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Tell me what you eat,
and I will tell you what you are.
—Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, The Physiology of Taste, 1825
What’s Your Nutritional Style?
The little black dress (LBD) is iconic and always in style. Think Audrey Hepburn, Jackie O, or Gwyneth Paltrow, the embodiments of effortless chic. Designers Karl Lagerfeld, Donna Karen, and Michael Kors feature LBDs regularly as the staple of any stylish woman’s wardrobe. My guess is you have at least one, if not several, hanging in your closet.
The best LBDs go with anything, and can take you from a dinner party in the spring to a cocktail party in the summer to a business dinner in the fall, and still look amazing and sleek at a semi-formal holiday event.
While the little black dress is a foundation piece for any woman’s wardrobe, your favorite one isn’t the same as your best friend’s. You adore silk, and she’s comfortable in a lightweight knit. You prefer knee length, and she loves several inches higher. A high waist suits you, and her shape looks best in a straight chemise. While we all love and need our little black dresses, each of us has different preferences when it comes to this basic wardrobe item. We each choose the one that fits our personal signature look.
Once you settle on your little black dress, you adapt it as needed. You add a hot pink sweater and a colorful retro necklace with black tights and heels for the spring dinner party. Summer cocktails call for a lightweight pastel pashmina and swinging chandelier earrings to go with your suntanned legs and gold strappy sandals. You pull out a black fitted jacket for the fall business dinner, add a pop of color with a gorgeous Hermès scarf, and balance it with nude legs and nude heels, the epitome of business chic. You look drop-dead elegant at the holiday party, showing toned, bare arms, layers of pearls, and satin heels with a bow.
Not everyone has a little black dress—or feels the need for one. Maybe you’re more a blue jeans and sneakers sort of person who never needs to dress up. You still make those jeans your own, because you’re you, with your own unique style. Your personality comes through, no matter what you wear. And no matter what you have on, your own needs are still there.
Your Nutritional Style
Just as the little black dress is unique to you, so is your Nutritional Style. Just as the little black dress calls for different accessories throughout the seasons, your Nutritional Style must change with the seasons as well.
Your Nutritional Style is the eating style that makes you feel like the best version of you. Eating for your Nutritional Style gives you energy and allows you to live a sustainable lifestyle without causing stress and anxiety to your body or your mind.
Eating for your Nutritional Style gives you energy and allows you to live a sustainable lifestyle without causing stress and anxiety to your body or your mind.
It’s not religion, and it’s not scientific. It’s about discovering your own best way of eating, living, and feeling great. It’s the one that lets you effortlessly release excess weight and returns your natural vibrancy and glow from the inside out. Just like choosing the clothes that make you feel your best, it’s about finding the Nutritional Style that works best for you.
Think of your food and nutrition as unique to you, and not as a way to fit into someone else’s plan or ideal. You’re not meant to live life going from diet to diet that you’re either on or off, and you don’t want to feel good or bad about yourself based on whether or not you stuck to a diet someone else created.
Here’s the best part. Your style can, and should, evolve over time; and it can, and should, change and adapt with the seasons.
The Healthy Omnivore
An omnivore is someone who eats all kinds of foods, including both animal and plant foods. I’m using the term Healthy Omnivore here, not regular ol’ omnivore, because anyone working with me is going to be the healthiest version of an omnivore possible. Animal protein includes red meat, pork, chicken and poultry, fish and all seafood, eggs, and dairy foods, including milk, butter, and cheese.
As a Healthy Omnivore, you eat lots of fresh vegetables, fruits, and an assortment of plant-based proteins, such as beans, nuts, seeds, and whole grains. You’ve learned to eat the right amount of animal protein, an amount that won’t weigh you down or clog your digestion.
The main way omnivores get into dietary trouble is by taking this Nutritional Style too far. When you rely too heavily on animal proteins, consuming them several times a day, it can lead to sluggish digestion, constipation, lack of vitality, dull skin, and weight gain in the short term. Significant health issues, such as heart disease and even cancer, could show up in the long run. Unhealthy omnivores usually indulge too frequently in processed foods, such as pizza, breads and baked goods, and low-quality snacks and sweets. These foods dull your taste for fresh ingredients and whole foods; they crowd out more nutritious foods from your diet.
