Four Pillars of Healthy Food

1. What would be the perfect diet to follow?

Diets don’t really work nor have long lasting effect. I believe that people are becoming tired of different labels, diets, and health gurus that have commercialised the “Health” industry to the point where it became unhealthy and overpriced.  The amount of contradictive information out there is overwhelming and it creates additional stress for all of us.

More and more people use the term like “life style” as opposed to “diet”. When you follow certain life style it means you have a holistic approach to your health. You incorporate a lot of tools and means to stay healthy and you are committed to it as long as you live.

When you start eating  the food that sits or agrees perfect with you, not only you feel great,  you get  an enormous volume of  “side effects”  – you look young, you are glowing, you have lots of energy, you are retaining your optimum weight, and you become a high performer in everything you put your mind to.

2. How do I know what food is right for me?

You need to start with basic food and build your food list gradually. You are discovering yourself, giving yourself utmost attention, tuning in and learning your body language. Your body is constantly communicating to you but we become deaf and dull and we are ignoring the most of our signals due to its soft and subtle nature. In my opinion, when we develop a serious disease it’s the result of failed communication.

3. Are there any general rules that one can start to follow?

Yes there are.  Here are key points to keep in mind.

Attitude and new awareness: You start by changing your attitude towards food.  Food is the energy and information which is passed on to you once consumed.  It’s not just simply combination of protein, carbohydrates and fat.  When you cook for yourself, you create an energetic bond between you and your food. You are prepping and programing your food to give your body the most nutrients and healing.

Whole foods: You become very selective in what you eat.  You fuel your body only with the highest quality whole foods possible – the natural one ingredient food that comes from trusted sources.  Keep in mind that the longer the shelf life of the product the shorter is yours. The whole foods make the primarily portion of what you eat.

For anything else you rely only on the list of ingredients and not on marketing phrases you see in big letters.

Intolerances and toxic triggers:  This is where we recognize that we are all different and we can’t simply follow one specific diet or regime.  Some of the whole foods create problems for us and we don’t feel our best because of indigestion, bloating, fatigue, skin issues, inflammation and so on. Regardless if you are feeding yourself with high quality whole foods until you remove those triggers you will keep experiencing health issues.  Although it differs from person to person the food to watch out for or most problematic for most people are GLUTEN and DIARY. The list goes on containing SUGAR, COFFEE, EGGS and like.

What you eat may change overtime but what stays is WHOLE FOODS minus TOXIC TRIGGERS.

Healthy is tasty:  Devote some time and energy into trying new recipes. You will find pretty soon that your new healthy choices are finger licking delicious. Then all you have to worry about is to cook in large quantities so you never go hungry and reach for something that is questionable. The internet is full of all kinds of recipes.  One of the online resource that you may follow www.revivingretreat.com  .

Community: Get to know like-minded people who can support you and from whom you can get inspired. You no longer would feel that you are an outcast as you see that more and more people honor their bodies and life by making smart choices despite of social conditioning and marketing invasion.   Such community not only shares your interests in health and wellness, it also gives you a sense of connection and belonging.

4. It could be very expensive to buy groceries at Whole Foods stores. How can you afford it ?

First of all we need to compare apples to apples: eating junk, processed food and eating live whole food is not the same thing. Also we need to look at long term picture vs. immediate cost.

If food is your medicine and getting sick is expensive than buying whole food becomes the logical choice. People who are chronically ill will testify they spend substantial amount of money monthly on regular basis. What is constant here is that their medication changes because of different side effects and medical bill increases.

Another point is that when you buy whole foods you need to buy the whole foods, not prepackaged “healthy” food like gluten-free muffins or organic kale chips and so on. Just because you shop at the health store does not mean everything you buy there is healthy. Your bill goes up when you buy convenience, boutique style processed food. Your focus always has to stay on fundamentals: whole fruits, vegetables and meats. This way you can be happy about both your food choice and money spent.

To your optimum wellbeing,

Tanya Trunov

Holistic practices to retreat, restore and revive

through yoga, meditation and nutrition consulting