From a PROfessional...
Make Salads the Focus
Build your meals around your salad and get the results you crave!
By Scott Chaneski
When preparing your next meal it is imperative that you aim to get the most amount of nutrients for the least amount of calories. By focusing on nutrient density you will ditch the empty-calories, flood your body with nutrients, and trigger your brain to feel satiated. Most of our cravings and mindless snacking comes from our body signaling us to find more energy. Years of poor eating habits will only program us to continue to reach for the same processed items that we have come to know as ‘food’.
When you read a food label and see a list of processed ingredients, chemical names, and synthetic vitamins, you must realize that your body innately does not recognize these as food. …And whatever the body cannot metabolize will be converted and stored as body fat.
Unfortunately these nutrient-deficient, empty-calorie, toxic foods that have become the staples of the Standard American Diet (SAD) will only keep us stuck at our current weight, current state of health, and continue to accelerate the aging process.
A simple tip to help re-wire your brain is to make a salad the focus of the meal. So next time you open the fridge and start building your meal, don’t think of (maybe) adding a small side salad, but instead, grab a large bowl and start building your health-promoting dish.
When you continue to focus on all of the health-promoting properties of your food, you will find that the cravings for health-sabotaging foods and the need to ‘count calories’ will go out the window.
Tips For Building Your Salads:
Organic ingredients will ensure you are not consuming toxic pesticides, herbicides, and fungicides that will undermine your results and your health. Glyphosate (the active ingredient in Round-Up) and other commonly used chemicals are linked to cancer. Ingesting these antibiotic chemicals will also hurt your digestive tract and ability to absorb nutrients. Organic foods are produced without using genetically modified organisms (GMOs) and will contain significantly higher levels of nutrients…so they are worth the extra cost.
When unable to find (or afford) organic produce, consult the Dirty Dozen List to see which foods are the most important to buy organic.
Not only are leafy greens powerful anti-inflammatory foods, but they are also loaded with Potassium. Aiming for 7-10 Cups of greens each day will help to reach the recommended 4,700 mg Potassium.
Blood Pressure is highly dictated by the ratio of Sodium (“bad salt”) to Potassium (“good salt”) in the body. Increasing your Potassium intake can improve blood pressure, fight fatigue, and replenish your electrolytes after your Exercise Video Session.
Other foods high in Potassium include: Avocados, Brussels Sprouts, Broccoli, Salmon, White Beans, & Coconut Water.
Choosing vegetables with a wide variety of colors will ensure that you get an array of Phytonutrients. These are part of the plant’s immune system and every color indicates a different compound containing antioxidants that protect your cells from damage and ward off cancer and other diseases.
Your Organic vegetables will be full of fat-soluble vitamins (A,D,E, & K), but this means nothing if you don’t absorb them!
Be sure that every salad contains at least a small amount of healthy fats. This can be some avocado, nuts, seeds, olives, and/or Healthy Salad Dressing.
Paying attention to the pairing of certain foods can help you to increase the nutrients you absorb. For example:
Iron from vegetables is known as nonheme iron and it is not absorbed as well as heme iron (found in animal-based foods). To be able to absorb nonheme iron up to 6x better, pair these foods with those rich in Vitamin C. Vitamin C can help the plant release the iron while also blocking other compounds that inhibit absorption.
Vitamin C rich foods like Kiwi, Strawberry, Brussels Sprouts, Red Pepper, Broccoli, & Lemon (juice) can enhance your absorption of iron from the Spinach, Kale, etc.
Most vegetables are ideal raw, but certain ones have different benefits when cooked. It can be helpful to mix it up and sometimes eat your veggies raw, and sometimes cook them lightly. (And never microwave since it will destroy the beneficial bacteria that you are paying for!)
Spinach is loaded with calcium, yet due to the high oxalic acid (oxalates) content our bodies barely absorb this mineral. By lightly cooking/wilting the spinach for just 20-60 seconds you can remove some of the oxalic acid and enhance the nutrient profile.
*Be cautious when consuming high oxalic acid foods if you suffer from kidney stones, leaky gut, and certain inflammatory conditions. Kale, Swiss Chard, and Romaine all contain less oxalates than Spinach.
