Not sure where to begin? Let me help you get started! These four simple steps will walk you through the process of slowly healing your body and creating a personalized plan specific to your health concerns. Then use the guidelines in this chapter, as well as the information and meal plans in Chapter 10, to make anti-inflammatory eating quick, easy, and delicious!
The first step is to identify what the biggest “issues” are in your current diet. To do this, think through your food intake over the past week or track your normal eating for a few days. Then, see how many of the following you eat in 3 to 5 days.
_____ Refined grains
_____ Highly processed foods and ready-to-eat foods
_____ Fast food and fried foods
_____ Added sugars (think coffee drinks, soft drinks, cereals, grain products, condiments, etc.)
_____ How many days did you have more than two caffeinated drinks?
_____ Men: How many days did you have more than two alcoholic drinks? Women: How many days did you have more than one alcoholic drink?
_____ Cured or processed meats (bacon, sausage, lunch meats, hot dogs, etc.)
_____ Other
_____ Other
_____ Total vegetables
_____ Beans, legumes, and peas
_____ Leafy greens
_____ Fruit (other than dried or in syrup) ______ How many of those were berries?
_____ How many meals do you eat a plant-based protein in place of an animal protein?
_____ Fish ______ How many of those were fatty fish?
_____ Nuts
_____ Other
Cooking dinner from scratch every night is often seen as the ultimate pinnacle of healthy eating. However, this isn’t a realistic expectation for many of us today, and it shouldn’t be the standard we hold ourselves to or that causes ongoing guilt—even though I felt it for years. I know as a dietitian that it’s the quality of the food that I serve my family that matters—not whether every single item was peeled, steamed, emulsified, or spiralized by my own hands.
The key for me is finding the healthy balance between convenience and health, and to do this I rely on some minimally processed foods and food products (think canned beans, frozen sweet potato wedges, and corn tortillas). Combining these items with prepped staples or quick-cooking foods allows me to have a healthy meal made from high-quality foods usually in 20 minutes or less. While it may not be completely “from scratch,” the end result is the same—or maybe better—and much healthier than the alternative.
Your next step to healing your body is to focus for two weeks on consuming foods that supports the body’s natural detoxification process.
• Eating foods with nutrients that support the liver and the body’s natural detoxification processes
○ Whole or minimally processed foods (see page 72 for what this means)
○ Lots of vegetables, fruit, herbs, and spices
○ Increasing the proportion of healthier fats, carbs, and proteins
• Ridding the diet of toxins and irritants
○ Unnecessary additives like colorings, artificial sweeteners, chemicals, and pesticides when possible
○ Irritants like gluten, added sugars, alcohol, excessive caffeine, etc. (Don’t worry—many of these are temporary!)
• Restoring, balancing, and nourishing gut bacteria
○ Probiotic foods—those rich in “good” bacteria strains
○ Prebiotic foods
• Eliminating food group(s) unless you have specific allergies or sensitivities
• Consuming only liquids, juices, or odd food combinations
• Severely restricting calories
• Cutting out flavor, taste, salt, or fat
Do you have several issues to address, and don’t know where to start? No worries, because your best bet is to start small! Here’s how to define a personalized Detox and Restore plan:
• Choose two or three of your top “issues” or priorities that you identified in your assessment (priorities may include any of the inflammatory food items or habits on page 16, such as reducing fast food, reducing soda intake, eliminating artificial sweeteners, etc.).
• These top two or three priorities then define what you are detoxing (eliminating or greatly reducing) during the initial two weeks, while you’re also increasing gut-health-promoting foods (page 39).
• At the end of the initial two weeks, add another top priority to eliminate or add to your existing detox plan (this may include additional inflammatory food items or habits from page 16). Don’t forget that detox isn’t just about elimination. You should start to incorporate more anti-inflammatory foods and habits as “priorities” in your plan, too.
• Stick with it! Remember that your body benefits from all changes, even small ones! And small ones can add up quickly to have a powerful impact.
The goal is to calm the body and restore key nutrients and bacteria, but this will mean something different to each individual. Choose to follow the Detox and Restore meal plans on pages 287–89 or define your own plan using the guidelines above.
Congrats! You’ve made it two weeks eating a cleaner, more anti-inflammatory diet. You next step to healing your body is to choose an action plan to focus even more anti-inflammatory healing on ailments or disease prevention. Or repeat step 2 to restrict additional toxins.
• Start healing your body by targeting specific diseases and health conditions using Chapter 10’s meals plans and guidelines (page 283).
• Continue to Detox and Restore (page 287) for an additional one to two weeks.
• Continue detoxing and restoring by adding an additional one or two focus areas to eliminate or incorporate for another two weeks. Continue this process until you have addressed most of the concerns from the assessment.
• Start healing your body by targeting specific diseases and health conditions using Chapter 10’s meals plans and guidelines (page 283).
Enjoy the food, the improvement in energy, the easing of symptoms, and, most important, the process! Sure, the healthy guidelines are the basis for healing your body, but these two components are essential for continuing long-term.
• Progress, not perfection: If you’re like me, then you’re probably tempted to try overhauling your diet in one day, but this isn’t the goal—nor is it recommended. Research suggests that incorporating gradual, small changes is more manageable and something you’re more likely to continue. Don’t take an all-or-nothing approach. Instead, focus on progress, and then on maintaining and growing that progress.
• 80/20 living: Your short-term goal is to gradually “clean up” your diet. Your long-term goal is to make anti-inflammatory eating your natural eating “norm” at least 80 percent of the time. But let’s be completely honest: All of us are going to eat added sugars again, be in a situation where we have less-than-healthy options, or maybe want a big, juicy steak. And this is okay 20 percent of the time, if you’re eating your best the other 80 percent.