Health and wellness without the shitty normativity
Sultry Health's mission is to connect you with information, tools, and practices that can help empower you to feel better and live well. The thing is, those don't mean the same thing for everyone, do they? We're not all starting from the same place and don't all have the same goals. We aren't all operating in the same environment, and we don't all have access to the same resources.
Our philosophy here at Sultry is grounded in ancestral health principles. That is, we generally prioritize foods and food preparation techniques that originate prior to modern industrial-scale agriculture and food processing. Similarly, we expect humans to be best adapted to activity and movement patterns that extend back before modern sendentary (and non-sendentary but environmetally restrictive) lifestyles. We also believe in the critical importance of connection, play, meaning, stress management, and just getting out into the sunshine.
If that sounds a little loose, a little subject to interpretation, that's because: yes, it is. One-size-fits-all answers are for snake oil salesmen.
So for example, we might recommend primal movement patterns as generally beneficial to building functional strength and mobility. But if you're starting from a place of poor mobility, lack of use, or injury, then you shouldn't expect yourself to be able to suddenly throw down a bunch of squats or push-ups or pull-ups like flipping a switch. Or maybe you have a physical disability that means squats are just off the table for you. Where you're starting from might impact your options or make a different starting point logical. The important thing isn't to adhere to a magical ideal plan, but rather to make the most of the options that make sense for you.
If you can't stomach the idea of "working out," or if you are trying to reset unhealthy workout patterns related to body dysmorphia or gender dysphoria, then maybe you'll find it more helpful to focus on play or functional movement. If your starting point is simply to spend more time walking inside your own home and improving your functional bending and squatting as you access your kitchen cabinets, lift your laundry basket, or tie your shoes, that's a perfectly good starting point.
Similarly, if you are a person who feels good eating vegetables, then eating enough vegetables is going to be way more beneficial to your health than eating only the purest, most perfect of vegetables. And if you are a person who does not feel good eating vegetables, then you won't feel any better eating the purest, most perfect of vegetables, and instead perhaps you should give not eating vegetables a try.
In framing conversations about nutrition and movement, it will always be our goal at Sultry Health to be inclusive of all people, recognizing our great human diversity of cultural backgrounds, physical abilities, body types, racial and ethnic backgrounds, gender identities, economic situations, and other factors that impact us all as individuals as we manage our health. Rather than assuming a cookie cutter approach will work for everyone, our aim is to provide a useful toolkit of diverse ideas, along with some context and thoughts on what strategies may be complementary (or may be counterproductive). Only you can decide what works best for you.
And taking ownership -- feeling ownership -- of your health care decisions is really important, especially for people with identities belonging to historically marginalized or underserved communities. That's because often health care advice is based on data developed through studies of people who are not similarly situated, don't have similar heritage, don't have the same experience of gender, etc. And feeling empowered to make your own health decisions often starts simply with knowing that you can make your own decisions. It's your body. It's your mind. You get to choose how you live in it.