What is Food?

Behind the scenes

As we round out winter, I wanted to share a bit about what our team has been up to these last few months behind the scenes. First, let me say we are all filled with gratitude as we approach the tenth anniversary of Prasada. When I sit with that reality, the journey it has been and the day-to-day work that I get to do…there are no words to express my appreciation and joy.

So many people along the way believed in me and in our team and supported the vision of Prasada. In the fall, we knew it was time to look again and get even more clear about what we believe and how we best can be of service.

Meg Townsend and Stacy Hines have been with Prasada for many years. Sarah Murray was with us early on and then took time off to have two amazing little boys and is now back with us. We all put our heads together. After a few rounds and some valuable feedback, here’s where we landed.

We believe that every person has the desire to thrive―to live a life of health, purpose and joy.
We are guides to help you and your team discover, learn and live wholebeing practices.

We have created a new package that outlines the expansion of our programs that are now organized around six themes.

Food and Nutrition

One of the significant additions is the theme of Nutrition, Food and Energy. We’ve added a variety of Wholebeing Workshops around food, and I wanted to share how that has evolved and what else is happening behind the scenes.

In my travels, I was continuing to hear that food and diet were the most significant health risk factors for individuals. Also, diabetes continues to be a big part of the rising cost of health care for employers. Stress and exercise are factors, but obesity and diabetes seem to bubble up as the most costly health issues for employers. I was frustrated that the programs I was seeing to support better eating were still mostly focused on weight loss as the prime measure.

Simultaneously, my younger sister who is a member at a small gym began telling me about a nutrition program she was doing with her coach from the gym. The first time she mentioned it I politely listened. Daily emails, and calls with her coach every few weeks. Hmmmm. Sounded interesting, but I promptly forgot about it the next week.

About 6 months went by. I had talked to my sister, but we had not been together. We had a family wedding in June, and I was surprised to see my sister looking really fantastic. She had lost some weight, but that is not what I noticed the most. She looked healthy and strong. She seemed more relaxed and self-assured. Hmmmm. She asked if I wanted to work out with her one morning and she was lifting HEAVY weights, and she was running. This really got my attention.

Was this related to the nutrition program she had mentioned so many months before? She shared how it was a 52-week habit based program. I spent another month investigating.

Today, Meg, Sarah and I have been enrolled and been fully experiencing Precision Nutrition with my sister’s coach, Ryan for the last few months. We all are at different points in our lives, have different family and living configurations and different food preferences. Sarah cooks every night for her husband and young boys, I had been hoping to keep a clean kitchen and avoid cooking as much as possible and live on coffee and smoothies. Meg is well-trained in the science of an Ayurveda diet.

We’ll each be writing more about our experience in the upcoming months. I’m a few weeks ahead of Sarah and Meg and can’t believe what I have uncovered, not necessarily about food but about my mindset related to food. I certainly knew my diet was connected to my health, and I was a very disciplined eater. Yet I did not fully realize how my moods, cravings, slow recoveries from hard workouts and thinning hair were connected to what I was, and more importantly, was not eating.

As Meg and I talked last week, she summarized it so well. “This program is not about food. It is about our relationship with food.” As the program began, we were asked the question “What is food?” That question stopped me in my tracks. It seemed rather obvious. Why would this question even be necessary?

Yet, each week of the program I continue to uncover another definition, belief, a mindset that I did not know I had about food. Some of my responses to this question shocked me. One day within the first few weeks, I wrote down “food is dangerous.” Other answers to that question have evolved over the last few months. “Food is a way for me to be creative, to savor life.”

Finding Our Guides

We are deep in the Precision Nutrition program testing, poking, experiencing it all, the surprises and the challenges. While we are your guides, we too need guides. Each of us has realized food, and our relationship with it is another place where we each have habits that we are ready to look at and shift, day-by-day as a wholebeing practice.

We found a guide and a program to support us, to offer feedback and to keep us building the new habits to support better health. We, like you, want to thrive.

This week, I offer you this question, “What is food?” Wonder about this as you drive, as you get hungry, as you prepare or buy food, and as you eat and notice the array of answers.

I’d love to hear what comes up.