Food does three jobs at once: it gives the body building blocks, it carries energy, and it communicates information that influences digestion of the next meal and the next day.
Layered on top of all three sit the culture + tradition + skills components, which is where I like to start my consultations.
When working with a client (or yourself), my opinion is that the best entry point is what is already happening in the kitchen.
A sudden full blown switch tends to produce weeks of digestive (and kitchen) chaos and a likelihood of feeling like a failure and defaulting back to old habits.
This is why I always like to start with what is already happening and choose the easiest nudges toward better health.
Can you source locally in bulk at a discount for some of your staple food items?
Is there a new tool, like a better pot, cutting board, or knife, that would remove some of your dread around a certain cooking task that needs to be done but you hate doing?
Is there one small habit or recipe you could add?
In last week’s class for paid subscribers, I shared some of the things I have learned about managing the kitchen, which is really where the magic happens for diet.
Some of my best kitchen & cooking tips:
Ask for help.
Children can be in the kitchen as company before they are useful, then graduate into real tasks. You can add a food prep component to your baby shower planning and people will probably be happy to oblige the new mom in helping her stock up her freezer and pantry with meals.
Invest in real tools.
Sharp knives, solid cutting boards, and silverware that feels good really improve the experience of cooking. Many women I know who say they hate to cook are working with dull, flimsy, uninspiring equipment.
Buy in bulk.
Bulk buying simplifies the diet choices available since you have to make bigger investments at a time, meaning your budget (and pantry/fridge/freezer space) may be allotted to more of a fewer number of items. I really find it also helps my budget stay available for the food I had intended for us to eat because once it is bought and in the home, I am obliged to cook it. And you can often get bulk discounts.
Pick the No’s that matter.
Two examples from my family: artificial food coloring (because of its potential for neurological effects and how poorly it is regulated in the US) and commercially produced crackers (which trigger carb-chasing and rashes in my household). The list will look different for everyone. My No list used to be a lot bigger! I’m moving from tightly restrictive to more grateful and accepting.
Use the “never skip twice” or “never skip thrice” rule for healthy habits you care about.
If a habit slips, don’t let two days in a row pass without it. This helps me flow with inevitable habit disruptions without feeling like a failure and helps me not abandon my good intentions altogether just because I slipped up once.
Front-load food and water in the morning.
A slice of lemon and a pinch of mineral salt is how I usually start. Many pregnancy symptoms ease with this single change. The same for children and bedwetting: hydration delivered late in the day comes out at night. I find it’s just much harder to catch up if morning hydration is missed.
Here’s some more of the nutrition stuff we talked about
Folate, iron, and the cofactor problem in most prenatal supplements:
Almost every pregnant woman hears that she needs to supplement for iron and folate.
Folate use depends on DHA, vitamin D, magnesium, zinc, choline, the full B-vitamin family, and several amino acids working together.
What those cofactors mean is one isolated source of folate does not guarantee the folate cycle will run smoothly.
The same is true of supplemental iron.
Driving isolated iron up without phosphate, vitamin D, and the rest of the supporting cofactors can tank other parts of the system.
And the same with messing with insulin and ignoring all the other metabolic hormones!
Local, seasonal variations
The mainstream “local seasonal” recommendation works differently depending on latitude and season. Lily Nichols’ research shows healthy pregnancies sustained on as much as 30 percent carbohydrate near the equator and as little as 2 percent in polar regions.
I think understanding the food culture you grew up in, what you agree with and where you are forging your own path is wise to reflect on.
Food is more than merely nutrition, and treating it as some kind of ideal to attain is just not as comforting or fun as chasing the flavors and experiences of home and belonging through meals.
Imported food: I think how food travels matters
Trade routes are ancient and I believe the desire for new tastes is built in and healthy.
My considerations when buying imported foods:
1. Dehydrated foods (especially sun dried), which are harvested at peak ripeness, keep a stable shelf life, and are lighter to ship
2. Fermented and pickled foods, also transported well historically
3. Flash-frozen foods, which retain a comparable nutrient profile (texture changes; nutrition largely does not)
4. More caution with canned goods, partly because of can linings if you aren’t doing your own canning
5. Caution with imported carbohydrates if you live in a polar or even temperate climate because of light/dark and metabolic hormone interactions and possibly deuterium
Sourcing quality food
1. (USA) Azure Standard convenient for one stop for bulk meat (cases from specific farms), line-caught fish, produce and other groceries, plus I love the “drop” system as yet another way to build local community
2. Local CSAs, you may be able to find one using a platform like https://www.localharvest.org/csa/ and customize your shares
3. Cow/pork shares split across families
4. Work-trade arrangements on local farms, gleaning parties
5. Mindset! Farmers markets are not just for shopping! They are also and maybe even more importantly a relationship-building entry point to your local farming community
References mentioned:
Lily Nichols, Real Food for Pregnancy and Real Food for Fertility (the latter includes a section for men)
The Brewer Diet for Pregnancy
Full class citations at the end, and in my Circadian and Quantum Research Library
The perinatal nutritional arc:
Specific concepts I find helpful for preconception, earlt pregnancy, late pregnancy, labor, early and late postpartum.
