1. Easy
2. Affordable
3. Delicious
My friend Ed Edge offered to do a free nutrition consult and it’s been a game changer. He recently started Have Heart, a health and wellness center dedicated to cultivating healthy lifestyles in under served populations in Richmond. With a background in nutrition and a career as a paramedic, he knows what’s up when it comes to health.
I’m the queen of convenience and don’t like to cook so my freezer was stocked with microwave meals. I knew they weren’t healthy. Problem: I didn’t know the difference between real nutrition and a brand’s marketing campaign to make their product seem healthy. For instance — those Kashi frozen dinners. Nope, not healthy. Why? All frozen meals contain high sodium and high cholesterol/saturated fat — the stuff that creates irreversible plaque in our arteries (yikes).
New eats for breakfast, lunch and dinner — I love these Brita filtering bottles
I asked Ed what he ate on a day to day basis: muesli with vanilla soy milk for breakfast, spinach and avocado salad for lunch, quinoa and black bean salad (pre-made at Kroger) for dinner. That’s a pretty hard core vegan diet, but I used it as a starting point and felt my energy levels increase immediately. Also, it’s surprisingly delicious, inexpensive, and does not involve cooking — triple win! At this point I make substitutions but try to eat at least one of these meals each day.
Another fancy thing I learned is that we don’t need protein, we need amino acids (the things that make up protein). Dark green leafy stuff is stocked with amino acids and they are WAY easier to break down than proteins, so the body functions more efficiently.
While there are always exceptions, a few general rules Ed offered:
Do not eat...
1. If you have to microwave it.
2. If you have to freeze it.
3. If you cannot see the food through the packaging.
4. If it’s white.
Definitely eat something dark green, leafy and uncooked at least once a day.
Definitely drink half of your body weight in ounces of water everyday (i.e. if you weigh 150 lbs, drink at least 75 fl oz of water per day).
If you have questions or need help making diet changes, contact Ed at cutebikes@gmail.com or through RVA Vegan’s “veg assistance” contact form.
2 comments:
KZ, it's great to see you embracing healthy eating! A few thoughts I had on this topic..
1. If you really dislike cooking, the RAW diet might be a really great fit for you. Check it out. There is a ton of literature out there about how good a raw diet can be for certain people - especially if it meshes with your lifestyle. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raw_foodism)
2. One of my "go-to" rules on eating well is reading the ingredients label. When something has more than 1 ingredient that I don't understand - I don't eat it. Also, if there is any added sugar or salt (especially with canned veggies), I don't eat it either. It's a really easy way to keep the bad stuff out.
3. Lastly - I'm reading an AMAZING book called Eat to Live that is really inspiring me to make healthy choices on a day to day basis. The author, Dr. Furhman breaks things down in the most common sense form - a healthy food means one that has more nutrients than calories.
Anyways, I thought I'd share my two cents on the subject. It's been one of my favorite topics lately :)
Awesome info CHT! I need to look into that RAW diet... sounds right up my alley,
Post a Comment