5 Steps to Eating Healthier – Put an immediate bounce in your step

Converting to a healthy eating routine and life can be overwhelming; baby steps are good in getting started. Here are some steps to start to consider.

#1 Start Eliminating processed foods

Looking at ingredients, avoid artificial additives, artificial sweeteners, refined sugars or vegetable oils. There are so many positive options to replace processed food…. Almond Butter instead of commercial peanut butter. I snack on almond butter and celery, it fills me up and the protein quenches my hunger. Baked sweet potato with grass-fed butter (I use Kerrygold butter, which you can find at Trader Joes, Whole Foods and all the other markets like Ralphs… At Ralphs and markets like that, Kerrygold butter is usually with the gourmet cheeses and not with the regular butter. Other snacks I eat are berries, which are low in sugar, hard boiled eggs (which are pasture raised and hormone free eggs and you can buy those at all the markets as well), raw almonds, raw walnuts, raw Brazilian nuts, all my nuts I store in the freezer to prevent mold and/or them getting rancid. Other snacks are Grass-Fed Beef Jerky, avocado, no nitrate lunchmeat wrapped around avocado and sea salt, (no nitrate lunch meat you can find at Costco, Trader Joes, Whole Foods) green juice freshly made by me or a juice bar if I am out and about, organic apples dipped in raw honey. These are just a few examples of healthy snacks.

#2 Eat Real Foods

Real whole foods include fresh fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, unrefined grains and beans. These are unprocessed, unrefined and don’t contain any added salt, added sweeteners, added fats or artificial additives. Eating real whole foods give you vitamins and minerals your body needs, they are very high in vitamins, minerals, dietary fiber and water. These choices help your energy, health and beauty.

#3 What you drink

Switch to herbal teas like Coriander, Cumin Fennel Tea & Licorice Mint Tea which both of these are amazing for your digestion. Also Green Tea, green tea’s catechins EGCG, EGC, ECG, and EC are helpful in fighting and preventing cancer, fight against free radicals which protect from DNA damage, help your body detoxify and helps protect your body against damage from UV radiation according to the National Cancer Institute as well as many other research institutes. Green tea is also one of the best anti aging beverages we can drink. Also getting in your purified/filtered water… get in the habit when taking water with you to put it in Stainless Steel Insulated Water Bottle or glass bottle, ditch the plastic all together or as much as you can. One of the other things I love to drink and make at home about once a week is my turmeric, cinnamon, lemon grass tea.. Turmeric is so anti-inflammatory and has so many benefits; you can read all the benefits of turmeric in my post here. Making warm healthy beverages are so good for your digestion and health, it is one of the #1 ways I nurture myself on a regular daily basis. From bone broth to my dandelion tea latte, to herbal teas I have on hand and take tea bags with me when I am out, drinking filtered water, about 12 ounces max of coconut water a day to replenish electrolytes after my work outs and Kombucha are all amazing beverages to consume to improve your health immediately.

The Stainless Steel Insulated Water Bottle link above and here is the Geysa Stainless Steel wide mouth water bottle, it is the total bomb!  Absolutely my favorite water bottle ever!  Premium quality, high grade stainless steel with bamboo top, easy to carry, spill proof, leak proof, keeps your beverage cold or hot for long periods of time so GREAT for warm teas or water.  An awesome hook to hold onto when you carry it or can be clipped on backpacks when hiking…and more benefits like wide mouth to easily add in ice cubes and drink from…. I can go on and on…  GREAT FIND!!!!!

#4  How you start your day

I use to start my day with a cup of coffee and would savor it and then not eat until about 11:am when I finally got hungry…. Switching to a new routine has made an instant improvement! That routine is this: I wake up and have a tall glass of water room temperature or warmed with ½ of lemon squeezed into it. Then a warm beverage, any of my herbals teas or bone broth with eating breakfast within an hour after I am awake to set my digestion and metabolism on a positive track for energy and elimination and overall health. My breakfasts are mostly either eggs and a green veggie stir fried in coconut oil or grass fed butter…. OR a smoothie. My smoothies vary but the typical recipe is a protein powder like hemp protein, plant based protein, OR collagen powder, a superfood like ground chia, ground flax, avocado, coconut oil OR cocoa powder… a banana and/or berries, almond mild or coconut milk. I have recipes on my blog for some ideas in my recipes under beverages.

#5 Get moving

In our daily lives today, there seems to be a lot of sitting at computers or looking at our cell phones, being sedentary is so bad for our health, it makes us depressed, ages our body, adds havoc to our digestion… Just taking a break every few hours to stretch, do a few exercises or take a 5-minute brisk walk is great! And of course getting an exercise routine in about 3-4 times a week to sweat, work on our cardio and build some muscle helps our body detox and in itself is a medicine for your bodies, exercise does wonders!

In conclusion:

These basic steps are a great way to get started, from here there is so much more to learn from addressing root causes in our health issues from anxiety, bloating, thyroid problems, autoimmune disorders, blood sugar issues, detoxing issues etc….. As I continue to blog and post articles I will be sharing with you a lot of information about so many ways to improve health, from cookware to our air quality in your homes, to our products we put on our skin.. After these steps here in this blog post, I would say the next steps would be lessoning the toxic load in our homes and what we but topically on our bodies, that will be coming up in future blog posts… Baby steps…

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What steps have you taken so far to improve your health?  Follow me on instagram to see more of my day to day lifestyle.

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