Hi there, Nurture your Palaters, Let’s talk about “Eating to Live” within the family unit. This post is derived from some talking points from our most recent community coaching call. If you missed this discussion and would like to listen in on future discussions, sign-up for my email list HERE and save contact@nurtureyourpalate.com in your Contacts and email favorites so you never miss a notification from us!
In today’s blog, I will share 3 foundational food fundamentals to consider when designing your personal meals alongside your family’s. In addition, I will also share 3 practical tips that may help you to navigate incorporating a healthier diet into your life and home. Now let’s get into it!
Nurture your Palate’s 3 Food Fundamentals
The purpose of these fundamentals is to primarily point you toward making food choices that will serve a purpose and benefit your health.
Consider,
#1: Food is Information. Food can ultimately fuel or hinder your health. There’s no such thing as neutral to your body’s interpretation of the food you eat. Your body will begin to produce signals, elicit chemicals, and produce symptoms in response to the predominant information you provide it. Now this extends beyond food, it also includes lifestyle, but for our purposes in this discussion, let’s focus on food. Symptoms are never neutral, they are the direct result of a root cause. For example, some individuals have an apparent lower carbohydrate or sugar tolerance. Whenever they consume a carbohydrate-heavy diet with minimal healthy fats and protein, which both help to regulate the blood sugar response and balance out carbohydrate effects in the body, then they may get acne as a symptom of having this higher carbohydrate diet. Does this make sense? So for a person like this, the more sugar they eat without the addition of healthy protein and fats, the more acne they could experience.
Food is information, make sure you consume the best information and it will produce the best results! Think about how this applies to your life as well. The more positive in, the more positive out. The more negative in, the more negative out.
For my readers who are really in need of a health breakthrough, I really want to encourage you to FOCUS IN and make sure that the information you are eating physically, spiritually, and soully (mind, will, emotions) is conducive to the healing you desire to receive and walk in.
#2: Food should provide nutrition. This means that the food you eat should be nutritionally valuable to you. If you’re going to consume calories or energy from food, you want to make sure it has beneficial nutrient value to you and isn’t something that is just going to get you full but yet provide your cells with no fuel for healthy function. Your body is going to do its best to extract the nutrients out of what you eat, but it can’t get something from nothing.
#3: Eat to Live, Don’t live to eat. Are you eating to maintain health and vitality, reverse or prevent chronic disease? These are questions to consider when determining your meals each day. What is going to fuel you to life?
I would encourage you to keep these 3 food fundamentals in mind as you make your grocery lists and decide what to put on your plate to eat. Consider these things, write them down, and put them on your refrigerator so you don’t forget them and can keep them in mind.
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Eating to Live in the Family Unit
Within the family unit; Eating to Live revolves around keeping things simple. So I’m going to share 3 practical tips with you that can help to make meal prepping and planning easier for you if you are the primary cook in your home.
1st tip: If those in your family are not on the same healthy eating journey try keeping your main meal focal points similar and switching up the sides so that you can meet your nutrient goals.
Let’s say, if your family really likes having baked russet potatoes, you opt for the sweet potato instead. If they want beef burgers, maybe you can experiment with making your own burger out of chickpeas or black beans if you desire more meat-free meal options. Another example of a healthy swap for burger night is substituting the bun for lettuce and making a tasty lettuce burger if you are desiring a lower carbohydrate diet. Low-carb noodle options for your long noodle meals like spaghetti or noodle stir fry are heart of palm linguini noodles, carrot noodles or zucchini noodles just to give you an idea.
2nd tip: Make it from scratch & Get the Family involved! You can get your family involved, especially your kids with helping you to prep certain meals and food items from scratch to make them healthier. So if you or your kids like having soups for lunch, instead of buying canned soups that may have lots of sodium or unnecessary preservatives, etc. in them; y’all can get together at the beginning of the week – maybe a Sunday afternoon and batch prep 2 different types of soups and salads to go with them for the week so lunch is made for the week ahead of time.
You can also get together and prep your breakfasts for the week and a dessert or sweet treat for the week that way you can be accountable to ensuring you are eating wholesome ingredients that are not full of harmful gut-disrupting chemicals like artificial food colorings, highly processed oils, genetically modified sugar, and other unnecessary additives. **Note, depending on where you are in your journey – just be mindful of the ingredients you are using. If you are avoiding sweets for some time; then leave out the sugar in your baking.
3rd tip: Cook and stock your kitchen for health. Now I know this is a hard one and some of you may or may not agree with me and that is fine; Sometimes the foods that are best for us don’t always taste the best at first. This is where “nurturing your palate” becomes vitally important. If your child has become accustomed to eating highly processed foods – high in sugar, unhealthier fats, and table salt – their taste buds and your taste buds if that’s what you have been eating are primed for this. The companies that make highly processed and refined foods that have been stripped of vital nutrients make their foods in such a way as to get you addicted for lack of a better term so that you can keep coming back for more. Because of this, when you are trying to eat healthier, you might find that it just simply may not taste like what you are used to and you’d rather go back to what is comfortable. HOWEVER, you just have to keep working at it. If you need strategies and more personalized tips on this, this is where someone like me and Nurture your Palate can come in to help you through nutrition consulting and health and wellness coaching. You can find out more about these services and sign up for my email list on my website at https://nurtureyourpalate.com or you can email me at contact@nurtureyourpalate.com
It takes time to nurture your palate and it requires patience to work through this process. It doesn’t have to be miserable; hopefully, you can avoid tantrums but if not; so be it, because investing in and eating quality food will pay you, your children and family back in rich dividends in your health in both the short and long terms. Also, I’m not saying you can’t have a pre-packaged good or snack that is ready to eat for a quick bite during the week – just make sure to read the ingredients and make sure they are quality and not chemicals. You want to make sure that the majority of your diet is real, whole foods.
Note, if you have a spouse who likes to eat highly refined and processed foods, I don’t recommend you try to control their eating or incessantly badger them. They’re grown. I do suggest that you be the best role model for healthy eating that you can and that you learn how to make healthier foods taste good and desirable so that maybe they would want to try some. If you are the main grocery shopper, then maybe try making the point to just buy the healthier choices and options to keep in-house.
That’s all I have to share for this post! Thank you for reading and let me know if you found any of these tips helpful! Take care and remember in all you do, Choose Life & Live!