13 Eating Tips for a Healthier New Year

13 Eating Tips for a Healthier New Year

By Candace Booth, ND, PhD, CNC, SHC

Whether you need to de-stress from too much holiday partying, or simply want to kick off the New Year right, these 13 healthy nutrition tips are a great way to start.

1. Drink warm water with lemon in the morning. A cup of warm water first thing in the morning goes right through the bowels and cleans out mucus from the day before.

2. Lubricate, don't flood. Your stomach needs to be lubricated, not flooded. When you drink fluids with meals, it means you drown or destroy digestive enzymes which in turn inhibit or strain digestion. Therefore, drink fluids, juices, or preferably water, 20 to 30 minutes away from meals.

3. Chew slowly. Chewing slowly gives the food in your mouth a chance to become liquefied as a result of mixing with enzymes from the saliva. Really learn to savor each mouthful. Feel the texture of the food and capture the flavor. The digestive process begins when your saliva comes in contact with your food as it is being chewed. The chewed food will pass more easily through the digestive tract for maximum nutrient uptake.

4. Eat when calm. Stress eating causes you to physically not be able to digest your food properly.

5. Not too hot -- not too cold. The temperature of food and drink entering your body affects the strength of your spleen, your energy battery, and other organs too. Ice cold drinks weaken the organs. Eating foods that are too hot (burn your palate) aren't much better, since they injure your mouth membranes, damage gastric stomach lining, and degrade taste buds. Room temperature water is best to drink.

6. Decorate your plate. Try and prepare meals that are attractive to your eyes -- this causes your brain to spur into action sending a message to salivary glands to secrete saliva which contains digestive enzymes.

7. Rotate your foods. Don't eat the same things every day. You don't need too much of one single food and it can often lead to food intolerance, allergies, or sensitivities. You will also nourish your body with a wider range of nutrients.

8. Listen to your body. Take note of the foods you crave. If you really want a specific food because of its color, smell, or feel, just enjoy and go with the attractions. It may be that your body needs something nutritionally contained within that food. We aren't talking chocolate cookies here! We are referring to all those healthy whole foods such as fresh herbs, fruits, vegetables, seasonings, etc. that are available at health food markets. Walk the produce aisle slowly and imagine your taste buds enjoying the flavor of each food. What looks good? What smells good? Which foods look healthy and robust? Savor the produce instead of looking at the high sugar/fat foods. Then make your choices. Notice how much difference there is in the foods you are buying compared to the week before.

9. Enzymes! Enzymes! Enzymes! Sprouted seeds, raw vegetables, raw fruits, nuts, and seeds are loaded with live enzymes, which are the key to feeding your body with living nutrition and assuring better nutrient absorption.

10. Break the fast. Always eat something healthy and substantial for breakfast. This is the time period when your stomach energies are at their strongest and your digestive juices are raring to go.

11. Don't sleep on a full stomach. Eat your last meal of the day at least 3 hours before bedtime. Try not to eat after 7 PM as a rule. When you eat too late, you stress your digestive system -- you cannot digest as effectively when you go to sleep on a full stomach. It's bad for your digestive organs, heart, and liver not to mention the sugar that will get stored as fat because you aren't burning off what you ate.

12. Choose as many colors as you can. Every color in the vegetable/fruit family -- red, orange, purple, green, yellow, dark green, etc. -- plays a role in building or detoxing the body/blood.

13. Drink your greens. Once a week, have a green juice drink made from a variety of vegetables and/or fruits. This drink will have a rejuvenating effect on your body -- it is a power surge for the blood because it will be rich in chlorophyll. It will purify the blood, build red blood cells, detoxify the body, and provide fast energy. Green juice is the perfect fuel for the body. Its high water content means it is easily assimilated, and it contains the whole vegetable except for the fiber, the digestible part of the plant.