NOURISHMENT: What Are You Feeding?

We Consume All Day Long

What do you think of when you hear the word consumption?

What you buy? Use? Eat? Drink? An illness from way back when?

When I’m drinking coffee in the wee hours in my jammies and someone stops by for a chat, I often think, “Oh dear God, I’m not fit for public consumption right now!”

Truth is, food isn’t the only thing we consume. Just about everything around us is available for consumption.

News. Conversations. Social media. Music. Advertising. Other people’s opinions. Food. Books. Gossip. Beauty. Anger. Art.

All day long, something is entering us.

And yes, that does sound like the precursor to a paranormal movie, but it’s true.

We are constantly taking in the world around us. Through our mouths, certainly, but also through our eyes and ears. Through our relationships. Through the places we spend our time. Through the things we read, watch, listen to and believe.

Which means nourishment is about a whole lot more than what’s for dinner.

Consumption Becomes Us

We tend to think of nourishment as physical. Are we eating enough vegetables? Drinking enough water? Getting enough protein? All important questions.

But we have other appetites too.

We are emotionally nourished by people who make us feel safe enough to be ourselves. By laughter. Affection. Friendship. Belonging.

We are intellectually nourished by books that make us think, conversations that challenge us, ideas that expand what we thought we knew.

We are creatively nourished by music, beauty, art, color, nature and making things simply because something inside us wants to make them.

We are spiritually nourished by whatever connects us to something larger than ourselves—prayer, meditation, ritual, community, silence, the forest, the moon, the mystery.

And energetically? We know nourishment when we feel it.

Some things leave us more alive than they found us. Others leave us strangely tired, agitated or empty.

Because what we repeatedly consume influences our energy, our thoughts, our nervous system, our worldview and ultimately how we show up in our lives.

Spend enough time immersed in outrage and the world begins to look outrageous. Spend enough time around people who complain and pretty soon everything seems worthy of complaint. Feed yourself beauty, curiosity, kindness and meaningful conversation, and those things begin showing up in you, too.

Consumption becomes us.

Which is why I’m less interested these days in obsessing over everything we should eliminate.

No sugar. No scrolling. No processed food. No negative people. No news. No this. No that.

Instead, let’s try a gentler question: What would I like more of?

More vegetables. More water. More books. More music. More laughter. More meaningful conversation. More beauty. More time outside. More silence.

We may need to let go of some things to make room for what we want to invite in. But I’ve found that once something genuinely nourishing begins filling that space, letting go of what depletes us can be a hell of a lot easier.

Maybe you don’t wrestle the bag of chips out of your own hands. Maybe you discover something else you genuinely enjoy eating. (This has certainly been the case for me as I’ve been diligently up leveling my diet. Just by incorporating more protein, my hankering for salty snacks has fallen by the wayside.) 

Maybe you don’t declare war on social media. Maybe you pick up a book that’s so good you forget to check your phone. 

This new little habit also rings true for me. I’ve been surprised how much more eager I am to read on the porch instead of reading my phone.

Maybe you don’t force yourself to stop spending time with people who drain you. Maybe you spend more time with people who make you feel alive and suddenly notice the difference.

We can spend an enormous amount of energy trying to empty our lives.

Or we can begin filling them with better things.

Practice: The Consumption Audit

For one day, simply notice what you consume.

You may want to keep a small notebook nearby or make a running note on your phone. Don’t judge anything. Don’t try to change anything. Just pay attention.

Notice the food and drinks, certainly—but keep going.

What did you watch? What did you read? Who did you talk to? What did you listen to in the car? How much news did you consume? How much social media? Did you spend any time outside? Did you encounter beauty? Did you laugh? Did you learn something? Did you have any silence?

At the end of the day, ask yourself:

What left me feeling nourished?

What left me feeling depleted?

What would I like more of?

Then choose one small trade-up for tomorrow.

Not a purge. Not a cleanse. Not a dramatic declaration that you’re becoming an entirely new person on Thursday.

Just one trade-up.

Feed yourself something good.

Carry On

Nourishment is happening all the time.

We feed our bodies with food, but we also feed our minds with information, our nervous systems with environments, our hearts with relationships, our spirits with meaning and our imaginations with whatever we repeatedly place before them.

So perhaps self-care isn’t always about removing things.

Sometimes it’s about becoming more intentional about what we let in.

More of what steadies us.

More of what delights us.

More of what makes us curious.

More of what helps us feel connected, awake and alive.

Sometimes we simply feed ourselves so well that there is less room for what leaves us empty.

And that might be one of the gentlest forms of self-care there is.