My Food Philosophy: I believe in eating unadulterated, quality ingredients that come from the ground and the whole animal. I believe in enjoying and celebrating food around a table with great company and walking away from a meal feeling nourished in both body and soul.
But, let’s be real. That’s just isn’t the case for a lot of us.
Before I switched to a more whole foods way of eating, I was not celebrating food. Instead, I was constantly thinking about food and not in a good way. I would think about foods in terms of what I could or couldn’t eat and label them appropriately as ‘good’ or ‘bad.’ It was a roller coaster and more of a nightmare than anything. After my cancer ordeal I started eating to fuel my body and as the years went by I thought less and less about food. I still had the low-fat diet mentality, but overall my relationship with food improved. And then one day, I realized I didn’t think about food in an all-consuming way anymore. I was the smallest I’d ever been and I ate whatever I wanted and whatever felt good to me. How was this possible?
This was possible because I had retrained my body to recognize what real, good food felt like and my body was able to naturally regulate itself. I never gained, I never lost. I simply stayed at this awesome size and had this great love of food and I didn’t care about weight or scales or how I felt in my clothes. I had a new set point and I could stay at that set point no matter what. How? Intuitive eating. I didn’t know it had a name at the time, but that’s what I was doing. I was eating intuitively based on what my body needed.
I later went on to become a Holistic Nutritionist and one of our required books was Nourishing Wisdom by Marc David. It was life changing for many of us. The entire book’s premise is about how to eat by your body’s intuition. Every single one of us resonated with this book because it opened our eyes to something bigger: food and life and how to have a healthy, effortless relationship with both. DaNelle Wolford, a fellow blogger and also a whole foods advocate, recently wrote a book on her own ‘Aha!’ moment about her personal experience with this, too. It’s another great read: Have Your Cake and Lose Weight, Too. It all starts with eating real food. If you’re eating stuff from a box or from hormone-filled animals sitting in their feces for most of their lives or you haven’t touched a vegetable in awhile, your body is nutritionally starving. This sets the stage for sleep issues, lowered immunity and disease. The good news: people all over are waking up to eating real, whole foods and creating change in their own bodies and lives. They are ditching the chemicals, refined sugars, GMOs, fake oils and processed stuff and going for fresh, whole, organically grown foods that truly fill them up. People are eating foods that fuel their cells and body and their lives are changing.
If you are just starting out and trying to ditch toxins in your home and eating more whole foods and less from a box or you are way down the road with all of this, I hope you find a place here.
There won’t be counting calories or low-fat diet dogma here, but there will be real food health posts and nourishing recipes made with quality, whole food ingredients: lots of gorgeous veggies, good fats, fermented, probiotic-rich foods, bone broths and grass-fed/pasture-raised meats and definitely gluten-free sweet treats from time to time.
So glad you’re here,
Chef Jamie Oliver sums it up well…
My philosophy to food and healthy eating has always been about enjoying everything in a balanced, and sane way. Food is one of life’s greatest joys yet we’ve reached this really sad point where we’re turning food into the enemy, and something to be afraid of. I believe that when you use good ingredients to make pasta dishes, salads, stews, burgers, grilled vegetables, fruit salads, and even outrageous cakes, they all have a place in our diets. We just need to rediscover our common sense: if you want to curl up and eat macaroni and cheese every once in a while – that’s alright! Just have a sensible portion next to a fresh salad, and don’t eat a big old helping of chocolate cake afterwards.
Knowing how to cook means you’ll be able to turn all sorts of fresh ingredients into meals when they’re in season, at their best, and cheapest! Cooking this way will always be cheaper than buying processed food, not to mention better for you. And because you’ll be cooking a variety of lovely things, you’ll naturally start to find a sensible balance. Some days you’ll feel like making something light, and fresh, other days you’ll want something warming and hearty. If you’ve got to snack between meals, try to go for something healthy rather than loading up on chocolate or potato crisps. Basically, as long as we all recognize that treats should be treats, not a daily occurrence, we’ll be in a good place. So when I talk about having a ‘healthy’ approach to food, and eating better I’m talking about achieving that sense of balance: lots of the good stuff, loads of variety, and the odd indulgence every now and then.