How Consuming Nutrient-Dense Foods Can Help You Lose Weight
Loosing weight and keeping it off is going to be a topic that I touch on many times. This is a very important subject to a lot of people and to me. However, I want to stress that 100% of what I say about how I eat is true. My body is NOT naturally thin. I don’t starve myself. I’m not one of those girls who is just lucky to be thin… believe me, if I’m not careful, I can shoot up 20 lbs in a little over a month easily. I’ve done it once before and could have kept gaining weight if I didn’t get a personal trainer and consult a holistic nutritionist to get me back on track. And lastly, I don’t work out that much to keep my weight consistent. So how I eat is truly, how I eat which keeps me healthy and at a healthy weight . I’m not sitting here telling you all the things you can be eating and then not doing so in my everyday life. I eat very traditionally, and I eat a diet based on nutrient-dense foods.
But first, what does Nutrient-Dense foods & eating Traditionally mean?
Nutrient-Dense foods are foods with high nutrient value. And the best place to get those foods are in animal fats, homemade broths made animal bones, from raw milk, green leafy vegetables, grass-fed based butter and meats, and eggs.
Dr. Mary Enig:
“Nutrient-dense, with particular emphasis on the vitamins that we get from the fats and organ meats of grass-fed animals. Everything that they did in traditional cultures, from their food choices to their agriculture techniques to their way of preparing food, maximized the nutrients and made them more available. Everything that we do in the modern diet is for convenience … and big profits, and it minimizes the nutrients.”
The most Nutrient-Dense foods to try to implement in anyone’s diet would be these 3 things (from Sally Fallon, President of the Weston A. Price Foundation)….
“Number one would be liver. It’s the most nutrient-dense; it’s got a thousand to ten thousand times more nutrients than fruits or vegetables. The second would be cod liver oil,{can be bought in capsules} which is such a good source of A and D, and probably the third would be raw whole milk from pasture cows, or raw whole cheese.”
Eating Traditionally means…a style of eating based off of how our ancestors ate for thousands of years. To try and prepare your own stocks and your own meals using the freshest ingredients as possible. Ingredients from organically grown, local, and grass-fed sources.
When you eat based on Nutrient-Dense foods:
- You don’t have to eat as much
- It keeps you satisfied
- Keeps you energized throughout the day because you’re running on food that is high in nutrients, not on foods that provides no real energy, like processed foods.
I think of food such as this:
“I try to have a very simple relationship with food. A respectful relationship where I don’t just eat food to eat something. I want to eat food that is going to take care of my body, satisfy me, and keep me going. I TRY to only eat what I can make, and it has to be fresh and raised correctly.”
When you respect fresh food, and where it comes from, then the image of pulling a meal out of a box and straight into the microwave will seem less appealing. The idea of making meals with your two hands or with the help of your family no matter how good or bad it will turn out, will seem so much more satisfying! And the amount of food you make verses the amount you get in that box or from a restaurant is generally so much more. You will have leftovers for next day’s lunch or dinner again!
How I go about making every meal and dessert that I eat, which I know, sounds time-consuming, but once you do it a couple of times, is not.
- I like to take a little extra time and get a general idea of what I want for dinner for the week and what kind of sweets I want. There HAS to be sweets!!! Make that list and head out shopping!
- I go to the grocery store only one time for the whole week and get everything.
- I buy only fresh produce, fresh seafood, and meats.
- And of course I buy a bottle of really good wine for the week.
Now during the week, I will usually only make 3 dinners plus a Quiche or a soup and that’s good for Dan and I. Because when you make a meal, it’s usually a good amount of servings…generally 5-6. And of course I make a big batch of cookies for the week made with coconut flour and butter or some gooey flour-less brownies for us to snack on at night while watching TV.
Also! Your grocery bill will be, I PROMISE, 50% less when you only purchase foods that you are going to prepare yourself. When you cut out buying the boxes of cereal, cartons of cookies, bags of chips, frozen Lean Cuisine Dinners, you are literally cutting your costs in half if not more. I went to Whole Foods Market which is a pretty pricey place and bought food for 3 meals, and dessert for the week along with some other things and only spent $87, AND Sea Bass was one of the items I bought, and we all know what an expensive fish that is to buy! (Which I ended up preparing to perfection in the oven by the way!)
So the emptier your cupboards are and the fuller your fridge and baskets of veggies and fruits are, then the healthier and skinner your diet is!
