Photo by Rachel_R, Flickr

I talk about food a lot on this blog. The importance of a healthy diet, the benefits of discipline, and the ramifications of straying. Today I came across a blog of a nutritional counselor who spoke of a book called Integrative Nutrition by Joshua Rosenthal. Rosenthal offers a very interesting point that deepens and broadens my frequent “eat intentionally” message – the distinction between primary and secondary food:

Primary Food = Career, Physical Activity, Relationships, Spirituality
Secondary Food = What you eat

Rosenthal says that after years in his practice he’s noticed that there are those who eat horribly but thrive, and another group that eat with obsessive discipline and yet struggle to feel healthy. This begs the question: Where does true nourishment come from?

As always, achieving vibrant health is a delicate dance of many factors. But today I want to know how well you are nourishing yourself, and if there are areas of primary or secondary food that need your attention. Subtle shifts can create dramatic change in your health. What needs shifting? What needs nourishing?

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Photo by Ken Mccown, Flickr

I’ve been packing for days. Each day, I box up some of my possessions and my daughter’s possessions and add them to the tower in the corner of my living room. My life is methodically being packaged into a pause. On Wednesday, the boxes will be picked up and put in storage, where they will rest while decisions are being made. I am jealous of them (the boxes). I want a suitable place to rest too. To be not-in-use for a bit. To nestle somewhere cozy, built just for me. To breathe.

I’ve made matters worse by eating cookies. And some other things I’m too ashamed to admit here. By anyone’s standards I’m probably still a beacon of diet discipline, but by mine, I have been bad, and the only reason this matters is because my body knows it. My cognitive abilities are seriously compromised this week. I fake it well, but I feel the difference. It’s as if some cruel fairies have sneaked into my brain in the middle of the night and placed gauze around all the parts that do the thinking. The film of my life is still playing, but I’m sitting too far back and off to the side.

As if these few weeks weren’t all surreal enough.

I guess I thought I should get a free pass for a bit to behave like a person who doesn’t have a chronic illness, you know, what with these massive tectonic shifts happening in my life right now. But turns out no free passes available this week. That could make me feel sorry for myself, but it doesn’t. Apparently I’m enrolled in the master class. If I want to stay well, and do it without the standard MS drugs, there is no circumstance in which it is okay to eat food that is not whole and pure and good. The warrior path is the warrior path, and cookies don’t belong on it.

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But still, I’m busy, and I don’t always have time to cook. And yet I’m not willing to stray from my diet, because I’ve made a commitment and I realize that my life quite literally depends on it.

So what’s a busy girl with a chronic illness to do?

Well during the last two and a half years I’ve discovered some yummy staples and snacks and substitutes for now-illegal-for-me food that don’t require much prep time and keep me satiated. Most importantly, they keep me away from the harmful foods that would slow or sabotage my healing. Ideally, of course, everything I eat will be as fresh as possible – fresh chicken, turkey and fish, fresh spices, fresh veggies, and very little carbs like rice pasta or bread. The general rule of thumb for eating healthy is that the less “packaged” it is the better. If you simply don’t have the time or money or energy or inclination to eat fresh all the time, keep in mind when purchasing packaged foods that ingredient lists should be short, easy to pronounce, and contain things that are recognizable as real foods. I almost never go to regular supermarkets, and when I do, I skip the entire middle of the store and stick to the periphery where the fruits and veggies and meats can be found. All that said, some of the options below are not necessarily the most ideal, but they’re good ones to keep you on the right track and especially to transition onto this diet. I realize that it’s not enough to just know what NOT to eat (that’s a long, long list and I’ll be publishing it to this site soon). You need to know what TO eat. So here’s a few of my greatest hits and favorite basics. Most of these items can be found in a health food store or sometimes in the health aisles of supermarkets. I am also a big fan of Trader Joe’s and if you are lucky enough to have one within a reasonable distance from you, go at once!

One more thing – by changing your diet you are beginning to sculpt the internal landscape in which health can take hold. You are getting to the root of infection and inflammation, which are at the root of all diseases, by no longer ingesting foods that are toxic, and replacing them with foods that are whole, nutrient-rich, and detoxifying. Let this be your inspiration as you enter the unknown. I can assure you, having been on this diet for 2 1/2 years, that what once seemed daunting and downright impossible (living without pasta?! what?!) is now so natural and normal I cannot imagine that I ever ate any other way.

