Originally posted on Sep 26, 2018, 10:36 am. Updated on Oct. 16, 2019.

If you’re doubtful of the healing power of food, just ask Brooke Goldner, M.D. When she was 16 and diagnosed with Systemic Lupus Nephritis with stage four kidney disease, she never thought she would reach the age of 40. Now she’s healed, healthy and was featured on the cover of Vegan Health & Fitness magazine’s Fit Over 40 issue in April 2018. That’s a transformation that she credits almost entirely to the way she eats. Today, as a best-selling author, the founder of VeganMedicalDoctor.com, GoodbyeLupus.com and creator of the Hyper-Nourishing Nutrition Protocol for Lupus Recovery, she’s helping others to heal themselves with food as well.

As I was interviewing Dr. Goldner for my post on Exploring a Plant-Based Diet, she shared her story with me. There was simply no way I could fit in all of the powerful information she gave me into that one post, so I decided to begin my new profile series on the Healing Power of Food with Dr. Goldner’s journey from disease to health. She reveals the not-so-secret way that she overcame her debilitating and potentially deadly disease and some things you can do to heal your body and feel your best.

** The end of this post was updated in October 2019 with information about the amount of nutrition training U.S. doctors get in medical school.

Note: As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases made through some of the links included on this page. You can read my disclosure policy here.

A Grim Outlook

When Dr. Goldner was diagnosed with Lupus as a teenager, she was already in stage four kidney failure from the disease, she had arthritis throughout her body, would get long-lasting migraines, and some days couldn’t even get out of bed. She was told she had at best six months to live unless she did “above and beyond aggressive medical therapies.” To say the prognosis was extremely grim would be an understatement.

After two grueling years of chemotherapy and high doses of steroids, Dr. Goldner’s disease went into remission. Even though she was stable at the time, she knew that she was going to be someone who didn’t live a long life and that she would probably end up handicapped at some point, more than likely by the time she was in her 40s. As she started medical school, she remembers thinking, “If I go into medicine, I can help people, and even if I don’t live a long life, I’ll have done something important.” Because of the rigorous schedule she had to keep in medical school, Dr. Goldner ended up getting sick again and developed new antibodies that caused blood clots resulting in a mini-stroke. When that happened, they told her that getting pregnant was not an option because she may have a massive stroke or repeated miscarriages and that she would have to be on blood thinners for life. Her expected life span and quality of life were looking fairly grim again.

“I had just graduated medical school at the time. I knew that nutrition had nothing to do with disease!” – Brooke Goldner, M.D. 

A Healing Discovery

When Dr. Goldner was 28, she asked her celebrity trainer fiancé Thomas Tadlock, M.S. to train her for their wedding. As part of that training, he put her on the meal plan he had developed. She says, “He had figured out that you can increase people’s metabolic state, by feeding them huge amounts of raw vegetables, high Omega 3s and a lot of hydration, and at the time, he also thought you needed meat for muscle building. This was a long time ago. So, it was kind of like the best version of paleo could be nowadays. He was doing that and getting great results.” Since Dr. Goldner was a vegetarian at that point, she didn’t eat the meat, but she added tofu and followed the rest of his plan. Within a few months and with nutrition being the only thing that had changed, her Lupus tests were negative for the first time since she had been diagnosed 12 years before, and they have been ever since. That was 13 years ago.

Dr. Goldner has easily maintained low body fat and high fitness levels and was even able to have two healthy pregnancies and to give birth to two healthy sons. She says, “I have an amazing life now. It’s quite remarkable to compare the 12 years prior and the 13 years after. It’s like I’m in a different body altogether, and really I am. The body I live in now is built out of kale, spinach, broccoli, flax and chia seeds instead of being built out of macaroni and cheese, Doritos and eggs like it was before.”

According to Dr. Goldner, what she discovered for herself about the healing power of food holds true for everyone. “All of our cells, every single cell in our body, is made out of what we eat. There’s no way around it. Literally, that expression, you are what you eat, is true. We make ourselves out of our foods. The reason that people get sick is that they’re either eating foods that make them sick and/or they’re not eating the foods that their body uses for repair and healing.” What do our cells need for healing and repair? Dr. Goldner says the not-so-secret secret is in the vitamins, minerals, antioxidants and all the different phytonutrients we get from living plants. In other words, a whole foods, plant-based diet that she strongly believes can cure most of what ails us.

