Over the years there have been countless health ‘fads’ and rise of diets such as high-carb low-fat, high protein, no-carb or no-sugar. The truth of the matter is we are all looking for that golden ticket to health. It’s a baffling game of calories, opinions, science and superfoods. Holistic Health Expert Claire Obeid shares her expert advice on the best way to sustain a healthy diet long term.
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The one thing I know for sure is that every single person on this planet is uniquely different. Yes, we have similarities in terms of heritage, history and even DNA. But the way your beautiful body chooses to handle and respond to food can be bi-polar to the way someone else’s does.
What’s that leave us with? The truth. The simple fact that we have to listen to our own bodies and our intuition around what feels good and what is right for our health.
There is one very powerful place to start from when diving into the journey of health and that is to keep it clean.
Whether you choose to eat raw food or cooks foods, vegetarian or high protein Clean Eating, as it’s lately been termed is a diet full of exactly that – clean foods.
So what is Clean Eating and what does it entail?
Try this… imagine deleting from your diet anything that is processed, packaged or so far from removed from its original source that you don’t actually know what that was.
Delete the junk (I won’t call it food, because it’s not). Fast food, processed chocolate, chips, refined oils, fake butter, sugary drinks, sugary anything, soda, (margarine etc).
Now, go as far as deleting fruits and veggies grown in and slathered with chemicals.
Finally, for the omnivores out there, delete any meat from your diet that came from a factory farm. Did your cows grow on grain? Delete! Did your chickens live with 25,000 other feathery friends in cages? Delete! Did your pigs spend their lives in sow stalls? Delete! Is your fish farmed – fed little bits of itself and grain (not a fishes diet!)? Delete!
So far you’re thinking that clean eating leaves you with zip, right?
Wrong… but you’re not wrong for thinking that – all of that junk is what fills our supermarket shelves.
Let’s imagine this instead:
You eat food as close to its natural source – Butter made from real milk. Extra Virgin and cold pressed oils, instead of the highly toxic trans + hydrogenated oils (canola, sunflower, safflower). Yoghurt is sugar-free and natural.
Your fruit and veggies are organic and chemical free, preferably sourced from a local farmer (hit up your local farmer’s markets!)
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Your meat produce is all grass fed, pasture raised – happy animals, treated and fed well. And your fish is wild or at least sustainable.
If you buy into Superfoods you are choosing the organic option with minimal processing.
You enjoy nuts and seeds. Wholegrains (biodynamic versions). You make a lot of your food from scratch and you get the whole nutritional profile – fats, carbs and protein. Nothing nourishing is deleted.
Clean eating is food as Mother Nature intended it. Food as close to its real source. It isn’t fancied up. It’s not packaged, frozen and shipped around the world with more chemicals in its core than a nuclear weapon. It’s food your great grandparents would recognise.
Clean eating isn’t a diet and shouldn’t be labeled as one. Is a strong foundation of good, clean, real and most importantly WHOLE food that allows you to fuel and enrich your beautiful body, mind and spirit. Better still, there are so many options with clean-eating that you get to listen to what your body needs (no one else’s) and respond accordingly.
No rules. Just real food.