sugar I have, the less I am able to differentiate between those different feelings and the harder it is to stay connected. Since sugar is in practically everything on the market, this makes the topic a serious discussion – especially when a lot of us are working so hard to make sense of the world, develop our own inner connection and find true harmony within.

382. It has been about 10 years now since I stopped eating gluten and dairy and I have never felt better. Dairy used to cause congestion in my sinuses and gluten made me bloat and feel terrible. People often ask me is it is a hardship to give these foods up but it isn’t. My body thanks me for it every day!

383. Thanks Cherise, I loved reading your article. It has inspired me to curb the food that I ‘think’ is ok for me but actually it isn’t. Those reactions you mentioned really put it into perspective. It looks like I’ve been hanging onto some food and putting up with the reaction in my body, even though it is really subtle, it’s time to go!

384. Thank you for sharing Cherise, I really could relate to your lists of what the foods did to you and how they made you feel. I was also a thin lean build but always had a bloated abdomen growing up, and blocked sinuses, not to mention hyper active/ racey. Since making initial changes that were originally suggested by a nutritional GP the quality of my life has changed dramatically. To understand and feel what certain foods do to us energetically is an amazing journey .

385. Cherise, thank you for reminding us about the support that food can give us in our bodies when we feel into what is right for us at the time. Our bodies tell us very clearly what is okay or what is not if we choose to listen!

386. “I have enjoyed reading all the blogs you have written Cherise – another gorgeous article here – revealing the true benefits of eliminating gluten, dairy and sugar from our diets, which I can also vouch for. Who would want those symptoms? GF, DF, SF, “Paleo” is so “the new black.”

387. Food has certainly been a convenient tool for distraction and numbing in my life. I am still deepening my awareness of how it affects my body and why I choose to use certain foods at certain times. One thing that often amazes me is the scepticism and suspicion that I get from others when I decline to eat certain foods and tell them I stick to a diary and gluten free diet. Some people simply write it off as a ‘fad’ as I haven’t had any formal tests or diagnosis – but I don’t need a diagnosis to tell me that I feel much clearer without these foods in my life.

388. Thank you Cherise for what you have written as I can relate to a lot of what you have shared.
     I too was feeling all this and more :-

     Gluten Dairy Sugar

     Tired Sinus, Mucous Raciness, too fast

     Heavy Chest congestion Back pain

     Numb Eczema Headaches

     Lethargic Sore throat Watery eyes

     Bloated Diarrhoea Forgetful

     Foggy Nausea Shaky

     Constipated Acne Hyperactive

     But at 165ks plus I was so numb to how my body was truly feeling. Now after a 70kgs weight lose thanks to the teachings of Serge Benhayon,Universal Medicine and the way I now lovingly chose to live I feel what my body needs before eating instead of eating how I was feeling.

389. Hi Cherise
     I loved it when you mentioned that you were never told what to eat or what not to eat but inspired through building the love for yourself to eat in a way that was loving for your body and well-being. Listening to your body and eating foods that feel supportive and nourishing, and loving yourself enough to do this without overriding how your body was truly feeling. I have had a similar experience and as my love for myself grows I am becoming more consistent in choosing to eat foods that my body loves and do not make me feel sick, tired or bloated.

390. So very true Cherise, what you say here speaks for me to, I realised that I could go on feeling grumpy, heavy racey etc. or I could choose to change – 8 years on now of avoiding the foods you mentioned above and I am so glad I listened to my body if not I dread to think where I would have been now. Of course this is always a work in progress and refining which can still bring it’s challenges but overall I know that when my body speaks loud and clear it is for mine and everyone else’s benefit that I listen!

391. I love the line that we are creatures of habit as I too find myself falling back into old patterns or ways of being with food. I am in the kitchen with the fridge door open before I realise what I am doing! Slowly, with much patience with myself and learning to really feel how food makes me feel in my body I have made similar changes to you. I find that my food choices are constantly changing because my body is often giving me signs about how food makes me feel.

     1. So true Sally, I have been finding exactly the same thing – that my body knows what suits it and what doesn’t and all that is needed is to not override this communication. Also as you say it is ever changing, never static.

392. Thank you Cherise – this is so inspiring to read .
     Our body’s do know what is the right food for us in every moment, and even if we over-ride that feeling and knowing, our body will always let us know the consequences of our choices.
     Gluten and dairy have also gone from my diet, and then last year a naturopath suggested a low fructose diet due to symptoms I was experiencing. After a month on this diet my body felt amazing – so light and free: there was no denying this way of eating was for me.

393. Where you say that you couldn’t make a change until you had understood and healed the reasons you were unloving, I have found this also .. with sugary foods. Universal Medicine has supported me with this and from this my awareness of what nourishes and supports my body has been developing and refining, my food choices have naturally changed and evolved with me.

394. Great Post. I thought I didn’t have any intolerance’s to foods, so when I gave up dairy, sugar and gluten 2 yrs ago I was shocked at how my body reacted if I consumed these again. I have gone on to notice not only a change in my body ( losing 15kg ) but in my health as well. The symptoms you listed I was feeling but I put them down to other factors rather than what I was eating.

