My last post was all about tip #1 for transitioning to a whole foods diet; just changing the way you think about food. The questions you ask, the ingredients you challenge and the advice you think twice about. This was the lesson I learned in January 2012.

February was when I started to be more accountable for my actions, I continued to challenge, question and think twice or thrice about mainstream nutritional advice. I also started making subtle changes to my diet. No food was off limits and I never made any bold statements like “I will never eat x, y, z again”.

Yet more often than not I chose plain milk to drink rather than flavoured, and 85% dark chocolate over chocolate ice-cream. I would choose sushi over Subway and porridge over a packaged cereal. Heck I even started even chicken soup for breakfast if we had some leftover (way, way, way before I’d even heard of GAPS – it was just an instinctive thing).

Looking back with hindsight, there was still so much I didn’t know at this time. I can’t believe how much sugar I was eating. I was addicted to raisins and sultanas and my favourite drink was the Green Tea Mango Mantra Smoothie from Boost Juice … with three shots of extra green tea (it took me until May to figure out that the amount of caffiene in that beverage was making me an insomniac!). However I was gradually eating less of these foods and more savoury options, without even really noticing. I just took things one meal at a time, not really having a definite plan or knowing where I was headed.

I vaguely remember enjoying ‘treats’ less and less. Ice-cream no longer did it for me, and muesli bars began to taste too sweet – and refined, I could ‘taste’ the processing. I didn’t really care for cakes or biscuits and would instinctively just nagigate towards fruits, nuts and veggies for snacks. All of a sudden it wasn’t just that I didn’t care for these junk foods, but I genuinely didn’t like them anymore. I didn’t see the point when real food was so tasty.

It’s incredible how sensitive you become to additives and refined foods once you begin to reduce and eliminate them. If you can just change your thinking and in turn slowly make slight adjustments to the way you shop and eat, then within a few months, you’ll naturally be making better choices anyway.

Tip #2 for transitioning to a whole foods diet …

Make slight changes. It might seem insignificant, but if you love dessert, swap that ice-cream or cake for a few squares of 85% dark chocolate. Eat your favourite homemade leftovers for breakfast rather than eating cereal or toast. Within a few months your tastebuds will be different and your attitude towards food will shift. It’s so much easier to eat cleaner and evolve your diet when you genuinely want to, rather than feel like you ‘should’ or that you ‘have to’.

Like I said here, my diet has been pretty shocking in the past (I was a nutella-out-of-the-jar type girl) and I was pretty stubborn when it came to nutrition. There was once a time where I would’ve though you crazy if you said that one day I would be an advocate for the whole food movement (becuase that would’ve meant giving up cinnamon donuts, classic chocolate milk and wood oven pizza). Yet here I am, not missing one of these foods one little teeny, weeny bit.

You needn’t learn everything at once, nor change everything at once. It’s can pay to be the tortoise in this race. Slow and steady.