The New Year brings New Year’s Resolutions. Many of the resolutions that I hear about, and sometimes make myself, are vague and unmeasurable. You know what I mean. Resolutions like “I want to eat a healthy diet” or “I want to be healthier” or even “ I want to get fit”.
Goal setting experts tell us that it is important to set specific measurable goals if we want to succeed. So for each week in the month of January we will cover the top 5 nutrition goals that you can integrate into your diet to make it more anti-inflammatory, and then look as some of the measurable strategies that you can use to implement these changes and track your progress.
Start by adding spice to your life! It is true that herbs and spices contain nutrients that can help the body to better cope with different stresses. For example Turmeric is known to help reduce inflammation as is black pepper. Ginger is used to prevent nausea. Almost every other herb or spice contains some type of plant chemicals that will help the body in some way or another.
So how can we start to add spice to our menus? Well let’s look at the small steps that need to be taken to achieve this goal
- Pantry Inventory: make sure you actually own some herbs and spices and make sure that they pass the smell test. If they have no aroma then they are too old and need to be discarded.
- Look at old favourite recipes to see if they contain any herbs or spices.
- Look for new recipes or recipe ideas that contain herbs or spices. For instance lots of recipes for apple crisp or apple pie mix apples with cinnamon. So how about a sprinkle of cinnamon on your apple the next time you eat an apple. Or maybe sprinkle some cinnamon or ginger in your tea. Maybe it is time to make that curry recipe that your mom used to make but you stopped making because you thought that grilling was healthier….
- Now pick a simple goal! Here are some examples:
- I will purchase cinnamon this week
- I will make Seasoned Chickpeas and Almonds ( From the Complete Arthritis Health Diet Guide and Cookbook) to add to my salad at lunch.
Doesn’t that sound easy?
Stay tuned, next week I will look at 2 other goals.