This article you are reading includes the very words I tell family and friends when they say to me “I feel like crap, how can I get healthy?” They usually follow with “…but keep it simple.” So, here it is, a simple approach to begin a healthier lifestyle, from my family to yours.
Start by figuring out how to make some healthy sweet-treats
Let’s start talking about healthy snacks…
Recently, the JK teacher of my youngest daughter, sent home a note asking us to send in a treat for my daughter because the class will be sharing a birthday cake. We alerted the teacher on Day one that “junk foods” and “hot dogs” weren’t on the menu for our child.
My daughter is completely comfortable saying “no thank you” and never complains, however, I want her to enjoy food as well, so we learned to make snacks that she loves and is excited for. To be honest, her and my son both see raisins and other dried fruit as a treat, but we have found we need to kick it up a notch when going to school. We have to make it “special” in some way, but still keep it simple.
So, together my daughter and I made some “raw candy balls” as she calls them. Essentially, for the first step, we soak different nuts and/or seeds in salt water overnight (to remove any enzyme inhibitors or other anti-nutrients that are said to exist in them, and explode the locked nutrition that creates the life force for a plant or tree). For school treats we cannot use nuts, so chia, pumpkin and sunflower seeds are often used.
Then, we drain the nuts and seeds, and although some suggest they must completely re-dry to be “ready”, we use them wet. We combine them with something gummy and sweet… Dates, figs, raisins and other sulfite-free dried fruits work well. We form them into balls, bars or hearts and serve. They stay best in the fridge. Sometimes they are hard, sometimes gloopy, but who cares… just enjoy 🙂
Finding a happy-medium, and not stressing when you cannot eat “perfectly”
Going overboard with diet rules… I think that getting “religious” with food has it’s place for the truly ill, but I also feel that having guilty feelings and alienating oneself from loved ones has the opposite effect to what I think we are looking to achieve.
I feel that if you are hungry and want to eat, and eating raw or “100% healthy,” whatever that means to you, isn’t realistic at a given moment, take it down a peg and choose something you can consume that is close to Your 100%… all the while not alienating yourself or stressing out with the sole purpose of “perfection”. You won’t ever achieve perfection anyways, so don’t sweat it 🙂
Besides… eating “too clean” in this world, some have admitted, forces them to “live in a bubble” of sorts.
My Definition of Healthy Eating – primarily consuming a balance of foods that are GMO-free, organic, non-toxic, raw (or lightly processed) and plant based, or more simply: wild!
A simple inexpensive approach to getting “healthy bacteria” in the diet
I think it’s important to get regular probiotics into your body, for a multitude of reasons, including recolonization after antibiotics usage and for digestion and more importantly assimilation.
I have a routine that I follow for getting probiotics in my diet daily. I make a delicious drink by fermenting water kefir grains.
The process I use is as follows:
1) I have a glass jar on my counter top full of water that I will use in 24+ hours after the chlorine has mostly evaporated
2) I have another jar with some water kefir grains at the bottom
3) I pour in some sugar (that the kefir grains consume, then evacuate to produce a healthy by-product)
4) I sometimes add a bit of fresh ginger and/or a pinch of aluminum free baking powder to further feed the grains and keep them hearty (healthy, hearty grains are NOT mushy)
5) I pour in some hopefully chlorine-free water to the top of the jar (I use 1L or 2L jars)
6) I stir the water with a wooden spoon (using metals can harm the grains)
7) I place a loose fitting lid on the jar (just the disc part of a Mason jar lid works) then I place the jar in a cupboard to begin fermenting
8) After a couple days, I pour some off the top, add a piece of frozen fruit (for flavour and an ice cube) and I drink
The flavour varies based on the length of time allowed to ferment, and the type of frozen fruit used.
Warning: Using a tight lid (and fermenting longer) runs the risk of “explosion” as pressure builds and also increases alcohol levels to mild-medium intoxication levels.
Consult a natural health care practitioner before considering any changes to your diet. Please learn more about water kefir and it’s by-product (including but not limited to the use of sugar, the creation of alcohol, and beneficial bacteria), before including it in your or your loved one’s diets.
Stay tuned for Part 2! It may already be published… check here.