Recently a friend asked me this question; “I love your book (Live Vibrantly! 10 Steps To Maintain Youthfulness, Increase Energy and Restore Your Health), and I feel like I’m so not there yet. What’s something simple I can do before I start the 10 step blueprint?” Have you been wondering the same thing? If starting with the blueprint seems a bit overwhelming to you then let’s start with this. Let’s look at how we can raise the quality of the food you currently eat.
The Quality Of Your Food Matters
Why? It’s simple; life = life. How alive your food is equals how alive you are. The question now becomes how do I know how alive my food is? To keep things easy here’s a list of what to look for when choosing food that will support you to live at your highest level. For now just do a swap for swap; look to improve the quality of the foods you currently eat. Some things you currently eat you might not be able to find a healthy swap for; at which point I invite you to take the hint and consider dropping that item from your current food intake.
Whole foods; this is a term most of you have heard at one time or another; what is “whole food” though? It’s just that, the whole food in it’s original state with no alterations or additions. What it’s NOT is genetically modified, processed, has had a component isolated, sprayed with chemicals, contains hormones or medications, grown in nutrient depleted soil. Choose “organic” when available keeping in mind that many small farmers use organic and permaculture methods but are not certified as such. This is where getting to know and developing a relationship with local farmers and farms benefits you. Organic doesn’t mean it’s perfect; it means that the quality should be higher and it shouldn’t contain the above mentioned “nots”.
Choose Local Seasonal Foods
Now look to see where it comes from. Is it local? Local can mean different things depending on where you live and shop. But for the most part whether you are shopping at a farmer’s market or grocery store, look to see if it came from an area fairly close to where you are shopping at. After looking at where the food comes from ask yourself how long it would have had to travel to get to where you are at. Whether organic or not, long travel times leave a larger carbon footprint (a subject I will go further into in a future blog) and many of the nutrients are depleted from picking before reaching its full ripeness or readiness and longer transportation times. Which leads to eating seasonally.
What is in season in your area? Eating foods that are available to you according to season and region provide you with the nutrients your body needs most at that time of year to stay healthy and strong. And can help lessen your carbon footprint.
Get to know what comes from your area. Google searches make it super easy these days. Type things like local farms, local produce, local pasture meats, raw, local pasture dairy into the search and see what comes up.
For pantry items these days ordering online can be an option for many. In the United States I love Thrive Market (enter to win a $10,000 shopping spree) for their fabulous pricing and variety of healthy choices. In British Columbia, Canada I’ve tried Spud Market and quite liked them. Again to see what’s available to you in your area type “organic local food home delivery” into your search and see what comes up. If you have nothing available to you in your area then Amazon could be a good resource for many staple items at reasonable prices.
Translation
What does the above advice actually look like when shopping? Here’s some examples for you:
- non-fat or skimmed dairy swap = whole/full fat, grass-fed pastured dairy
- eggs swap = ones that are not vegetarian fed, that do get some access at least to roam outside
- regular meat swap = organic, pastured meats or at the very least hormone free, non-medicated
- farmed fish and seafood swap = sustainable (use SeafoodWatch.org app to guide purchasing)
- grains swap = whole, traditional, ancient, organic or non-gmo (and sprouted if possible)
- pasteurized/cooked honey swap = raw, unpasteurized/uncooked (and organic if possible)
- sugar laden, processed treats swap = fresh fruit, dates, young coconut
- commercially farmed, sprayed, pesticide laden produce swap = produce grown using organic methods in healthy soil by local farms
These are just a few swaps you can make in this initial phase. Don’t make it difficult; it’s really not. Just start reading labels and getting to know what’s in your area. “Are you kidding?! I barely have time to shop let alone stopping to read to every label!” Is that you? Then take just five minutes each time you shop to read 2 – 3 labels of regularly purchased items. Each time you you shop add a couple more labels under your belt. Remember this is an investment in you and your family’s lives; make how you and your family get to live a priority! Don’t wait until you or someone you love has a major health issue and has to make major changes overnight before it’s too late. Start slowly but start now. Use the shopping template in my book as your guide to make it even easier.
Once you have swapped out your basic everyday items and become comfortable reading labels and knowing where your food comes from, you are now ready to move into my 10 step blueprint. Pick any ONE of the 10 steps as your starting place, go in any order. Stick with that step until it becomes habit, is incorporated into your life and you don’t even have to think about it anymore; it just happens. This is not about changing your entire life overnight and taking on the entire blueprint right out of the gate. Even if you never incorporate all the steps, making a few of them part of your life will elevate the way you get to live your life. You’ve got nothing to lose by trying and everything to gain. So what are you waiting for; the “perfect” time? never gonna happen. NOW is the time.
To get your copy of my book, “Live Vibrantly! 10 Steps To Maintain Youthfulness, Increase Energy and Restore Your Health” click here.
Live Vibrantly!
ps. If you have a question about any of the steps in the blueprint please do reach out to me! You can post a comment on my facebook page, comment here below, email me at info@iLiveVibrantly.com or connect through my website.
