by Healthy Influences
Happy New Year!!! Today is the first Wednesday of 2015. For many of us that means creating resolutions, setting new goals,and intentions of improving our health and wellness. We all want to do better for the New Year and get that fresh start. We want to feel better, have more clarity, no longer feeling tired, achy, sick, bloated, gassy, abdominal pains, or be constipated or have loose bowels. All of those issues are telling us that our plumbing (digestive system) isn’t working properly and our gut is definitely not happy. This is all due to the foods we are consuming or not consuming. We tend to overindulge before the new year or perhaps we did that all year and now we feel awful. It’s time for a change!
Now, I am all for the New Change and I do trust that if you believe you will achieve, but I’m mostly for realistic resolutions, goals, and intentions that do not set you up for failure. Originally, I was going to write about New Year’s Detoxes and Cleanses, but what I realized after visiting a good friend of mine is that many of us just need to get back to basics and just basically eat much more veggies and drink more water! Cooking and Clean Eating 101. I refuse to call it healthy eating or cooking because these are the things we should be consuming that our great grandmothers, grandmothers, or mothers, even our ancestors just simply called food! Now I do have to say my ancestry is Caribbean and our food traditions consists of many carbohydrates and starches, but please do not be scared of them. We can eat them. Our body needs them as well. We have options-we can add, we can take away, we can do things to healthify it and it will taste equally the same as the old recipe or sometimes better.
7 Simple Resolutions to Incorporate in Your New Healthy Lifestyle:
1. Basically introduce new carbs/starches/grains into your lifestyle. Such as brown rice, quinoa, brown rice pasta, amaranth, etc
2. Add in fresh vegetables and/or fruit to all of your meals including breakfast. Also snacks if you can. Sneak them in to your family’s food if you must. Even if it’s just a salad, that helps. Try to buy local, you can pick up your freshest vegetables, fruit, etc at your local farmers’ market. I frequent Union Square’s Green Market every week.
3. The Acceptable Unbalanced Plate-There should be more vegetables on your plate than your carbs. You can have an unlimited amount of veggies especially green veggies like spinach, kale, collards, etc. also I want you to try to eat the rainbow when you eat your veggies and fruit. You can mix and match it’s okay but you should always consume twice to three times as much vegetables than fruits just because of the sugar intake.
4. Take a good sugar free or very low sugar multi vitamin, preferably with greens in it if possible
5. Drink More Water! You can add fruits and veggies in you water if that helps you.
6. Your body needs movement. Try to take the stairs at work or home, walk to the store if you can instead of the car, dance, get up from your computer every once in a while and stretch and take a walk, do leg lifts, squats, any movement is better than no movement at all!
7. Lastly, invest in BPA food storage containers, plan and cook ahead your clean meals and snacks for the week. Bring your necessary meals and snacks with you to work, or when you are out and about for the day. This will ensure success
Getting back to the basics is key to a happier and healthier lifestyle. I know it maybe time consuming but it doesn’t have to be. What always saves me time are food coops, farmers’ markets, online markets, or an every month vegetable/fruit delivery services.
We need a happy functioning gut to lead a happy life because if your gut/digestive system is out of whack, you are out of whack! Food is truly medicine and just starting slow and incorporating the right foods and cutting down or eliminating foods in your lifestyle would make you a better person inside and out! A healthy outside starts on the inside! As Hippocrates said, “All disease begins in the gut” and other good one is “Let thy food be thy medicine and thy medicine be thy food”
Be Well,
By Felisha at Healthy influences
Felisha is the founder of Healthy influences, a health and wellness coaching practice in NY. She is a certified Integrative Nutrition Health Coach/Holistic Nutritionist. She is also currently studying to be a Herbalist and an Aromatherapist and hopes to one day soon incorporate them into her practice. She enjoys helping others be healthy in mind, body and spirit. She is usually found picking up and taking photographs of fresh local foods at the Union Square’s Green Market.