Salad with chicken, salad, salad, steamed vegetables, more salad, salad with salmon -no bread, steamed greens…I think you get the idea. Eating healthy can make you feel and look great but it can be so boring if we are not creative about it. If you are like me, you probably have a fear of being boring in any way. How do we make being healthy fun? You have to start bring back the P vitamin, which is PLEASURE. We need to start eating with all of ourselves and not just our fearful, limited, diet restricted minds. I recently started reading about Marc David’s work with the psychology of eating. He says that what you bring to the table when you eat (meaning your emotions, your personality, your day, your mood, your appetite) is just as important as what you eat. If we are eating in an uplifted, curious, playful, sexy state of mind we actually digest food better than if we are upset and not paying attention to the food we are ingesting. I may be going out on a limb calling food sexy, but it so obviously is. Anything that brings us pleasure is sexy. Start bringing sexy back to the table. Start admiring your food; the presentation, the aromas, and the mouth feel of what you are choosing to make your meal. Food is fuel as it keeps up alive but it is also this magical, sensual, pleasureful, playful time in our day where we are taking time to ingest what we want to put in our bodies. We all want to make healthy eating choices, but there are ways to make them more exciting. What are some food tips to spice up your healthy life? Well here are a few ways:
1.) Keep it spicy. Spices are alluring, exotic, fragrant and powerful. Just a dash makes an exciting and dramatic difference in a plate of food. Start playing with new spice combinations like harrissa, zatar, curry, or start making up your own. Add spice blends to healthy items like steamed vegetables, grains, and beans; or make an olive oil-spice rub for a baked fish or chicken dish. Start playing with different salts, and peppers too. Cayenne, white pepper and togarashi all add different flavors to a dish. Celtic sea salt is way more complex than your iodized table salt. Start paying attention and start experimenting with what you like. Go ahead, keep it spicy. Your mouth will thank me, I promise.
2.) Start using super foods. A super food is a super charged food or herb that is off the chart with nutrients and antioxidants. Raw food guru, David Wolfe, is the number one pioneer of super foods. Adding these foods to your morning smoothies, mixing them into your yogurt, or making a healthy raw food dessert are just a few ways to get creative. Hempseeds, chia seeds, cacao, maca, mesquite pod meal, goji berries, lucuma powder, raw honey, bee pollen are just a few examples of some delicious super foods. Think about a bowl of oatmeal in the morning. Boring, right? Now imagine that same bowl of oatmeal toped with a spoon full of goji berries, a tbs of hemp seeds, 2 tbs of cacao bits, some shredded coconut flakes and a drizzle of raw honey on top. Way different story, right? So go ahead be a health food weirdo and stock up on as many super foods as you can. Your body will thank you.
3.) Go abroad. Start researching what people eat in South India, Thailand, Lebanon, Turkey, or Peru. There are so many combinations of food we as Americans would never think of doing that are quite natural and delicious in other parts of the world. Start researching new ingredients, cooking methods, recipes from other countries. Start exploring your local asian and ethnic grocery stores in your area. They are full of things we have never seen or head of before. Ask questions, be curious, be creative. No one would dare call you boring if you bring a traditional lentil based Lebanese dish to a dinner party. Start intriguing yourself and others with new eating adventures.
There you have it. Food is sexy and we as eaters are awesome. Start playing with food and stop being a slave to boring diet. Healthy is great but healthy, sexy, spicy, and exotic are even better 