If, as you read this, you realize you’re an unhealthy omnivore, let’s first focus on upgrading you to Healthy Omnivore status. As your eating patterns evolve, we’ll revisit your eating style season by season, while still allowing you to keep the variety of foods you love.
Don’t worry. If you choose this eating style for the long haul, you’re in good company. Both the Dalai Lama and Michael Pollan believe that animal protein is necessary for optimal health. We’re going to make you the healthiest omnivore possible.
The Flexible Vegetarian
If you’re a Flexible Vegetarian, also called a Flexitarian, you follow a vegetarian or an almost vegetarian eating style. You mostly avoid animal foods and enjoy the amazing variety of plant foods: beans, nuts, seeds, grains, vegetables, and fruits. You sometimes eat some poultry or fish, and also enjoy moderate amounts of eggs and dairy foods.
I’m not using the label vegetarian, because your Nutritional Style isn’t about rules and never eating animal foods. Many of my clients come to me already enjoying this particular eating style. They’re vegetarian, except for when they’re not. They don’t feel guilty if they crave an egg once in a while, or if they enjoy a piece of fish while out to dinner. It’s just food, and if their diet is 90 percent vegetarian, they’re OK with that. Your Nutritional Style is about the style of eating that you love and that makes you feel your absolute best. It’s not about forbidden foods.
Your Nutritional Style is about the style of eating that you love and that makes you feel your absolute best. It’s not about forbidden foods.
The downside to the standard vegetarian diet is that people employing this style often rely too heavily on processed carbs. Many people “fail” on a vegetarian diet because they forget about the vegetable part of the word; instead, they load up on sugary carbohydrates and dairy foods to replace the meat in their diet. A diet that has lots of cheese, deep-fried onion rings, and blueberry muffins isn’t really a healthy diet, even if it doesn’t include red meat. For too many vegetarians, an unbalanced diet leads to weight gain, low energy, skin problems, digestive issues, sinus problems, and more, all because they’re making poor nutritional choices.
THE NUTRITIONAL STYLE QUIZ
Your Nutritional Style is the style of eating that nourishes and satisfies you completely, not just because you look your best when you eat that way, but because you feel it, too. It’s the style of eating that banishes cravings, feeds your body well, and allows you to live life with joy, ease, and grace. It’s the style that fits well with the rest of your life and enhances it.
So what’s your Nutritional Style? Let’s figure that out together.
Take the quiz below and tally up your answers. When deciding which answer to give, please pick the one that’s closest to your usual eating habits. Or think of it this way: If you were eating out and had to choose from the three options, which would it be?
You’ll probably find you fit naturally into one of three Nutritional Styles. Once you’ve determined what your basic Nutritional Style is, we’ll begin your journey to better health with whichever style suits you right now. Within that style, I’ll teach you to upgrade your food choices to make them the healthiest ones possible. And if later on you feel you need to adapt your food choices to a different style, you’ll have the knowledge to make the shift slowly, and seasonally, in a smart and sustainable way.
No matter which style you choose, they all share one common goal: to help you attain a fabulous, vibrant, uplifting, happy-to-be-you level of health and well-being. I invite you to find that place where you feel good in your own skin and know you’re doing your best to stay there.
