Health chal­lenges often respond well to the use of clean, prefer­ably organ­ic, whole foods, that are cooked from scratch. When your body receives all the macro and micro nutri­ents it needs from whole foods, crav­ings for junk food or sug­ar will be dras­ti­cal­ly reduced.

TIPS TO TRY:

• Keep organ­ic whole grains around to cook from scratch. You can use them whole, in sal­ads, or fresh­ly ground to a pow­der for quick-cook­ing por­ridges. All whole grains are high in fibre, which helps clean the colon of pos­si­ble toxins.
• Give up refined fruit juice and eat your fruit whole, unless you have a juicer.
• Give up con­ve­nience foods as much as pos­si­ble: any­thing in a bag, box, or can, or frozen.
• Pur­chase a grain mill to grind grains and make your own flour. The nutri­ent con­tent is incom­pa­ra­ble to pre-pack­aged flour which has been sit­ting on a shelf for months.
• Drink plen­ty of water, away from meals so that the liq­uid does not impede digestion.
• Increase con­sump­tion of fruits and veg­eta­bles. If you have slug­gish diges­tion or weight issues, con­sid­er eat­ing your fruit 1⁄2 hour before food, or 1.5 to 2 hours after a meal.
• Expand and get cre­ative with your pro­tein options. Try legumes like mung, red lentil, adzu­ki or chick peas, or organ­ic non-GMO tofu. Increase your con­sump­tion of nuts like wal­nuts or seeds like sun­flower, pump­kin, flax, or sesame. For ani­mal pro­tein options stick to organ­ic chick­en, organ­ic eggs, wild-caught fish, and organ­ic grass-fed beef (used in moderation).
• Stop buy­ing low-fat prod­ucts. They will cause crav­ings for miss­ing macronu­tri­ents. Use goat cheese and goat yogurt in their nat­ur­al, full-fat state. Eat oth­er fat-rich foods in mod­er­a­tion, such as avo­ca­do, olive oil, coconut oil or organ­ic but­ter. Good fats such as these will help to raise HDL cho­les­terol and low­er the LDL cho­les­terol. Cell mem­branes need good cho­les­terol to func­tion properly.
• Eat­ing a whole­some break­fast and strate­gic snack­ing are very impor­tant and pre­vent over-eat­ing lat­er in the evening. A mid-after­noon snack (between lunch and din­ner) could con­sist of  fresh fruit, fol­lowed by a nut but­ter eat­en 1⁄2 hour lat­er, either alone or on rice crack­ers (as one example).