The Choice

The Choice

Oh the stories that abound about how hard it is to eat healthy...

When we healthy eaters hear them; in one way we are bewildered by how easy it actually is to eat healthy and at the same time, we have to remember that the person who is struggling is under the influence of hidden forces that we too suffered from at one point and are now free of. If we forget that, we lose sight of why people need help with changing the way they eat so they too will find eating healthy as easy as it can be.

Really, it is not hard to eat healthy, and once you understand how, it can be as predictably pleasurable, enjoyable and convenient as the way you are currently eating right now. Whole foods from nature were the original fast foods any way and before we had all this unnatural foods, we were all eating healthier.

Grown from nutrient rich soils (and yes our soil is still nutrient rich) nutrient rich foods are healthy, and great tasting because they are naturally nutrient rich. No chemist on the planet can duplicate the flavor of an orange, especially organic!

So why is it so hard to eat healthy and change your eating habits? Well, there isn't just one answer. It's because most people's heads are filled with false information that confuse us as to what's really healthy and why, but also for a series of other reasons that many are not aware of because the conversation around food, is usually about the food itself, and not all the other factors that are essential in making a change or what we call the 'nutrition transition."

It's called the Nutrition Transition.

Failure to understand how to make a transition and interpret the process when it comes to nutrition will ensure you get tripped up and diet trapped by forces that are vested in your current eating habits from Dr's to Pharma to food addicted friends, to convenience stores and media ad dollars and junk food companies to politicians who are bought and paid for by the meat, dairy and cola lobbyists.

As if that weren't enough...

Here are 10 reasons why changing the way you eat and eating healthy can be so hard. 

1. The Dietary Pleasure Trap. When you strip nutrients out of a whole foods and abnormally concentrate the pleasure stimulating chemicals, you hijack your taste buds, stimulate dopamine in the brain and get a super normal hit of pleasure. This is addiction and food is no exception.

2. If you don't have at least a basic nutritional education, you will be prey for anyone who thinks they do, but really doesn't. 80% of what you need to know and learn is what you don't need to do anymore, not what you need to do.Plus, that education had better be in high nutrient density nutrition, not the nutrient-poor nutritional practices we learn, that are influenced by economics and politics, supplement or product sales alone, or weight loss-only diet or tradition, or some ulterior motive that maintains the status quo. Even convenience and great taste (both of which are also leading drivers for eating nutrient rich foods) are used to guide nutritional guidelines and practices for many people who are lead astray. See the Vicious Cycle of Eating Nutrient Poor at the bottom of this page. 

3. The time it takes to get this information and understanding if they are fortunate to be getting advice from the right people.

4. Making a nutrition transition from predominantly nutrient poor, high addictive, highly stimulating foods to predominantly nutrient rich, non-addictive not-as-stimulating foods may not be exciting at first; you might actually feel uncomfortable as your body goes through a process of detoxification from the unhealthy foods and diets you've been eating for a long period of time.

5. Your digestive track may need to adjust, as it may be used to low fiber, nutrient poor foods. Load it up with high fiber nutrient rich foods and you'll start experiencing a level of function you are not used to.

6. Holidays, eating rituals, and habits (routines) also begin to change and that requires social adjustment.

7. Shopping, preparing, organizing and eating out change

8. Pressures from family members who are not yet on board.

9. A poorly planned transition strategy, with unrealistic expectations, focused on weight loss only, and not on the 7 healthy success results in their order of importance - detoxification, health improvement, increased energy, natural weight loss, lifestyle-induced disease reversal, slower aging and a younger look, and a longer life.

10. Other hidden lifestyle challenges that hold you back such as low energy, overwhelm, lack of inspiration... and ultimately EGO.

So, as you can see there is more to changing the way you eat than meets the eye that can explain why it's so hard to eat healthy. Resolve these issues thoroughly and evolve with new thoughts and lifestyle skills and you will achieve your goals with amazing quality of life.

Begin making the Switch to Nutrient Rich healthy eating, today.

The post Why it's So Hard to Eat Healthy appeared first on Nutrient Rich.

If You Don't YET Want to

 CHANGE the Way You Eat, Then ADD...

Add what?

Add the nutrient-rich superfoods that will change the way you eat, 

for you; and add them to the way you are currently eating. We call this the Superfood Eating "Initial Approach" to change or making the "Switch" to nutrient rich healthy eating. 

You see there is one thing that a nutrient rich super foods will do that no other food in the food chain can do; they supply massive amounts of micronutrients that nourish and detoxify your body. 

For example, according to Dr. Fuhrman, just 3 servings of cruciferous vegetables each week, such as broccoli, is the equivalent of eating over 20 servings of regular green vegetables!

If that's true, can you imagine what would happen if you includes 3, 6, 9 or more servings of cruciferous vegetables in your diet every week? How much healthier would you be? How much farther down the path would you be towards actually desiring a change in the way you eat.

For example: Broccoli is one of the Nutrient-Rich "Superfoods" - What are some others? Find out here: http://ow.ly/kYxDL

And there are so many more...this is just the tip of the iceberg. 

And here's what happens when you begin adding them into your current eating style...

• Your food preferences change.
• Your body starts functioning better,
• You get satisfied faster, and
• If you add enough of them in ways you enjoy, you'll start to see your weight and health change naturally. When this happens you'll then be super motivated to take nutrition and lifestyle changes to a whole new level.

This is a very real strategy and is rooted in "reality," because if this where a conversation of a different kind, such as general healthy eating, eating more plant based nutrient rich foods would make perfect sense to you. Nobody would debate it.

Now in the context of achieving your health objectives and maximizing your health (energy, weight, fitness) and life potential (longevity) taking this initial Superfood Eating approach of eating those foods that literally work for you will make the difference between not wanting to change the way you eat, to wanting a change.

Nutrient Rich Superfoods will nourish, and detoxify your body every single time you eat them will go a long way towards the next step on the path which is to begin making the Switch, from nutrient poor to nutrient rich healthy eating. 

The Superfood Eating Approach™, kicks it all off. This is the first step on the path.

The post If You Don't Yet Want to CHANGE the Way You Eat, Then ADD - Superfoods appeared first on Nutrient Rich.

It was great to hear John Robbins talk about one of the most powerful nutrition facts of his seminal book Diet for a New America, the book that actually launched the food revolution over 20 years ago, that is this... if "American's", just Americans, ate 10% less animal products, the biggest consumers of grains in the world (live stock) no one in the world would go hungry. Nearly 60,000 people a day die of starvation in the world, so I think we can both eat less meat, and redirect those grain resources to the people who need it.

Don't you?

In the last interview with John and Ocean Robbins... John Robbins laid out the 10 questions he asks that keep him aligned right with the foods he eats.

These are the 10 food questions you too could be asking...

1. Will eating this food propel me towards an inspiring future or keep me stuck in the past?
2. Is this food consistent with my ethics or will was it produced in a way that create harm to the earth and cause unnecessary harm to other sentient beings?
3. Will eating this food bring me long term fulfillment or only short term gratification?
4. I am maintaining my own integrity and well-being or just trying to please others?
5. Am I feeding my strength or indulging my weakness?
6. Will eating this way enable me to align with my spiritual path or is it a distraction from living a conscious life?
7. Will this food add to my life force or will it decrease my vitality?
8. Does this choice empower me or not?
9. Is this an act of self-love or an act of self-sabotage?
10. Am I coming from faith in self and in life or am I coming from fear?

These questions are powerful, and guess what, they will all naturally steer you towards a More Plant Based Nutrient Rich, healthy eating style and the superfoods that deliver all the results!

The post The 10 Food Questions You Could Be Asking appeared first on Nutrient Rich.

How Eating Nutrient Rich Superfoods Can Change Your Life for the Better—Forever

Hi Friends, an article about what we are up to as a community here at Nutrient Rich Life, was recently published by Living Well Magazine, a Lifestyle Magazine for Thriving Adults.

Eating Nutrient Rich is all about "thriving"!

"Everywhere you turn, we are hit with ads on how to eat, what to eat and when to eat. The “why” is often limited to weight loss-only programs that push “half-baked” healthier eating styles that are simply not focused on true health and are unsustainable. The marketing claims seem amazing and the canned testimonies border on the miraculous, yet most of these “diets” are based on making changes that don’t really solve the core problem—why we gained weight in the first place.

According to Nutrition and Lifestyle expert John Allen Mollenhauer, the relationship between food and health leads to the reality that we need to make a decision to switch from eating predominantly nutrient-poor foods to mostly nutrient-rich ones. Any conversation on healthy eating, let alone practicing nutritional excellence, should start and stay at eating micronutrient-rich foods. When this happens, every other aspect of what makes an eating style “healthy” falls into place.

“I have spent decades researching and testing and have lived through cycles and programs that I thought were healthy but were based on limited information,” says Mollenhauer who founded NutrientRich.com eight years ago as part of emerging a new meme for lifestyle that focuses on getting all aspects of your lifestyle working for you, not against you. Lifestyle change starts with improving the way you eat without the need for dieting, and the healthy way to eat is nutrient rich!”

Mollenhauer has become one of the nation’s leading Nutrition Education Trainers and spends countless hours coaching nutritional insiders as well as the mass audience he has attracted online. The NutrientRich.com site has grown into a leading online resource motivating people to Build a Nutrient Rich Body by “Nutrifying” and detoxifying, and dropping the weight of the past.  This enables you to dramatically improve your health, reverse lifestyle-induced diseases, increase your energy, age slower and look younger, for longer. “I can finally say that eating Nutrient Rich superfoods up to 90% or more of the time or more is the most effective nutritional path to long-term wellness and promotes living at or near your ideal weight all the time.”

Since founding the NutrientRich.com site, Mollenhauer has driven himself and those around him to develop a flexible approach to eating more plant-based, nutrient-rich foods in everyday modern life. “What is “SAD” is our Standard American Diet strips out nutrients and throws useless and even harmful ingredients into the foods we eat,” states Mollenhauer. It doesn’t need to be that way. His objective is to bring people to the understanding that eating healthy can be fun, affordable, convenient and very tasty.

The Nutrient Rich business model combines free introductory education with simple products and support services that help people make the nutrition transition from eating mostly nutrient-poor to eating mostly nutrient-rich superfoods so they can fuel their bodies right. NutrientRich.com offers free monthly teleconferences on topical areas of superfood eating while connecting people to the Nutrient Rich products that make this eating style so enjoyable. The company also offers micronutrient-rich foods and drink mixes, as well as educational materials and support. For serious individuals, Mollenhauer has established the Performance Lifestyle^® Club to help people maintain the pathway to incredible health, as well as personalized “Nutriventions,” for those who desire one-on-one coaching.

According to Mollenhauer, success depends on Building a Nutrient Rich Body based on superfoods that provide all the nutrients your body needs to function without overwhelming it with what it doesn’t need from food. “Really, we offer a nutrition and lifestyle solution for anyone, from Joe the hamburger eater to the contemporary lifestyle- conscious individual that wants to achieve their goals in a health-promoting way.

For more information, visit www.NutrientRich.com or contact John Allen Mollenhauer, NET, CPLC, or Jackie Schatell directly at 1-800-870-4068 or via email by contacting us here.

The post Making the “Switch to Rich”—How Eating Nutrient Rich Superfoods Can Change Your Life for the Better—Forever appeared first on Nutrient Rich.

I will tell you a secret—most diets don’t work, or if they do, the results are not sustainable.

There is a good reason for why this happens. If you want to lose weight, you have to do it the right way. And. I will tell you right now that skipping meals or following extremely low-calorie diets is not in any way, shape, or form the answer for losing weight. Extreme calorie deprivation only sets you up for yo-yo dieting, or "weight cycling." If you diet this way—your weight will continue to go up and down for the rest of your life. If you want to lose weight permanently, in a healthy way, read on.

The lack of understanding about the right way to lose weight naturally can set people up for big-time failure. Even if you do have initial success on one of these extreme diets, the toll it takes on your body is not worth it. Extreme diets that promise big weight loss in a short amount of time, merely cut out macronutrients like carbs and fats, and this is horrible for your hormone balance and your metabolism.

Do you actually know why are you in this pattern of dieting, and then slipping up and binging, and then dieting with simple minded, single variable ideas again?

Let’s use this example:

You want to lose weight for a special occasion, and figure that eating 800 calories a day, for a few weeks will give you results you want.

Many people do this, and truthfully—the method works, as a short-term tactic. However, it is not healthy or sustainable.

The problem is that while you are focusing on starving and fitting into that dress, or tux, you are not thinking about what eating this way is doing to your health, or what will happen once you go back to having a normal eating pattern.

Here is what happened to your body, while you took in very few calories:

You most likely took in so few nutrients that you compromised your own immune system, and actually threw your body so far out of balance depleting your body that the minute your pattern of eating changes, you will have an inverse reaction of the same magnitude. This is yo yo dieting.

Here is what happened next:

When you inevitably started gaining back weight, you started the yo-yo dieting cycle all over again. And, it gets more and more frustrating every time you do it.

Solution:

It's time to end this vicious cycle of yo-yo dieting once and for all! The way to do this is to get rid of the “dieting” mentality altogether. Remember, how I told you at the beginning of this article that dieting with simple minded single variables alone like just giving up meat, cutting carbs, eating more protein, cutting out gluten, eating less, etc, all of which may have value, but by themselves are not a healthy eating style, never work for long?

Now it's time to start learning about eating nutrient rich.

Instead of dieting, dig deeper and make what seems harder but is actually easier and that is, a lifestyle change; a wholehearted decision to begin making the switch to nutrient rich eating, By shifting your thinking from merely "cutting back" to eating large or appropriate portions of the right nutrient rich superfoods—greens, vegetables, fruits, berries, beans and legumes, nuts and seeds and whole grains.

These types of whole, nutritious foods will repair, nourish, and support every cell in your body, so it will work for you and not against you. Be good to your body and it will be good to you!

The post Quit Yo-Yo Dieting, Get Real, Get Sustainable appeared first on Nutrient Rich.

Time to bust this weight loss-only myth once and for all!

The Truth: You CAN eat carbs — the "good" ones! Yes, you read that right. You CAN eat carbs and still lose weight! I know that a lot of trendy diets (like Atkins and Paleo) have popped up over the years based on the principle that a high-protein/low-carbohydrate diet is the key to weight loss. It's not.

I’m here to tell you that is mostly false and very unhealthy: You don’t have to banish carbs to lose weight. Even though you may want to limit starches, you don't have to succumb to a nutrient poor diet of animal protein and limited fruits, because you are afraid of gaining weight.

In fact, eating "nutrient rich" fruits as part of a superfood, high-nutrient density, or nutritarian eating style will even aid in your weight-loss efforts as your nutrient needs get met, you don't overwhelm your body with what does not promote health, and you naturally eat less. Think about it — fruits and vegetables have carbohydrates and they are the two best food groups out there. The key is choosing the right carbs to consume. Here are a few other reasons why carbs are NOT the enemy.

Healthy carbs help you feel full. But muffins, cupcakes, french fries, white bread, white rice…? These are the evil carbs. These refined and processed carbohydrates have very little nutritional value and can definitely make you gain weight — which is why it’s about time you replaced them with a healthy version or just eliminated them altogether. Carbohydrates that are 100 percent whole grain and fiber rich help you feel full because they get absorbed slowly into your system and keep your blood sugar balanced, and come packaged with thousands of nutrients.

Other healthy carbs that fit the bill? Look to non starchy vegetables, fruits, beans, and whole grains like quinoa (which is technically a seed), oats, wild rice...

Our bodies need carbs for fuel. Limiting carbs will never work long-term because our bodies crave and need them for obvious reasons. Depriving yourself of a major food group like beans for example, is not a manageable weight-loss plan because, like the elimination or limiting of fruits, the replacements wreak havoc on your metabolism.

One study found that women who severely restricted their carbohydrates for three days ended up binging on carbs the fourth day — eating 44 percent more calories from carbohydrate foods than they had before they restricted their carb intake. You should have real food carbs, health promoting protein, and essential fat in the the quantities they are available in whole natural foods.

Carbohydrate also help fight disease. People who eat three servings of whole grains a day are 30 percent less likely to develop type 2 diabetes. And that's just whole grains. The right mix of healthy "Nutrient Rich" carbs (because you are not just getting carbs when you eat nutrient rich foods) is the best way to control your blood sugar and avoid diabetes. Carbohydrate rich foods are also the vehicle for many of nature’s disease fighters, like phytochemicals.

Without real food carbohydrates, we’d be sitting ducks for cancer, heart disease, metabolic syndrome, chronic inflammation, and digestive problems.

The Bottom Line: Remember, while you should ditch white flour and white rice from your diet and cut back on refined carbohydrates, it is a mistake to eliminate all carbs. Healthy carbohydrates, such as fruits, vegetables, beans and whole grains are an essential part of a healthy, balanced diet. Enjoy!

The post MYTH: Carbs Are the Enemy appeared first on Nutrient Rich.