1. What’s your preferred source of protein in the food you normally eat?
A. Animal protein: meats, fish, eggs, maybe dairy
B. Legumes: beans and lentils
C. Nuts, seeds, and some soy
2. An average dinner for you would be:
A. Chicken breast, quinoa, and veggies
B. Vegetable chili and a salad
C. Kale noodles and fresh marinara sauce
3. Your favorite breakfast is:
A. Bacon and eggs
B. Oatmeal with blueberries
C. Green juice
4. They offer wild salmon and steak filet at a party and you choose:
A. Both, to taste each of them
B. A small piece of salmon
C. That fish had a mother! Pass the salad again.
5. Your BFF wants to go for ice cream, and you get to choose what kind. You go for:
A. Full fat and delicious creamy ice cream, any flavor!
B. Rice milk or tofu ice cream that tastes almost as good
C. Raw organic coconut ice cream loaded with raw cacao nibs
6. The soup you crave for chilly days is:
A. Hearty chicken and vegetable, maybe add some noodles?
B. Miso noodle soup or lentil
C. Raw broccoli soup with tahini, warmed gently
7. How often do you eat fish?
A. Whenever I want, as long as it’s a kind I love
B. Now and then if at all
C. Never. Our oceans are threatened
8. How do you feel if you don’t have meat, fish, or eggs for several days?
A. I definitely miss it and want it back. Why am I doing this?
B. I feel OK—I’m eating more legumes and grains, and I don’t really miss it.
C. Fabulous
9. What’s in your omelet at the omelet bar?
A. Ham, sausage, onions, yum
B. Spinach, onions, a bit of cheese, and easy on the eggs
C. Skip the eggs, please sauté all the vegetables you have.
10. You just arrived at an avant-garde cocktail party, starving, and the menu is only cheese. You go for:
A. All of it
B. You eat mostly the veggies and crackers, because you know you’re intolerant of dairy products.
C. You whip out a raw bar from your handbag and nibble away.
11. You just ate a big, gooey sugar doughnut from the corner doughnut chain. How do you feel?
A. Really bad, but really good. Life happens.
B. It was delicious, but now I’m feeling bloated. I’m juicing when I get home.
C. Nauseated and unable to think or speak
12. What do you eat at a big holiday dinner?
A. Turkey, ham, all the sides, and, of course, dessert. I love to taste everything!
B. A few bites of turkey, all the sides, and I’ll splurge on dessert. It’s a holiday!
C. I’ll skip the meat, eat the sides that aren’t too heavy in dairy or gluten, and load up on the vegetables. Dessert? There’s always room for a little taste.
Scoring Your Nutritional Style Quiz
Tally up your total number of answers in each category.
• If you mostly answered As, you’re a Healthy Omnivore.
• If you answered mostly Bs, you’re a Flexible Vegetarian.
• If C was your favorite pick, you’re a Modern Vegan.
What if your answers don’t fall into a clear Nutritional Style? Or what if you think that style won’t work well for you? That’s OK. By the time we get through this chapter, you’ll know which style you are and where you can go with it.
TINA From Omnivore to Flexible Vegetarian
When Tina first scheduled an appointment with me, she was an omnivore who ate meat at most meals. She believed that animal protein sustained her; without it, she felt weak. At the same time, she was having problems with bloating and constipation. She often had big energy drops in the afternoon, when she felt deeply tired and had trouble focusing on her work.
Tina’s diet relied too heavily on animal protein for her calories. She figured her daily multivitamin filled in for the total absence of vegetables and fruit in her food. As we worked together, I recommended that Tina add more vegetables to her meals. We wanted to increase her intake of phytonutrients and essential vitamins and minerals, and also add some much-needed fiber.
Instead of eggs and toast for breakfast, I recommended she switch to eggs and sautéed spinach, or skip the eggs and go with warm grains.
Instead of a meat-filled sandwich each day, Tina began enjoying a salad with a small amount of animal protein a few days a week. She learned to vary her lunch by having lentil or bean soup or quinoa salad.
Instead of meat for dinner every night, Tina switched to meatless meals, starting just once a week and then adding a couple more days. She learned to make delicious stir-fries full of vegetables, using nuts or seeds to substitute for the meat. She also learned to make hearty bean stews and vegetarian chili. We made sure to include plenty of healthy fats—in addition to being essential to good health, the fats helped Tina feel satisfied by her food and helped sustain her energy throughout the day. Her afternoon energy lags became less severe.
Gradually, we added more and more plant foods. We began exploring protein smoothies, too. As we did, Tina’s taste buds began to change. She stopped craving meat at each meal and felt satiated by all of the flavorful, fiber-rich foods she was now eating.
After about three months of gradual changes, Tina mentioned that she hadn’t had meat in almost two weeks. When I asked her why, she said she’d just lost her taste for it. She also said she felt her thinking was clearer and she had more energy since she stopped eating meat. Her afternoon energy lags were gone—she was now feeling highly productive all day long.
I hadn’t encouraged Tina to give up meat completely—all I did was suggest cutting back and substituting healthier choices. Likewise, Tina hadn’t consciously set out to remove meat from her diet. She realized, however, that she clearly felt better and looked better now that she wasn’t eating meat. She had, without really trying, found the Nutritional Style that worked for her: Flexible Vegetarian.
It’s been a few years now, and Tina continues her Flexible Vegetarian Nutritional Style. She eats mostly plant-based foods, along with moderate amounts of dairy products and eggs. She eats fish now and then, and meat only rarely. She continues to feel and look great!
