Transitioning to a Healthy Diet

Do you want to lose weight, eat more healthily, improve your digestion or banish a food intolerance?

Transitioning to eating a healthy diet seems to becoming more and more challenging. Confusing nutritional advice, time pressures and the abundance of fast foods are creating a nation of people suffering from malnutrition!

Often it takes a digestive problem, weight gain or illness to trigger the desire to create more mindfulness around eating.

Getting started can be challenging when its accompanied by resistance to giving up favourite comfort foods and its important to continually remind yourself of your motivating factors.

My belief is that a healthy diet can be achieved quite easily once the intention is firmly in place to make it a lifestyle change. Quick fixes just don’t work. The diet industry is making billions from this fact.

Action needs to follow great ideas so once you have committed yourself to making changes to your diet follow these easy guidelines to help your transition.

Goal Setting
Choose the time of the week/day that is best for you to quietly have the time for yourself to organise your goals around eating/exercise and get clear about what you want to achieve.

What do you want in your life? What are your needs? What needs to happen in order to achieve them? When would you like to achieve them by?

Make your goals realistic, write them into your diary and tell as many people about them as possible! Ask for support from close friends and family.
Maybe you’re goals include booking a nutritional consultation or a personal trainer to help you get on track!

Menu Planning and Shopping
It’s a good idea whilst setting your goals to include some menu planning and write a shopping list. Preparation is key to success! Find the times in your diary when you will go shopping. Work out which nights will you definitely eat in, which days look busy and need extra planning, if you have more than 3 social engagements in a week where you know it’s going to be difficult to control your eating maybe you want to space them out.
PLAN and ORGANISE! Make yourself a priority! Make a date with yourself!

Food Diary
This is one of the best tools (if you’re honest with yourself !) that can guide you and show you where you are eating well and which areas are more challenging. Eg you may look back over your week and discover that you find it a struggle to eat healthy snacks or that you do well all the way up to that 11pm choc attack! You may see that when you eat at home you nearly always choose healthy options but when you socialise it goes to pot.
Keeping a food diary helps you reflect back on our weeks eating behaviour and see those areas that need greater mindfulness and planning.

Alongside the food diary, indicate where you have energy slumps or digestive problems to pinpoint which foods could be the culprit. Also take into account your lifestyle… you may not need to change your eating…. stress/emotional issues could be the problem.

I follow a 80:20 rule when it comes to eating. In the week you’ll find me eating mung bean dahl, quinoa and salads etc but I love social eating and that will definitely include wine and maybe a dessert. Keep it in balance and make eating a divine experience!!

Super Salads!

Summers abundance of fresh foods creates endless variations of salads. Fresh foods are essential as they provide us with digestive enzymes that help us to break down our food. We can make these in our bodies but our ability slows down as we get older. They also provide us with essential nutrients and vitamins which can be destroyed if they are heated in cooked foods.

When the weather is warmer our bodies enjoy the cool energy of raw foods. Try to make your salads from scratch. As much as possible choose locally sourced and organic to maximise nutrition and reduce toxins. In terms of maximising nutrition, picking home grown is best. You only need a windowsill to be able to keep you in salad leaves all through the Summer!

Here are a few of my faves!!

Summer Quinoa salad

• 2oz Quinoa
• 1 tomato
• 2oz Feta
• 1/2 Avocado
• basil leaves
• mixed salad leaves

All mixed up with:

1/2 Lemon Juice, 1/2tsp Umemboshi vinegar (has a tangy salty seasoning from plums) or Balsamic and 1tsp Virgin Olive Oil.

Spinach Salad

 Dressing:

• ½ Small jar Almond butter/Tahini
• Juice of 1 lemons
• 1 tbsp Tamari
• 1 clove garlic

1 bags baby spinach

Add all dressing ingredients to a food processor, blend then add spinach and pulse gently until spinach is roughly chopped or the consistency you prefer.

Oriental Salad

• 1 Cup Cooked Puy lentils
• 1 Cup chopped spinach
• 1 cup chopped mint
• ½ cup chopped coriander
• Half a Cucumber diced
• 1 bunch spring Onions finely sliced
• 4 Finely diced tomatoes.
• Optional- ½ Cup chopped Almonds

Dressing:

• Juice 3 Limes
• 2 Tbsp Rice Mirin (Japanese Sweet Rice Seasoning)
• 2 Tbsp Maple syrup
• 1 Tbsp Tamari

Combine all the ingredients, add the dressing and sprinkle with chopped almonds and a last sprinkle of fresh herbs.

Detox

Just back from Turkey. I’ve been teaching nutrition classes for the Fasting company www.jivahealing.com. It’s always amazing to see the transformation that people go through when fasting. A deep internal cleanse shifts old blockages on a physical and mental level leaving the body energised and functioning at its optimum. Well worth the self investment!

Jiva runs week long juice fasts in the UK and abroad. Yoga and massage are available to enhance the process and the nutrition classes give you the information to continue a healthy lifestyle. The therapists are excellent and experts in their fields.

If you are considering doing a fast for the first time it’s worth preparing for it with a preliminary detox. This will allow the body to start cleansing gently and will help reduce the common cleansing reactions which often occur during fasting.

I am running a Yoga Detox weekend break at Osea Island July 29-31st. A relaxing weekend in a stunning location offering Yoga, Core conditioning, Cleansing Diet including Juices, Nutrition class, Massage, Sauna, Outdoor swimming and plenty more. See www.thelifestyleretreat.com for more information.

Here are my maintenance detox tips that can easily assist the body’s natural cleansing.

• Drink freshly squeezed lemon and warm water first thing in the morning
• Drink at least 2 litres mineral water throughout the day
• Buy a body brush and brush towards the heart 5 mins per day before you shower to increase circulation.
• Exercise until you sweat! At least 3 times a week.
• Sweat it out in a sauna/steam room at least once a week.
• Eat wholefoods from nature and ditch the takeaways!
• A tongue scraper and flossing keeps your mouth smelling sweet.
• Use your full lung capacity, taking long deep breathes.
• Detox your mind with 10 mins of meditation or self reflection time every day. I like do this first thing in the morning and last thing at night.
• Avoid stress!

Wake Up Smoothie

• 2 Ripe Peach, stone removed
• 2 Tbsp Oats
• 2 Tbsp Almonds
• 2 Tbsp Hemp Seeds
• 1 Cup Fresh Carrot/Apple Juice
• 1 Cup Water
• Maple Syrup to Sweeten if necessary

Combine in a Blender