Photo by freestocks.org from Pexels

The Healing Power of Food

When Dr. Goldner is trying to help people recover from illness, she implements a protocol with them that focuses on what she calls hypernourishment. This is her specialty – to use the healing power of food to help her patients learn how to nourish themselves from the cellular level. She does this by getting them to focus not only on what to get rid of but what to add. “Every bite that you put in your mouth is something that your cells use for cellular repair – nothing else.” This means making sure that 75 percent of what you eat is coming from green salads, green smoothies and fresh foods “because that’s what our bodies should be built from.” She says that in the long term, people can eat things like whole grains, beans and other things but when she’s helping people with what she calls rapid recovery (a matter of weeks to a couple of months), she doesn’t use any cooked plant foods. The focus is on raw foods, especially greens.

She says that even if people just want to get closer to a healthier version of themselves, adding what they’re missing, even if they’re still eating foods that aren’t so good for them, is the best place to start. “If you’re not eating processed foods, you’re not eating animal products, you’re getting a good dose of Omega 3s every day to create your anti-inflammatory immune system, and you’re eating lots of fresh foods like vegetables, you’re going to go a long way toward general good health.”

Dr. Goldner believes that eliminating animal products is critical in healing because they may very well be what’s making us sick in the first place. She says, “There’s a lot of research that shows that eating meat increases mortality by 50 percent, that processed meats are in the same category of carcinogens as asbestos and cigarettes, and that it increases your risk of heart attack and stroke.” Dr. Goldner also blames dairy products for illness because they’re “probably the most inflammatory thing that people eat. That’s why as a vegetarian, I was still extremely ill because I ate a ton of eggs and cheese every day. Those increase your inflammatory markers, they encourage the production of your inflammatory immune system, which is going to drive inflammation up and trigger your genes for illness. When you get rid of animal products, you are automatically increasing your ability to heal disease and eliminate inflammation.”

Getting Down to the Numbers

If you’re looking for amounts to guide you on a daily basis, Dr. Goldner likes to see the following:

• At least eight cups of raw vegetables a day
• At least 96 ounces of water a day
• A handful of flax or chia seeds a day (her suggestions include either ground up into your smoothie or in a chia pudding)

She says this isn’t as intimidating as it may sound at first. “Drink green smoothies and eat salads all day, so that you’re raw all day, and then come home and cook dinner with your quinoa and beans and vegetables or something like that.”

Dr. Goldner believes that based on her own experience and her experience with treating her patients that if people can follow this way of eating, it’s not only going to help with any kind of disease they already have, but it’s going to keep them healthier than they would normally be.

Resources for Healing

Dr. Goldner is so passionate about making sure that everyone has access to healing resources that in addition to her books Goodbye Autoimmune Disease (affiliate link) and Goodbye Lupus (affiliate link), she also offers free 6 Steps to Reversing Disease with Supermarket Food online classes. In addition, Dr. Goldner’s husband Thomas Tadlock, M.S. started smoothieshred.com, which offers FREE smoothie recipes, workouts, group support and mentoring. If you don’t want to give any personal information, you can still access the smoothie recipes without signing in.

If you’re dealing with a chronic illness, Dr. Goldner suggests talking with your doctor about the possibility of incorporating nutrition into the treatment plan. But, she cautions, don’t be sidetracked if you meet resistance. According to her, doctors weren’t taught about the role of nutrition in illness, health and healing in medical school. Now, they should be getting more exposure to how it’s all connected, but “This is a ground up movement. Patients are the ones that are going to have to bring it to their doctors.” After all, it is your health, and ultimately, eating a lot more vegetables can only help to fuel your body and your recovery.

October 2019 update: While doctors should be getting more education about the role of nutrition in illness, health and healing in medical school, recent studies show that in most cases, they’re not. According to the research article The State of Nutrition Education at US Medical Schools published in The Journal of Biomedical Education, as of 2013, most U.S. medical schools (71 percent) fail to provide the recommended minimum 25 hours of nutrition education and 36 percent provide less than half that much. That’s based on survey responses from 121 of all 133 U.S. medical schools. Bottom line: Trust your doctor but don’t be afraid to educate yourself about the healing power of food and bring what you learn back to them. Together, you’ll be better equipped to support the best you possible. 