When vegetarians find their supposedly healthy diet isn’t working for them, they throw up their hands, claim their hair is thinning, and say their doctor tells them to go home and eat meat. They tell themselves that they just aren’t supposed to be vegetarian.
In reality, they never approached this eating style in a healthy, well-informed fashion. It’s very easy to be an unhealthy vegetarian, but it’s just as easy to be a super-healthy one. Flexibility is the key.
If you’re a Flexible Vegetarian, you allow yourself the occasional serving of meat, poultry, fish, eggs, and dairy products, because you’re aware of your body and know when it is calling for some extra protein and dietary fat. You add generous amounts of greens, vegetables, fruits, and raw foods to your diet to keep your mood balanced and your energy levels high. Most important, you eat this way because you love the taste and variety of wonderful plant-based foods. All over the world, meatless dishes are the basis of richly flavored, highly nutritious ethnic cuisines. With so many food traditions to draw on, a Flexible Vegetarian is never bored by her food!
The Modern Vegan
The fundamental principle of veganism is avoiding all animal foods—even honey, because it’s made by bees—and eating only plant-based foods. Many vegans choose this path for ethical reasons: They wish to avoid harming other living things, and they wish to have a minimal impact on the environment. But being a vegan isn’t a form of penance—it doesn’t mean eating nothing but brown rice and steamed kale. If you’re a Modern Vegan, your Nutritional Style is full of vegetables, fruits, grains, and plant-based protein sources, like dark greens, beans, nuts, and seeds. Many Modern Vegans also choose to eat mostly raw foods. If you have a good understanding of both nutrition and your own body, being a Modern Vegan can be a perfectly healthy lifestyle.
I work with many Modern Vegans in my consulting practice. The key to success for them is to be flexible in what they eat. It’s OK for a Modern Vegan to indulge an occasional craving for raw sheep’s milk cheese or local honey. It’s OK to cut back on raw foods if your body is craving the warmth and easier digestibility of cooked foods.
It’s also OK to bend a bit, especially when you’re away from your own kitchen. One of my Modern Vegan clients needs to attend business luncheons a few times a month. If it’s a buffet, great—there’s always plenty of salad and veggies and usually a meatless choice or two. If it’s a sit-down meal and there’s a vegetarian option, she asks for it. If there’s no vegetarian choice, and the waiter can accommodate her request for more broccoli and no chicken, that’s fine. If not, she quietly does the best she can with whatever is put in front of her. She’ll often eat—and enjoy—the animal-based main course. Remember, it’s food, not religion.
KAREN To Vegan and Back
My client Karen grew up in a family that ate the Standard American Diet. Lots of boxed cereals and sugary snacks, plenty of microwaved foods, and always meat for dinner.
As an adult, Karen became more aware of what she was eating, but it took becoming a mother to decide she really needed to clean up her diet. Unfortunately, Karen didn’t have a good idea of where to start. After listening to some of the moms in her children’s playgroup, she decided to make a radical change in her own diet and become a vegan. She abruptly gave up all animal foods and took up juicing. At first, Karen felt amazing. She had energy to spare, enjoying huge amounts of greens and vegetables, beans, grains, nuts, and seeds. She lost weight, too. For about a year, she was happy. Then she began to crave what she was feeding her family.
She began to sneak bites of her kid’s organic hot-dogs. She found herself picking at the roasted chicken in the kitchen so her husband wouldn’t question her choices. She was frustrated and hungry all the time, trying hard to make her new vegan lifestyle work. She believed that being a vegan was the best choice for her (after all, the other moms seemed so happy), but her body was rebelling.
It was at this confusing time that Karen came to see me. Her head wanted one thing, but her body fought her and wanted something else. Karen was losing energy and craving food all the time. She felt like she was never satisfied by her meals, which led to frightening episodes of binge eating. On top of her out-of-control behavior, she could see that her hair was lackluster and thinning. Karen was worried.
She proudly told me she was a vegan. When she described her ideal eating day, I was confused as to why she’d called. Then she told me the true story: her diet and mind were all over the place, and she no longer knew what to do.
I knew what Karen was going through because I’d been there myself. I recommended that she let go of the dogma, the all-or-nothing attitude about her food. Her goal before our next session was to add in a serving of organic animal protein of some kind a few times that coming week, without guilt. She needed to listen to her body and eat what it told her she was craving.
