What makes you feel amazing? What can snap you out of a bad mood in seconds?

One of the key things we learn at Integrative Nutrition is how to feel our whole selves with what we call “Primary Food” – the relationships, activities, work, exercise, and spiritual practices that fulfill our lives and fill us up in ways that food cannot.

Our community is great at feeding themselves with healthy doses of Vitamin L (love) and primary food. We asked our community what makes them feel their best, and here’s what they told us:

Photo Credit: Marina de la Torre, Class of 2011

It's a big weekend for two major world religions - a time for celebration, family, and most of all, spirituality.

At Integrative Nutrition, our curriculum teaches that spirituality is a vital part of a person's primary food that sustains his or her soul. Even if you don't practice in the Christian or Judaic faith, this weekend might be a good time to reconnect, or maybe get in touch for the first time, with your own spirituality.

Spirituality doesn't have to be elaborate. It can be as simple as a hike in the woods or a park, appreciating the beauty of nature. Perhaps quiet meditation or yoga can bring light into your soul. Most of the time, our minds are running at a mile a minute, and for some, a serene setting and a little focus is all they need to connect to their spirituality.

What happens when one’s religious beliefs clash with making healthy lifestyle choices?

If there’s one thing that most religions around the world agree upon, it’s the importance of respecting one’s body. Ranging from the Christian tenet that the body is a temple created in the image of God to the Buddhist belief that a healthy body enables us to live longer in order to benefit others, most religious practices emphasize that caring for your health can in fact be a spiritual act.

As an essential source of primary food, spirituality not only offers a sense of community and comfort, but it also often explicitly rejects unhealthy behaviors such as smoking, excessive drinking, and overeating. Many studies show that religious people enjoy greater emotional and physical health than those who are nonreligious.

Yet clashes between religion and healthy behaviors can and do arise. A recent MSNBC article highlighted the conflict that some devout Christians feel towards yoga. Despite the exercise’s well-known physical, mental, and emotional benefits, there are concerns that yoga poses, interpreted as offerings to Hindu gods, are incompatible with Christianity.

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© 2011 Integrative Nutrition Inc.

Here’s some heart-warming news for all you married people out there: new research shows that having a long-term mate is beneficial to your health. According to a recent University of Rochester study published in Health Psychology, happily married people who undergo coronary bypass surgery are more than three times as likely to be alive fifteen years later as single people.

In fact, the health benefits of marital bliss are so high that according to co-author Harry Reis, they are “every bit as important to survival after bypass surgery as more traditional risk factors like tobacco use, obesity, and high blood pressure.”  The numbers speak for themselves: Fifteen years after surgery, 83% of happily married women were still alive versus 28% of unhappily married women and 27% of unmarried women.

This study only confirms the “marriage advantage” phenomenon that scientists have observed for centuries. According to a report in the NY Times, married people are less likely to get pneumonia, have surgery, develop cancer, have heart attacks, and even get dementia. The quality of the marriage counts, too. Ohio State University researchers (and fittingly, married couple) Ronald Glaser and Jan Kiecolt-Glaser found that when married couples argue, their immune systems suffer and their bodies take far longer to heal from injury.

Dining can be a very social experience.  Gatherings with friends after work, family on the weekends, and coworkers at lunch are how many people spend mealtime.  We like to eat with others, whether the people are with us at the dinner table or on the television.  Many people do not dine alone, ever.  Many people would never go out to a restaurant alone.

However, eating alone can be a meditative experience that helps to control over-eating.  Martha Rose Shulman references “Savor: Mindful Eating, Mindful Life,” by Lilian Cheung, a nutritionist at Harvard, and Thich Nhat Hanh, a Buddhist teacher, in her New York Times article, that focuses on eating alone.   Eating alone allows you to contemplate and focus on your food.  You can count chews and be mindful of when you feel full.  When you cook for yourself you can practice mindfulness, which is something you need when using a knife!

Many people find that cooking for one can also be a challenge.  Obviously ordering take-out is much easier, but finding creative ways to stretch a meal or work with a recipe that feeds 4 is a great way to save money, skip unwanted calories and put meditative eating into practice.

Shulman will be hosting a series with recipes for one beginning with Pan-Seared Tuna with Asian Coleslaw.

