Two Easy Steps to Lose Weight and Stay Healthy this Holiday Season

What you eat each day influences how you feel, how you look and how you perform. It has far reaching consequences on your health now and in the future. It is important enough that you would be well served to consult a knowledgeable professional such as an integrative medicine physician, a nutritionist or dietician. They can perform tests to help you determine your specific nutritional needs and possibly foods you need to avoid.

You are the one who is in the best position to notice how a food makes you feel. When you share this information with a trained professional, they can help fashion a diet that will optimize your health. Even though I research nutrition all the time, I still benefit from seeing an integrative medicine physician and I would recommend consulting a doctor to you.

Scientists have studied thousands of foods to discover their nutritional benefits. Yet more is being discovered all the time. Common sense is sometimes our best defense in making healthy choices. You don’t need a PhD to know the difference between a doughnut and an apple. That said I’ve known people who had to give up lettuce because they were sensitive to a microbe that couldn’t be washed off. We’ve all known people with common allergies to substances such as dairy, corn, soy, gluten, eggs, peanuts or sugar. I’ve also known people who are sensitive to rice and oranges. So pepper your common sense with a willingness to explore your individual needs and sensitivities.

Whole natural and preferably organic and local foods  are rich in proteins, vitamins, minerals, phytonutrients, essential fatty acids, fiber, and anti-oxidants. These are the foods that are rich in research proven health benefits and disease prevention. These foods include nuts and seeds, fruits, vegetables, whole grains, grass-fed beef, fish, and pasture raised chickens and eggs.With careful choices this can also be achieved with a plants based or vegan diet as well.

Processed foods with synthetic ingredients, preservatives, GMO modified ingredients are not harmless. They disrupt your health in many ways. Children who are raised on whole foods are much less likely to be attracted to these pseudo foods. If you are addicted to them or even mildly attracted to them, here are two suggestions:

1. Eliminate them for one-three weeks and see how you feel without them. Results are more convincing than my words alone will be. Allowing for a period of detoxing, when you might actually feel worse for a few days, you will soon begin to feel better, much better.

2. Change your associations with these foods. They are not treats and they are not comfort foods. They are not forbidden, they are just undesirable. When you eliminate them for a few weeks, it will be easier to realize how true this is.

There are plenty of delicious holiday foods that you can prepare without using processed foods. A trip to a local health food store that has prepared foods will give you ideas. It's not hard to find the how-to. It shouldn't be hard to find the want-to when you realize that you will look and feel better all through the holidays when you eat healthy whole foods every day and stay away from appropriately named junk foods.