Keto, paleo, Dukan, Atkins … choosing a diet can sometimes be mind-boggling, and keeping up with the fast-changing diet trend, even more so.
But naturopathic practitioner Dr. Heidi Standeven believes that grabbing your daily grub doesn’t have to be so complicated.
“There's so much information out there about what you should eat, what you shouldn't eat, what's good, what's bad, and it seems to change every week. And then, if you go onto Dr. Google, of course it opens a whole other can of worms,” she added.
“I have patients come in and say, ‘I don't eat fruits because they have sugar in them.’ But fruits are good for you. I don't know who decided that fruits were bad.”
To debunk such misinformation and “demystify” food, Standeven, who has been running Foundations Naturopathic Health in New West for the past three-and-a-half years, decided to hold a workshop for the people of New West.
“I want to try and bring food back to the grassroots level.”
At the workshop that’s to take place at the recently opened Yoga at the Quay, Standeven wants to get people thinking about food in the most simple way.
Start with: “When you look at your plate, what is the breakdown?” she suggested.
“Half of your plate should be vegetables,” she added.
According to Standeven, this is not a novel idea; it was, in fact, what was commonly practised until about 75 years ago.
“But post World War 2, our diet really started to shift. We've become so reliant on convenience and things that come in packages,” she said.
“I am not saying that everything that comes in a package is bad, but I am trying to get us back into eating whole foods … real foods, stuff you don't need to read an ingredients list for.”
Back to Basics
This grassroots approach is a key element in naturopathy, as per Standeven, who was an anthropologist before taking up naturopathy five years ago.
“I was working in HIV and I was frustrated with how people living with chronic health concerns often got slipped through the cracks in our health-care system. You had someone with multiple comorbidities that had multiple specialists, and those specialists weren't talking to each other. And so, things got missed and convoluted. In the end, it was the patient that suffered because of that,” she said.
Naturopathy is about looking at all facets of someone's health and wellness, she said.
“I wanted to take that holistic approach where you're not just throwing stuff at symptoms and chasing the issue, but where you're trying to navigate through the symptoms while also trying to get to the underlying cause so that patients can actually feel better in a sustainable way.”
Which is why, when it comes to healthy eating, Standeven suggests, it’s not just about what you eat, it is also about how you eat your food — your relationship with it.
“We've lost the ritual of meals. We eat at our desk at work, we eat in front of the TV when we get home or in the car on our way to take our kids to soccer practice.”
Not being present with the food often has us “putting food mindlessly into our mouths without really tasting and experiencing it.”
While having a time, place and routine when it comes to food is one part of eating healthy, another is shedding any guilt or shame around it.
“We've become a society that shames people for their choices, shames people for not making what we deem to be the right response.”
“We need to look at food as food; there's no bad food. We need to let go of our obsession of what's good and what's bad and get back to not worrying so much.”
“It's OK to have those days where you want to have popcorn for dinner. It’s part of the joy of life,” she said.
“It's OK to have a pastry …”
“But maybe, don't get a frequent flyer card at the bakery,” Standeven said with a laugh.
Learn more about healthy eating at a one-hour food workshop on Saturday, June 3, between 4 and 5 p.m. at Yoga at the Quay (810 Quayside Dr.). Sign up on Yoga at the Quay website. Participation is on donation basis.
