And no you don’t have to eat like a mouse!

See our last post: Do the Holidays the Nutrient Rich Way – Happy Thanksgiving!

Why do most have to go on a diet in the New Year, eating less food than they want and need? The answer is simple. They eat so many nutrient-poor, calorie-rich foods during the holidays, they overeat excessively, and it’s only natural to want to deal with the most obvious symptom; overweight. It’s what happens when you overload your body with food that doesn’t “serve” your needs other than great taste.

But what if you prepared Nutrient Rich meals which are more appropriate in calories and promote your health? Imagine eating foods, meals and a holiday menu that was great tasting, and you actually felt better after you ate? This can happen for you when what you eat is Nutrient Rich!

Everyone will benefit when you choose to create, buy and serve Nutrient-Rich recipes, rich in quality real food or whole food ingredients. From snacks to baking, there is a Nutrient Rich equivalent for almost every food you are eating right now.

Below are examples of ways to make your holiday meal great tasting and healthier for the entire family.

Instead of eating meals heavy with calorie rich, nutrient poor animal byproducts and ultra refined food stuffs, eat smaller amounts of animal products and discover the dozens, actually unlimited number of ways to eat plant based menus. Plant foods are more Nutrient Rich than animal foods because they are higher on the food chain and don’t contain stuff your body doesn’t need.

Instead of ice cream, eat vice cream – real food ice creams that are made from cashews, water, maple syrup and vanilla, for example.

Rather than seasoning the sweet potatoes with butter or margarine, add orange, pineapple, apples, pecans, cinnamon, nutmeg, brown sugar, maple syrup, lemon, lime, to add even more flavor.

Enjoy freshly baked bread by itself – there is no need to spread on the artery clogging butter when whole grain breads and healthy spreads are all around us. You can use raw nut butters, apple butter spreads and others.
If you choose to leave some of your favorite recipes as is, eating smaller portions will likely not happen. So make the majority of your meals with Nutrient Rich Recipes, and you won’t have to get as full. You’ll get fulfilled faster eating Nutrient Rich and hunger shuts off. You also won’t have to deprive yourself of the great tasting foods that are important to you and the holiday spirit.

Don’t worry, during the holidays you will likely overeat and gain a few pounds no matter what you eat because everything centers on food. But eating Nutrient Rich, you’ll be healthier, feel better, and be happier. You can then Lose weight the Nutrient Rich Way™ with simple adjustments, and there is no dieting required.

Make only one commitment his holiday season. Raise your standard and eat better quality food. Eat Rich, Nutrient Rich foods, not poor foods that will wreak havoc on your body… Start the New Year with the confidence and knowing you celebrated well.

Check out the Nutrient Rich Food and Recipe Database!

Best, JAM

One of the leading authorities in PerformanceLifestyle® training and coaching, John Allen Mollenhauer (aka John Allen or JAM) is helping an ever-expanding achiever base optimize their lifestyles for better health and success results.

Based on the PerformanceLifestyle® philosophy, he is the founder of the Lifestyle Coaching Center in Livingston, NJ and  leading lifestyle solutions like www.NutrientRich.com Eat Better, Not Less! He teaches that improving your physical fitness and nutrition, losing weight and managing your energy levels

Imagine a cup of broth at night, or a soup or a seasoning, for a salad or any one of a myriad of dishes, and knowing that you weren’t getting a dose of increase-your-blood-pressure sodium that will put you at further risk of disease. Yet, it tasted like you were getting that hit of salt you’ve likely gotten used to while your body was getting a nutrient rich superfood that you loved!

Well, that was yet again, my experience last night when I used DrFuhrman’s VegiZest product – which is the ultimate soup base and seasoning mix.

It was 7:00 PM, I was just sitting down to read a book, but wanted to sip something. At night, I like to go to be satisfied, but not full. So what I did was heat some water, and put in a tablespoon of VegiZest and I had a great broth that was “nutrient rich”. Mmmmm, it was so good.