Sunshine Burgers (original): Get ‘em in the health food store. They are made of cooked brown rice, ground raw sunflower seeds, carrots, herbs and sea salt. You can heat them on the skillet or in the toaster oven in under ten minutes. They’re especially yummy with unsweetened apple sauce (health food store or Trader Joe’s) or unsweetened organic ketchup (health food store). They’re yum! They’re filling! They’re a great solution for a quick meal.

Ground Turkey: (Organic, or at least grain-fed certified humane, no antibiotics): This is tougher to find – some health food stores carry it, I get it from a gourmet food place in my town. I throw the whole thing in a pan, season it with sea salt and garlic powder and pepper, and just eat it as plain ol’ ground turkey. It’s quick, filling, and scrum-didlee-umptous.

Chicken Breast: Bell & Evans makes fully-cooked grilled chicken breasts that are raised without antibiotics or preservatives. They come in a box in the freezer section of your health food store or supermarket. They’re yummy and make a very quick and easy dinner entree – ten minutes to heat and it’s on your plate. You can also get organic raw chicken breast at your health food store or some supermarkets, which is the more ideal option because it’s fresh and not frozen. Raw chicken takes a bit longer to prepare, but you can be sitting down with your meal in under a half hour. And, you can season it however you want and it generally tastes better than the frozen version. I’ll be sharing some of my favorite recipes for chicken in the future.

Unsweetened Almond Milk (original or vanilla) by Blue Diamond or Pacific Foods: Get it in the health food store or health aisle of your supermarket, or Trader Joe’s. If you only make one change, swap out your regular milk for this. Unsweetened almond milk is the healthiest milk you can drink – it wins above soy milk, rice milk, hemp milk, and DEFINITELY cow’s milk, which is the devil’s drink (but that’s for another post). It also tastes really good! You can sweeten it with Stevia drops (more about that below) or add Hemp Protein powder and Green powder to it for a yummy breakfast shake (more about that below too).

Brown Rice: Trader Joe’s makes a blessed organic brown rice that comes pre-cooked and frozen and can be heated to perfection in under ten minutes. The packaging says it can be microwaved, but since that would be blasphemously bad for the food and me, I use a good ol’ fashioned pot on the stove top. I buy many, many packages, stuff them in my freezer, and have near-instant brown rice whenever the urge should strike. Now if you’re not fortunate enough to have a Trader Joe’s nearby (even if it’s an hour away it’s worth the trip once in a while!) you can make a large batch of  brown rice, freeze it, and grab it whenever you want to re-heat quickly and easily. Brown rice is a staple. I couldn’t live without it but I generally don’t have the time to spend 45 minutes cooking it.

Brown Rice Snaps: You can get ‘em in the health food store. They’re made by Edward & Sons and come in various flavors. I like the vegetable kind. They’re great crackers to dip in hummus, baba ghanoush, guacamole, or, one of my favorite snacks that really fill me up – rice snaps with almond butter (see below), sprinkled with Stevia and cinnamon. Yum! Make sure to stick to the vegetable, plain, toasted onion or sesame flavors, the other ones are not legal.

Almond Butter: Brad’s Organic, Marantha, or Trader Joes  brand. Get it in the health food store or Trader Joe’s. (Stay away from cashew and peanut butters, which contain mold, and soy butters.) It’s an excellent way to satiate yourself between meals or as a dessert.

Stevia: Okay so sugar is out. And by sugar, I mean honey, agave, all artificial sweeteners like Splenda, Aspartame, all that. But you can use Stevia and the good news it that they’ve recently made it taste better. You can find it in the supplement aisle of the health food store. I use the liquid kind to sweeten my teas, my cream of buckwheat (see below), and my almond milk. It’s an acquired taste but I really like it. It won’t give you the warm heavenly rush throughout your entire body that sugar provides (once you’re off sugar for a while you’ll notice this rush in a way you never could have before) but it also won’t spike your blood sugar, thus keeping your body functioning optimally. You can also buy the powder kind to sprinkle on almond butter and crackers, or anything else you should fancy. I carry a  bottle of Stevia around with me in my bag so I’m not tempted to sweeten my tea with anything else when I grab a cup on the go.

Hemp Protein: Made by Living Harvest. You can get it online, I get mine from amazon.com. It’s great to use for a morning shake with Macro Greens (also from amazon.com), which is a nutrient-rich super food supplement that is essential if you aren’t getting a lot of green veggies in your diet.

