Is there any tips you could share with us GG? I'm sure we would all be interested in an alternative way of healthy eating .
Bramble
Gosh, where would I start? It takes 30 days to change a habit and because I had to do so quickly, I managed to make a lot of changes at once - under usual circumstances I'd probably 'nibble away' at these and make smaller changes and let these settle in first, together they're pretty major.
The first thing - eat more veg and fruit (two thirds veg, one third fruit). Choose organic as it won't be covered in the bad pesticides and intensively farmed so the nutritional value is low. It may be more expensive depending on where you shop, but it's far, far better for you. An easy way to get in more fruit and veg is to blend this into a smoothie (Nutribullets or a good blender is useful). We've simply experimented with whatever food we have around and it's usually been tasty (except for raw red cabbage, yuk!) We aim for 10-12 fruit and veg per day, which sounds a lot but if you have a couple of smoothies, a lovely rainbow salad or a home made vegetable broth, you soon get up to that.
Cut out wheat and dairy as much as possible. I can't tell you how much better we all feel with this (there's a good website, Wheat Belly which goes into some of the reasoning behind it all). We use buckwheat or coconut flour and now make pizza with a cauliflower base - scrummy! We use goats' milk instead of cows, it doesn't have the casein which can irritate your system. There are some good soy yoghurts, I also found a lovely coconut yoghurt recently at only 0.5% sugar.
A lot of today's meat and fish is intensively farmed and because of the methods, large amounts of antibiotics are needed. A sick or dosed up animal fed an unnatural diet doesn't make the best food. Choose free range, organic chicken; wild rather than farmed salmon; good quality meat (though keep the red meat as a treat only). Focus on quality not quantity. Use all of the animal - remember those broths our grandmas used to make? The bones are a good source of minerals so use these afterwards in a soup for maximum goodness.
Cut out sugar and (worse) artificial sweeteners. This was the hardest part for me as I have such a sweet tooth, but the less I have, the less I crave and now I'm getting very close to the point of finding it a turn off. Limit yourself to a spoonful or two of honey instead, and use fruit to sweeten - apple, pear, kiwi etc work well. Cinnamon too.
If it's got a label on it, the chances are you shouldn't be eating it. If it has a label on it with ingredients you don't recognise, you can pretty much guarantee that's the case. Real food doesn't come in boxes - and one look at the stuff that does will show you the high levels of salt and sugar used.
Cut out table salt, use herbs and spices instead for flavouring. If you must use salt, choose Himalayan Pink Rock Salt which has a better array of minerals.
Don't fall for the cereals and foods that boast "high in vitamins" or any other marketing hype - if you check the labels you'll find that they're often very high in stuff you shouldn't be eating too.
Drink water - plenty of it.
Eat fermented food or use a good probiotic (not the cheap supermarket yoghurts that are sugar laden).
There are literally hundreds upon hundreds of websites with fabulous recipes. My most recent find is
http://deliciouslyella.com/, (again someone who has healed a condition with diet) and she has recently launched a cookbook. We've recently made a lovely chocolate orange cheesecake with no sugar, gluten or dairy and it was absolutely fabulous.
It HAS meant a huge change in our eating habits, we eat a lot more raw food now and cook from scratch, but it's been worth it. Food tastes so much better when it's home cooked, and we feel so much better for it too. The microwave has been ditched completely and I threw out most of our tins and boxes (with the exception of gluten free crackers). I will cook and freeze food so we have some 'quick fixes' if the girls want a quick-fix, warm meal.
I bet you wish you'd never asked? :-)
GG x
