Down and Dirty

It has been almost two weeks since I have placed myself on this diet. Eliminating snacks for this time period was a fabulous idea (practically speaking; otherwise it sucks), and since then I've cut down even more on the less nutritive foods and focused on highly quality nutrition. It has been thoroughly cleansing.  This pairing down, is in fact, happening naturally.  The more I integrate clean eating, the more my body craves it, so then I can surf the healthy spiral up and begin to let my BODY dictate what I should eat and not my emotions... and that includes my brain as it is directly connected with sugar cravings and emotional eating.

Nutrition feeds information to cells and those cells, being hard little workers, distribute all of the food's nutrients to your blood, bones, organs, tissues, brain, ending with your emotions.  If you constantly feed your body a variety of whole foods with a high amount of nutrients, your body will process that information with vigor, and health is recycled over and over again. Same works in the converse.  Feed your body even a little refined sugar, artificial sweetener, processed foodstuffs, high sodium, and dare I say it... caffeine... and you make your body work extra hard to distribute the appropriate digestive enzymes, minerals and hormones to complete it's cycle in the body... sometimes taking years to finally exit... if at all!

To be completely frank with you I struggle with certain extreme digestive complexities...ok, I am not going to be so frank about the deets, but the long and the short of it, in a beating-around-the-bush-fashion is that I am highly sugar sensitive and when I eat poorly (usually sugar, alcohol, my allergic foods, and too little veggies) bad bacteria takes over and I am left with some pretty frustrating side affects... including weight gain.  I have a poor genetic constitution, and while I fully believe that we have the power to change our genes, I think it takes a lifetime to do so.  The progression and it's benefits are immediate and rewarding and if it's consistent through your lifetime the benefits are priceless.  Less doctor visits, less disease, less allergies and colds, a lifetime-al happy demeanor ;), memory retention, higher energy, lower stress, and most important to me is renewing the next generation.

I'm not going to detail all that I have taken out of my diet because I would become overwhelmed. But. Here is my basic meal plan:

Salads:
Mixed greens
various chopped veggies
avocado
kim chi i (those who inquire about this gets extra points)

Blended veggie soup:
zucchini, green and yellow
onion, garlic
cabbage
brussels sprouts
collards
celery
fennel
cayenne

Kale sauteed in coconut oil with red pepper flakes topped with fresh herbs

and steamed anything.

I am having a small amount of good protein daily like wild canned tuna or organic chicken and sometimes I will have a serving of a gluten free whole grain.  But the main focus here is getting in as many veggies as a can.  That's where the optimal nutrition is.  I can just picture bright, happy, shiny working cells circulating in my body.  That makes me feel good. :)