Written by: Danielle Christy, Executive Contributor
Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise.
Healthy eating takes the right environment to cook food! With these tips, you can make your kitchen the prime place for preparing wholesome meals. Healthy eating is a certain kind of lifestyle. It takes more than just buying healthy foods or making plans to cook from scratch. You have to physically set up your environment to accomplish your wellness goals.
Simplicity
One thing we do as humans is overcomplicate things regarding health, especially in the kitchen. Typically kitchens are stocked with every pot, pan, and spice imaginable. In most cases, this adds more clutter, stress, and wasted money. All you need are the basics 7-10 spices, a good cast iron skillet and a few different sized saucepans, and a kitchen knife. Of course, if you use certain tools all the time, you definitely want to keep those on hand as far as food goes; the fewer boxes and processed foods, the better. Stock your kitchen with whole foods that make cooking a breeze: frozen fruits and veggies, single packed frozen proteins, good quality oils, vinegars, and salt. Build layers of flavor with simple and delicious ingredients to master your health.
Approachable
Make healthy eating and healthy lifestyle changes approachable to what works for you and your schedule. Sure, diets and programs work but are they long-lasting and developed into habits. Take tiny baby steps daily to improve and reach your goals. For instance, if your trying to add more vegetables to your diet, start the day off right and make a smoothie blend in greens, riced cauliflower, and squash right in. Make a hearty bowl of soup. The vegetable possibilities are endless. Don't forget to write down your daily wins and give yourself credit for all the healthy steps you are making to change your life.
Variety
It is the spice of life. To keep your health journey delicious and exciting, variety is key—nothing worse than eating that same chicken breast and steamed broccoli every day. Switch things up every time you grocery shop, pick up one new fruit or vegetable you typically don’t eat, and add it into your weekly meals. Travel through food, find recipes from places you love to visit, and make a meal inspired from there. I mean nothing better than a delicious bowl of pasta from Italy! Even ask a friend or family member for one of their favorite recipes and have fun experiencing the flavors and memories from their kitchens.
Organized
Organized kitchens are the key to ultimately supercharge your health and life. The first thing to do for the organization is doing a kitchen purge of both food and cookware. Pull everything out of the cupboards and get rid of anything broken, expired, or never used. For food, read your labels and ask yourself, is there added oils and sugars? Where did this food come from? And will it nourish my body and mind or harm it? For cookware, look out for Teflon or nonstick there are a ton of endocrine-disrupting chemicals found in these, and you want to have stainless steel or cast iron. Once this step is complete, it is now time to stock the pantry with whole real foods and minimally processed foods. Keep an inventory and label what you have on hand in your fridge, pantry, and freezer. Also, set aside 20-30 minutes a week to meal plan, make your grocery list and set yourself up for success weekly. These steps will save time, money, and stress and bring joy into cooking again.
Recipes
Having gone to healthy family favorite recipes on hand makes healthy eating and cooking much easier. Get a binder with divider tabs and add your favorite handwritten, printed out, and torn out magazine recipes. It is also great if you have recipes from your favorite cookbooks to add in there too. Just make a note on what page and book the recipe is so that you are not hunting for the recipe before you make it. Also, if you make a recipe and make a few changes write it down, so you have that to reference the next time you make it. Lastly, make sure you read the whole recipe through before you start cooking. To ensure you have all the ingredients and tools on hand to make the delicious meal.
These five tips can help supercharge your kitchen and health by keeping things simple, approachable to you and your lifestyle, have variety, be organized, and cook with recipes and the foods you love. Get a healthier kitchen and life one bite at a time.
Danielle Christy, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine Danielle Christy is a holistic health coach and self-taught personal chef dedicated to helping families and people around the world stop feeling overwhelmed with healthy cooking by showing and coaching them on how to stock their kitchens with healthy ingredients, meal plan and get back to having family meals again. Danielle holds a BA in Hospitality from Northern Arizona University and Certified Health Coach through the Institute of Integrative Nutrition. She has helped families of all shapes and sizes create and establish a concrete strategy to ultimate health through learning what individually works for them and using whole real food as the medicine of life.
