October 2015 Real Food – What it is, what it means, how to __________________________ 3 Why Real Food is not a first world problem ___________________________ 10 Building the powerhouse PRODUCE stash ____________________________ 22 Building the powerhouse PANTRY __________________________________ 36 Real Food for the budget tight and time deprived – Creative corner cutting _ 51 Emotions, Habits and Discovery – A healthy love of food ________________ 59 The benefits of varying types of food preparation _______________________ 64 Real Food for healthy hormones _____________________________________ 71 Real Food and weight _____________________________________________ 75 Real Food for MOJO ______________________________________________ 79 Real Food for heart health _________________________________________ 81 Real Food and gut health __________________________________________ 85 Real Food and inflammation ________________________________________ 93 Real Food for strong children _______________________________________ 97 20 tips and tricks for excitement in the kitchen & easy ideas for lunch ____104 Real Food and community ________________________________________118 Real Food for the planet __________________________________________123 BONUS MATERIALS Real Skin food – Get your glow on from the inside out! _________________126 Label Reading Intensive – Refining your label reading skills _____________128 Real Food – Lunch ideas for big and small people ______________________139 Food prep, packaging and storage – The road to ditching plastics! ________145 Real Food What it is, what it means, how to YOUR JOURNEY. YOUR PACE This is not about perfection in 20 days. There are many things you will want to do to be a full real food rockstar – finding local trusted sources, co-ops, brand sifting, label decoding… It will be a good year or two before you are totally fluent, if you’re just starting today. This 20 days is your springboard. It’s your platform for rolling everything out – as and when you can and are ready. You will receive a PDF of all course content, a suggested library list and additional sites & blogs to be inspired by, at the end of the course. This means you will be able to go back and refer as needed for as long as it takes you. We have lots of people at lots of different stages in this course – from brand new ‘hmmm what’s in my food?’ people to experienced practitioners. This will be a great thing to see everyone helping each other over the course of the 3 weeks. There is absolutely NO QUESTION TOO SILLY. NONE. Ask away. That’s what the group is for – your own little village of wisdom. I am constantly blown away by how simple a fix the current health crisis is: Live a low tox life. Go back to nature and support the businesses who are actively doing that and the rest takes care of itself. I want your promise that you will not be wrapping yourself up in guilt and shame for what you do or used to do, or what you might find takes time letting go of. Guilt and change cannot co-exist. Clarity of goals helps us change and WANT TO. Set your goals for the next 20 days ONLY 3 major goals, so choose well. All the other ones will no doubt be smaller and possibly fall under your main goals. Examples It might be to start feeling comfortable trusting your body’s messages in terms of what food suits you best. It might be to finally feel they can let go of flavored potato chips. That might be massive for you. It might be stop drinking diet coke It might be to nail a lunch box meal plan It might be to successfully embark upon culturing your own foods (vegetables, kefir, kvass) It might be to become a better real food advocate and get that confidence up to do a healthy eating workshop at school It might be to replace all fake packet snacks in the house with real food options. It might be to find a food eating style that frees you from constant snacking and cravings It might be to find other ways to enrich your life and start untangling an emotional food attachment issue, that is hiding something lacking in another area of your life It might be to join a co-op in your area It might be to start cooking with your partner or kids and involve them in this journey that you’ve possibly already started It might be to ditch additive laden meal replacement shakes and start trusting that real food is NOT the enemy Whatever your goals, write them in your book. The universe has a funny way of making things happen for you if you’re clear enough with your intentions. Now, today’s topic. What is real food? Who can we trust to believe what’s right for us to eat? Who can we trust? There is so much information out there these days. It’s a blessing as well as a curse. The most important person to trust is yourself, when coming up with your perfect food ‘mix’. That’s right. I’m not going to tell you exactly what to eat, other than real food and what helps you and your family thrive. So many people read a blog post and change everything and then wonder why something isn’t working for them, when all they seem to see is positive testimonial for that way of eating. Why? Because they’re them, and you’re you. It’s that simple. Plus, half the time pages touting very specific food regimes, will delete negative comments, so it can all look very rosy, when for others it might not be, but you don’t see those. Can you trust science? Well, that depends. A vegan scientist can present a pretty strong case for veganism and its role in reversing various illnesses…. but then so can a low carb / high fat scientist somewhere else… and a lacto ovo vegetarian, and a paleo and so on and so on. So again, it comes down to believing in ourselves. People make billions of dollars from your perpetual state of feeling like a failure, with repeat business only coming from you continuing to feel like you’re failing. I’m all for people making healthy profits, but at our expense? No way! The most important thing is to ditch all the universal stuff that is wrong for ALL of us, and then from there embark upon some experimentation guided either by your own intuition or a trusted practitioner or coach – like me, perhaps? If something doesn’t feel right, sit right or sound right to you then you will be doing your personal intuition a disservice by going along with it. Explore into the arenas of curiosity and be mindful – did that work for me? Did I bloat after that meal? Did I turn into a fart bomb? Did I then get constipated for 3 days? Did I feel energized and awake? Do I want different foods for different seasons and reasons? Then you know what? That means you’re super in tune with your body and listening to the body’s internal seasons. Go with it. The truth is inside you, not inside someone’s latest diet regime. We’ve been told so much that ‘the answer is out there somewhere’ but in truth, the answer is deep inside us. Trust YOU and also of course trust those moments when you know you want some outside practitioner support for more complex healing issues at hand. My Real Food Manifesto, created when my blog was about 6 months old in 2012 has become something of a mantra – my ‘return to focus’ when I wanted inspiration, as I know it is for lots of people out there. I posted it on my page of then 257 likes (I’ve no idea why I remember that number!) and the next morning I woke up and it had been shared over 4,000 times. Over the next two weeks it was shared over 30,000 times. I had felt goosebumps as I’d written these words. It was like the old days when I was a song writer, and sometimes words would just flow right through me and out onto the page. The success of this manifesto said so much to me about how people need and want change and recognize how simple the solution is. Let’s look at the first line. EAT REAL FOOD. What is Real Food? It is food that hasn’t been tampered with that serves to nourish our bodies. It is food that still has a life force or, when prepared properly has life force brought back into it (Think soaking nuts or rice or legumes and ‘activating’). It is quite simply food that our body understands. Here’s a list of Real Foods that we’re going to be focusing on during the program – Don’t worry, we will expand definitions, scenarios and methods of preparation and use as the weeks progress. This is just a ‘get familiar’ list of what’s in and what’s out for today’s first little exercise and group share if you’re over on the Facebook group. Of course keep in mind that with intolerances, allergies, individual enzyme profiles and various diseases, not ALL the foods are going to work for ALL the people. Fresh veggies Fresh herbs Fresh seasonal fruits Olives Meat, fish, eggs – organic, pasture raised and ethical where possible Gelatin from pure sources Sustainable tinned or fresh “smaller” fish that is caught by sustainable fisheries, not farms, and as local as possible to you… sardines, mackerel, mussels or a great cheap supermarket option is tinned wild Alaskan salmon. Ensure either brine or 100% olive oil and avoid refined vegetable oil options.