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Grabbing something to eat, running through the drive-thru and throwing something together. All phrases that certainly reflect our lifestyles and all too often, our approach to food. While doing any of these every now and then is fine and can even be done in a healthy way, letting these phrases describe our overall attitude toward food means that we could be missing out on some of the huge benefits of what the food we eat can really do for us.

Transformational and Energy Medicine Specialist Jean Atman works with people on aligning their energy in every facet of their lives, including through the food they eat. In this Q&A, she explains how eating with intention can change your entire relationship with food and how its energy can fuel you.

Peppermint Tea & Me: What does eating with intention mean?

Jean Atman:I think it’s a mindfulness practice, you know. To really think about what foods you’re putting in your body and how they affect you as you’re consuming them. Basically, we get kind of caught up in the busyness of things, and so we don’t take time to even think about what we eat. We just sort of go to our defaults. I think eating with intention is increasing the mindfulness practice of thinking about “What do I feel like I want, what do I feel like I need, and then how do I feel after eating this?”

PTM: Why is it important that we eat with intention?

JA: We’re all made of energy. So, what we’re eating is either going to increase or decrease how we feel, how our body functions, and how our life works. If we’re congesting our energy field with a lot of processed foods, we’re going to feel more stagnant in our lives, and we’re going to be less able to proceed forward in achieving our goals and desires and dreams. We don’t have that free flow of movement and momentum that we can build as easily. So, it’s really vital to consider what we’re putting in our bodies and how we’re feeling based on it. If we’re eating something that makes us feel bad, we’re not going to be as inspired to do anything else in our lives. It really does start with what we’re putting in our bodies.

PTM: What is the role of energy overall in our bodies and in our lives?

JA: We’re all just millions of particles of energy that put together creates this form. We feel solid, we look solid, but in reality, we’re really not, we’re just a lot of moving parts. That’s why it’s really vital to focus on what we’re creating within our energy. If we’re eating something processed without a lot of life force energy, we’re putting that in our bodies and that becomes part of us. So, it’s not a real efficient product that we’re creating.

It’s everything that we put into our body, all the experiences that we have, how we respond to those experiences, and then we kind of have a set vibration based on all those moving parts. Whatever vibration we’re at, we’re going to automatically attract other things of that vibration. If our vibration is of a lower scale, you know we’re going to attract experiences that reflect that. Lower vibrational experiences mean more struggle, more hardships and more hard work to accomplish anything. Kind of trudging through mud knee deep to get to where you’re going, as opposed to skirting on top of it.

PTM: What do you mean when you talk about our vibrational scale?

JA: To test people’s energy, we use the Hawkins Scale of Consciousness. Based on that, anything under 500, you’re dealing with jealousy, hate, envy and other lower vibrations. So, if you’re eating foods of a lower vibrational scale, they’re vibrating within that same frequency.

PTM: Where does processed food fall on the scale, and how does that make us feel?

JA: Foods that have a life force of their own, like fruits and vegetables, grow from the earth, they’re nursed from the earth, and they’re nourished from the sun and water that’s created within the earth. It’s all this beautiful synergistic creation which is grown from life force, and that gives us life force. Lower vibrational foods, like processed foods, are stripped. Anything that’s put in these processed foods is stripped down so far that it has no life force of its own.

While these foods might fill us, you know, physically, they’re not nourishing our energy, our bodies, our spirits, our minds. We’re not gaining any energy to uplift our vibration from eating those foods. They really can cause depression. When people are depressed, it is actually just energy that is depressing the field, so they carry a lot of heaviness within their energy which makes them feel heavy mentally, physically and emotionally. When you start to recognize that “When I’m eating this food, I feel a little bit lighter and a little bit better,” you actually clear through some of that depression energy by eating something that’s more nourishing, that’s more life giving, that increases the feeling of being lighter.

