Dear friend

If you follow the guidelines in my previous post, do you know that you are automatically following many of the other food-related principles of healthy living? 💃🏻💃🏻💃🏻

Take these principles for example:

☑️ Eat mostly whole foods, close to their natural form
☑️ Avoid processed foods – including industrial bread!
☑️ Reduce and work up to avoiding sugars (saving them for special occasions rather than every day) 
☑️ Reduce dairy and keep it to a minimum✨
☑️ Reduce grains and legumes and keep them to a minimum✨

If most of the time you’re filling your plate with vegetables and other plant food and topping it off with a small portion of protein, then you can just go ahead and tick those boxes! Isn’t that wonderful?

The more you do this, the better you’re going to get at identifying (and creating) delicious and satisfying vegetable recipes.

(✨ What does keep to a minimum mean? Don’t have every day. If you tolerate it ok, then enjoy it once or twice a week.)

Moving along to this week’s topic, I can’t conclude this newsletter series on diet without addressing this final, important principle.

You’re unique. So, all the best diet guidelines in the world are not the best for you until you adapt them to your personal needs.

For example:

Age 

• A child doesn’t have the same needs as an older person. For children it is important to have quality animal proteins. I am not in favour of vegan diets for children or teenagers, particularly if they are active.
• The elderly, in contrast, require little-to-no animal proteins and can easily turn to plant foods. All the better for their digestion, which doesn’t get easier as we age!

Level of activity

• Someone who trains several times / week 🧘‍♀️🏄🏋️‍♀️🚴‍♀️🏌️‍♀️🏊‍♀️⛷️🚣 will not at all have a same diet as a sedentary person.

Geographic location 🌍

• If you live in hot climates for example, you really should avoid cooking and vice versa.  If you live in Toronto, in the cold winter months, you do not want to be having a cold gazpacho, right!

Seasons

• More raw and juicy fruits that “clean”  in the summer, more cooked or root foods that “nourish”  in the winter.

Your constitution

• This is your genetic makeup.  If you know for example that you have genetically weak kidneys or cardiovascular issues, in the family, than you diet needs to be filled with foods that are good for your kidneys and for your heart .

Your current state of health 🤒

• If you have a serious condition, your diet needs to be far more restrictive and with less deviations from the ideal foods, whereas someone that is active and generally healthy, can allow themselves to make more exceptions.

So, my advice to you is:

1.     First, do not buy into all these diets and advice that is a “one-fit-all formula”.  As you can see above, there is a common base but each one of us is unique and therefore you need to fit your diet to YOUR needs and abilities.

2.     Make sure to vary your diet and adapt it to the season, your level of activity, your geographical location,…

3.     Most of all: enjoy your food !!  Make it colourful, beautiful and tasty.  Make sure that it is fresh, organic or as close to that as it can possibly be.

And remember!

Unless you have a very serious health condition, follow the 80%-20% rule. 

Life is not perfect, and neither should you be!! 🤷‍♀️🤷‍♂️

Bon appetit!

Love & light, Dejana ✨

Then,  follow “Dejana Naturally” to read more in my social media posts!