Cream of Buckwheat: By Pocono. Get it at the health food store. It takes about 12-15 minutes to make and with a few drops of stevia and some cinnamon, maybe a drop of butter, it’s a delicious hot breakfast cereal that’s totally legal and totally yummy.

Roasted Turkey Luncheon Meat: By Applegate Farms. You can find it pre-packaged in the health food store, Trader Joe’s, and select supermarkets as well. It’s antibiotic-free turkey, no nitrites, and very good. I sometimes just roll up a few slices and snack on it, or else I make a sandwich with Rudolph’s bread (see below).

Rudolph’s Rye Breads: You can find it in the health food store. It’s yeast, wheat, dairy and sugar free and somehow still decent. But don’t overdo it with the bread – you should max out at two slices a day at the most. However, when I began the diet I was eating more than this as I transitioned from my previous carb-aholic self.

Brown Rice Pasta: Your health food store will definitely have some but Trader Joe’s has my favorite kind. You can make this in about ten minutes and it will fill you up, but keep this in mind – a bowl full will still spike your blood sugar and slow the progress of your healing. And, it really doesn’t have any nutritional value in it – it’s like brown rice stripped of the good stuff. It’s a great transitional food to this diet – I ate a ton of it when I started out – but now I eat it very rarely, preferring grains that are much more nutrient-dense like millet. Millet rules! More on that below. Use it to transition but ease up on it as quickly as possible.

Millet & Quinoa: Both of these are totally legal grains that you can make in about twenty minutes and sub quite nicely for brown rice. It’s important to rotate your grains, so you should get in the habit of eating all three of these. Quinoa is good but millet owns my heart in a way that quinoa never could. It’s a little more filling and heavy and it’s sorta like a blank canvas, waiting for whatever seasoning should inspire me in the moment. It’s delish.

Avocados: I like Haas best and you can get them in any supermarket but they’re cheaper at Trader Joe’s (they should be paying me for all this publicity, I really am in love with that store). Avocados win my vote for the most amazing fruit ever. Avocado slices are so yum on their own with a sprinkle of sea salt, or in a salad, or mashed up with some fresh lime juice and salt as gaucamole for dipping with brown rice crackers. Avocado, avocado, I long for thee avocado.

Red Chard: This is one of my favorites. You can get organic red chard in the produce aisle of your health food store, or if you can’t find it there, you can get the non-organic in the supermarket. Pick up some garlic too and a lemon – I like to buy pre-peeled fresh garlic because it saves me time. Wash the chard very well and cut it in two inch width chunks. Cut the garlic cloves in half and throw a whole bunch on the skillet with olive oil. Heat them first, then add the chard, cook until it wilts, then squeeze the juice of half a lemon and sprinkle some sea salt and you have a quick, ridiculously delicious and very healthy green.

Nuts: Pecans, walnuts, almonds, brazil nuts, whoo hoo! Nuts rule. Stay away from cashews and peanuts because they have mold on them, but the rest, go crazy! They are an excellent, nutrient-rich, filling snack.

Condiments: Get your mayo from Whole Foods or Trader Joe’s. Salt should be sea salt only, the best kinds are Celtic sea salt or pink sea salt. For soy sauce, the only legal option is Braggs Amino Acids, which is unfermented soy sauce. I don’t love this stuff but I know people who swear by it. You can get ketchup unsweetened in the health food store. Try Annie’s Natural Salad Dressings but only these kinds – garden style, organic green garlic, or Goddess dressing on occasion because it’s so good. For vinegar use Apple Cider Vinegar (raw and unfiltered) by Spectrum or Bragg’s.

Butter: Use Horizon organic butter in moderation or Earth Balance, which is a soy-based butter. I’m allergic to milk and butter so I use Earth Balance, even though I don’t take in any soy in my diet other than this. Every now and then you need to compromise or trade off, and I’m simply not willing to give up the butter taste, so I’ve chosen the lesser of the two evils.

Another thing to consider – you can always go to a high-end deli or gourmet shop or restaurant and pick up some already-prepared chicken or fish for the next day or two. Chances are it won’t be antibiotic free, which is less than ideal, but it will keep you on your healthy eating trajectory away from processed foods. Whole foods are always a better option than processed foods. So keep that in mind and do the best you can.

Have you tried any of these foods? What do you like? When you consider the possibility of starting on this diet, what feels like your biggest challenge? If energy or mobility are issues for you, do you have a loved one that can help? Do the food options described above seem like something you can reasonably prepare for yourself? Do you believe you have the willpower and determination to maintain a diet like this? Tell me what’s coming up for you.

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