So those things are really, really important to choose wisely, especially if you suffer from something that just feels chronic that you can’t seem to break free from, and you’re wanting some relief. A lot of times when people are sad or depressed, they’ll reach for the comfort foods: the donuts, the ice creams, the cakes and the cookies. But again, with the law of attraction, like attracts like. If you’re already feeling that way, you’re going to be more drawn to those types of things, because they vibrate there. But if you know that, and you can make a conscious decision and say, “I’m feeling kind of low today. I want to uplift my energy and I’m having a little bit of a struggle doing it emotionally right now, so I’m going to reach for something that’ll help support that movement. I’m going to eat a salad. I’m going to eat an apple.” Things like that. It can help.

PTM: Which foods give us the most energy?

JA: Anything that’s made from the earth, that’s nourished from the earth’s elements will give us a lot more energy. Even if you’re going to eat an orange versus orange juice, even things like that. Foods in their most complete form are made specifically to nourish us in the best possible ways. So even by keeping an orange fully intact and eating it that way can offer more energy than an orange juice could. That’s not to say that you can’t eat cooked whole foods. You can because your body knows what to do with that and how to break it down.

PTM: How do we gauge what types of foods we need or energy we need from our food?

JA: They say that if you’re craving something sweet, that you’re actually craving more sweetness in your life. And if you’re craving something salty, you’re searching for something more grounded. You’re wanting to be more grounded within your life. So, our cravings will give us a lot of information about what we’re actually needing energetically and emotionally. It’s learning to translate what the body is saying into giving us a direction of where we can go with it.

 PTM: If someone is just starting to connect with the energy of their food, what are some ways that they can do that?

JA: What works for one person is not going to work for the next person. It really is coming back to the mindfulness practice of how foods make you feel. There are a couple of ways that you can do that including approaching it from a beginner’s mind and taking a week to eat clean and cut out dairy, gluten and processed foods and see how you feel. Then add things back one at a time and make a note of how you feel then. You can also journal each day, or if you really want to learn about yourself, journal each meal. Think about “What did I eat? How did I feel after this? How was my energy after that meal?” Really tune in to how you feel. Also, if you’re trying to lose weight, ask yourself before you reach for anything, “Is this really serving my highest good?” Think about the kind of energy that you want to have and whether that particular food would serve as fuel for that energy.

Additional Resource

Jean is happy to offer you a copy of her free e-book called How to Energize Your Life. Through it, she shares information, insights, and “Mindfulness Practices” to better assist you in creating not only what you want in life, but to release what that you don’t.

The post Eating with Intention appeared first on Peppermint Tea.

Please Note: As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases made through some of the links included in this post. You can read my disclosure policy here.

Healthy Eating Isn’t a Diet, It’s a Lifestyle

When I completely changed how I was eating, my mom kept asking me, “What do you call your diet?” My answer to her was always “It’s not a diet. It’s a lifestyle.” I just woke up one day, decided I didn’t like the way I had been feeling and that I wanted to do something about it. Up until then, I was fully addicted to caffeine, loved sugar and carbs and could easily down an entire bag of pita chips in one sitting if I was stressed.

Having a child with multiple food allergies, I considered what I ate to be moderately healthy. I had learned to keep it fairly basic, cook most of our meals at home and do most of our shopping at the farmers market. It wasn’t until I realized how dependent I was on the sugar and simple carbs in my diet and how little of anything green I was actually eating that I decided I was going to try to do better for myself. I went cold turkey off caffeine, started drinking green smoothies in the morning, learned what kale actually looked like and came to love quinoa. By focusing primarily on what I ate, I started feeling better and, as a bonus, dropped 35 pounds without counting a calorie.

Not Perfect, Just Real

While I’m the first to admit that my diet isn’t perfect, and I’m always eager to learn about new foods and the science behind what we eat, one thing has become clear to me. Food is key to our overall wellness. What we eat can make us feel good, it can make us feel “icky” or it can even contribute to many of the diseases and health issues that many of us assume just happen.

In his book, Food: What the Heck Should I Eat?, Dr. Mark Hyman says, “Food exists specifically to energize, heal, repair and uplift us. Every bite you take is a powerful opportunity to create health or promote disease.” The quality of what we eat is everything, and yet, we’ve relegated eating to one of the most automatic and thoughtless things we do. We “throw something together” or “squeeze it in” on the way from one activity to another. While thinking about and preparing our food doesn’t need to be all-consuming, it should be one of the most intentional things we do so that we can be proactive and take charge of our health and wellness. As Dr. Hyman says, “Food is not just calories; it’s medicine.”