Karen went for it, and within a week she was feeling like a new person. Her agitation was gone; she was calmer and stronger. She felt like working out again, and she even lost the anxious feeling that each meal would bring. She hadn’t binged once that week.
We worked together for three months, and came up with many vegan and animal protein meals that worked for her because they gave her the protein and dietary fat she needed. Karen learned how to change her eating pattern seasonally and handle occasional periods of high stress. She’s ditched the stigma she used to attach to eating animal protein, in favor of her own physical and mental health.
If you’re eating in a healthy Modern Vegan style, you’re aware of how your body reacts to your food and you have a strong interest in nutrition. The downside to the vegan eating style comes if you become too dogmatic about food and diet, jumping on each new diet trend and superfood, and obsessing over your own nutrition. This can lead to ignoring signs that your body may not agree with your latest diet plan. Most Modern Vegans need a little bit of leeway, and I’m giving you the freedom to listen to your body and let go of the strict rules. (Check out chapter two for more on the importance of flexibility in your approach to food.)
I’m giving you the freedom to listen to your body and let go of the strict rules.
Discovering Your Nutritional Style
As you can see from the quiz, discovering your Nutritional Style isn’t complicated, but it is personal. What works for someone else might not be right for you. I’m pretty certain, for example, that the celebrity diet you read about at the salon while waiting for your stylist isn’t going to be the best approach for you.
What is right for you could be as simple as tweaking a few things in your diet, or it might mean a bigger shift in what you eat. No matter what, the goal of finding your Nutritional Style is to make you feel beautiful and energized.
Health and beauty come from being comfortable and happy in your body, having high energy, and a love and passion for life, and knowing that you look and feel the absolute best you can.
What Are You Really Eating?
If you’re like most of the women I consult with, you believe, for the most part, that you eat in a healthy way. You have a sense that you could do better, but compared to your assistant, friend, or sister, you’re a health nut. She orders a greasy burger at lunch and you have a salad. While your colleagues at work are raiding the vending machines, you’re enjoying healthier snacks, such as nuts or fruit. Good for you! But what about the rest of the time? Not so much.
Chances are you’re eating whatever’s within reach. More often than not, you ignore what you know and rationalize that “everybody else eats that way, so why not me?” You’ve paid the price for too long. It’s time to stop. Wake up and greet the day like Mary freakin’ Tyler Moore; toss that hat into the air and turn the world on with your smile. You can. Let me show you how.
You’re a busy person. Most of the time, you eat what’s handy—a frozen meal tossed in the microwave, last night’s party leftovers, take-out from the deli near the office, or whatever the meeting coordinator is serving that day. You justify it to yourself by saying, it’s here, it’s easy, I’m starving, and I’ll get back to eating healthily tomorrow.
When you do cook for yourself, you nibble on a favorite cheese with some crackers and pour a glass of wine to go with it. Before you know it, you’ve eaten several servings of the cheese and had a second glass of wine. If you do happen to become conscious of your snacking, you wonder, “Can anyone really cook a meal without appetizers and a glass of wine?” And for another day, you give up on healthy eating and decide to start again tomorrow.
The best way to learn what suits you . . . is to learn to listen to your own body wisdom. You have unique nutritional needs that suit your internal make up and your lifestyle.
The next day, you grab a candy from the bowl at the receptionist’s desk, because it’s there, and how bad can one little piece be? Ten luscious, high-fructose candies later, you’re filled with regret and a sense of failure. “How many chocolate pieces did I just eat?” you wonder, counting the wrappers in the wastebasket. “S*#t,” you murmur, and vow to eat only lettuce for lunch.
Every few weeks, you resolve to do better for your health and, let’s face it, your looks. You know you could feel better, and you’ve read enough nutrition articles to realize you could make better choices, you just have no idea where to start or what to believe. There’s so much contradictory information out there, and every day you read or hear something different. The Today Show brings on an expert who says eat goji berries, and the latest guest on Good Morning America swears by blueberries. The next day, Dr. Oz recommends a different berry that you’ve never heard of. Are you supposed to worry about your antioxidants that much? It makes you want to just give up and eat at the nearest fast food place.
