If you say “I am going on a diet” you are essentially saying that you are going to eat less for a period of time to lose weight and then go back to the way you’ve always lived, albeit with perhaps a few improvements here and there. In this case you are going to have a very different experience and get very different results than if you say “I am getting into a new diet style or lifestyle”. In this case, you are saying you will eat better quality foods in great tasting ways that promote your health and happiness, build this mindset and make it a reality in your every day life. Here you are not leaving your present reality overnight, nor living the new reality over night either. You have the option to move forward at a pace you can handle well.

This is the art of transitioning.

For some the pace of transitioning is fast, depending on their capabilities, for others this will take more time. Either way, the path to eating a Nutrient Rich diet is a transition. Get used to that word.

This is important to know when it comes to eating Nutrient Rich food, 90% or more of the time. Short of going on “Nutrient Rich Diet” for a short period of time, you will find for a host of reasons that you will be no more successful trying to make this change overnight than you will be trying to get financially successful overnight. It just doesn’t work really well; it’s too much too fast and just is as fun as when you get into a process of lifestyle change, and transition successfully.

Underlying your approach are two different time frames. One tries to overcome the effects of a poor diet and lifestyle overnight, while the other, characterized by no less of an intention for better results as soon as possible, recognizes that you’ll go as fast as you can go as long as you don’t compromise your health and happiness. This is the different between going on a diet and transitioning.

I don’t know what your experience has been but I can tell you this, if you’re like me, or the thousands of people I have worked with, you probably haven’t been very successful trying to change overweight. Yet this is what most commercial diets ask you to do. You buy the program and “go on it” overnight.

Essentially, you trying to transition to someone else’s lifestyle overnight, even if for only a short period of time.

And then, like the smoker who says this is my last cigarette, you may have said something like “I’m going to eat this last piece of chocolate cake and then I’m going to start my diet, I’m not going to eat cake any more and only eat low calorie, or low fat food or low carb foods”. I might add, drink meal replacement shakes or do what ever the common commercial solution you’re engaged in says you should do.

Clearly this idea of trying to stick to diet programs, without a fundamental decision to start eating "nutrient rich foods" as part of your lifestyle, is going to be hard. Despite the advertising and celebrity promotions and the testimonials from successful followers, diet programs do not work sustainably. It’s because life doesn’t work this way. It works if you’re aim is to win a Lamborghini or get your picture in a magazine; you heroically diet and workout for 8-12 weeks and get a quick tan in this highly motivating scenario. There is some benefit to this, but it says little for how you will be living 1 year from now, let alone the week following your effort.

I need to say there is nothing wrong with a heroic effort, IF, what you’re doing is health promoting and you are taking an aggressive approach that acknowledges what you’re doing and the potential consequences, that way you can respond accordingly. But this is not the case for most who find either they can’t stick with it or when their program is over, it’s time for things to return to normal and that usually means more of the same that got them into trouble to begin with.

For you to be successful at healthy eating, it has to be normal and natural. Not necessarily common, but something you could do normally or naturally for the rest of your life with a smile on your face.

So I want to introduce you to the concept of "transitioning". It is the path to eating a Nutrient Rich diet. When you master the art of transitioning, you discover diet traps for what they are and learn how to avoid them and this path inevitably leads you to eating a nutrient rich diet.

Basically, the entire diet industry is a trap, focused mainly on short term weight loss goals and that usually means manipulating diet's that don't promote health. And if the diet does promote healthy, manipulative or obsessive ways of thinking that have little to do with the food itself, become the trap.

Truth is, you don't have eat an unhealthy diet to lose weight, you need to learn how to Lose weight the Nutrient Rich Way. But before you can do that successfully, you really want to transition to a nutrient rich diet so that you start on a solid foundation. It's one thing to lose weight eating healthy, but if you are trying to do that, on top of the transition from a diet that was formerly 80-90% nutrient poor, that's is going to be one overly challenging process.

Up Next, I'll be sharing the basic process of transitioning (transformation) most people go through.

The post Transitioning: The Path to Eating a Nutrient Rich Diet - Part I appeared first on Nutrient Rich.

If you didn't read up on Thanksgiving on the Nutrient Rich blog, here were two of the posts that you can still benefit from in the post Thanksgiving days.

After all, "thanks" giving isn't really one day alone.

Eat Nutrient Rich Foods for The Holidays

Happy Thanksgiving!

Chances are you ate more than usual yesterday, and didn't resist Aunt Martha's candied yams or the various onslaught of pies. Even if you ate nutrient rich foods, minus all the oil, fat, salt, added sugar etc, chances are pretty good you overate. We all have years of training for this day and it usually means allot of food, even if you are committed to healthy eating.

It's not the worst thing in the world to overeat once and a while, (even though overeating is incredibly easy to do, even when you are eating nutrient rich foods), but certainly, you don't want to make a habit of it.

Life is better when you are not sluggish, bloated, engorged, and walking around in a body that is making all kinds of sounds as it struggles to reconcile the food stress you just subjected your body to.

So, I figured that having a recovery plan might very useful that will help you all the way through December and kick off the holiday period with some energy, not overwhelm and exhaustion.