Eating Healthy Focuses on Whole Foods

According to nutritionist Megan Spencer from SL/M Nutrition Coaching, “Healthy depends on each person. But it’s important to focus on balance, flexibility, being kind to yourself if it doesn’t work out perfectly and also focusing on whole foods.” Whole foods are real food. Except for meat, poultry and seafood, they’re pretty much recognizable from what they would look like in nature. In fact, at its core, healthy eating is actually fairly simple. Focus on what you would find in nature, not on the inside aisles of the grocery store. While some whole foods are better for us than others, if you start there, you’re going to be on the right path.

Which Whole Foods Should We Focus On for Healthy Eating?

Even when it comes to whole foods, there are a number of different theories out there about what exactly we should be eating. To keep it simple, here are some of the top takeaways from Dr. Hyman. 

1. Grass-fed Meat, Organic Poultry and Wild Caught Seafood are “Nutritionally Superior”

This is compared to their factory-farmed counterparts. Grass-fed meat, organic poultry and wild caught seafood are eating what their bodies were designed to eat and therefore contain higher levels of nutrients and healthy fats than animals eating a diet that is foreign to them. According to Dr. Hyman, “Studies show that today’s chickens have fewer anti-inflammatory omega-3 fatty acids, more inflammatory omega-6 fatty acids, and substantially fewer vitamins and minerals.” Your local farmers market is always going to be your best bet for knowing how your meat and poultry are raised and where your seafood comes from. But, if you don’t have one nearby and don’t have a grocery store that you can rely on for this, Dr. Hyman provides a list of possible resources in his book. You can also check out Root and Revel’s list of online resources for organic, sustainable and grass-fed meat delivery options.

2. Vegetables Should Be Eaten at Every Meal

Dr. Hyman advises that “Non-starchy vegetables like spinach, asparagus, broccoli and kale should make up 50 to 75 percent of your plate with a small portion of animal protein as ‘condi-meat.” To make sure that you’re avoiding pesticides and other chemicals when eating your vegetables, try to buy organic as much as possible. If that’s not possible financially, check out the Environmental Working Group’s Dirty Dozen List that tells you which vegetables and fruit are the worst offenders when it comes to pesticide residue.

3. We Don’t Need Added Sugar in Our Food

When it comes to sugar, Dr. Hyman reminds us that, “Sweet things in nature are always safe to eat and they are a quick source of energy that helps us store fat for times of scarcity.” But, “Sugar has become such a pervasive part of our food landscape that we’re chronically overdosing on it.” The bottom line is that we do not need added sugar in our food, and it’s causing a lot of damage in the form of diseases and ailments that we could all live without. If you are going to eat added sugar, Dr. Hyman advises no more than 5 teaspoons a day (or 21 grams). Compare that to the 22 teaspoons a day he says most adults consume and the 35 teaspoons a day that most kids consume, and you can see why we have so many sugar-related problems.

Getting Back in the Kitchen

If we’re going to be eating healthy, there’s no way around it, we’ve got to get back in the kitchen. To paraphrase one of my favorite lines from a recorded talk given by wellness guru Kris Carr, it doesn’t matter whether it’s men or women, but somebody’s got to get back into the (expletive) kitchen! Exactly! Our kitchens are where the magic happens and where good health is cultivated. As nutritionist Megan Spencer reminds us, “The best thing about cooking at home is that you have full control of the ingredients you’re using. Knowledge is power, and you have control over the decisions you make.”

Tips for Healthy Eating

Megan offers these tips for making healthy eating part of your lifestyle.

• Start with the basics. There’s no need to think you have to cook the fanciest and most difficult recipes you can find. Be realistic and master the basics first.
• Take advantage of short cuts at the grocery store. There are a lot of pre-chopped vegetables and salad mixes with all of the ingredients already included. These definitely cost more than the do-it-yourself versions, but even if you can’t sustain this for the long-term, it’s a good way to help ease yourself back into the kitchen.
• Focus on progress, not perfection. That might mean starting with dinner as a family, cooked from scratch once or twice a week and then build on that.
• Increase the good stuff before you take anything away. This means increasing things like vegetables, whole grains and lean meats. The idea is that you’re not depriving yourself of anything (far from it!) because when you eat more healthy food, then there’s simply less room for junky foods.
• If alcohol and sweets are a must have for you, cut back from what you were having before and put something healthy in their place. For example, if you’re used to having a glass of wine every night to help you relax, cut back to two or three times a week and maybe drink herbal tea the other nights.
• Planning is very important. Even if you can’t plan for a whole week, just having the right supplies in the fridge and in the pantry will set you up for success.