One of the reasons why I like DrFuhrman’s products products so much, in particular VegiZest, is because he has created the niche products that make eating a Nutrient Rich diet, so “every day” and easy. As I like to say, “simple quick & easy”

In this one cup of vegetable broth, I was actually consuming: green pea, organic spinach, carrots, organic broccoli, organic celery, organic kale, broccoli sprouts, organic soy flour, organic date sugar, organic onion, garlic, spices, green tea, nutritional yeast, canola oil and organic parsley.

* The canola oil is limited and the only allergen was soy, but in extremely limited quantity.

It was in this moment that I realized how content I am eating a nutrient rich diet, and its because of having access to DrFuhrman foods, that I love it all the more. A cup of tea moment like this is very enjoyable, but I knew I was drinking more than a cup of tea. I was practically eating a meal, yet enjoying that “meal” like it was that cup of tea, or “Joe” moment that so many people savor. I woke up this morning with a sense of satisfaction as well because my nutrient needs were met before I went to bed.

Remember, the key to success in a “nutrient rich” PerformanceLifestyle, is knowing how to get the nutrients your body wants and needs to function and perform well, in ever more convenient, tasty and enjoyable ways. This is DrFuhrman’s mantra as he wants to make sure that people can eat for health and get nutrient rich foods into their diet in the same ways they can get the super convenient nutrient poor and nutrient barren foods so many people are accustomed to.

That is why I have been calling this Nutrient Rich diet style the “Simple Quick & Easy” way to eat. It’s not to say I don’t like gourmet, I do, and so do you, but I must admit, I have a bias to being able to refuel and enjoy my food in simple quick and easy ways, as that is the way I eat most of the time… so that bias spills over into the messaging here at NutrientRich.com.

Note: The Nutrient Rich food and Recipe database has gourmet recipe’s as well, but the hallmark to eating Nutrient Rich successfully are the Simple Quick & Easy Recipes, that most people eat 80-90% of the time. People are busy!

Last night was a simple quick and easy moment.

Here’s some info on VegiZest:

Try it out, one canister of VegiZest is only $17.95

Dr Fuhrman also has a similar product called MatoZest.

They’re great tasting, certified organic and kosher. Not only are these extraordinary products nutrient-rich, they are “organic vegetable supplements” that have been painstakingly designed to taste great naturally.

No Sodium (Great Salt Alternative)

Dr. Fuhrman’s VegiZest is a super-green food supplement with a mild blend of spices.

Dr. Fuhrman’s MatoZest is tomato based with more of a zesty Italian flare featuring sun-dried tomatoes, garlic, and onion.

You can:

* Flavor all your soups, salad dressings and dips.
* Use alone in hot water as a weight–loss aid and phytochemical food supplement. (this is what I did!)
* Sprinkle on any dish as a seasoning, replacing salt.

The beauty is you get, phytonutrients, amino acids, antioxidants, plant enzymes and trace minerals in these unique products designed to complement your healthy, PerformanceLifestyle.

What’s also good is that MatoZest and VegiZest are “food supplements” as I like to call them because they are not quite whole foods (since they are dehydrated) but they are not necessarily supplements either (since they are all Nutrient Rich food ingredients with countless nutrients across all categories) have been formulated without the addition of possible allergy producing ingredients such as: sugar, starch, salt, honey, lactose, eggs, milk, colors, and fructose. There is some organic soy flour.

Enjoy these healthy additions to your lifestyle.
John Allen Mollenhauer

By John Allen Mollenhauer “JAM”.

We are at a major shift in the nutritional landscape, about how we think about eating, and eating for health, for that matter. 

For decades, we have been operating on the “nutrient poor” model of nutrition, where nutritional advice has focused mostly on what foods and substances people should limit – saturate fat, salt (sodium), cholesterol… – as if to acknowledge their consistent presence in the diet with “a little more of the healthy stuff” to be added in.

This moderation in everything nutritional approach has been a disaster; it’s not even a nutritional principle, it’s an economic one.

The old “take your vitamins” model of eating, where people would eat their standard nutrient poor diet and then make sure they were ‘eating their veggies”, ”taking a multi” or then, when they get sick “drink orange juice”, defies common sense.