395. Thank you, Cherise, for your great article. I too have been inspired by the work of Universal Medicine to make new food choices by feeling what is right or not right for my body. Consequently, I have dropped gluten and diary from my diet and feel so much better. It’s now amazing to me what I subjected myself and my body to when my food choices were made from habit and comfort, rather than feeling or attempting to discern whether what I am eating or drinking truly serves me. This is an ongoing journey for me of refinement for me, but, as many have shared in their comments, it’s so empowering that all I need to do to make an improvement in my wellbeing is to pause and feel whether something truly supports me or not.

396. When I chose to experiment with not eating gluten and dairy I was very doubtful if I would feel the difference and rather hoping that I would not notice anything as I enjoyed my diet of bread, butter, pasta, cream and all things gluten and dairy. My experiment gave me all the proof I needed that these items were not good for me as my health and feeling of vitality improved enormously. When I later stopped eating refined sugar I realized how suddenly I no longer suffered from a ‘busy brain’ and particularly how the quality of my sleep has improved. Surprise, surprise, what we put in our mouth affects the whole body!

     1. Absolutely Mary. My diet is so different to what it used to be only 10 years ago. It is so much simpler in terms of ingredients and ways of preparation. My body and my brain feel so much more vital, sharp and alive it’s a joy. I have come to the conclusion (in my own time breaking the ideals and beliefs around food that I was holding) that what we eat makes us sick or healthy.

397. Love your list Cherise it is really helpful, I could relate to many of the symptoms that I used to have when I ate gluten dairy and sugar. I have also noticed how salt gives me a heavy head and and can feel a bit like the symptoms of sugar. It is amazing what we can start to feel in our bodies when we start to eliminate certain types of food.

398. An inspiring read of your over coming those habits and old ways Cherise.
     I am learning to choose, moment by moment, self responsibility, honesty and constant awareness of what I eat and not disregarding the amazingness I already am.

399. This is a brilliant article and describes so well the effects food can have on us that we don’t often realise when we eat them all the time . I have made these changes for myself gradually also and the difference to how I feel is enormous and many of the symptoms have disappeared. However I am aware that when I do not like how I feel about something I am tempted to eat something not good for me to numb myself and
     so realise the significance of my relationship with food and the responsibility with it.
     Thank you Cherise for sharing all you say so simply and clearly.

400. I have experimented with many different foods over the years with varying levels of success but it wasn’t until I came to Universal medicine presentations that I began to understand how to properly nourish my body and keep me energised and vital. This is a very individual thing and I have come to realise the importance of constantly discerning the food I am eating to maintain good health.

401. I love the point Cherise makes about how we don’t need to take some medical food intolerance test to ‘prove’ that a certain food is not working for us, and that we can all be our own expert on how our bodies react to certain foods. After all, it is ‘our body’ isn’t it? If a test result came back negative for gluten intolerance but a person like Cherise was experiencing that laundry list of horrible symptoms every time she ate food with gluten in it, would it not be ridiculous to just ignore what her body was literally screaming out to tell her? What I have experienced after eliminating gluten, dairy, and sugar from my diet is how much more energy, clarity of thought, and even confidence has come from it from not feeling so racy on caffeine and sugary foods, as well as feeling more steady and with myself. The cool thing is that I don’t even have any cravings for any of that stuff anymore and it amazes me that I had even put it in my body in the first place. This is a work in progress for all of us, and one that can be constantly refined the more we are willing to feel what our body is telling us and actually listen to it, as Cherise has done for her own benefit.

402. I suffered for years with heartburn and indigestion and as I got older started to get quite over weight. Cutting out dairy and gluten was a cure for all of the above as well as having more energy and better overall health. I strongly recommend giving it a try. It takes a good few months for the body to clear itself totally of dairy and gluten but it is well worth it.

     1. I agree Kevin, for years I would take antacid medication to not feel the heartburn and indigestion until I finally looked at it from a different angle and decided to try cutting out the foods and alcohol that were causing it in the first place.

403. Thank you Cherise, what you have written here has really helped me with something “– I couldn’t make a change without first being willing to understand and heal the reasons why I chose to be unloving with me in the first place, which then lead me to override what I truly felt. “

     1. Yes this stood out for me too Vicky. Our food choices go deeper than just choosing what is ‘good’ or ‘bad’ for us. There is more to uncover in the way that we feel about ourselves and therefore how we end up treating ourselves.

        1. Yes food is a way to stop feeling what is really going on and cover how we are feeling and dealing with life for example anxiety, stress, sadness, anger, not being good enough, can be reasons to eat foods that don’t support us or that dull down these feelings.

404. I find if I really listen my body is always guiding me as my food requirements are always changing. It’s down to me to follow this guide and not over ride it.

405. A great example of how our relationships with food -can- be. Thank you for sharing your inspiring article, Cherise. I feel inspired to look at the responsibility levels I currently hold behind my food choices.

406. Great blog Cherise stating just how it is. People should not knock it till they try it. My story with food is a long one so all I will say is that my life, health and well being is 1,000,000,000 times,thats one billion times better after truly feeling what does go down well and what doesn’t.

