Summer is right around the corner — is your health where you want it to be? It's never too late to eat healthier. Here are 6 savvy rules of eating healthy this summer and beyond:
- Eat Whole Foods, not processed
Any food in its most essential, pure and basic form is nutrient dense and must be preferred over processed food. When you eat whole foods, you're getting the food in its natural state e.g., an apple instead of apple juice, or a baked potato and mashed potatoes. Favoring a whole foods-rich diet is a simple way to ensure that what you eat is micronutrient dense and free of unnecessary additives and preservatives. Whole foods have the best ingredients for creating tasty and healthy meals, supply essential nutrients with their chaperones to and help keep you healthy. Choose whole, fresh, natural, organic, preferably biodynamically grown, local, seasonal, unrefined and unprocessed foods. Refrain from adding these popular toxins into your diet: artificial flavors, colors, preservatives, sweeteners and hydrogenated fats
- Enjoy a Plant-rich diet
Everybody can benefit from a focus on plant-based foods. The more whole, plant-foods you incorporate into your routine, the more likely those unhealthy cravings will subside. To date, only approximately 6% of calories in the average current US diet comes from fresh fruit, vegetables, whole grains, legumes and seeds. When you eat more plants, you're helping not only the body get the key nutrients it needs but also helping the planet be more sustainable. Not getting enough protein is usually the main concern of many while on a plant based diet but if you add beans, nuts and legumes and grasses like quinoa and hemp that aspect can be easily taken care of. Eat a colorful variety of plants that are alkalinizing in nature and ensure you're getting the best nutrients for your body. Remember your first morning urine pH must be between 6.5-7.5.
- Healthy fats are important
Fat is an integral part of a healthy diet – the catch is, it needs to be healthy. Whole plant-based foods like nuts, seeds and avocados are amazing sources of healthy fats. Clarified butter and coconut oil are great too. Extracted oils like vegetable oil and canola and processed fats like margarine need to be avoided
- Eat nutrient dense foods; concentrate less on calories
A variety of nutrients – such as vitamins, minerals and phytonutrients – are essential for good health. Eat a rainbow of fruits and vegetables along with all kinds of whole grains, beans and other unrefined whole plant foods to get the most out of your diet.
- 5. Organic: eat organic when you can. Organic foods have a host of nutritional benefits compared with their conventionally grown counterparts, including more antioxidants, fewer toxic heavy metals and less pesticide residue. All of these lead to a higher toxin load on the body and when avoided, can serve the body better. A new study published in the British Journal of Nutrition shows that pesticide residues are three to four times more likely in conventionally grown foods and have double the amount of the toxic metal cadmium.
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Incorporate Super-foods like garlic, ginger, onions broccoli sprouts and eggs (GGOBE) to support healthy detoxification systems. While the quest is to avoid exposure to toxins as much as possible, you are bound to be inhaling and absorbing copious amounts of environmental toxins daily. The GGOBE foods provide a very important mineral sulfur. One of the most abundant in the body, sulfur is required for the synthesis of glutathione, one of our premier endogenous antioxidants, taurine that helps with the cardiovascular system and other amino acids like methionine and cysteine that aid in comprehensive detoxification.
GGOBE, especially the vegetables also provide a nutrient called
sulforaphane, an organosulfur compound. Sulforaphane exhibits anticancer, antidiabetic, and antimicrobial properties. These super biodetox foods are also a rich source of IP 6 which
aids in the metabolism of insulin and calcium, promotes healthy hair growth, bone marrow cell metabolism, eye membrane development, and helps the liver transfer fat to other parts of the body.
We suggest regularly incorporating these foods daily to add variety to the diet and to achieve that jump start in functional detoxification.
Stay healthy this summer!
