What No One Tells You About Decluttering Your Food and My Easy To Follow Pantry Declutter Guide

Starting a new, sexier, healthier lifestyle can begin with any one of the three pillars – body, mind or soul. Today we will focus on your body, or more precisely, the food you put into your body. 

Most of us are trained to go on and off a wagon. Start a diet, do some of the work, real life sets in, “Fall off wagon”. Epic fail.

I’m not interested in any wagon whatsoever, but in ensuring that any changes you desire to make are life-long changes that elevate your life in every area. So if you’re ready to ditch the temporary wagon mentality, join me in this decluttering exercise to help set you up for success with your food.

And on Jan 23rd I’ll share with you my decluttering tips for your mindset. Our psychology shapes a lot of what we attract so cleaning that up will help you bring in those healthy habits you’re trying so hard to maintain.

But first – Decluttering your food!

I operate a non-elimination policy with myself and with my clients. What does this mean? I am not the kind of nutritionist who pulls out gluten, diary etc from your diet as a first step. It may happen eventually if we find you are reacting to them, but we can get you amazing results without having to go to those extremes. But there are some things you can start to swap out today to move you closer towards the body and lifestyle you want. Feeling sexy includes ensuring your cells are being fed with sexy foods so let’s get you there today.

Pantry

Go through your pantry and start to swap out high sugary foods like cookies, cereals, crackers that you tend to binge out on. Head on over to the natural section of your grocery store or your local whole foods and explore the different brands offering similar foods but with way less preservatives, GMO’s, and sugars. It may be overwhelming at first, but just take some time to explore, read labels, and really get intimate with your food.

Don’t get fooled by gluten free – it’s NOT the healthier version. Most gluten free foods have a bunch of other crappy ingredients in them, so while your digestive system may be taking a bit of a break from the gluten if you’re sensitive to it, your body is still ingesting a bunch of crap. Instead, take it a step further and look into real whole grains you can use to create your own cookies and crackers. Look into flours like almond flour, coconut flour, chickpea flour and use those instead of white flour. Getting down and dirty in your kitchen once in awhile to make your own snacks is a lot of fun and forces you to slow down how many you eat at a time since it takes a lot of time to bake! It’s not as easy as grabbing a box of oreos, which makes bingeing on them a lot less likely.

Add more things like beans and lentils to have on hand. Red lentils are so easy to make, and having cans of beans (it’s ok if you’re not quite into making them from scratch just yet; just rinse them really well before eating) are a great staple to toss into salads or soups when you want a little heartiness and protein without using meat.

Swap out your white products for whole grain, quinoa or rice – however, white is still white. So, again, while you may be eliminating gluten, you still may be messing up your blood sugar (which keeps you fat and tired), so just because something is rice pasta it’s still a refined white carb you’re consuming. So check out whole grain pastas or quinoa pasta. For bread look into Ezekiel, or sourdough.

Fridge

If you’re consuming dairy & meat look at swapping everything out for organic. You are what you eat eats. Conventional farming includes a lot of hormones, antibiotics, crappy feed, crappy conditions. If you instead source out a local farmer and grab organic, free run eggs, grass fed beef, free range chicken, wild salmon, you’re eating animals who were raised decently, ate what they were supposed to eat (chickens aren’t supposed to eat just grains – they need bugs and stuff too! Cows aren’t supposed to eat corn, they eat grass!). If you’re spending more on your animal products you may eat less of them, which in turn will help you lose weight and feel better. I’m not a vegan or vegetarian by any stretch of the imagination, but I also know that we consume way too much animal products all the time. Make 1-2 of your meals vegetarian – and don’t be afraid of that word! It just means no meat. You can still be full not having meat.

Fill your crispers with fruit and veg you actually enjoy and will eat. It doesn’t matter if it’s only peppers, cucumbers, and tomatoes. Yes, variety is the spice of life, and it’s important to try new things and bring in a rainbow of veggies since they all have different nutrients and support us in different ways. But start where you are. Get more of the stuff you do love into you, then move onto experimenting with a new veggie a week.

Go through your salad dressings and condiments and throw most of it out. You can get organic versions of ketchup & mustard (dijon is fabulous). Veganaise is an awesome replacement for mayo. And salad dressings are SO easy to make yourself. Grab olive oil, apple cider vinegar and maple syrup and you have an amazing basic dressing full of nutrients that’s also delicious! No junky preservatives.

To make this easy for you, I created a declutter your diet checklist and a video of my pantry for you that you can grab here. You can print it off and start day by day to swap out the foods that are no longer serving you! It just takes one small step at a time, and a willingness to not settle for less than the absolute best for you.

Grab your checklist & video here and let me know in the comments what you swapped out!