My clients often ask me "What diet should I follow?" or "What foods do you recommend?"  Although I have studied food and diet for many years, and I understand a lot about how our bodies work and the structure of food and what the body does with food and the digestive process, I am not a dietican.  My basic philosophy is to eat food as close to fresh as possible and to eat the very best quality that is available to you. 

And if you have been a subscriber for the rest of this series, you would also know that Mindful eating one of our underpinning philosophies.  HOW we eat is as important as what we are eating.  Also extremely important is how our food is grown and prepared.

Variety - what do we mean when we say "eat a variety of foods"?  Some one said to me recently "Ingrid, I do eat variety. Everyday for lunch I eat something different; Monday is Subway, Tuesday is KFC, McDonalds the next day, then Oporto's and pizza to finish the week, and some weeks I change the order - even more variety" Oh deary me !!

Variety is in the eye of the beholder!

Eat a Variety of Healthy Foods; as close as possible to the natural state or as it would be found in nature.  Some examples - oranges grow on trees, bottles of orange juice do not grow on trees.  It is better to eat an orange then drink the bottle of juice.  The juice has sugars and preservatives and the bottle probably contains the juice of about 10 oranges - when would you ever eat 10 oranges?

Another example is potatoes.  Potatoes grow under the ground.  Sour cream Pringles do not grow under the ground.  Corn grows on a cob in a field - corn chips do not grow in fields.

I'm sure you can think of many examples for yourself. 

Of course there will be times when you need to eat foods that are a few steps form the tree, or the ground or natural environment.  Olives are a good example, and I cannot imagine life without olives. 

However, if you use this as a guide to what you eat, you will find that things will change for you.  Not only will it have weight impact, you will find your skin improves and you will sleep better.

The second aspect to variety is to buy the best quality available to you.  Buying seasonal fruit and vegetables usually results in better quality and reduces the price.  When vegetables and fruits are plentiful they tend to be cheaper in price and of superior quality.  This year for our southern hemisphere winter we have had cherries available thanks to the USA and international air freight.  I'm sure they are superior quality fruit but at what price? The dollar cost at the supermarket, and the cost in food miles.

Sometimes the frozen fruits and vegetables are of similar, or even superior standard to the available fresh.  Fresh in some of the supermarkets have been stored for long periods of time. 

Certified, or guaranteed, Growers markets can be a good source of the freshest and seasonal fruits and vegetables.

Including more fruits and vegetables is one of the most important eating habits to develop.  They contribute to preventing heart disease, cancer, diabetes, and hypertension and help you to manage your weight.  Vegetables in particular have little in the way of calories while offering huge health benefits.  They give you a sense of being full and provide fibre as well as nutrients and vitamins.  The benefits are endless.

There are different "measures" for serving of fruits and vegetables and I am not a zealot about any of them, except to think that "more is better".  Some say daily: 3 fruit/ 5 veg, others 2 fruit and 4-5 veg.  Another says your weekly goal is to eat five to nine servings of fruits and vegetables per day.  The service sizes are reasonable and make them easy to measure:

• medium size piece of fruit, about the size of your fist
• half a cup of cooked vegetables, remember half a cup is about the size of a tennis ball
• 1 cup of leafy greens - 2 tennis balls
• ¼ up of dried fruit

Try different ways to add fruit and vegetables into your weekly menu:

• dried fruit into cereal - I love to add currants to porridge
• a vegetable soup with lunch - soup before a meal can reduce, overall, how much we eat; research has shown that eating soup can help people to lose weight because the soup allows the body's natural hunger signals to kick in
• have fruit for morning or afternoon tea
• add fruit to plain yoghurt for natural sugars instead of buying fruit sweetened yoghurt
• add tomato, lettuce, alfalfa to a sandwich
• keep a container of celery sticks, snow peas - I often carry snow peas as a great snack;

When you are shopping, try to buy a variety of colours - you are looking for a colour spectrum in your shopping trolley.

Find yourself drawn to healthy food - relax about food.

Mindfulness and variety and your food diary - great ways to help you lead a Healthy Wealthy Life!