If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you probably know that true health is more than just eating fruits, veggies whole grains and exercising. Being healthy also involves nurturing your relationships, having a career that you love and having a spiritual practice. You might have loving relationships, a good career, a spiritual practice, exercise that you love and a healthy diet, but there is one thing that you are most likely missing. There is one key ingredient that no other health expert will tell you about: being bad.

In our loving relationships, fulfilling jobs or diet, many of us try too hard to please others. Can you relate? When we do this we end up sacrificing what we really want.

Being bad doesn’t mean robbing a bank or hurting someone, but rather something smaller that frees you from your everyday responsibilities. Think about what this might be for you. For some people being bad might be deleting unread emails or speaking up for themselves. Does that sound freeing to you? You might even go as far as playing hooky from work.

This exercise can be really challenging for people, so start slowly. Take a moment now and write down three things you want to do this week to practice being bad. Just start writing. What activities make you smile and feel a sense of relief?

The purpose of this exercise is to put you back in charge of your life and to remain true to your core beliefs. There’s nothing more health promoting than that.

Share your ideas with others.

A holistic lifestyle is more than just eating organic foods and practicing yoga from time to time. It means paying attention to all aspects of your life: relationships, career, health and spirituality to be sure that you are living a life in balance. This might mean making some adjustments. The important thing to realize is they are not quick fixes.

Take a minute now to think about all areas of your life:

Relationships: Are you surrounded by people who stimulate you? Do your friends and romantic partner make you laugh and are they kind to you? Are there people you can be spending more time with or less time with? Make an effort to spend more time with those who fill your life with joy.

Career: Are you satisfied with your day-to-day job? Do you feel challenged by your boss and your coworkers? Do you feel that you are compensated well for your hard work? Are you happy more than you are stressed-out? Make a list of the things you love about your job and the things that you do not.

Spirituality: Do you have a spiritual practice? This can be anything from meditating to going to church on a regular basis.

Health: Pay attention to the foods you eat. Do you enjoy whole grains, fruits and vegetables every day? How often do you consume junk food? When you crave sweets write down what you are doing. Sometimes when we crave junk food it means that something else in our lives is out of balance.

Everyone could nourish their relationships, career, spirituality and health a little more. By nourishing all aspects of your life you will live a healthier and happier life. What are you going to do today?

We live in a fast-paced society: fast food, speed dating, high-speed internet connections. Men and women alike are expected to be in multiple places at once. Our lives are overbooked with commitments to work, family, social life, exercise, hobbies, spiritual practice and the list goes on. When everything is made into a priority, it’s hard to find balance and eventually our health suffers. We fill up our lives with all these activities, but do they really make us happy?

It’s important to remember that we are human beings, not human doings. The next time you put on your cape in the morning to go about your day with a superhero mentality, look at how you are spending your time. Are you making time for the things you most enjoy? Take a moment to slow down, breathe and check in.

Our high-powered lifestyles require some prioritization and sometimes the courage to say, “I want to stay true to myself, and I want to enjoy myself. These are my priorities.”

Are your activities and commitments running your life? What’s one thing you could do today to slow down and enjoy your life?

If you are one to read gossip magazines or websites, you are privy to the latest celebrity diets, workout routines and relationship news. America was intrigued when Oprah went on her 21-day vegan cleanse. More celebrities are trying on different diets to see how they feel throughout their hectic days. Some may think these vegan, vegetarian diets and cleanses are extreme, but so is a high-profile lifestyle.

Lately, media has swarmed Madonna about her relationships—hey, at least she’s exploring what nourishes her in that area of primary foods—but years ago when she told America that she was following a macrobiotic diet and converting to Kabbalaism people questioned her sanity. Was this Material Girl just out to get more attention?

Macrobiotics may seem extreme to some, but if you look at the roots it is really about simplifying and taking food in its most natural state, which may benefit such a high-profile celebrity like Madonna. Translated, literally, macrobiotics means “great life,” promising longevity, peace of mind and optimal.

The basic foundation of a macrobiotic diet is to eat local, whole and traditional foods in accordance with your bio-individual needs. Macrobiotics has a reputation of being a strict diet. It can be, but that really depends on how you practice it. But the idea of simplifying and bringing peace of mind could be really beneficial for someone as busy and in the spotlight as Madonna.

With the combination of a healthy, simple diet and her spiritual practice, no wonder Madonna has been a superstar since the 80s. As more celebrities try out new eating habits more Americans are inspired to change theirs.

How could a healthier way of eating support your busy life?