7 Things That Matter More To Your Health Than Diet

Image from: http://nutritionforhealthma.com/

Have you often wondered why certain people seem to eat horrible diets but they display amazing levels of health, vitality and fitness? It’s quite remarkable isn’t it?

Then you have somebody who seemingly does all the right things with their diet but seems to have one health problem after another. Granted a lot of this can be explained away.

For example….

A person with a good diet could be going through a herxheimer cleansing crisis where they get worse before they get better. Or perhaps they’re eating great but not doing other things well.

Obviously diet and nutrition are important. There’s no doubt that it’s at the top of my list in terms of how to be healthy.

But eating the right superfoods, green juices, smoothies and medicinal herbs (and don’t forget the animal fats!) aren’t enough. I don’t think they even come close to the levels of health you can achieve doing other things.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m going to put a list together of things that matter more than nutrition but that doesn’t mean you can eat fast food and get the results you want. What I am saying is that if I had to choose what’s important and what’s not and then I had to actually remove a few of these from my life here’s how I’d rate them.

I suggest doing ALL of them (including eating right for you) to get maximum results.

So here’s a list of 7 things that are more important than diet…

Sleep

Sleep is incredibly important. During sleep you create massive amounts of hormones including melatonin and other feel good hormones. You do things during sleep that no food can do to your body.

Never compromise on sleep. No pill or supplement can even come close to what sleep can do.

Doing Work You Love

This should have been #1 considering we spend roughly a third of our working lives actually working. I couldn’t put it to #1 because it’s possible to do what you love and it’s also possible to feel like you do something you hate. Sleep on the other hand is pretty much non negotiable. We have to do it each night.

If you don’t feel any purpose in your life and are living an unfulfilled life, then what good is diet going to do? It pails in comparison to living a life of passion and meaning.

Stress Levels

If you are stressed out, anxious and suffer from panic attacks, anxiety or PTSD how is diet going to help you that much? I know people that are type A personality that are always looking to control things. Managing stress and preventing your body from leaking energy is the name of the game. In my opinion you have to get the stress component nailed down before you can even consider the health benefits of changing your diet.

Exercise

There are things that exercise can do that nutrition can’t do. You can’t improve your balance, coordination, athletic ability, timing, cardiovascular fitness, improve bone density as fast and on the list goes.

The great Jack Lalanne said that exercise is king and nutrition is queen. You might not agree but eating super foods while sitting down all day in a chair isn’t going to get you anywhere. The dangers of sitting applies no matter what diet you’re eating.

Smiling, Laughing & Having Fun

We’ve all seen these people haven’t we? That’s right, they’re the ones who are the angry vegans or the stressed out vegetarians. I don’t care what your diet is, if you’re not laughing, having fun and enjoying your life, screw your diet because it’s probably just making you sicker.

People have healed from cancer by laughing. Laughing and smiling create endorphins in your body that help you to actually be healthier. Make laughing or at least enjoying your life your #1 priority….even above food.

There I said it.

Detoxification & Cleansing

At this point in our lives it really doesn’t matter what we eat. We have to deal with what we’ve already consumed as well as what the chemical of the day has been for us. Think about all the chemicals (not just in the food) we either get exposed to daily or have been exposed to.

As Dr. Hal Huggins said on the topic of toxicity, “You can’t control what comes in a lot of the time but you can control what comes out. As long as you have more going out than you have coming in, you’re going to be okay.”

Make sure you’re detoxing on a regular basis before you worry about doing the Paleo Diet or the Raw Vegan Diet. There are many ways to detox. You can use a sauna, you can take zeolite, you can take clay internally or in a bath, you can drink lots of water, you can begin a juice program, you can jump up and down on a rebounder, you can do weekly coffee enemas, bi-yearly colonics, and even do something like an Ejuva Cleanse once per year.

Having A Supportive Family

Nothing can cause more strife, stress and ill health faster than drama in your family. If your family isn’t supporting you and is actually doing things to harm you, no matter of eating healthy will buffer that completely.

Don’t get me wrong, as with any of these things I’m comparing food to, I believe nutrition and diet can really help us get through these circumstances with grace. If you don’t have a supportive family, then you have one more reason to eat a healthy diet to help you get through that experience.

What I am saying is that I believe that how these two things affect the body (a tumultuous home life vs the best diet ever) can’t be compared. I think all the items I’m listing affect the body more than diet. I’m not saying diet can’t help you get through them or that you have to pick diet over improving these situations.

All I’m doing is comparing how they affect the body compared to how diet affects the body.

We all know that people have healed cancer with diet and proper nutrition. If these things I’ve listed truly affect the body more deeply than diet, imagine what could be achieved in your own health if you put all the pieces of the puzzle together?