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The Girl sees nutrition as fun, delicious, energizing, and
quick;
The Gal views nutrition to be easy, balanced, emotional, and
comforting;
The Guru knows nutrition needs to be sensible, assists our
physiological needs and is the fuel for our body.
Food! The
word itself creates many emotions and behaviors both
positive and negative, depending on our culture and
experience.
 If you Google the words nutrition or diet,
you encounter an overwhelming volume of information.
How do you
decipher your way through the maze?
What’s
relevant?
What’s the
next craze?
What’s
based on solid information?
What
special-interest group is paying for the research?
What are
the disclosed and undisclosed conflicts of interest? What’s
a gal to do?
Are you
confused yet?
At Girls,
Gals and Gurus, we aren’t for any particular diet, menu or
craze. We recognize that every person has a unique chemistry
as a result of his or her biology, so we can’t recommend one
size that fits all for menu planning. As we are each
individuals, our decisions need to reflect our uniqueness.
Our menus need to reflect where we are in life. They will
vary as we age, change our activity level, confront other
health conditions, have accidents, experience stress, bear
children, breast-feed, become menopausal, etc.
You may
notice we prefer to use the terms menu and
lifestyle change rather than diet. Our rationale
for this is that after you go on a diet, you eventually come
off the diet and revert to your previous eating
habits. While on the diet, there was an interruption
of your usual eating habits to reduce weight and you know
this will not be permanent unless you make menu changes part
of your long term commitment to yourself. Even the word
diet sets us up for failure. What are the first three
letters in diet? Using menu change or
lifestyle change instead has a profound influence on
intent, manifested by the mind, to make a commitment to
change and not suffer through sacrifice! The first thing we
observe with patients who are on diets is that they want to
go off them. If behaviors that caused the challenges in the
first place aren’t addressed, eventually one finds oneself
back to where she started.
We would
like you to be responsible for learning about what you
ingest and its effect on you. We recognize that this is not
the forum for individual nutritional counseling or
recommendations, but we can give you some hints to start
your learning.
We
observe in practice that a “normal” menu varies greatly from
person to person. What seems normal to one person may be
incomprehensible to another. So to begin on a level playing
field, we would like you to begin with a dietary survey on
yourself. Write down everything you eat for two weeks.
Everything! If you have a glass of water, note it. Coffee?
One lump of sugar or two? Double cream?
Note
whether your food was raw whole food (fresh) or cooked,
frozen and then cooked, or processed.
Note the
quantity and size
of what you ingest. Was that one c hip
or the whole bag? Was that piece of meat 4 ounces or 12
ounces? Was the latte a Venti, or did you have an
espresso?
Note
when
you eat. Do you skip meals? Is breakfast at 6:30 a.m. or 11
a.m., and when is dinner -- 6 p.m. or 10 p.m.? Does the
timing of your eating change within the week or the weekend?
Also note
why
you eat. Do you eat due to hunger, craving, habit, thirst,
an emotion? What need does eating fill?
How
do you eat? When you eat, are you sitting calmly, standing,
driving, at your desk, in a meeting, talking, sitting with
family or in front of the television?
Note the
composition of your meals? Do you combine proteins or mix
proteins with fats or carbohydrates?
What is the
quality
of your food? Is it genetically
modified, organic, farm-raised, wild, grain-fed, treated
with antibiotics? Do you know?
Note how
you feel when you awaken and how you feel immediately after
eating and a half-hour after eating. Things to look for
include stiffness, aches, fatigue, bloating, gas, loose
stools, sleepiness, emotional changes and cravings.
The more
detail you provide, the better.
Note your
goals for reviewing your menu. Weight removal? Reduction of
fatigue? Making your body less inflammatory? Improving your
energy? Reduction in the expression of a health condition?
Early detection and prevention of problems? Promotion of
wellness?
Once you
have a dietary survey done, review it. Review what you can
tweak with healthier alternatives, slight timing changes or
modifications of food. Keep an apple in your briefcase or a
Lara raw food bar in your purse. Keep a bottle of water at
your desk and in your car, as thirst can be confused with
hunger. Have a midmorning small snack of fruit and nuts so
you won’t be so hungry by the time lunch rolls around.
We would
like you to you to use this landing page as a starting
point, and we will add pages in the future. We encourage you
to educate yourself in the areas of greatest concern. Look
at what your priorities are and why. Do research.
When you
establish your goals, make them specific, realistic and
attainable.
Should you
want an affirmation for nutrition, the following might be of
assistance:
I am easily
and effortlessly approaching my ideal body weight,
I see
opportunities to learn new ideas about healthy eating around
me.
We
encourage all Girls, Gals and Gurus to regard this
commitment to making a lifestyle change as part of your
decision to enhance longevity and make the rest of your life
the best of your life. Change your frustration to
fascination!
Some simple
tips:
Eat real
food. Real food doesn’t have a label on it! The body doesn’t
recognize chemicals and spends an extraordinary amount of
energy on digesting them, not on any nutrition
it may be linked with, and hence we expand!
What are
examples of real food?
1.Whole
fruit, organic, not canned or with high-fructose juices
2.Sprouted
grains, not whole wheat, processed flours, oats or rye
3.Organic
vegetables, not canned (can be frozen)
4.Grass-fed
beef if you need meat, lean pork, turkey
5.Wild
fish, not farmed.
6.Nuts,
seeds, legumes, beans, not fried or salted (raw preferred)
7.Water,
water, water, distilled with a dash of Celtic sea salt
This is
just a start to G-Nutrition. Stay tuned -- let’s get there
together!
We would love to hear topics you have
an interest in. Visit
info@girlsgalsgurus.com
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