407. A very clear and easy to read article, thank you Cherise. This paragraph really resonated with me – “Personally, I have not been medically tested for intolerance to gluten, dairy or sugar but my experience with them is more than enough for me to know that they don’t sit well with me. Without self-responsibility and the willingness to take a more caring approach with me, I was living in a cycle of abusing my body and used food as a harmful form of medication to distract me from whatever I was feeling.”

408. I have had a similar journey with eliminating certain foods out of my diet including dairy, gluten and sugar… As much as things tasting so lovely, being left with how if feels in my body is something that I am no longer tolerating. I am constantly amazed that I feel so clear, light, energised and alert – I didn’t even realise that I could feel this amazing and that food had such an impact on how I felt. My body and what it tells me is science and it only took a couple of foods that I started with to realise how much my body did actually tell me – It was because I was ready to listen to it and take responsibility for what I chose and how it makes a massive difference on how I feel. I totally enjoy experimenting with food and it never stays in one place because as I grow, evolve and expand so to does my body and food can either support this or not.

     1. Very true Natalie, it took me time to realise that I was holding a lot of ideals and believes around food and the way I fed myself. It is amazing that we have a body we can listen to and that knows what is good for us or not.

409. I am in awe of how much my body speaks to me – over time various fruits have been too sweet for my body and now it is calling for more refinement with fruit and hidden sugars which are the cause of some skin reactions.

410. I tend to choose foods which I know will dull me down or make me feel heavy because I do not want to feel what is happening in my life, or the choices I have been making which perhaps are not very loving towards myself and others.

411. I also have made many changes to what I choose to eat and rather than feeling deprived I now find have much more fun in selecting, preparing and presenting the food I eat. I have more energy and vitality than when I just ate whatever appealed to my taste buds without considering what the rest of my body would feel about what it had to digest and cope with.

     1. Great point you make Mary about the fun of selecting, preparing and presenting the food we eat. I have found the more present I am with doing these things the more fun there is, and it is simply love that goes into the food and my body just loves that.

412. I have found when I stopped eating harmful foods to my body such as gluten, dairy , sugar it has helped with my awareness of what other foods maybe having a negative effect or that are supporting me.

     1. I found the same Ruth. The key for me has been to be honest about the effect foods are having on my body and to keep listening to my body!

413. Cherise. I have indulged in all the foods you mentioned, and totally agree what it can do to the body. I loved all the sweet things, chocolate, cream cakes etc.
     Am now feeling better after giving up so much of what I thought I loved. Feel less tired, can think more clearly. I just have to make the choice and stay off harmful foods.

     1. Mike great point about making a choice to stay off the harming foods to your body… I know I have gone into override knowing that they don’t feel great and harming me but get seduced by the two minute sensation that I have whilst eating it. Its a slippery road as well.. once I let it slide and go there the mind jumps in and says oh it didn’t hurt that much what’s the big deal… days later I’m feeling terrible and realise where I have gone with it. I then choose to go back to what felt better and realised how bad it actually was.

     2. It all comes down to that choice Mike. Every time, I don’t make it, my body lets me know!

414. I stopped eating Gluten and dairy many years ago after some digestive issues. No tests showed these foods as a problem but on the advice of a nutritionist I gave it a go. How I felt after this was confirmation enough that these foods had to go. However it was when I heard Serge Benahyon present around food and why we eat what we do that I was able to understand why these foods did not work for me. Since then it has been an ongoing experiment with what suits my body and as and when something doesn’t support me anymore I choose not to eat it and feel the positive difference.

415. Food choices can be influenced by so much more than just hunger.
     As I have been more aware of food, I notice I can pick certain things based on how I feel,. If I feel crap I’ll have something heavier, if I feel stressed I’ll be hungry all the time.
     Food gave me exactly what I needed to not feel what was going on.
     And until recently I was completely unaware of this.
     It’s great to look at ourselves as our own research – and make consistently loving food choices. I know there is still a way for me to go and keep developing with this – but I am now much more sensitive to food at each moment and can start to look at what’s behind my choices.

     1. That’s so true HV, I too have a way to go. Before I stopped having gluten, dairy and alcohol, I ate pretty much anything with no apparent problems. Which just goes to show how much I had shut down my awareness of how my body was. My sensitivity is developing and I am much more aware of the patterns that tempt me to eat inappropriately.

416. ‘As human beings we always have the opportunity to research and feel for ourselves if a certain food sits well in our bodies’ – I absolutely agree, it is up to us as individuals to take notice and really look into the way food effects our bodies, and, if something is not right to correct it. I like the analogy of us being our own researchers – it fits very well.

     1. Well said Meg, it is up to us to take responsibility for our health and make choices that will support our bodies.

417. Thank you Cherise. Over 25 years ago I stopped eating gluten of my own choice and dairy too because of what my body was showing me with a marked improvement to my health. Sugar came later. My body is very clear with it’s signals about what I am eating. I too have been inspired by Universal Medicine to listen more closely to my body, to eat foods that support and nourish me rather than feed my emotions and reactions to life.

418. Thank you Cherise. Amazingly powerful blog. When we choose to eat to nurture and love our body if is an ever deepening and refining process. I love how you share that we can break cycles of unloving choices at any given moment, we have trillions of chances to choose love, this is hugely empowering.

