Eat More Plants

I don't consider myself a healthy eater, but I don't really eat a lot of junk either. I've never felt guilty about the occasional fast-food indulgence or eating half a sleeve of shortbread cookies. Bless my genetics, I've never really had to watch what I eat because for the most part, I look healthy.

But in the past year, I've started noticing longer periods of bloating, acid reflux, more frequent psoriasis and eczema related flare ups...although they were not too severe and manageable, the frequency was getting slightly alarming. The worst part was the uncomfortable indigestion. It seemed like anything I ate I would just feel uncomfortable after. I went to bed with indigestion and woke up with it. I started taking anti acid medication once a day and started chewing on tums like it was candy. 

Disclaimer: Before I continue, I need to say that I am not someone that blindly follows anything and if I am told I have to do something, I have the personality that questions it and that person's motive. I learn best and absorb knowledge better and function better when I learn things on my own and make mistakes (this has 100% also been true for Atèlette as a self-taught designer navigating how to start a slow & sustainable clothing line). 

All that to say, if I keep getting told/shown/advertised "Your gut health is as important as your brain/mental health!" I'm the person that thinks "Stop selling me snake oil!" until I do my own research, conduct my own trials and errors, and then go "Oh, yeah, shit, they were really on to something..."

Moving on... I have always struggled to incorporate more vegetables in my life. It's not that I don't like them, I think it goes back to the whole you're supposed to eat them to be a healthy person and I don't know, it just didn't click in my brain. 

Until I heard a gastroenterologist suggest one of the best and easiest things to do for your gut is just to EAT MORE PLANTS. For some reason that clicked in my brain. It wasn't a "eat kale for this, eat sweet potatoes for that, get 15 grams of that, this green is better than this green..." which for my brain is too overwhelming. 

Eat more plants. Simple, generic, open, inviting. 

I could do that. I can do that! I can simply eat more plants. It didn't matter what kind of plant it was, just I needed to eat more of it. 

I started by making sure I always had some kind of plant in every meal. A banana and blueberries for breakfast. Cucumbers with dill with lunch. Kale and chickpeas with dinner. Mushrooms and asparagus in scrambled eggs. Spinach and sundried tomatoes in my pasta. Slowly I started making really nourishing bowls and salads for lunch and dinner. I found the more I incorporated simple plants into my daily meals, the easier it was for me to come up with recipes with these ingredients. (I will share some soon, these recipes are not of my own invention, but personalized tweaks of other recipes I found). 

I've also been sneaking in as much fiber as I can into all my meals. Women are supposed to consume 21-28 grams of fiber a day (an apple has 2.8g for reference, so you are most likely not getting enough fiber!), but I will write about fiber on another day. 

Today, my hope is to just encourage you to eat more plants. Keep it simple. I find when things are simple, I'll stick with it more and it is a lot easier to turn these small steps into part of my daily routine and making it a habit.

- Ate Lette

Image Credits: (1.) Selected vegetables from the kitchen garden c. 1978, (2.) From a 1970s arts & crafts magazine