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Spring almost here and while most people if you want to make a real impact on your health and wellness, here are 5 tips on how you can spring clean your diet.

Lemon water to spring clean your diet — Photo by Julia Zolotova

Let’s face it, for most people the winter chill brings unhealthy “comfort” cravings for things like sugary baked treats, heavy sauces and a decreased interest in eating healthy foods like fresh fruits and vegetables.

Of course, you can argue that fresh produce is less available during the winter months. But, while that may be the case, eating in season can make meal planning fun, increases the biodiversity of gut flora and is less costly. In addition, I’m going to surprise you by saying something. Healthy eating is not just about fruits and vegetables.

There is much more.

Clean Out Your Fridge

Listen, you can’t eat what’s not there. Your home should be your safe haven. Foods that trip you up, should not be in your home. That one food that you can’t stop eating, has no business being in your house,

It’s like if Superman had kryptonite stored in his kitchen. He wouldn’t dare. The big difference is that kryptonite isn’t addictive. Your arch nemesis, that food that you can’t stop eating is.

So rid your fridge of the junk. While you’re at it, clean out the pantry too. I even have 30 pantry staples to stock in your pantry for healthy eating. Read ingredient labels. If sugar, refined flour, industrially grown grains, processed salt, hydrogenated oils (seed oils) are in this first top five ingredients then toss it out.

Back Up on the Sugar

Processed sugar is a beast. Inflammation, premature aging, cardiovascular disease, excess weight and more can come right along with it. You name it, processed sugar is probably at least partly to blame. Try to avoid it in processed foods as much as possible.

Instead of ingesting processed sugars, opt to add your own natural sugar to your foods favoring raw sugars like molasses, maple syrup, turbinado, demerara, panela, sucanat, muscovado and more.

Avoid Packaged Foods

It’s the truth. Prepackaged foods are convenient. But, what’s also true is that most times they are also unhealthy. Certainly, there are healthy snack alternatives. By no means can anyone avoid packaged all together.

It’s just difficult living in a modern world. But “buyer beware”, over indulging in packages foods can expose you to more than your fair share of added sugar, salt and added preservatives. Think of fresh foods as high octane fuel for a mustang and prepacked convenience foods as low grade generic sludge for a slow moving junk piece of car.

Even if you don’t think that you are driving a mustang right now, don’t you want to? Be the change you want to see.

What type of fuel are you using?

Go Against the Grain

If you want to spring clean your diet like real for real, then you should consider removing non heritage processed grains from your everyday diet or reducing it greatly.

What is grain?

Grain are the seeds of grasses or the seeds of cereal. Grains include wheat, barley, oats, rice, barley, corn, rye and spelt.

It’s not that all grains are bad. But, modern industrialized grains are a beast.

It’s not a coincidence that diets like the keto and paleo diet exclude grain. This goes beyond weight loss. While modern industrialized grains are generally unhealthy, what those diets fail to address how to choose the right type of grains and how to prepare then correctly.

Since originally publishing this article, I have reincorporated grain into my diets and have written several recipes using the original ancient wheat, einkorn.

You can see some of those recipes here:

Einkorn Apple Cake

Einkorn Strawberry Banana Muffins

Einkorn Chocolate Pancakes

Eat More Raw Foods

Before fire was invented, all the food we ate was raw or uncooked food. However, there are many benefits to cooking food before eating it. Cooked food tends to be easier to digest, cooking adds flavor and let’s face it, cooking is fun!

Even so, eating some raw non starchy fruits and vegetables is an optimal component of the human nutrition. In some situations, enzymes, and phytonutrients are lost during the cooking process.

You don’t have to go crazy here. You can check off the “raw” box by incorporating some salads, smoothies and properly prepared raw foods.

And just so that we’re clear, I’m not talking about the popular trend of going raw vegan. What I’m talking about is incorporating more raw foods (overall) as a part of a normal diet.

I think we can all agree on that.

But oftentimes, what is suspiciously missing from this “eat more raw foods” conversation is the consumption of other raw foods like ancient and nutritious raw dairy, raw cheese raw egg yolks and other properly prepared animal products.

This can include things like caviar, ceviche and carpaccio. Minimal processing techniques like curing and fermenting further amps up the nutrition and the flavor and these foods.

You don’t have to jump in with both feet right away. An easy transition to eating raw animal products can as easy as snacking on some raw cheese or enjoying raw yogurt. Those foods are nutritionally dense and healthy benefits and natural probiotics can’t be beat.

Spring is a wonderful time of year. Spring cleaning your diet is the first step to spring cleaning your the rest of your life.

Original March 6, 2021 Updated for content: March 21, 2022, March 1, 2025.