Expand Your Diet & Shrink your Waistline

Our modern word Diet has a history, with origins coming from the Greek diaita . Diaita was a noun that meant a way of living, and also had a more specific meaning, signifying a way of living which could include a food diet as well as other other daily habits. Most of our daily food choices ultimately depend on preference, marketing and trends. Someone may decide to follow a trend and go fat free, carb free, hi protein, rustic or something else.  Restaurant commercials and food products tempt us everywhere.  When you combine our fast food culture, a trendy diet, and then limit it further with personal preferences, it’s fairly easy to come up nutritionally short, under satisfied, and overweight.

What does your diet say about you?  What is your Diaita; your way of living?  Does it include too many fast foods, packaged foods, or high sodium meals that dominate your taste buds into food ignorance?  Have you bullied your taste buds into submission?  Our taste buds are capable of subtlety unless you bully them with salty, fatty or highly processed foods and add-ons.  By giving our taste buds simple, clean foods, we can re-awaken our taste buds and our good health.

My food philosophy is built around whole foods that are seasonally and readily available combined with essential food groups. Learn the basics, and then add flair and flavor!  I assist my clients in learning simple recipes that use natural ingredients and to proportion their serving size for each meal and snack.   Expanding the number of foods and flavors in your go to selections can bring even more flair and nutrition to your plate. You have to learn to play the diet game for good healthy living.  Once you learn the game, you can keep your skills up by practicing. 

Some of my favorite ways to “practice” are to experiment with color themes of food, try something new or mysterious to me, and try foods and spices from other cultures.  When at the local market, I look for fruits and vegetables that are bold in color, flavor and even name.  An earlier post of mine was a recipe that used Daikon radishes as a sushi wrapper, and it was AMAZING! Finding new, unconventional ways to eat healthy can be such fun, and can really help expand your diet.  Here are some ideas to get you started:

• Try making some of the new Cauliflower recipes.  From pizza crust, to a rice substitute, and lots of other ideas, Vitamin C loaded cauliflower is perfect.
• How many different colors can you get into your salad – set a new PR!
• Make a Jicama salad!  Don’t know what it is, find out!
  
•  Have a tasting platter of 5 different types of greens to take notice of the subtlety in flavors.  Try chard, arugula, kale, spinach, mustard, dandelion, etc
• Throw some golden beets on the grill. Slice for salads or as a side dish with spicy mustard dip.

Trying new things, although sometimes weird or scary, can really open your eyes into a whole new world of foods, flavors, and cultures.  Get some friends or family in on the game too!

Go with whatever smells or looks good to you, and start playing in the kitchen!

Expanding your diet is a great way to keep you moving forward in your health journey. The more you expand your healthy variety, the less likely you are to expand your waistline.