What My Day of Eating Looks Like: (keep in mind, I don’t get up till 11-11:30am. I’m a night owl staying up usually till 3 working)
I’m not a get up and eat breakfast person. Don’t get me wrong, breakfast is my FAVORITE meal of the day actually. But I need to sit with my cappuccino and get my work going before my stomach can handle anything. I have a very touchy stomach!! If my stomach had a personality it would be similar to Charlie Sheen’s….easily disturbed, and violent when given the wrong things…….So I don’t eat anything till I’m awake at least an hour or two.
- A cappuccino made with Whole Raw Milk
- 2 Eggs, Poached every morning. Sometimes with 3 pieces of bacon if I’m really hungry.
**(Eggs will surprisingly hold you over for a while. Not egg whites! Geesh, you mine as well go eat some foam…egg whites never filled me up! And that’s one thing about eating Nutrient Dense foods is all about, eating foods that will satisfy and fill you up. After the eggs, I’m good for a couple hours. So my next meal is my biggest and I try to keep it as early as possible! Which is next to impossible sometimes! I should be French because I would love to eat dinner at 10 every night!
- I’ll always snack on cookies with my afternoon tea, or have a small slice of Quiche or small bowl of soup if I can’t wait till dinner.
For dinner I like to keep it varied for the week: A red meat dish, a fish dish, and then a vegetarian dish….YES! I said the word Vegetarian on my site! So take me in the back and beat me why don’t ya! But, I believe that we need to give our digestive tract a little relaxation time now and then. But hey, if you can eat a rib-eye every night of the week, then go for it! My little tummy…aka…Charlie Sheen…needs some down time:)
- Dinner: Blue Cheese Stuffed Meatloaf made with Lamb, Pork, Beef and Chicken Livers
- Dinner:Wild Caught Crab meat and Shrimp Grilled and tossed in a Salad with avocado, mango, radicchio, and just some good olive oil and balsamic vinegar.
- Dinner: Butternut Squash Soup made with homemade chicken stock, with fried Sage Leaves and Pumpernickel croutons.
Snack time!!
- My snack time stretches from when I’m done eating dinner, to when I close my eyes to go to bed. And breaking this habit is hard. I do this because I’m a complete sweets person. Not that I’m hungry, but because it makes me happy! I’ll have small little “snacks” before going to bed. I’ll snack on carob chips, or have a slice of gluten-free banana bread, granola, or cookies before dozing off to lala land. All of course with a glass of Whole Milk.
Now, with that said I know almost everyone is like, well I’m a mother of 3 with a full-time job, or I run my own business and don’t have the time, I get it. Totally get it. But little adjustments here and there makes a difference. When I started this way of living, because that’s what it is, not a diet, I started implementing small changes slowly. Like just switching out my milk for raw milk. Then buying only grass-fed meats. Preparing my oats, and nuts properly. Then taking time to cook more than one of my meals a week to 3 meals a week. So it’s about making small changes slowly.
I’ll definitely be touching base on this topic a lot, I’m very passionate about it. Getting back to our roots with how we used to eat and how we used to prepare our food is so important. There is such a major deterioration in American health, obesity is now a major concern not only for adults, but with children, and diseases have skyrocketed so much, that some questions have to be asked, and some changes have to be made. Start eating the right foods, and weight loss and weight management will follow. I’ll leave you with these statements:
From Eat Fat, Lose Fat by Sally Fallon and Dr. Enig:
“…nutrient dense foods takes into account the basic nutritional needs of the human organism, needs that modern food and technologies usually fail to meet. These technologies produce foods that not only lack a full complement of nutrients but often contain harmful substances produced by industrial processing. On this lifestyle, by contrast, you will be meeting your body’s basic needs by consuming wholesome foods, prepared with methods that make all the nutrients more available.”
“Many people mistakenly believe that low-fat diets are the only way to lose weight. They do not realize that the right fats, such as coconut oil and other healthy oils in synergistic combination, not only encourage weight loss but also help you heal from a wide range of ailments. ..moderate protein, lots of vegetables, small amounts of whole grains, and a wide variety of healthy fats including coconut oil…healthy traditional foods, will provide the right combination of saturated and unsaturated fats to optimize health and weight loss.”
“The proposed 2010 Dietary Guidelines perpetuate the mistakes of previous guidelines in demonizing saturated fats and animal foods rich in saturated fatty acids such as egg yolks, butter, whole
milk, cheese, fatty meats like bacon and animal fats for cooking. The
current obesity epidemic emerged as vegetable oils and refined
carbohydrates replaced these healthy, nutrient-dense traditional fats.
Animal fats supply many essential nutrients that are difficult to obtain
from other sources…”
