The Foundation of Good Health:
One of my Naturopathy teachers was Dr.F.O.Lawrence. He taught us that health is like a coach pulled by many horses. The strongest and leading horse is our nutrition. Sayings like “you are what you eat”, “food is your best medicine” and many similar sayings have been around for thousands of years. Moment to moment you’re always choosing what to consume. In time you become the results of what you choose to eat and drink.
As a health coach, I focus primarily on helping you take the best care of your body, health and happiness. Starting today, you can choose to eat healthy foods and take steps to cultivate a variety of good habits. Do not worry about major dietary and lifestyle changes at the moment. Let’s start by making a few simple effective choices. What you eat, how much you sleep, the amount you move, what you think, how you deal with stress, how much water you drink, how many bad habits you discard and how much your social relationships support you, can all be changed slowly step by step if needed. Eventually your health program can have a profound effect on the quality of your life and your longevity.
Think:
Of the many positive steps you can take, three can be controlled to give you maximum results. The steps are : what you eat, how much you move or exercise and what you think about. They tend to be fixed patterns in many peoples lives, but can be gradually changed without too much drama. If you want vibrant health, freedom from disease and to be filled with energy and vitality, start to upgrade your health habits today. Most people are digging their graves with their knives and forks at every meal. While food is only one of the essential ingredients of vibrant health, it is a big one. Your body is composed of more than 70 trillion cells. Each cell has a little engine. For those engines to function properly, they require specific fuels. If the fuel is of a poor grade, the engine will lose power. Most of the fuel for our cells comes from what we eat and drink.
Plan:
Food contains vitamins, minerals, water, protein, carbohydrates, fats and enzymes that are needed to sustain life in our cells. These nutrients are involved in every bodily process. For example food and nutrients are involved in fighting infection, providing energy as well as healing and repairing the body and keeping it going every day. Most people eat too much low nutrient, man made, toxic, chemical laden food every day. That is not a good plan. The human body has tremendous resilience and often hides the repercussions of unhealthy food choices for many years. Eventually poor eating catches up with you. Even if you aren’t obviously sick (sometimes referred to as vertical illness), you may not necessarily be healthy. By understanding nutrition and knowing what nutrients you need and what foods contain them, you can improve the state of your health, ward off disease and maintain the harmonious balance that nature requires.
Why Age?
Why do you choose the foods that you eat? Most people make poor food choices on a daily basis that unconsciously constitute a slow suicide. What do you think consuming chemicals via eating, drinking, applying externally, and breathing does to us on a daily basis? What do you think consuming junk food; nonfood; genetically modified food; nutritionally void food; tinned or packaged food; chemically treated food and lab produced food will do to you? Your body requires the best fuel to operate. Do you put sugar into the gas tank of your car? You know that it will damage or destroy your engine! Do you want to live to 120 years old? What if you could do so and be in perfect health? What if you could even reverse ageing? At present, just when we are at the top of our careers, when we are good at “who we are and what we do”, our health betrays us due to a lifetime of poor lifestyle and dietary choices. Then suddenly it’s too late. You are caught spiraling downward, ending up in hospitals, with brain fog and lack of energy, with bones that won’t hold you up, living on pills and eventually ending up in the nursing home. Do you want to escape that fate? There is another way-a healthy way! The choice to be healthy, to live a longer better quality longer life requires a shift in your thinking and lifestyle now.
Up to You:
The first step is to understand that the way you have been eating is not serving your health. This is true for most people. You have to decide to completely change your thought processes about food. What foods are you addicted to? Be addicted to healthy eating. Beat any other sort of food addiction. This is not about dieting ! We need to eat healthy plant based foods that build us up and enhance our immunity, health and energy levels. Life involves millions of choices. Moment by moment you are making choices and they give you results in your life. What you think, what you imagine, how you react, what you eat, how you move, what you say, what you feel and what you expect in life results in your current situation. With that in mind, it is time to take full responsibility for the decisions you make. Start right now by acknowledging your immense power to create what you’ve always wanted- a healthy, fit body and a joyful, fulfilling life.