Plus, the extra weight you’re carrying drives you crazy. Those extra 10 or even 20 pounds are exhausting. Your energy lags, and none of your favorite clothes fit. You’ve done several diets with mixed results, and while you’ve lost some pounds, you couldn’t wait for the diet to end. Who wants to live on processed packets of powdered food that you mix with water? How healthy can it be to eat frozen meal after frozen meal? And how badly will you feel when the diet ends and, despite your effort and discipline, you put all that weight back on and more? You’ve had it.
Allergies, migraines, low energy, mood swings, and many other common health problems are closely linked to nutrition. Going to the doctor and collecting a medicine cabinet full of pills and sprays has helped the symptoms, but not the cause.
Let me guess. Not one of those doctors has ever asked you what you eat, have they?
After years of trying to improve your health through nutrition, you still haven’t found the winning formula. All those diets and books and supplements have proven only one thing—that nothing seems to work, and you have no clue what to do about it.
With shelves of vitamin pills, and a cabinet full of expensive powders and teas, you’ve spent hundreds of dollars on the next big thing for weight loss or gorgeous skin, but you take whatever potion or powder it is for five days and give up, because you hate choking down fistfuls of capsules and gross powdered drinks.
The best way to learn what suits you from a nutritional point of view is to learn to listen to your own body wisdom. You have unique nutritional needs that suit your internal make up and your lifestyle. When you meet those needs you’ll feel satisfied, and may even start to feel so good you will wonder how something as simple as food could make such a profound, important, and positive difference in your life.
Adapting Your Nutritional Style
Several years ago my diet consisted of almost entirely raw, vegan food. I adapted to this style of eating gradually, over a few years, and it was working for me. At my lowest weight, and with my energy sky high, I was productive and blissfully happy. I was certain I’d found a nutritional remedy I could follow for the rest of my life.
I delved into raw and vegan cookbooks, learned to prepare my food in creative and nutritious ways, got certified as a raw chef, and incorporated superfoods, nuts, seeds, smoothies, and juicing into my day. My health improved to the point where I couldn’t remember the last time I’d gotten sick. It was a wonderful, healthful time.
I continued on this path for almost two years. My skin glowed from the high levels of phytonutrients, and my hair and nails grew stronger than ever before from the plant-based protein sources that my body preferred.
Then I began to sense new changes in my body—not so welcome ones this time. I began to lose circulation in my fingers throughout the day; they would turn white on one hand, sometimes both. I felt cold and was unable to get warm as winter approached.
When I first experienced these symptoms, I denied they were the result of my diet. Convinced it was happening because of unusually cold weather, I dressed in layers and turned up the heat in the house. I wore sweaters, drank a lot of tea, and continued to believe that nutritionally speaking, this was the right path. I continued to create raw food masterpieces in my kitchen while what I really craved was a big bowl of warm stew or soup.
I was cold, all the time. Despite the season, I couldn’t recall ever experiencing such a chill. I didn’t know it yet, but my body had begun to rebel.
As my cravings became stronger, I began to steal bigger and bigger bites of my son’s dinner, and it was then that I realized that this behavior was crazy. To force myself to eat one way while my body was crying out for something else was unhealthy. It wasn’t what I wanted to bring into my business and my family.
Despite my awareness of changes in my body, I felt as if I’d failed, that somehow I should have been able to make it through the winter eating a strictly vegan, raw diet. But I had to acknowledge it was taxing my system, and my diet had become unsustainable. I needed to make changes.
I began eating more steamed and roasted vegetables, stir-fried entrees, thick soups, and quinoa stews. I still ate salads loaded with superfoods and drank cacao smoothies and green juices, but the more complicated raw food preparations fell away for the time being. A new, warming, seasonal menu was nurturing and gratifying. It enabled my body to handle the cold climate.
That spring and summer, my body naturally wanted to return to eating raw foods. As the warm spring air blew across our farm in northern Virginia, I added more and more fresh, local raw foods. As the summer heat soared, I craved the cooling crunch of raw vegetables and fruits, but I wasn’t trying to consume only raw foods anymore—I was listening to what my body was asking for. And as the heat of the summer that year gave way to cooler nights of early fall, I was drawn again toward warm soups, roasted root vegetables, and the occasional serving of animal protein.
I’m sharing my story because, whatever your Nutritional Style, it’s more important to listen to your body than it is to stick to a set of rules. Many people, especially women, seek to adopt a new strict diet or way of eating that someone else dictates. I’ve given up on that. I no longer follow anyone else’s rules. I’ve learned to accept what my body wants and needs and change my eating habits accordingly around the year.