The Basic Day After Recovery Plan

OK, It's the day after.

You can't possibly be hungry right now, especially if you ate predominantly nutrient rich foods. Thanksgiving, traditionally includes lots of foods that are very nutrient dense.

Think about it.

* Yams
* Green beans,
* Potato's
* fruits
* salads,

* even small amounts of turkey (rich in some nutrients but not considered nutrient rich by definition).

So, no matter what you overate, rich or poor, you want to take some solid steps on Friday.

Friday

Wait until you are hungry to eat.

This is very important, as your body is digesting a great deal of food, so it's likely that today you will only need to "top of the tank" and not get back into a routine of eating 3 square meals.

That's one of the unique aspects of eating a whole foods, plant based, Nutrient Rich Diet, 90% of the time or more; you eat when you are hungry, (depending on activity levels and how much you ate at your last meal), not by the time of day it is.

Yesterday you had a day that was focused on food, so today you don't need to eat, or much at all.
Let your body have a rest.

Now of course, if you've been eating nutrient rich for sometime, that is easy to do. If you haven't and you've been eating a traditional westernized nutrient poor diet, pay attention to the fact that withdrawal symptoms can easily be confused as hunger today; headaches etc. They are not.

Detoxification:

The minute you stop eating (consuming) digesting and assimilating food, otherwise known according to Dr. Fuhrman as an Anabolic state, your body goes into a catabolic state of mobilizing and eliminating toxins; so you know that when you stop eating, nutrient poor foods, or junk food for a period of time, the body is going to do what it's going to do and that is clean you out!

It's inevitable, so believe it or not, if you didn't eat clean yesterday and your body is cleaning house today, it's actually a good thing and a sign that your body is vital and doing it's thing. Nothing is wrong.

If it gets uncomfortable and you can't stand to let your body just do it's thing, then stick to some light foods today like fruits, vegetables or their juices. Whatever you do, just because it was on the table yesterday, doesn't mean you have to eat it today.

True hunger is when your body really needs to eat, not when you are covering up the symptoms of withdrawal.You're body is always trending towards health and a clean environment, so this is a great concept, probably one of the most important nutrient rich concepts for you to learn.

Exercise your lymph system.

If you want to speed up the process of recovery, get moving.

Your lymph system is the detoxification system of your body and it only works at a high level, when your body is moving. What mobilizes waste products for elimination faster than any other natural force? Movement!

So, even if you don't feel like it today, move your body; take a walk and if you really want to speed the process up, go for a bike ride or a jog. Watch what happens, you'll begin to clean out.

You see, if you eat and live nutrient rich, as part of a performance lifestyle that works for you, you won't have too many problems following a day like Thanksgiving.

Truth is, even if you eat nutrient rich foods 90% or more of the time, the suggestions in this recovery plan still hold true, for the same steps that help you recover health are the same ones that help you maintain it. But of course, it's a much more enjoyable process when your body is not overwhelmed in a food coma induced by nutrient poor toxic foods.

Remember one thing about nutrient poor foods: they are also toxic.

So help you lymph system alone with exercise.

Friday - Saturday

Re establish your routines as you prepare for the week ahead, that is still a few days ahead and you recover from the break in routine that is now two day's old. One of the things we learn in a performance lifestyle is that you want to minimize recovery periods by eating healthy all the time, in great tasting ways so that the after-effects don't cost you multiple days, let along make you sick,

This also applies to your vitality. Live it up, but recognize you have to recover your vital energy at the same time that you need to clean and detoxify your body, so it's a good objective today that you do what you've got to do, (it's Saturday after all) but then prepare for a regeneration period to set yourself up for success on Monday.

This is going to require that you manage your energy carefully these next couple days and ongoing for this to be be truly possible.

You did allot of work preparing for Thanksgiving, and might have even traveled, shopped, worked (you might be working today; like I am), so you've got to be very aware of this, else you'll be paying for over indulgence for weeks to come.

There is a reason why people get sick after the holidays. It's usually has something to do with overwhelm (by activity and food) and exhaustion and then detoxification when the body forces you to stop and clean things up and recover. Yep, sorry, you can't always blame it on viruses. It's almost always, your lifestyle.

Sunday:

Regeneration is the name of the day today.

Do you want power this coming week, actually this whole forthcoming holiday season and year end?

Clear headed, solid decision making, with full function and capacity to you can live into your full capability without struggle and the sidetracking nature of having to deal with all the consequences of overwhelm and exhaustion will only follow sleep, rest, recovery and rejuvenation, otherwise known as recuperation or "regeneration".

Regeneration - Deep rejuvenation, restoration of your adaptive energy.

I know you're busy as heck, just don't make the biggest mistake most high performing people make, which ultimately sidelines them or costs them their health. It is this: you must build activity around recuperation, not the the other way around. If you make that  mistake you will always be battling a downward energy trend and suffer from personal energy debt.

So on Saturday night, start winding down and plan for a very lethargic, chilled out Sunday.

Then start the week

~ JAM

The post Thanksgiving, The Basic Day-After Recovery Plan appeared first on Nutrient Rich.