One of my favorite things about being a Holistic Nutrition Consultant is being able to share what I know with others. I love introducing people to what they can create in their own kitchens. Everything you eat is a choice. Everything you eat has a consequence. It will either build your health or contribute to disease. Eating for your health doesn’t have to be painful. Cooking and creating good healthy meals can not only be fun, but delicious! Each one of us is different. There truly is not a one-size-fits-all diet. It just takes a little time and your attention to figure out what works best for you and your body.
Here are a few tricks, tips, and myth-busters to get you started looking and feeling your best.
Myth #1: You need a kitchen full of fancy and expensive equipment to prepare healthy meals.
Truth is the only special tool you need is a basic blender.
Myth #2: You can’t afford to eat healthy.
The truth is that you either spend the money now on good clean ingredients or you will spend it down the road at the DR.’s office. There are simple ways to save money at the grocery store. Stop buying the processed and nutrient deficient food items. If your cart isn’t full of Doritos, white bread, and soda, you’ll have more to spend in the produce isle. Even better, you will feel better when you remove those “food” items from your diet.
Tips and Tricks:
- Eat real, whole, food in their natural state, or at least as close as possible to its natural state. Nature doesn’t use wrappers. Use whole grains instead of those processed and bleached into flour. Eat the whole fruit and not just the juice. You need the fiber to slow down the impact on your blood sugar.
- Eat your vegetables either raw or lightly steamed to retain the nutrients.
- Swap out your white pasta with brown rice pasta (Tinkyada brand holds together the best).
- Choose wild caught fish over farm raised. Farmed fish often has added food coloring to make it look better.
- Choose clean high quality fat every day. Raw nuts and seeds, extra virgin cold pressed oils and avocado are good choices.
- Simplify your meals. Not only does it make meal prep faster, studies have shown that we eat less when there isn’t such a wide variety available at a meal. (Remember what happens at a buffet?) Choose just one dense food, like chicken, eggs, or pasta. Then fill the rest of the plate with non-starchy veggies. Read non-starchy as leafy greens! You can have a nice quality meat with a great salad or steamed vegetable and then skip the potato and/or bread.
- Quality of food rules quantity. There is a reason that you can eat an entire bag of chips and not feel full. If you choose wisely you will be providing your body with the nutrition it needs instead of dumping empty calories in and still needing more.
Something my doctor suggested to me was to improve my nutrition. It makes sense why it’s a myth that you can’t afford to eat healthily. That’s a misconception that I feel many people have a problem with.