Imagine nutrient rich foods as a side dish!

Today the trend is eating Nutrient Rich foods that result in health, peak function and performance, and natural weight loss as THE way to eat! If you want to include the nutrient poor stuff, if anything they are the side dish.

The beauty is, once you start eating Nutrient Rich foods, it get’s harder and harder to even consider those food stuffs as a “side dish”, because your body won’t tolerate them. Once you clean your diet up and therefore your body, just like any high performance machine, a clean machine, will not tolerate junk.

The nutrient poor approach to nutritional advice, of “what you should limit”, is also uninspiring and ineffective; especially when you consider that everywhere around us we have intelligent people promoting the very foods and substances we are supposed to limit. It’s confusing, it makes you feel left out and it gives rise to the “eat less” dieting industry.

In the book The Wellness Revolution, we learn that the nutrient poor model of nutrition was really in fact, an economic force. It had little to do with your health, and everything to do with the platform for various industries. Now I’m not into stepping on people toes, or hurting their bread and butter, but I do have a problem with industry practices that make people overweight and sick.

Don’t you?

As a result of these economic forces, most Americans today are not only overweight, but are overfed while undernourished. And it’s because they are missing out on the valuable array of nutrients their bodies need to stay healthy and function; the ones that are found in nutrient rich foods and nutrient rich food products.  

If they were to eat Nutrient Rich foods, and food products, they would get these nutrients, and they would not suffer the problems they they do when they eat nutrient poor foods that are rich in calories, stimulants (drugs) and poor in nutrients. They also wouldn’t suffer the withdrawal symptoms they experience when they try to stop and eat better. 

That is the diet trap.  

Of course eating Nutrient Rich foods, isn’t nirvana overnight, espspecially when you just begin making the transition to Nutrient Rich; there are a great many ins and outs, “nuances” to eating Nutrient Rich foods successfully, to look and feel the way you want and perform better. You can even still get overweight eating the world’s best nutrient rich foods, it’s just allot harder.

The Nutrient Rich Way (NRW) to eat has many of the same nutritional rules around around calories only the interpretation and the expereince is very different. Nutrient Rich calories are very different from nutrient poor calories and the implications are startling. The most successful way to eat for health, it is also a positive way of eating that focuses on a food’s complete nutrient profile, shifting the focus from foods to avoid to foods you enjoy.

Nutrient Rich is the “eat better” way to lose weight and when you lose weight, it happens naturally, especially when your lifestyle is successful. Eating Nutrient Rich is not like going on a diet that you need to stick to, it’s a quality standard that you set for yourself in your life and then transition to as the way you eat.

The Nutrient Rich Way is inspiring and not confusing.

The big question is, how do you make that transition, from nutrient poor to Nutrient Rich foods? This is the challenge, because it’s not just a matter of changing your diet, your body goes through allot of changes too and sometimes its difficult to interpret what’s going on.

Sign up for the Nutrient Rich RSS Feed at this site and stay tuned for the upcoming teleseminar – “How to Get Rich, Nutrient Rich!” the Most Successful Way to Eat for Health, Peak Performance and Natural Weight Loss!

There are so many ways to eat "Nutrient Rich", a nutrient dense, or high nutrient diet diet based on the principle of Nutrient Density, the cornerstone of nutrition.

Look at it this way, there are as many ways to eat a nutrient rich diet as there are to eat nutrient poor. But while there are no ideal ways to eat nutrient poor, there ARE ideal ways of eating Nutrient Rich.

It all depends on where you are in your transition, from poor to rich.

For example, are you just starting out eating a nutrient rich diet?

If so, chances are pretty good, you are not going to be eating a predominantly green diet, based in vegetables overnight, with fruits, beans, seeds and nuts and whole grains.

