What is consciously nourishing ourselves all about? What should we eat? What does healthy eating look like on the plate? I must stress that it is a principled approach that one must ultimately adopt. In any field of endeavour using principles relieves us of the need to know what to do in each and every specific situation. I have 11 principles for healthy eating summarised below for your reference.

The purpose here is to look at some meal suggestions and a few tips on healthy oils taken from my own repertoire of meals.

The Ultimate Personal Development Challenge

Firstly, when tackling diet (the most powerful health tool in your box) it is important to appreciate from the start that you are attempting to change deeply ingrained habits and you must be patient. You will need to strike a balance between being easy on yourself at first and being disciplined and committed. My own experience with dietary experimentation has seen me crash off the wagon many times. For me learning how to eat right has been a long process that has got easier with every new delicious flavour I have discovered. It has been a process of displacing harmful foods like bread and pasta with new foods that satisfy me and fill me up.

Think of changing your diet as an exercise in self-control and self-mastery. Putting the value of health above that of taste alone is crucial. It is difficult but the rewards are enormous – a long and healthy life in a fully functioning body. Take charge over the one activity that you have total control over by subordinating taste as the only criterium for what you choose to eat.

With every mouthful of food you eat you are determining your genetic expression. Whether you eat fat or sugar, whether you eat toxic additives in processed food or nutritious healthful raw and home prepared food, you are determining the body that you build with every bite. You are determining your future health outcomes years in advance with every meal you eat. It is the most powerful control we have on our genetic expression.

What Nutritional Type am I?

Discovering what your body needs is ultimate an individual journey for you to undertake. There is no quick answer, you have to discover it through trial and error to some extent. Within certain broad parameters the requirements of your body are specific to you. It may be helpful to understand that research by Dr Joseph Mercola revealed 3 specific nutritional types that people generally fall under. It is well worth looking into this as it may shed some light on your specific requirements enabling you to better design a diet that is best for you. His work was based upon the original work by William Wolcott  “The Metabolic Typing Diet“.

Vegan and Vegetarian

I do not consider it wise to avoid all animal fats and there is a lot of propaganda out there steering people away from eating meat (and fish) such as the film “What the Health“. The real challenge is that there are edible healthy sources of meat and there is meat that is not fit for human consumption. It is the same with fish. As a general rule avoid farmed fish and almost all supermarket bought meats. We must be very discerning in sourcing our food. This is a key part of consciously nourishing ourselves.

There are a lot of vegetarians who are rightly protesting the methods of meat production. However, there are animal fats that humans need. And we must not forget that we have evolved eating a high-fat animal based diet.

How to Start

Get a ketogenic recipe book. It doesn’t matter which one. Here are a few suggestions.

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