Is Your Nutritional Style Right for You?
The Nutritional Style quiz gave you a good idea of your basic approach to food, what you like, and what works best for you. But it’s possible you’re forcing yourself into a style that actually isn’t best for you. Let’s take a good, honest look at your health right now, and notice any undesirable symptoms you might be experiencing.
Are you holding onto weight, even though you’re not overeating? Are you suffering from chronic headaches, sinus congestion, or frequent colds? Do you have unexplained pain, bloating, or discomfort in your stomach or gastrointestinal tract after eating? Are you frequently constipated, or do you get diarrhea, or do you alternate between the two? Are you tired, achy, maybe depressed? Do you feel exhausted or get sick often?
To force myself to eat one way while my body was crying out for something else was unhealthy.
What about your appearance? Is your hair thinning? Is your skin itchy, or scaly, or red? Are you still getting pimples or acne? Is your skin dry and prematurely wrinkled? Are you too thin, or are you carrying a pooch of fat around the middle?
These are all signs of an imbalance in your diet caused by your day-to-day eating patterns. Something in your nutritional habits isn’t working, and it’s time to make a change. Based on my experience, five key factors are universal when assessing your Nutritional Style.
Begin with where you are
The first step in figuring out your Nutritional Style is to get clear on where you are now. What do you eat most of the time? How much animal protein do you consume? Do you eat beans and grains, or is your diet based on seeds, nuts, and raw plants? Are you eating so much salad that you’re not getting enough calories? Are you a heavy consumer of sugar or dairy products? (I’ll talk more about these in chapter three.)
Begin by first establishing what and how you eat on a normal day. Write it down, including all the snacks, and be honest with yourself. Are you getting a good range of varied foods? Is there room for improvement?
Choose what you want
Once you’ve acknowledged where you are, decide if you want to move toward a new style of eating. Finding your Nutritional Style is about making your own choices. It’s not necessarily about eating what’s in front of you, served to you at a business dinner or by a well-meaning family member. No matter what others around you say or do, what you eat is up to you and what you want.
Your Nutritional Style doesn’t have to be restrictive or confining. It should give you freedom to investigate how various foods affect your body, your energy, and your moods, and make necessary changes based on your findings. Be open to some experimentation. Maybe you love beans, lentil soups, and brown rice, and you want to try a Flexible Vegetarian diet, but you’re scared you’ll faint or get headaches from hunger if you don’t eat meat once a day. Well, if you want to eat mostly vegetables and grains and some meat, why not? It’s your choice. You get to make the rules. Finding your Nutritional Style means creating the diet that suits you, and only you.
You need to learn to trust yourself, and to make the connection between the foods you eat and how you feel.
Be ready to change and adapt
You learned from my personal story that my Nutritional Style not only evolved, but that it continues to evolve over time. I had to adapt my Nutritional Style to account for colder weather, or else. You may well want and need different foods at different times too. The most common adaptation is with the seasons, but sometimes other situations also demand adapting—recovering from a serious illness, for example, or trying to get pregnant. Listen to your body and, if you have a health issue, talk to a knowledgeable nutrition expert.
We’re naturally inclined to eat in a way that corresponds to the time of year—our instinct is rooted in millennia of seasonal cellular programming. We crave warming foods in the fall and winter and cleansing, cooler foods in spring and summer. This book contains a chapter about each season, and how adapting to the seasons can enhance your Nutritional Style and your life.
Your Nutritional Style can also evolve over time. For example, your diet now may include a lot of meat, but after implementing some healthy upgrades and ditching those dangerous liaisons I’ll talk about in chapter three, you may find you want less and less meat and are drawn to more plant-based meals. Your style will shift as you begin to let go of foods that your body doesn’t like any more; you’ll start to crave and reach for healthier alternatives. You’ll probably find that simple changes—swapping a snack of cheese and crackers for a crispy apple, for instance—can make a surprisingly big difference.
Part of adapting your eating style will be to discover any lurking food intolerances. In chapter four, I’ll take you through a semiannual seasonal cleanse plan that will allow you to figure out the source of your symptoms, isolate the foods that cause problems, and work on reducing or eradicating irritating foods from your eating style.