419. Like you Cherise I don’t need science or an allergy test to tell me what does or doesn’t sit well in my body – it either does or doesn’t make me feel good, unfortunately what tastes so yummy often sits on the doesn’t list — : ( —- but then I feel so good in my body when I honour what it likes, it becomes easy to let go of the taste part of it all, there are so many yummy things that make your body say yes anyway – it is these habits that we can create.

     1. I’d agree, we don’t actually need a science test to give us the knowing of what is good for our body or not, sure confirmation of a food allergy test may be helpful, but the signals we get from our body about how food makes us feel are loud and clear. Of course even now I sometimes forget to link the food to the feeling, but it’s obvious when I realise this.

     2. I agree here Vanessa and Cherise, I don’t need the proof of a medical test to tell me I have coeliac to give myself permission to stop eating gluten. A question I get asked a lot: is that tested? Like it is more accepted to not eat something if it is proven so by medicine. I feel so much more vital and clear in my head now that I don’t eat bread and gluten any more. That is all the evidence I need to take care for myself.

420. Thank you Cherise, I found this article very helpful. I have been suffering with several of the symptoms that you mention, poor sleep, feelings of disconnection to myself etc so this has given me the realisation that my food choices may be playing a bigger part in these than I had imagined. It is time to try some different choices.

421. I really resonated with this article especially your first paragraph.

     ” I had eaten these foods all my life leaving me unaware and numb to their compounding symptoms in my body. I had become an expert in overriding what my body truly felt.”

     It was the same for me. I used to love the bread, cheese and cakes and used to say I couldn’t live without them. But I can live without them. I do truly live without them as I too have had a path of of discovering the effects of them on my body. Today, my diet is very simple and void of these foods and I am in appreciation of myself for making these choices and to Serge Benhayon who has inspired us to look at what gets in the way of living our true selves and never, ever, told me what I should or should not eat. He has gracefully demonstrated to us that food is to simply nourish our bodies.

     1. Years ago, I used to eat dairy twice a day until my sinuses gave up which means got completely blocked. My GP advised an operation but I felt like stopping dairy completely instead. After 6 months, my nose cleared. Miracles happen when we listen to our bodies.

        1. “Miracles happen when we listen to our bodies”, how right you are Maryline.
           It is so amazing to feel the difference that listening to what is really nurturing for your body and experience the changes this brings along. I have never felt so vital in all my life since being a small child.

     2. I can relate to what you were writing Michelle, Ariana and Maryline. I absolute love cheese and bread and yogurt and ice-cream and cake and . . .
        I was sure that I would eat all of it until I die but all of the sudden my body was on the way to get asthma and because of this I had to start to use this special asthma spray.
        That made me stop and I chose to see what would happen to not have gluten and lactose for 6 month and guess what has happened after these 6 month – no spray was needed anymore – no asthma signs at all. So how easy and cheap is it to heal asthma – just leave out gluten and lactose – wow!!!!

422. Cherise, I love how you have pointed out that we can all feel when something is not right with our bodies and that we don’t have to leave it to medical experts before we make some simple choices to eliminate certain foods. It is so important that we teach our children to be aware of their bodies and how they can check in with them so that when they eat foods that don’t support they can recognise it and make different choices. We tend to override because we lose awareness. Perhaps because little tummy pains, a bit of constipation now and then or runny noses are ignored and are not considered important enough to pay serious attention to. As kids we learn to accept and dismiss them. They are important however as they are signs that the body is out of balance and that the body is saying “please take care of me”!

423. What a top Top blog Cherise Holt. I will be printing this out for a re-read and to give to others who would really Appreciate what you are saying coming from your expert field of Gastroenterology. I agree that it should be us as individuals who check and discern what our bodies actually need for optimum vitality and take responsibility which in turn would benefit society as a whole because there would be less visits to the GP or hospital.
     For me personally it has not just been a weight loss thing although this was great as I had been on yo yo diets all my adult life, my acne has totally cleared up and I feel full of life as if I am in my 20’s but I am 52. My husband has lost over 12 stone without any diet but cutting out the 3 you mention – Gluten Dairy and Sugar.

424. Food is a big area because everyone eats! There’s so much to tempt you, to stimulate your taste buds and give you oral pleasure for the few seconds a food is in your mouth. I have felt those symptoms too. At times when I succumb to those temptations by eating gluten / dairy free snacks, I still get those symptoms. So I’m getting that those symptoms are not from the the gluten / dairy but actually a result of using food to self-medicate.

425. I love what you’ve said about cycles Cherise – “Just as the Earth revolves around the Sun and our bodies experience a monthly cycle of menstruation or follow the monthly cycle of the moon, there are times when I know I have ‘been here before’ or have ‘made the same mistakes twice’ – if not many times over. But we can always change or re-imprint the cycle that we may find ourselves in, at any time.” So true, thank you.

426. A great reminder that we can take responsibility for ourselves and our own health by listening to our bodies messages and symptoms after eating. We do not need to wait for someone to tell us that we have an intolerance to something or worse still wait for serious illness or disease to make us stop eating something, if we can feel for ourselves the bodies reactions.

427. Thank you Cherise for a brilliant article. I never questioned the food I ate before I came across Unimed but I had symptoms that were going from unpleasant to really awful and I never made the connection. It shows how disconnected I was with my body! Now all these foods have disappeared from my diet and I feel heaps better and more vital.

