Is Your Kitchen Holding You Back?

Diets don't work, willpower eludes you, and behavior patterns related to food don't support the life you want to live.

Sound familiar? You're not alone. The kitchen is the most important room in your home. You have to eat to live, and in order to live well, you have to eat well. This should be a simple process learned as a child and practiced every single day until your last meal. Unfortunately, the landscape of nutrition has become increasingly complicated, and sorting through overwhelming volumes of conflicting information leaves most people confused.

[Related: Sacrificing Your Health for Success Can Have the Opposite Effect]

To make matters more challenging, the American medical system only provides minimal nutritional education in medical school. Most doctors still recommend outdated diets, or worse, use the food pyramid. New science is emerging about the importance of diet in preventing disease — especially the value of maintaining a healthy gut biome for optimum health.

The Standard American Diet (SAD) can be linked to diet-related diseases like obesity, type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, dental disease, strokes, neurological disease, and many types of cancer. Scary stuff, but you don't have to be a statistic; you can decide right now to improve your health one bite at a time.

The journey to optimum health is like Dorothy following the yellow brick road — know the route and stick to it. The way to create health and happiness can be found by taking control of what happens in your own kitchen.

I love showing how simple it can be to harness the cumulative power of little everyday habits to significantly improve health over time. When I complete a Kitchen Intervention, someone develops a new relationship with food that it is not difficult or expensive, is filled with delicious things to eat, and can be done immediately. Click your heels, wake up in your kitchen, and get excited to reboot your life starting at the end of your fork.

[Related: Living in a Body You Love]

What is wrong with your kitchen, and how can it become the starting point to help you live your best life?

Most people’s kitchens are overflowing with things they think they need, but actually don’t. When was the last time you used a waffle maker or panini press? Drawers and cabinets get cluttered with items that do not serve your wellness goals, turning healthy meal prep into a dreaded task.

A Kitchen Intervention is a transformative process that addresses the root cause of diet-related health problems. The biology of your health begins in your kitchen. Making lifestyle changes, even small ones, can become an internal battle of epic proportions. The very habits you have created over decades hold you hostage to behaviors that keep you in a health rut - or worse, can lead to disease. Diets don’t work because they are not sustainable, and restricting caloric intake isn't pleasant. When optimum health becomes the goal, sleep improves, the body assumes a healthy weight, stress becomes manageable, and we feel better.

[Related: What Vitamins Have to Do with Your Bank Account]

What creates lasting change is developing new patterns of behavior and structuring your environment to put health-supportive habits on auto-pilot. By eliminating ingredients that trigger food cravings, create inflammation in the body, and cause disease, the body can begin to recalibrate by signaling its own natural appetite-control systems. The body knows how to self-regulate, but artificial, processed, sugary foods interfere with the way our gut works, sending thousands of confusing messages throughout the body and wreaking havoc on our health.

You can create a health-supportive micro-climate in your own kitchen to help prevent lifestyle diseases. A Kitchen Intervention is the starting point for understanding the cost-benefit analysis of the food you eat and the habits that run your life. Your health the single biggest asset you have. If you want to eliminate avoidable lifestyle diseases, have abundant health and energy, and put more life into your years…start in your kitchen.

Get started on your own mini Kitchen Intervention.

• Toss the toxic teflon pan and invest in a green, non-stick pan.
• Get rid of plastic containers, save glass bottles and jars to reuse, and invest in glass storage containers. Plastics are bad for you and the planet.
• Double down on removing expired foods from your refrigerator, freezer, and pantry. Toss what is expired - no exceptions.
• Check the expiration date and sniff your spices. If the spice has no smell, it has no medicinal benefit. Toss and replace.
• Use up your chemical cleaning sprays and replace them with natural, non-toxic ones.
• Buy less, buy organic, and use all the fresh food you buy each week.

A Kitchen Intervention is a simple solution to a complex problem. Health is a big business, but your health is your business, so take control of your kitchen today.

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Kristen Coffield is the founder and owner of The Culinary Cure, a consulting business and information website dedicated to helping people “Live Younger Longer.” Find out more about Kitchen Interventions and creating a healthy life at The Culinary Cure.