Tune in to your body
Truly listening to your body is the most challenging part of finding your Nutritional Style. You will learn to trust yourself, and to make the connection between the foods you eat and how you feel.
Learning to tune in to signs of imbalance is an integral part of figuring out your Nutritional Style. Often the messages indicate an intolerance or sensitivity to one or more inflammatory food groups. Gluten, sugar, and dairy are the big three offenders to look at first, and I’ll help you figure out which of those bad boys is your nemesis.
You may not want to hear the message your body is sending because you love the Good Humor guy more than your boyfriend. You’d duel at sundown for a slice of your mother’s lasagna, and the corner bakery’s scones are worth a $15 cab ride. It’s easier and more delicious to ignore the signs. I get it—that splash of vanilla cream in your coffee is so comforting it can’t possibly be causing chronic sinus issues, can it? Sorry, Charlie.
Finding your Nutritional Style is about tuning in to your body, listening to what it’s saying, believing that food is that powerful, and making changes to correct what’s not working for you at this time. Sadly, most people wait until they are faced with a life-threatening health issue before they are willing to radically change any eating patterns. (I’ll talk a lot about that in chapter five, Healing in Style.) You don’t need to wait until circumstances become dire to begin making changes. You’re already getting signals that you need to improve your nutrition. Listen to the signs and messages that your body’s sending—in chronic ailments, weight you can’t lose, bad skin, and low energy.
Get smart and stand up for your own health. Make the connection between what’s on your plate and health issues. See the difference in the mirror, on the scale, and maybe even in your blood test results. Feel it in your joints, in your digestion, and in your energy levels.
We all have other issues. If you begin with your food, and care about what you put into your mouth, the rest of your life does get easier.
Add in the good and ditch the Bad Boys
No matter what your Nutritional Style is now, and regardless of where your diet is headed this year, or next, there are some truths that are self-evident. Adding in more fresh, seasonal, organic vegetables is paramount and will benefit you, no matter what else you eat. If you do just one thing for your health today, have a serving of vegetables instead of those fries or that dinner roll. As a juice or smoothie, sautéed, grilled, mashed or roasted, stir-fried, slow-cooked, or julienned, raw or steamed, they’re all good.
Simple? Yes. Heard it before? Of course.
But unless you accept that your body needs nutrients that you can only get from whole foods, not a multivitamin pill, and unless you incorporate this simple act and begin to do this now, all of the benefits of the other changes you’re about to make will be minimized.
No pill or supplement can give you the complex synergy of nutrients that whole plants can. Adding more vegetables into your diet, however you do it, will make a huge difference in your overall appearance and vitality.
Throughout this book, I’ll talk about fun, easy, delicious ways to eat lots of veggies without feeling like you’ve turned into a rabbit, walking around with nothing but carrot sticks and chomping on celery all day. You’ll learn how to find what’s fresh and in season, the importance of variety, and the benefits of fresh, whole foods packed with phytonutrients, year-round. You may even learn to love it. Hop on the veggie wagon with me today! It’s a fun ride that’ll change your life.
A Better Life
A better life isn’t all about the food, but if we begin with our food, the rest gets easier.
When I work with my clients to find their Nutritional Style, I always start with, “Let’s talk about food.” It’s not all about the food, and there are many other factors that play into our health and well-being: stress, anxiety, peer pressure, lack of time, illness, depression, allergies, bad marriages, bad relationships, toxic environments—you can name your stressor here. We all have other issues. If you begin with your food, and care about what you put into your mouth, the rest of your life does get easier.
Play with me for a minute: As your diet changes and you discover the foods that feed you well, and those that don’t, you gain more energy and become open to moving more. All of a sudden, that yoga class or daily half-hour walk isn’t an impossible task. After two weeks of moving, and getting your newly discovered muscles to yoga class or out for brisk walk, you begin to have more mental clarity. That project you’ve been postponing for months is now getting done, ten times easier than you thought. Boom!
You begin to cook at home more, and your family loves it. You’re feeling good about yourself, your body feels lighter and more “yours,” and you’re loving your new level of productivity. Romance seems hot again, and now, everybody is ecstatic. Life is as it should be, delicious.
Impossible? Not your story? Maybe not exactly, so come up with your own dream. But dream big, because when you begin to eat better and feel better, and clear away the foggy brain and tired body, all things become possible.