428. Just the other day I was in the company of a cafe owner who said that there is a significant study just out that proves that gluten allergies are just in the mind! I almost fell off my seat and asked who do you think commissioned that study, the grain companies by any chance? I for one lost a lot of weight and feel so much better for not eating gluten, dairy and sugar. I actually had a gf df pizza the other day because I wanted to taste one again, and three days on my stomach is still not right and I have a need to eat, my sense is flours just aren’t that great for me. Many of my friends have stopped eating gluten and dairy recently and all have lost weight, look so much better and have heaps more energy, one I was speaking to yesterday and she has suffered with constipation most of her life and all the doctors would say was eat more fibre, which did nothing now she is completely fine in that area. All in our mind, well scientist the world was flat once too.

429. Thank you for sharing this Cherise. My health too has improved since giving up
     Dairy and Gluten.

430. A great article Cherise and I relate to the symptoms you describe. I have certainly noticed the benefits to my well being since choosing to eliminate dairy , gluten and sugar from my diet. It would be great to have more general understanding and promotion of these benefits within the medical arena. A true support for all.

431. Working in a health food store many people ask me about my diet and at first seem confused as to why I would ever willing give up certain foods myself without being told by a doctor. I tell them it is because I started to feel the effect of the food when I ate them. From experience I am wiser and simply choose to not want to experience that situation again.

432. Thanks Cherise, I love the simplicity of what you present and how to take the battle out of what to eat and not to eat and begin to notice and deal with the cycles that come around again and again.

433. Your blog reflects so well my own experience. I found myself being constantly sick with colds, bronchitis etc, and having to be off work, many years ago. I was then impulsed to look at my dairy intake and decided to live without dairy for a year (this is nearly 30 years ago now). The result was truly amazing for me that after my body had purged itself from it, I felt very well and this constantly being sick stopped. After that year I also noticed, when I tried a bit of dairy, how I didn’t like it anymore,it just felt thick and furry in my mouth. The research with Gluten came much later, I tried it out to see if this constant feeling of being bloated would change. And change it did :):) And so it went with other foods too. The change in how my body feels and my overall Well Being has been phenomenal and my body loves the beautiful dairy-gluten-yeast- sugar free foods it now is being given:)
     Thank you for sharing your experience and also producing the list of effects these foods had on your body, I can only concur.

434. Your blog was EXACTLY what I needed to read at this moment. I really appreciate you having written it.

435. I agree with Otto above that it would be great if these foods came with a health warning ! As a health professional myself who has also changed my diet in the last 10 years with great health benefits I would agree that the best way to approach diet is to take responsibility for your own body and pay close attention to the signals it is giving you. Many patients I see (including myself) have many of the symptoms you describe but would probably not test positive on an intolerance test simply because the tests are not sensitive enough yet and also as a society we are yet to acknowledge that exhaustion and raciness and unstable moods are actually the first signs of illness way before the more serious conditions of IBS, Crohn’s disease etc. I have made big changes in my diet and thus my health without the need for any testing or special dieting or dictatorial program.

436. It’s amazing seeing your table of symptoms. I too don’t eat any of these three and looking at it like that it really is a no-brainer. Perhaps it should be printed on the packet of any foods containing any of these three things! I know that won’t happen but actually if you presented it that clearly to anyone, then it would be amazing. EVERYONE can relate to a large number of those symptoms (I’ve still got some of them even without eating these things!!). There are of course the underlying issues behind why we got to eat certain foods but I feel sure that if it were presented with such clarity then more people would be inspired to at least look at what they are eating.

437. Very true Cherise! I have been taking acid reflux tablets for 13 years and have tried SO many weird and wonderful ways to come off them. In the end actually listening to my body was the way forward and now I eat pretty much loads of vegetables and meat and coconuts and herbal tea and have not taken any medication for over 3 months – food was absolutely my medicine!

438. Thank you Cherise and everyone else for your amazing comments, and for bringing to light how important it is to be honest about why we eat things that we know don’t agree with us.

439. You raise the million dollar question – why, when we know what food works in our bodies and what doesn’t, do we continue to abuse the very thing we walk around with and in, daily, to the extent we do? I love your honesty about not being perfect and falling back into old habits. It is very hard to give up something your mouth enjoys for 30 seconds as a way of checking out of what’s really going on. Surely though, the lingering effects on our state of being should be enough motivation if we care about ourselves enough? But you also gave us the answer: the way to break the cycle is to be ‘willing to understand and heal the reasons why I chose to be unloving with me in the first place’. That’s the real trick. And it takes real responsibility for the self to get us to that place where we’re willing to be willing. Free will. It’s ours, to use or abuse.

440. Thank you for this Cherise, I can relate to virtually every symptom you presented. I have come to realise also the enormity of the effect the food choices I make have on my mood and energy levels, as well as any reactions I have to certain foods and how dulling and lifeless some foods make me. I have found that even using gluten and dairy free alternatives often gave me the same symptoms. It took a while but with the support of the presentations from Universal Medicine I have slowly over time refined what I eat to provide me with more energy. When I started out I never thought I would give up certain foods that weren’t good for me, but over time this has just happened naturally, no dramas and I feel so much better for it.

