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10 Simple Swaps For a Healthier Life

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We all want to live a healthier life – that’s a given. But if we don’t watch out, it can get overwhelming quickly!

Personally, I stand firmly behind the philosophy of one bite at a time – take one bite, or one simple step toward what you want, chew (master) it, and don’t take another bite (step) until you’ve swallowed and are ready to move on.

These ten simple swaps for a healthier life will mean a diet that's better for you with almost no effort at all!

Okay, that’s an odd analogy, but it works, right? Because you can’t keep stuffing your mouth full of new food unit you’ve swallowed your previous bites. Likewise, we can’t keep adding more and more more and more to our plateful of life without first getting use to, and making a habit out of the last thing we added, so we can take it off the plate of things we have to constantly think about.

With that in mind, not every step toward healthier living has to be hard or overwhelming, and these are ten steps that you could implement in one day, almost without even thinking about it!

  1. White sugar for evaporated cane juice – Yes, it’s still sugar, but that’s what makes it a simple swap. While you can still use it in the exact same way as you would refined white sugar, or even brown sugar, evaporated cane juice is less refined, and still contains some of the good nutrients from the sugar cane.
  2. quick oats for steel cut oats – What makes steel cut oats a healthier choice than quick oats? While I’ll be the first to tell you that quick oats can’t be beat in no-bake cookie recipes, their pre-steamed, ultra thin and processedness, not only make them less nutritious, but terribly high glycemic. Not great for the longevity of your metabolism. Steel cut oats, on the other hand, are obviously not rolled or steamed, which make them much slower to digest, and much lower on the glycemic index – not to mention more nutritious overall.
  3. Fluoridated tooth paste for homemade mineralizing tooth powder – Have you heard horror stories about what fluoride can do to your body? There’s got to be a more natural way to strengthen your teeth, right?! We’ve fallen in love with this homemade mineralizing tooth powder in our house. It will leave your entire mouth feeling clean and refreshed, plus give your teeth the minerals they need to stay in shape.
  4. Vegetable oil for coconut oil – Coconut oil is full of medium chain triglycerides, which are easily digested and burned for energy. These MCTs also help boost the metabolism. yay! On the other hand, the harmfulness of vegetable/soy/corn/canola oil is too big a subject to go into here, but suffice to say, they’re not benign, and are most often rancid oils. BTW, Refined, expeller-pressed coconut oil does not have that dreaded coconut flavor! It’s also one of the few healthy oils that you can safely fry things at high temperatures with.
  5. Artificial flavorings for essential oils. Young Living has a line of vitality oils which are specifically labeled and FDA approved for internal consumption. that means you can a few drop of peppermint vitality oil to your peppermint patties recipe instead of 1/2 a teaspoon of artificial flavoring, and get a powerhouse of flavor along with the digestive benefits of peppermint!
  6. Lettuce for Spinach – or kale! Dark leafy greens have so much nutrition that lettuce simply doesn’t. I used to think that I couldn’t have a salad without lettuce, but oh how wrong I was! I use almost all spinach, kale, collard, and various micro greens now, and love them!
  7. Table salt for sea salt. We’ve probably all been told at one time or another to limit our salt intake, but salt is an essential element of life. So how did it get such a bad rap? Maybe it’s because our body does not recognize refined table salt as the life-giving salt it needs. So do yourself a massive favor and switch it out for unrefined sea salt, Himalayan pink salt, or “real” salt – hint: if your salt is white,  you’re doing it wrong.
  8. Peanut butter for natural peanut butter. There are a lot of peanut butters out there these days being marketed as “natural”, but they’re lying! So many of those jars are still full of sugar and rancid oil. Avoiding this trap is simple though – simply read the ingredients! Ideally, you buy a jar with one ingredient – peanuts, and add your own salt at home.
  9. Antiperspirants for natural deodorant – Did you know there’s a difference? There is! Antiperspirants contain aluminum in order to keep you from sweating, so not only are you rubbing aluminum into your body, you’re preventing the lymph system from doing it’s job of eliminating toxins through sweat! But never fear! As I wrote in How To Wean Yourself Off Of Antiperspirants, there are ways to absorb the sweat so you don’t feel yucky all day. Needless to say, natural deodorants don’t contain aluminum, and are much safer for your to use. Homemade deodorant is great, and surprisingly easy to make, but I’ve also fallen in love with Young Living’s deodorants, Dessert Essence’s Tea Tree deodorant, and Tom’s of Maine’s Wicked Cool (for kids – their other “deodorants” are antiperspirants).
  10. Baked or fried potatoes, for boiled potatoes. Did you know that boiling potatoes – either white, or sweet – cuts their glycemic index in half? Yes, if you boil your potatoes in place of baking or frying them, your body will produce half of the insulin response. That’s crazy! And it can make a huge difference in your long-term insulin sensitivity. Baked potatoes are the worst – their glycemic index is even higher than sugar! That doesn’t mean that having the occasional baked tater or serving of french fries will kill you, but simply that choosing mashed potatoes 90% of the time will is a great simple swap for healthier living.

It doesn’t get much simpler than these ten simple swaps, does it?! I am confident that you can adapt to these simple changes very quickly, and it won’t even take long for your taste buds and/or body to adjust and realize that you like them even better than the traditional products that you were used to!

Just be warned: once you start seeing success in your attempts to live healthier, you’ll get addicted!

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3 Comments

  1. Great ideas! Thank you. I’ve implemented some–LOVE coconut oil, for instance–but I did NOT know that about potatoes.

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