The reasons are simple:

1. You are not likely going to be used to plant based fare (you are used to animal and fake foods)
2. Your body will experience withdrawal (the process of detoxification from nutrient poor and nutrient barren foods)
3. You will fall for all kinds of traps in the market, mis- interpreting this "transition experience" as, not enough iron, or not enough protein or something like that
4. You won’t haven’t adapted socially or learned how eat Nutrient Rich in any situation
5. You may medical issues that you have to be concerned with
6. You have emotional connections with foods from your past
7. You can’t adapt that fast
8. There are plenty more reasons…

Your saving grace is this… the more you eat nutrient rich, the more your body becomes nutrient rich and all of the above get’s easier.

Here’s one of the core strategies that I have seen many people be successful with out of the gate.

• Find a great Nutrient Rich meal replacement in a flavor you like. This is not quite a whole food, not quite a supplement, but rich in whole food nutrition because it’s basically dehydrated whole food, that has been processed, but not refined. This will work great because it’s simple, quick & easy and will work in any situation AND people are used to making smoothies, eating food bars, having snacks and meal replacements.

• A good example of a Nutrient Rich meal replace ment is Vega
• You can mix a Nutrient Rich meal replacement with an infusion of fruit, or vegetables and nuts and seeds for that matter.
• Nutrient Rich Meal replacements with a berry, vanilla, chocolate, or natural flavor is very fulfilling, you can drink one throughout the day and be satisfied. Mixed with food in its natural state even moreso.
• The benefit of using a meal replacement mix (notice I didn’t say "protein powder") is that they contain a flat line protein complex. All vegetables have complete protein, they just may be low in certain amino acids and high in others and that slows recovery until your body gets more of the amino acids it needs for faster recovery. That usually means more consumption, which means more calories. So the mix of proteins contained in a meal replacement along with all other nutrients, including micro nutrients, pro biotics, etc, all in your smoothie, makes it super food like.
• Satiation and recovery, and great taste are the biggest factors in foods.

• Combine the use of meal replacement that ensures you’ll eat Nutrient Rich, with simple "mono meals", like easy-to-eat vegetables (eat lots of these), and fresh fruits, and a small handful of seeds or nuts… when you are actually hungry; you can’t eat grains unless they are cooked for the most part.

• For one meal a day, eat more gourmet, in other words, I’m not necessarily talking 5 star, but I mean eat a prepared meal, made from preprepared bulk ingredients, or fresh that you lightly cook or merely mix together. I’m talking about where you sit down with the family or friends, and enjoy a meal. The meals, menus and places to eat Nutrient Rich, are endless. See the Nutrient Rich Recipe Database.

Again, there are countless strategies for eating Nutrient Rich, but this is a basic structure that tends to work well for many people.

The first thing you want to do, is arrive at a strategy for eating that serves you now and then you can adjust as circumstances change.

This is a great "let’s get real" article.

It addresses the 9 point scoring system created by the promoters of the mediterranean diet.

First of all, all the factors for health and the success of a particular diet cannot be summarized into 9 points. Next, these nine factors have to do with diet and exercise as if these are the only fundamentals of successful living, they are not. Third, read this article…

Here are a few of the article highlights:

• First of all, it concerns itself only with quantities of specific things, not quality. So nutrient-poor industrialized, toxin-compromised foods are given the same score as organic and nutrient-rich foods free from toxins.
• Second, Mediterranean Diet research assumes that only diet, or only diet and exercise are factors in the superior health and longer lifespans of Mediterranean people, but as other research is showing, sunshine is another factor. This is a problem because Mediterranean diet research does not include advice to get more sun.
• Third, with the exception of alcohol and saturated fats, the Mediterranean Diet Scale doesn’t concern itself with consumption or over consumption of unhealthy foods. So it’s possible to get a perfect 9 on the Mediterranean diet scale, and still consume huge amounts of cotton candy and Red Bull and every day.
• Fourth, subjects get an alcohol point for consuming from one to three glasses of alcohol for men and slightly less for women. That means drinking zero alcohol — the healthiest option, assuming the rest of your diet is healthy — is treated the same as drinking a bottle of scotch every day. The upper end of this scale — three glasses per day — is enough to develop chronic alcoholism.