     1. I was the same Stephen, the idea of giving up certain foods was at first unthinkable but the more I came to understand what some foods were actually doing to my body, how they were affecting my moods and my health, I was eventually able to let them go. The weight loss and more importantly, the benefits to my health and vitality, are now the reasons that it would be unthinkable to go back to the foods I know would harm me.

441. Cherise, your blog offers us a very easy to read list of symptoms your body experienced through eating Gluten , Dairy and Sugar. For me, my blocked sinuses,post nasal drip and annual cold all cleared since eliminating dairy from my diet and It’s so gorgeous to be able to breath freely.

442. Great list, I can definitely relate to most, if not all of it. The benefits of giving up gluten, dairy and sugar far out weighs the pleasure in the mouth. Once I could really feel for myself that something did not agree with me, it made it easier to take the item out of my diet – if I followed someone else, the urges to eat the wrong foods would easily creep back in.

     1. I agree Julie, feeling the impact and our own bodies for ourselves is the key to making true and lasting choices and loving change.

     2. I agree Julie the key is to feel it for yourself and then letting go of eating it is easy.

443. Great summation of what food does your body. Can you imagine what would happen if your self research on food and your body, was taught as a required course for your Gastroenterology studies.

     1. I can imagine sjmatsonuk, it would be profound!
        In my experience there are many patients (and nurses) that I meet who are wondering if/what food/s may be causing digestive upset within their own bodies. I also observe that the thought of changing ones diet is often seen as ‘too hard’ or ‘a lot of effort’ for something that may/may not be the cause or problem. Similarly, sometimes the thought of not having a certain food (like chocolate for example) may appear too uncomfortable at the thought – I could only share from my own experience to share that the way my body feels after not eating it, is the marker I needed so to be more aware of how I felt when I did eat it. A markable difference.

        When we can share with others, that the self scientific-research is not as difficult as one might think, but also so very much worth it – more people may feel supported to listen to and experiment with their own choices too.

444. I remember eating bread and always feeling sleepy afterwards. This was not a good scenario especially if I had a sandwich for lunch at work. I used to think people who didn’t eat gluten or dairy were just following faddy diets, but when I tried it for myself, I never went back. I feel so much more energetic and don’t lose focus in the afternoon at work. I also noticed the cessation of many of the symptoms you have on your list above. Thanks Cherise for such a clear blog on how we can support ourselves to be more healthy by paying attention to how foods affect us.

445. Hi Cherise , when you write about not being able to ‘change without understanding and heal why you chose to be unloving’ is a great point. Your body may be giving you signs but until you get that understanding it is not so easy to make the right choices. With that understanding then comes the responsibility.

446. I like your,words, ‘I couldn’t make a change without first being willing to understand and heal the reasons why I chose to be unloving with me in the first place, which then lead me to override what I truly felt.’ No matter how resolved I am to eat less or not to snack, I know that until I deal with the hurts I am trying to numb this pattern won’t change. I have learned that will power on its own just doesn’t cut it. I feel so much more amazing since not eating gluten and dairy, but the process of needing food to numb is an ongoing one that I am looking at.

447. Cherise, I can really relate to this. For years I’ve known gluten, dairy and sugar don’t work for me, and since dropping them (sugar still has blips), I’ve found myself to be much clearer, with less health problems, less weight and much greater vitality. Really it’s a no brainer for me, I’ve never been in better shape since dropping dairy and gluten, and I can feel as I’m letting sugar go, the same applies there – I’m racier with it, and know I don’t have the same steadiness when I do have some, even just a little. Our bodies are truly remarkable instruments and as I’m learning more to listen to mine, it’s providing me with a wealth of feedback on how I’m living and what does and doesn’t work, it’s just fantastic. Thanks for this blog.

448. This is great Cherise. I have made many changes to my diet in the last few years, I also used to get headaches and many of the symptoms that you listed when I consumed sugar, I no longer have it and don’t miss it at all. At the moment I’m aware that I can over eat and that this makes me feel tired and dull so I’m starting to change this too.

449. This tiredness is still an issue for me, that I previously would unconsciously reach for a bar of chocolate, but now find I still can reach for something else sweet as a habit I’ve done my whole lifetime. I’m learning that what I need for tiredness is rest- how sensible does that sound? And now I’m starting to look into why am I tired – have I pushed myself or am I not getting to bed early enough? So to reach for sugar is a sneaky pattern to look at and observe.

450. Reading this again I am appreciating the healthy choices I have made and am making all the time and especially when I fall for sugar in subtle forms which has always been a desired taste and weakness for me. But feeling the effect it has now as I just want to fall asleep and cannot focus as it becomes more difficult to handle for my body. This really helps me to see my choices and to know it clearly and to make more loving choices so I can be more present and focused in my life and with this comes such a joy. Thank you for your amazing article

451. I read your excellent blog Cherise, on a day when I am feeling a lot of the symptoms you describe and yet I have not eaten gluten and dairy, or actual sugar for many years. I have eaten fruit, but gradually cut down on that too. What I have learned is that I SUBSTITUTE those foods with others, creamy things like coconut cream or almond cream, tahini, and certain nuts. I am fine if they are part of a recipe, as they are all beneficial foods, but if I indulge in them as a “treat” after a meal or as a snack, then I feel the bloating and digestive problems. So I realise it is so easy to think I have made the change when really I haven’t, as I am still eating with that same energy, that is trying to comfort myself and not feel something I don’t want to face. I go through periods of eating lovingly for myself and my body responds and the symptoms lessen and I feel lighter and clearer. Reading your blog has helped me to look at this again and feel into what I am doing. But giving up gluten, dairy and sugar was the start of clearing my body and helping me to make loving choices for myself. Just more to do!

