by Cherise Holt, Gastroenterology Nurse, Brisbane
Around two years ago I made the choice to eliminate gluten and dairy from my diet and my body instantly benefited from the decrease in stomach bloating, changing bowel habits and other symptoms I had experienced within my gastrointestinal tract. 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.
The choice to decrease and then to eliminate sugar from my diet came later, and whilst it was obvious my sleep patterns and the raciness I was experiencing in my body did not leave me feeling wonderful – as with all my food choices – 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.
As a human being, I am not just a creature of habit; I know that I actually live in cycles. 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.
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. Through my own process of elimination, I have been graced to feel how these foods were really affecting me and my body.
As I began to make more self-supporting choices throughout my whole life I also experienced moments when I returned to my old ways or when I was not feeling like myself and I ate foods containing gluten, dairy and sugar. My body suffered considerably…and this was how I felt:
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
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!
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.
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. 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.
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.
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?
Medicine and Serge Benhayon 
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.
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.
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.”
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.
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.
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.
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?
‘…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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
When we start to notice that our emotions are a key source in how we eat we will no longer need the diet industry.
…”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.
“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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Are we willing to run the experiment?
‘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.
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.
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…….
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.
“…. 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.
“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.
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…
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.
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.
“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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Thank you for this reminder – “But we can always change or re-imprint the cycle that we may find ourselves in, at any time.”
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I like the invitation to become the scientists of our own bodies here.
Yes, it is a very illuminating and value strategy to look for cause and effect and can make a big difference in our life.
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.
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.
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.
” 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
‘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.
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.