How to nourish your body with nutritious food
As a qualified nutritionist I could talk about the importance of good food and nutrition habits all day long. But ultimately, it all comes down to eating real foods, as close to their natural form as possible.
With a focus on wholefood nutrition, I love showing people how delicious and easy healthy eating can (and should) be. The foods I recommend incorporating into our diets include seasonal vegetables and fruit, beans, lentils, pulses, wholegrains, good quality meat and poultry, oily fish, free-range eggs, seeds, nuts, herbs and spices. Of course it’s completely up to you which of these categories you’d like to include, so for anyone who follows a plant based, vegan, vegetarian or pescatarian diet it’s simply a matter of focusing on the other foods that fit into these preferences.
When it comes to vegetables, these should be the focus of our meals and at a bare minimum we should aim to get 5 serves in per day. So what is a serve of vegetables? One cup of raw vegetables, or 1/2 cup of cooked vegetables are considered to be a serve. This means we should be getting anywhere from 1.5-5 cups of veggies as a minimum per day. There are some studies showing that we should actually be aiming for closer to 10 serves of veg per day, so I always recommend 5 to be the absolute minimum. There are so many ways to incorporate veggies into our diet, including in smoothies, snacks and sweets! You’ll find plenty of my veggie filled recipes here.
How to put together a balanced meal:
Another thing I talk about often, is what a balanced meal looks like. This right here is the perfect formula for a balanced plate:
1/2 plate of vegetables
1/4 plate of quality protein
1/4 plate of complex carbohydrates
Plus 1 serve of healthy fats
Quality Protein
To go a bit more into detail of what comes under each of these categories, sources of protein include meat, poultry, fish, seafood, eggs, tofu, tempeh, lentils, beans, pulses, nuts and seeds. If following a vegetarian or vegan diet, it’s important to protein combine by getting protein from a number of different sources throughout the day. This helps ensure you’re getting a complete amino acid profile through these veggie friendly foods.
Complex Carbohydrates
Complex carbohydrates include foods like wholegrains (brown rice, barley, rolled oats, spelt), pseudo grains (quinoa, buckwheat), and some of the more starchy vegetables like sweet potato, potato and pumpkin. It’s important that we don’t shy away from carbs and too often I hear of people cutting them out completely. We get dietary fibre through the carbohydrates that we eat and fibre is so important for the health of our gut and digestive system. Choose the right types of carbs instead of cutting them out, this simply means opting for less processed options instead of the refined white carbohydrates.
Healthy Fats
An important part of all diets is healthy fats and that’s why it’s important to have at least one serve with each meal. You can get healthy fats from nuts, seeds, extra-virgin olive oil and avocado.
Foods to avoid for optimal health:
So now we know what to eat and how to put together a healthy meal, what should we be avoiding? Things we should steer clear from are highly refined and processed foods. We should also avoid inflammatory foods like vegetable oils (canola, sunflower and vegetable blends), soft drinks, deli meats and deep fried foods. We should also minimise refined sugars and processed sugary foods and instead transition to natural sugars that occur in real foods, like fruit.
Why we should focus on eating nutritious foods:
The food we eat has a huge impact on our overall health and wellbeing. By eating a healthy diet full of whole foods, we are giving our body all of the important nutrients it needs to thrive. Just like a car needs fuel to run, our body needs various nutrients to perform its different functions. Different foods support different systems, which is why it’s so important to eat a variety of real foods each and every day.
Like Hypocrites said, ‘Let food be thy medicine and thy medicine be thy food’. When we focus on eating well and taking care of our body and health through my ‘Ingredients for a Nourished Life’, we focus on prevention and get all of the beautiful healing properties of the whole foods we’re eating.
Be sure to grab a copy of my free eBook ‘Ingredients for a Nourished Life to learn more about the healthy habits we can incorporate for vibrant health.