452. This is such an amazing article Cherise; I have been brought up for years not eating gluten and dairy, but sugar has always been a hard one to let go of… But reading this has made me really think about how I actually feel after having sugar, and whether the short lasting taste is worth the damage it does to my body.

     1. I agree Susie, I found gluten and dairy really easy to stop eating, I just didn’t want it in my body. Though I have never eaten a lot of sweet things its the hidden sugars I find hard to let go of. I accept that for me, it has been a gradual process, but as my awareness grows its getting much easier.

453. I love the clarity of this article thank you, Cherise, the way you have the understanding from your training and the connection from your feeling your own body to present this. Knowing that we are not creatures of habit and we can re-imprint the cycles when we make that choice about food is huge.

454. This article is so empowering. gorgeously power-full.

455. Thank you Cherise, I loved re-reading your blog. And I can so much relate to this part: ‘Personally, I have not been medically tested for intolerance to gluten, dairy or sugar but my experience with them is more than enough for me to know that they don’t sit well with me.’

456. Thank you Cherise for sharing your charts and feelings in the body with the different effects for you so clearly. I too can identify with all of these and I find that this becomes clearer the more I reduce and give up things that do not agree with me. Before I have found it difficult to identify the specific effects and foods in myself as it was all a muddle to separate but the simpler I eat the easier it is to notice these reactions which makes it so much easier to feel and know what to avoid. I also had convinced my self that when tired in the day something sweet would support me to keep me going but I can no longer be fooled as I now can hardly keep my eyes open with fruit and the littlest amount of honey and I want to fall asleep. So to take responsibility for myself by what I choose to eat feels very empowering.
     So no longer can I deny the effect and hence can chose to no longer have it each time as I feel like something sweet which comes from an emptiness inside and if I am tired I will take a moments rest instead to connect to myself and feel full again.

457. Hi Cherise, this is exactly my experience. It’s only now I see that we can abuse ourselves through food.

458. I love how this article exposes that our body shows us clearly and loudly, if we but listen,how we feel after eating certain foods and which then affect our health. I have found my food choices to be an ongoing evolvement with the starting point having been gluten and dairy and so long as I have been willing to continue paying attention other foods have fallen naturally by the wayside. Reading this is a great inspiration to trust what the body is saying and take responsibility for our food choices. Thank you Cherise.

     1. I agree Julie, this article is an inspiration to continually listen to my body and take responsibility for my own food choices.

459. Very inspiring read. Thank you.

460. The words, ‘Without self-responsibility and the willingness to take a more caring approach with me, I was living in a cycle of abusing my body and used food as a harmful form of medication to distract me from whatever I was feeling,’ so describe the path I was on – before I stopped and really started to wonder why I was in such agony after going out for a meal. My body had to ‘scream’ at me before I started taking notice of what it was trying to tell me….

     I ate fairly simple food in my everyday life, but had a tendency to lash out and indulge my tastebuds with creamy sauces and desserts when I ate out. I then used to wonder why my stomach started complaining on the way home, so much so, that I’d be hoping all the lights home would be green, such was the desperation I was feeling ( if you get my drift). I was a bit of a slow learner on this one, but once I got the message of what certain foods were doing to my body, I have never looked back. Feeling well within myself longterm definitely provides way more joy to my life than the momentary gratification and pleasure those indulgent meals ever did.

     The list of effects of foods on the body is my experience as well on the whole. I’d also add joint pain – especially in my fingers and knees. They are a perfect barometer for me to test whether a food agrees with my body or not and guide me as to what no longer supports my wellbeing.

461. Thank you Jane, at the moment I am finding that with changes to our diet it’s so important to accept that we are consistently refining what the body needs and may react to. A food that hasn’t been previously, can be too stimulating to the nervous system or cause bloating but when our health and feeling truly well in our bodies is the impulse to make such changes we get to make the choices from here and let go of old patterns and comforts with a greater sense of ease.

462. Thanks Cherise,

     I like how you speak of the ‘knowing’ that something is just not right. Once I made a choice to go gluten/dairy free, I started to clear a great deal of mucous from my body (yuck!). I now feel so much lighter and clearer! I can also feel sugar and caffeine quite strongly and when I recently had a cup of caffeinated tea, I couldn’t sleep till the wee hours of the morning. My mind was racing a million miles an hour.

     That was just ONE cup of black tea – something many people may drink several times a day! Needless to say, it was the worst nights sleep I had in ages and I felt terrible the next day. I still have weaknesses when it comes to food but my body is definitely speaking to me louder and louder. Thanks again for sharing your experience and inspiring me to keep going!

