I had a discussion with a group of clients this evening regarding making positive dietary changes. It can be overwhelming at first, especially if you go home with great intentions and find your cupboards overflowing with packaged sodium filled CRAP and not one living thing in your fridge!

So where do you start?

Here’s where: make a grocery list!

Step 1: Vegetables and Fruits

• Choose a variety of brightly coloured produce.
• Buy organic when possible, especially foods of which you will consume the skin (carrots, apples etc.)
• Buy kale (my bootcamp participants think I am obsessed - but seriously you can put it in everything! Tomato sauces, shakes, stirfry, make kale chips..)
• Buy produce with a recipe in mind (how often have you bought produce only to let it rot in your refridgerator?) Buy what you will use, and USE it!

Step 2: Choose Protein Sources

• Tofu – buy organic when purchasing soy products.
• Lean meats – look for free range, grass fed, and local products whenever possible to avoid growth hormones.
• Eggs – free range again! Buy whole eggs, not simply egg whites – the yolk is where most of the nutrient content is found in an egg.
• Hemp hearts – a great vegetarian source of protein, easy to add to oats or shakes.

Step 3: Healthy Fats

• Oils: Coconut oil for cooking at high temperatures, olive oil/hemp oil/flax seed oil for salad dressings.
• Chia seeds – fibre, omega 3 fatty acids
• Fish – buy WILD caught seafood products to avoid an average of 24 synthetic drugs found in a farmed salmon. (of course this fits into ‘protein’ as well)

Step 4: Carbohydrates

• Choose ancient grains as close to their original form as possible.
• Quinoa, steel cut oats, barley, buckwheat, millet, brown rice.

Step 5: “Other”

• Whether you drink dairy or soy or nut milk – choose products with minimal to no added sugars.
• When purchasing packaged items, stick to products with only a few ingredients (you should be able to pronounce all of them!) ex. Brown rice cakes – ingredients: brown rice.

This is obviously not an exhaustive list, but a great place to start. Fill your cupboards and fridge with wholesome ingredients and you will find it much easier to achieve your ‘eat healthy’ goal. Now – check out my ‘Top 10 Cookbooks in my kitchen’ post to figure out what to make with all the great foods you just purchased.

I will close with a great quote I heard this week: ‘If you’re not hungry for something healthy, then you’re not hungry!’

Until next time,

Lana

1. How to Cook Everything By: Mark Bittman
This is the cookbook equivalent to the bible. A modern day ‘Joy of Cooking’. I use it all the time for sauces, muffins, basics and specialties! Mark gives lots of in-depth instruction on cooking techniques and describes every recipe in detail. There are 800 pages of recipes in this book and it will certainly add to your cookbook collection.

2. Whitewater Cooks, Whitewater Cooks at Home, Whitewater Cooks with Friends By: Shelley Adams
All three of these books are amazing. They have beautiful colour photographs and mouth-watering dishes that are now part of my weekly recipe repertoire. Any of the Whitewater Cookbooks will give you delicious ways to add more vegetables and whole foods to your diet. Also, your friends will be in shock when you bring fancy and tasty appetizers to their parties!

3. Quinoa 365 By: Patricia Green and Carolyn Hemming
If you do not have quinoa in your kitchen – go out and get some! This superfood grain is a complete protein and full of fibre. Quinoa 365 offers all types of recipes with quinoa (pronounced keen-wah) including breakfast, lunch, dinner and great tasting baked goods that offer complete protein!

4. Slice By: Barb Davies and Jennifer Rallison
A local Calgary cookbook, this one is a must for any ‘whole-food’ kitchen. Delicious recipes that are health-inspired fill the pages of this must-have book. One of my favourite parts of this book are the health tips at the bottom of each page. Local Calgary doctors and nutritionists have offered up advice such as “Sugar lowers the immune system for up to 6 hours after consumption.”

5. Paleo Comfort Foods By: Julie and Charles Mayfield
This book is full of gluten-free comfort foods, delicious pesto spaghetti squash, pumpkin pancakes and roasted chicken to name a few. It has great ideas for adding protein and vegetables to your diet.

6. Clean Food By: Terry Walters
Not only a cookbook, but an introduction to eating seasonal, local and whole foods. The recipes are broken up into 4 seasons and feature seasonal produce in each dish.

7. Meet the Coup Cooks
The cookbook from one of my favourite restaurants! The Coup is a Calgary-based vegetarian restaurant that I visit weekly. This compilation of recipes includes their signature dishes, easy to make and healthy salads and dressings and healthy, filling food.

8. Plenty By: Yotam Ottolenghi
A beautiful cookbook with colour pictures and enough vegetable recipes to make any nutritionist happy! A great way to get variety into your kitchen with vegetables in your diet. This book offers lots of creative ideas to increase your vegetable consumption!

9. Gourmet Nutrition By: Dr. John Berardi
Gourmet Nutrition is the cookbook companion to the wildly popular and effective Precision Nutrition Program. The recipes are labelled ‘anytime’ or ‘post-workout’ depending on their carbohydrate content. This book includes in-depth information on the nutritional content of each recipe.

10. Eat Clean Diet By: Tosca Reno
This book is a staple in my kitchen. You can rest assured every recipe is full of fibre, protein and complex carbohydrates. Tosca Reno has authored many other cookbooks and any of them are a great way to add flavour and creativity to your healthy go-to recipes.

Enjoy the delicious recipes from the books listed above and watch great health, increased energy and improved body composition follow!

Lana :)