What We Eat Fuels Our Body

If we put junk and artificial food in, then we’re not giving it much to run on. If we put goodness in, then we’re more apt to get strength, vitality, and good health out. Healthy eating doesn’t demand perfection, but it does require being in touch with ourselves enough to understand what our body is saying it needs. Start listening, and the results may truly surprise you.

Additional Resources

If you need additional healthy lifestyle support and resources geared specifically for women over 40, I offer my Reclaim Your Energy and Revitalize Your Life workshop, membership in the Empowered Health and Wellness for Women Over 40 Facebook group, and personalized one-on-one health and nutrition coaching. If you need more information on any of these, feel free to reach out to info@peppermint-tea.com.

The post How to Make Healthy Eating Part of Your Lifestyle appeared first on Peppermint Tea.

This back to school time of year can be exciting for everyone, but, if your family is like mine, it can also mean that things get quite a bit busier. Afterschool, evening and weekend activities; exercise; homework; meetings; and oh yes, the regular work that pays the bills. To some degree it all has to be done (or does it? Click here for more on how to prioritize), but where does that leave eating healthy foods that give us the energy to do everything we need to do? When things get busy, it’s all too easy to throw up our hands and do drive-thru yet again. It really doesn’t have to be that way though, and while my family is by no means perfect, I wanted to share my top 5 tips for getting organized so that you can eat healthy during even the busiest of weeks.

1. Meal planning. This is the first step to take in organizing how you’re going to eat for the week. If you plan your meals and snacks in advance, you’re taking control of what you eat. That means planning out every meal, the ingredients needed for those meals and having that list at your fingertips when you head out for your weekly shopping trip. Yes, a weekly shopping trip is much more efficient than just getting enough to get through a couple of days. Besides, you never know what the week is going to throw at you and already having ingredients on hand makes it much easier when that meeting or practice run long. If you need suggestions on how to make meal planning work for you, check out Meal Planning Tips and Tools for Healthy Living.

2. Prep fruit and veggies. Once you’ve bought your groceries, it’s easiest to go ahead and carve out time before your week gets started to prep any fruit and vegetables that you may need for meals or snacks. With activities that can take up most of the weekend, I know this is easier said than done, but it is a time saver for once you get into your busy week. If I’m doing it by myself, I usually try to set aside one to two hours where I can just focus on food prep. This means washing fruit and cutting up vegetables that may be eaten by themselves or are needed as part of recipes. Even if I don’t have time to go ahead and prepare the full recipe, having the prep work done is often more than half the battle. We all know that when a recipe gives the prep time, it usually doesn’t take into account the time it takes to shred, cut up or mince whatever ingredients are needed.

Another way to get this done even faster and to start teaching your kids the skills they’ll need in the kitchen is to get the entire family involved. When I do this, I usually say that we’re going to set aside one hour, and we’re all going to pitch in and help. With everyone working, this is usually more than enough time needed for straightforward prep. Younger children can be in charge of washing fruits and vegetables, while older ones can learn to peel and cut them.

3. Cook ahead. If you can add an hour or two to your time in the kitchen on the weekend to cook ahead, you can save yourself a lot of time and frustration during the week. Some dishes can be completely cooked and just reheated in the oven or microwave when you need them. Others can be put together ahead of time and then cooked when the time comes, and still others may need to be put together when you’re ready to eat them. For those, you can at least go ahead and cook individual components such as pasta or grilled chicken or beef. You can even fire up the grill or get the water boiling while you’re prepping any fruit and vegetables.

Another advantage I’ve found to cooking ahead is that as kids grow older and are involved in more activities, eating together is a challenge. While I’m all for family dinners, it just sometimes isn’t a possibility. That doesn’t mean though that everyone has to do drive-thru or takeout. If meals are cooked ahead, everyone can get what they need when they need it.