Explore more closely the importance of your day to day food choices. Reprogram and retrain your senses to choose empowerment and release self limiting beliefs and habits. The primary goal of an aliveness eating program is to get to the point where you’re eating a sufficient amount of high quality living foods prepared with love. Avoid fanaticism. Some of you may need to do ‘baby steps’ to incorporate healthy eating gradually. Coach yourself or work with a coach if the job seems daunting. Eat mainly vegetables either raw or lightly steamed. Fresh, in season, preferably organic, beautifully coloured delectable plant foods can be found. Soups, stews and stir fried foods can be health giving. Use culinary herbs and spices in healthy ways to enhance healthy eating. I shop for grass fed beef, lamb, ostrich and venison plus organic chicken and eggs for protein. If your fruit, vegetables and protein are not organic, do not stress about it. At least try to avoid all GMO foods and seed oils.Make sure that your drinking and cooking water supply is flouride and chemical free. Whatever makes it to your kitchen, cook it with love and reverence for all life. Love and care in the preparation of food makes it high octane fuel. I end this article with a list of what I consider to be the best foods to consume.
Shopping List:
- Acai Berries
- Aloe Vera gel or juice
- Almonds.
- Apples
- Apricots
- Artichokes
- Arugula or Rocket
- Asparagus
- Aubergine. Brinjal.
- Avocados
- Baby Marrows.Courgette
- Banana
- Barley Grass
- Beans
- Beetroot and its leaves.
- Berries
- Blackberries
- Blueberries
- Broccoli
- Brussels Sprouts
- Cabbage
- Cauliflower
- Carrots
- Celery
- Celeriac
- Cherries
- Chick Peas
- Chilis
- Chlorella
- Chlorophyll
- Cinnemon
- Cocao
- Coconut oil, milk, flour or shredded coconut.
- Collards
- Cranberries
- Cucumbers
- Daikon
- Dandelion leaf and root.
- Dates
- Eggs.Organic.Free Range.
- Fats.Coconut Oil.Palm Oil. Macademia Oil.Lard.Duck Fat. Cold Pressed Olive Oil
- Fennel
- Fermented Foods. Kefir. Sauerkraut.Kimchi.Coconut Kefir
- Figs
- Fish.Unpolluted.
- Flaxseed or Linseed
- Flower Blossoms.Non toxic flowers only
- Garlic
- Ginger
- Goji Berries
- Grapes
- Grapefruit
- Green Beans
- Green Leafy Vegetables
- Kale
- Kiwi Fruit
- Leeks
- Lemons
- Lentils.
- Lettuce.Cos.Iceberg.Butter lettuce
- Limes
- Mango
- Meats.Beef.Lamb.Mutton.Chicken. Turkey. Duck. Goat. Venison. Ostrich.Organ Meats. Bone Broth Soups.
- Medicinal, Culinary Herbs and Spices.
- Melons
- Millet
- Miso
- Mung Beans
- Mushrooms
- Mustard Seed and its leaf.
- Nuts.Almonds. Brazil. Cashew. Hazel Nuts.Macadamia.Pecan. Pine Nuts.Pistachio. Walnuts.
- Okra
- Olives
- Onions
- Oranges
- Parsley
- Parsnips
- Paw Paw
- Pears
- Peas. especially Mangetout
- Peppermint
- Persimmons
- Pineapple
- Plums
- Pomegranates
- Prunes
- Pumpkins and their Seeds
- Quinoa
- Radish
- Raisins
- Raspberries
- Red Peppers (Green/Purple/Yellow/Black)
- Salt-Sea and Himalayan
- Sea Vegetables
- Seeds. Chia. Sunflower. Pumpkin.
- Sesame Seeds–Tahini
- Spinach and Swiss Chard
- Squashes of various kinds
- Strawberries
- Sunflower Seeds
- Sweet Potatoes
- Tapioca
- Tea (Green, Ceylon, Puer, Rooibos, Honeybush, Hibiscus, Mints, Chamomile and many others)
- Tomatoes
- Turnips
- Vinegars. Cider.Balsamic. Red Wine.
- Walnuts
- Water -pure and chemical free.Distilled.Reverse Osmosis.Spring.Structured.Many kinds of clean water.
- Watermelon
- Watercress
- Wheatgrass
- Yellow Split Peas
- Yogurt made from kefir.Not necessarily made from cows milk.Sheep,Goat,Buffalo are generally well tolerated
- In addition to this list there is the ever growing list of superfoods from South Africa and all around available.