One of the most common questions I’m asked about is clean eating. Mainly, what are my personal strategies, what do I focus on, and what do I recommend. I get this so much that I created an entire program around it!
So today I’m sharing with you the essential discoveries that make up my own clean eating strategy. I use or implement each one of these every single day.
Nourish Plate
I follow the Nourish Plate concept each time I eat. By doing so, I’m able to enjoy ALL foods. Since my Nourish program teaches you what foods work well with your unique body chemistry, you don’t remove entire food groups from your diet just because it sounds cool to do so. You actually learn what types of foods fuel YOUR body best and how they fit into your personal clean eating strategy. Knowing this, you can literally have your cake and eat it, too. It just needs to fit on the plate.
During Nourish we DO limit our intake, but just a little bit and for a good reason. We not only remove common food allergens (dairy, gluten) we also remove added sugar, caffeine, alcohol, and other foods that may be affecting our body in a negatively. The difference is that we bring the foods back into our diet in a meaningful way. The Nourish plate works as a portion guide during the program and long after it’s over.
Vitamix
My Vitamix is more than just my favorite kitchen appliance. It’s my friend. My clean eating partner. My daily joy. Sound a little over the top? Perhaps it is. I just love my Vitamix machine. We make beautiful meals together, mostly in the form of creamy and delicious green smoothies, savory soups, dressings, dips, and other clean eating, Nourish-friendly delights. Yes, a Vitamix is an investment. But it’s an investment in your health and vitality. It’s the one appliance that I use every single day.
Sugar Strategy
This one insight might be the most important nugget you get from my Nourish program. Sugar: we love to hate it. And we love to love it. It’s the crutch that we rely on for so many things. But here’s the rub: for many people, sugar is NOT an everyday food. I like to equate sugar to alcohol. Many of us enjoy a glass of wine, on occasion. But we wouldn’t drink at work. Or after lunch. Or in the car. We wouldn’t do a shot every time we passed by a co-worker’s candy bowl, right? If we applied the same common sense restraint to sugar, it could cause a profound shift in our relationship. I’ve had a sugar strategy for years and it works.
During Nourish, we remove added sugar for 21 days. Then we watch. And ever so slowly some magical things happen. At first, it sucks. There’s anxiety. Headaches. Cravings. But soon you are able to create a path for newly found clarity. And with that clarity, you can create a strategy. Creating a sugar strategy for yourself is a gift that keeps on giving. It’s one of the most important takeaways of my Nourish program.
Food Confidence
I love being able to look at a recipe and clean it up. And when I say clean it up, I just mean make it work for me and my eating style. Knowing how to do this comes with experience. Experience comes from practice. That’s why cooking your own food is so important! You don’t have to cook everything from scratch, but you do want to know the basics for whipping up clean meals that satisfy. This is usually the first question I get when someone is deciding whether to do the program. Do I have to cook? My usual response is this:
- Do you want to feel better?
- Do you want to have less gas/bloating/digestive issues?
- Do you want to stop gaining weight?
- Do you want to have more energy?
If yes, then you need to stop eating the food that is making you sick. There’s no shortcut here. You have to take responsibility for what you consume and that starts on your own plate, in your own kitchen. But here’s the thing: the more you prepare your own food, the better you get at it. The better you get at something, the more you love it.
Food Confidence….that’s what Nourish is all about.