4. Divide food into portions. If you have enough smaller containers, this tip can be a huge time, sanity and health saver. If you’ve cooked ahead and know that this is going to be a week where everyone is eating piecemeal, just quickly divide what you’ve fixed into single serving portions – complete with the main course and side if it all has to be reheated.

I love my boys, but they have been known to come in and not eat a perfectly good meal just because it wasn’t completely portioned out and ready to pop in the microwave. Yes, I am still working to teach them not to be so effort averse (ahem… lazy!), but I’ll admit that after a long day of work or running behind from getting someone somewhere, it is nice to come in and all I have to do is grab a container filled with a healthy meal and just heat it up.

This can also be done at the beginning of the week with lunches (other than sandwiches. Very few people like sandwiches that have been sitting in a refrigerator for more than a few hours.) Salads can easily be done this way as can main dishes, vegetables, applesauce, etc. Simply go ahead and divide it all into containers for the week. If you don’t have enough containers for a full week, do enough for a couple of days and then you can wash and refill them. Whether you fix lunches at night or in the morning, for yourself or for your kids, this little bit of prep work ahead of time may just change your entire outlook!

5. Invest in lunch bags, cooler bags, coolers and ice packs. If you or your kids take lunches to work or school, it’s obvious that you’ll need a lunch bag. But what about for evenings where activities are taking place during dinnertime or you need to take a quick snack or meal to your child? All of the prep in the world won’t make a difference if you don’t have a good way to transport the food when you need it.

 In the spring, my youngest son’s baseball games during the week regularly take place in the evenings, often right after he finishes another practice. Since we’re all rarely eating at the same time or places on those nights, I pack up a bag for each of us (usually in the morning) and distribute it to the appropriate person as we go through the evening. For weekend travel ball tournaments, we pack an entire cooler full of already prepared food that can easily be eaten on the go. While I can’t say that concession stand hotdogs or nachos are never eaten, I can say that healthier options that we bring with us are the norm.

I know that actually doing all of these things may sound a bit daunting, but I can attest to the fact that it is possible and that it does make a big difference. I know weekends are busy, and if they’re not, it’s hard to give up even a couple of hours of precious downtime to dedicate to food prep. But for most people, the choice is either to set aside a focused amount of time on the weekend, spend 30 minutes to an hour cooking every night or to let someone else do the cooking for us – in which case, we lose all control over how healthy it really is. Getting into the routine of being organized and preparing food ahead of time helps to make sure that you can eat healthy during even the busiest of weeks, which makes those times feel a little less crazy and a lot more enjoyable.

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We’ve all gotten sidetracked at one time or another when it comes to healthy eating and exercise. Life happens, we get bored or we might lose sight of why we’re doing what we’re doing in the first place. It’s not the end of the world. The most important thing is recognizing what’s going on and getting back on track. It’s not the easiest thing to do, but it’s probably easier than you might think – especially if you use these 10 steps for restoring your health and wellness to guide you along the way.

