I have a question for you today. What is it that you do 3-6 times a day that provides information to your body? You eat. You make choices about what foods you put into your body. Eating food provides your body with the raw materials that it needs to run the chemistry of life. Pretty cool, right?
Yet you may not connect the foods you eat day in and day out, to your current state of health, or to your odds of suffering from some chronic illness in the future. Have you ever considered that your diagnosis of Type 2 diabetes, or autoimmune disease, or fatigue might be some how related to the foods that you routinely eat? And if so, how do you sift and winnow through all of the food choices that we have available to us today?
Maybe to make sense of food, and your body’s relationship with food, you need a perspective or an approach to help you make food choices. Maybe your choices would be easier if you had some insight as to why certain things that you may be eating on a daily basis may be causing you more harm than good – at least in your current state of health.
That was part of the aim of Dr. Sarah Ballantyne (aka The Paleo Mom) when she wrote her incredible book, “The Paleo Approach”. My plan today is to chat with Sarah about Food, what foods provide the building blocks for your body, and what foods could be getting in the way of your own optimal health.
Sarah and I talk about what your plate might look like using a Paleo Approach, about the abundance of nutrient dense whole foods available to you, about the reasons why you might resist this sort of approach, and the idea of tailoring this approach to meet your needs no matter where your starting point is. We also dive into the reasons behind why the Paleo Approach eliminates grains (even whole grains), legumes, seed oils, refined sugar, and conventional dairy from your diet.
Sarah’s Bio:
Sarah Ballantyne, Ph.D. (a.k.a. The Paleo Mom) is the blogger behind the award-winning www.ThePaleoMom.com; cohost of the syndicated top-rated The Paleo View Podcast; and New York Times bestselling author of The Paleo Approach and The Paleo Approach Cookbook.
Sarah earned her doctorate degree in medical biophysics at the age of 26. She spent the next four years doing research on innate immunity and inflammation before becoming a stay-at-home mom. After her second daughter was born, she began to experiment with the Paleo lifestyle. It had an amazing effect on her health, including contributing to her 120-pound weight loss! Over time, she healed herself of a long laundry list of physical complaints including: Irritable Bowel Syndrome, acid reflux, migraines, anxiety, asthma, allergies, psoriasis and an autoimmune skin condition called lichen planus. Sarah successfully transitioned her originally skeptic husband and two spirited young daughters to a paleo diet and lifestyle. Her passion for providing straightforward explanations of the science behind the paleo diet and its modifications, plus her love of food and cooking and her dedication to her family form the foundations of her blog, her podcast and her books. You can also find Sarah on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest.