15 May The Vibrancy of Greens
Life is so precious, if we could feel our best everyday, why wouldn’t we?
Food really affects how you think and how you feel. A lot of times we eat to bury feelings or we eat as a distraction and once you start eating more clean and eliminate the poor quality foods from your diet, you’ll notice this shift in conscious vibrant eating has a positive mental and emotional impact.
When we eat a lot of our energy goes to digesting food and when we eat less or cleaner, our bodies aren’t working as hard to digest, resulting in a noticeable energy shift towards our mental and emotional self. Your cells will be doing back flips in your body and you will feel more energized, more alert, better mood!
There isn’t a box that most of us will fall into with respect to best diet plans. Sorting out what is right for you means paying attention to the foods that feel right for your body. The clinical impact of diet can be determined by connecting with a Naturopath who can do a review of body systems, risk factor assessment (for diabetes, heart disease, cancer) and evaluate your blood parameters for cholesterol, fasting blood sugar, hormones, and general blood count. Partnering with a provider can be an invaluable means of optimizing your unique health goals.
Green Coconut Drink, recipe’s at the end!
What foods can help us be more vibrant?
Focus heavily on plant based foods and include raw foods such as greens to tolerability. Good greens include your macro greens, these are the dark leafy greens such as spinach, kale, collards. Better greens are your sprouts which are very nutrient dense (up to 600 x more nutrients than their seed) and therefore one of the most vibrant foods we can choose. A simple way to increase sprouts in your diet is by adding them to your salad or blending them into your smoothie.
Algae are wonderful too. Chlorella is very energizing and cleansing. But even colorful foods like red bell peppers, purple carrots…foods that are colorful are high in antioxidants and a great addition.
Green powders. I’m a true fan of high quality green powders and I use them on a daily basis usually in morning as almost an insurance policy that I’m getting all kinds of vitamins and minerals for the day, despite eating clean. Vital Greens is so nourishing and enlivening it’s almost like having caffeine without the nervous energy that caffeine can give you. This Greens powder is sourced with the highest quality of chlorella, spirulina, and blue green algae making it very high in chlorophyll which helps to increase red blood cell count, delivering more oxygen to our body and leaving us more energized. It’s quite addicting!
Also, I do the UltraSmoothie with probiotics as my daily morning smoothie because it has everything I would take in the day and it really reduces the amount of supplements you would need to take. The Smoothie has 6 servings of greens *per serving* plus vitamins and minerals which all come from whole food ingredients. It contains fatty acids, probiotics, as well as steam-extracted medicinal mushrooms for added immune and adrenal support.
Adopting a green diet doesn’t need to mean making drastic changes all at once. Start small and try even just one change a week. Swapping out breakfast with a green smoothie that includes a healthy fat and a healthy protein can be a great way to start. You will feel a difference and one thing will lead to the next and many of your health-robbing habits will be swapped out.
Green Coconut Drink:
Full of vitamins and fatty acids to help revitalize and stabilize blood sugar!
Ingredients:
1 tsp Vital Greens powder (option: 1 tsp moringa powder + 1 tsp chlorella)
2 scoops marine collagen (helps make this drink foamy and collagen contains amino acids)
1 tsp flax oil or 1 tbsp coconut oil (use coconut oil sparingly and avoid if you have high cholesterol)
1/2 tsp MCT oil (for extra brain boost!)
16 oz hot water
Directions: Blend on high for 1-2 minutes, pour into a cup and top with some spirulina if you wish:)
If you need a copy of the UltraSmoothie or would like help with your diet, feel free to drop me a line on the “contact us” page on this site. I treat patients locally at my Naturopathic practice in Vancouver, B.C. and worldwide via phone or Skype.
To your best health!
Dr Tasnim Adatya
Naturopathic Physician, Menopause Clinician, Acupuncturist, and Health Educator