1. Acknowledge that you’ve gotten off track. As with anything, this is the critical first step – acknowledging that we’re not happy with the way things are going or that we want them to improve. It’s hard to make any changes if we don’t do this first. This isn’t meant to judge or to be hard on ourselves. It’s just looking at the situation in a very matter-of-fact way and recognizing that we want something to be different.
2. Track macros and other nutrients if possible. I am not a proponent of this on a regular basis because it’s too easy to get obsessed with it, but it is a beneficial exercise to do for a week or so if we feel like we’ve gotten off track from where we want to be. Unless weight loss is your goal, that’s not how this is meant to be used. This is primarily to let us see how many carbs and how much sugar we’re really taking in every day. That’s not to say that either of these are necessarily bad, but if they are the wrong types of each, they could be among the culprits for us not feeling our best. Complex carbs and natural sugar from whole fruits and vegetables are usually okay. But if we’ve gotten off track, it may be that we’re eating too many processed foods which tend to be loaded with simple carbs and added sugar. While eating those types of food every now and then is okay, we have to be careful that “every now and then” doesn’t become every day. Tracking what we’re eating and figuring out what that really meant for our numbers that day is an eye-opening way to recognize where we may be getting off track. Keeping up with other nutrients is all the better. If we can make a connection between something we might have been low in for the day or for a few days in a row and how we were feeling those days, it can be very helpful in recognizing where corrections need to be made.
3. Accept responsibility. When we get off track, it’s very easy to blame outside circumstances and to convince ourselves that we really didn’t have control over the situation. Life does happen, but we need to recognize that’s it’s still our choice as to how we handle different situations. Again, this doesn’t mean that we should be beating ourselves up, but it does mean that we should recognize where we’ve made our choices and what the consequences of those choices were. It’s truly an empowering truth. We are the only ones responsible for our health and wellbeing. While our life circumstances may change from month to month or even day to day, and we do have to be flexible, it’s still our choice as to whether we find a way to do the things that keep us healthy or not.
4. Think about how you’re currently feeling and how you felt when you were feeling good or at least better. This exercise is most effective if the responses can be written down. That way we can easily compare the two and recognize how we want to be feeling and whether that’s different than how we’re currently feeling.
5. List your current challenges to eating healthy or exercising. The more specific we can get with this, the better. Don’t just say, “I don’t have enough time right now.” If we had time at one point, we can find it again. If it’s that “The kids are out of school for the summer, and our schedule is very unpredictable,” then say that. Or, if it’s that you’re planning certain meals at the beginning of the week and then don’t find them very appealing when it comes time to make them, admit that. Or, “I’m in a food rut, and it’s all just boring right now.” Say that. Be honest. No one is judging us on our answers, but the more specific we can be on what our current roadblocks are, the more specific the solutions can be.
6. Set new goals – short-term and long-term. We have to start where we are with this, not where we were previously. If it’s that cooking meals at home has become more difficult, we can’t rely on the fact that we were cooking at home every night at one point. If that’s no longer happening for whatever reason, it’s no longer happening. While it’s critical that we set short-term goals to get us where we want to be, it’s also important to set long-term ones as well. Sometimes we get off track because we lose sight of the big picture of what we want for ourselves in the first place, and sometimes this happens because the long-term goals we once set no longer fit. That’s fine. Re-evaluate and set new ones.
7. Get specific with possible solutions. Once we know what our current challenges and new goals are, we can list possible specific solutions. The more specific we can be with this, the better. If cooking meals at home again is a goal, then get back to a reasonable starting point of saying that three to four meals for the first week is what we’re shooting for. Once we’re back in the habit, it will become more natural again. If getting exercise in has become difficult, aim for two to three days for the first week.
8. Recruit a partner or partners to help you. This is huge because accountability and support can make the difference between whether we’re able to get back on track or not. The most important thing is that it’s someone we feel okay being completely honest with and who won’t judge us because we were doing great and have now gotten sidetracked. This can be one person or many people – whatever works best. If putting it all out there on social media and asking for help and support that way feels comfortable, then by all means, go for it. The main thing is that a support network is in place.
9. Adopt a positive attitude about health and wellness goals. If it’s not something that excites us or makes us feel good, it’s not going to work – again. Drudgery is not what we’re going for here, and if that’s how we’re feeling about it, then that’s probably why we got sidetracked in the first place. Really recognizing why we’re doing what we’re doing and the impact it’s going to have on our overall wellbeing can help get us back in the right frame of mind.
10. Give yourself some grace. This is probably one of the most important steps we can take when getting back on track. We are not perfect. No one is. But that doesn’t mean we don’t keep trying. Beating ourselves up because we didn’t get exercise in one day or that we had two days of eating foods that we knew weren’t good for us isn’t going to help anything. We have to simply accept it, think about it enough to figure out why we made the choices we did and work to make choices we do feel good about the next day.

Getting sidetracked doesn’t mean we’re failing, and it doesn’t mean we can’t still accomplish our health goals. Sometimes getting sidetracked shows us where tweaks need to be made in what we’re working for in the first place, and sometimes getting off course just happens. It’s all okay. The most important thing is that we learn from it and move on toward our best life possible.

Lean on Your Community

If you need help or support in getting back on track, leave a comment below, head over to the Peppermint Tea & Me Facebook page or to keep it more private, feel free to email me at Robyn@robynmooring.com.

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