     1. Thanks Linda – I completely relate to your experience! and isn’t it wonderful to know that our own bodies are themselves their own science. All we need to do to make any new choice is be aware of how certain foods may affect us or leave us feeling afterwards. And I love what you say about our bodies speaking louder to us – my body ‘lovingly notifies’ me 😉 of something new each day.

463. Thank you, Cherise – my story is in many ways quite similar; I actually thought that this gluten free stuff was nothing but a fad for a long time until I took the plunge and tried three weeks without it. The difference was incredible and I then knew that I had actually been feeling the fatigue and heaviness after the consumption of gluten all along but had ignored it because I hadn’t wanted it to be true and hadn’t known what to do about it.

     1. I too thought it was a fad. I had never stopped to consider that it might be the food I ate that was affecting how I felt. Having decided to give it a try – scientific experiment on myself – I was amazed at the difference in how I felt. I used to have a very busy brain and found it difficult to go to sleep at night and then wake up tired. Now that I have eliminated nearly all sugar from my diet I sleep beautifully and restfully every night.

464. I love you blog Cherise Simple and yet powerfully put!
     I too would feel an ‘endless sense of hunger and a disconnection to my body’ sometimes feeling low for days, overtime it became so obvious to me that it was wrong food choices that I could ignore no more.
     As I have learnt to love and respect myself more I now make healthy loving food choices that support and heal me. I now able to feel clarity and vitality within from choosing to listen to my body. It’s a beauty-full thing to do for me and everyone around me!

465. thank you Cherise for so clearly commenting on this. There is growing awareness within some parts of the medical community re the harm of gluten/wheat in the body in particular. The recognition of the harm of dairy and sugar is also gaining pace. Cardiologist William Davis calls gluten/wheat a chronic poison – and people are willingly consuming it not knowing any different/better as I used to do so as well. I used to be so dismissive of people who said they were affected by this or that – but I know now I was just very ignorant and that was with a medical degree! The more I pay attention to my body the more aware I become of how different foods affect it and realise, whilst it might have a sweet taste in the mouth it can have a yucky effect on the body! Also working in gastroenterology, you will be aware of the large numbers of patients with irritable bowel syndrome and for many of these patients their symptoms can be greatly helped by eliminating such foods from their diet. Thanks again

     1. Thank you Eunice, yes there is growing awareness which is great. Something that I see each day is people presenting with uncomfortable symptoms within their gastrointestinal tract, and whilst we test for certain illness/disease, there are many people who think they know some foods may not agree with them but with no results / hard evidence showing in their pathology they can be left to feel they still have no answers, with irritable bowel especially – However, how inspiring and self-empowering that we always have the right to make our own choices when it comes to food and our own bodies.

        1. Cherise I love your comment here, we do always have the right to make choices which feel good for our bodies, and that is super-empowering. It feels like taking these steps as more and more people are doing will lead to a new paradigm with research akin to what Lyndy suggested, we will work with it from a completely different viewpoint, not about over-riding the body and functioning but about true wellness – what does my body need to truly support me and how can research support us all in that. Awesome to have you working in gastroenterology – people really do know what does and doesn’t work for them, they need to reclaim the confidence of that knowing just as you’ve done.

466. Awesome Cherise, you are a gift to the field of Gastroenterology, and a much needed one. I Love your table of food and the effects they have on your body. Through self exploration I found the same findings.

     1. Thank you Toni, it is simple to make a list of any foods and your own body’s reactions – but even more simple to see that we always have the choice to treat our bodies with greater care.

467. Thank you Cherise. I never realised just how intolerant I was of these foods until I experimented with them. The real key was in taking the time to observe how I felt after meals and this process is still continuing. Your powerful question at the end of your post is a question that could support so many to change the way they feel every day: “so why don’t we all choose to eat foods that support, build, nourish, confirm and truly complement the amazingness we already are and the bodies we must live with every minute of every day?”.

     1. Thank you Rowena, I completely relate as I also never realised just how much certain foods were affecting me until I experimented for myself, and as my body continues to evolve the foods I can tolerate and choose to eat are regularly changing. – Listening to what our bodies need in the way of food is key, as opposed to choosing foods from a lack of self-awareness.

        1. I agree about the foods changing Cherise. While some foods are permanently on the ‘off’ list, and there is no way I could eat them, my throat closes up at the thought of it, other foods may come and go. It makes shopping very interesting, and fun.

468. Cherise, I can relate to many of the symptoms you speak of in this article. It is great to feel this in our body so that the choice to stop comes from us, and not from any health or nutrition authority outside of us.

     1. Spot on Anna. I too can relate to a lot of the symptoms described above and I too had other symptoms such as eye inflammation due to dairy products. I chose to no longer eat gluten, dairy and sugar as I did not like how I felt after having them.

469. It was a pleasure to read such a beautifully written and spot-on article on food choices. There is so much to be said for us being our own self-responsible researchers. When we reach a critical mass of people living in that way the role that medical research and pharmaceuticals play will change massively – we will be calling for something very different, perhaps making life happen instead of having it happen to us.
     Thank you Cherise for your beautiful contribution.

     1. Thank you Lyndy – I love what you have written here ‘being our own self-responsible researchers’. How inspiring this is !

        1. I agree that’s a great phrase and very inspiring!

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