Author name: laura@lauracipullo.com

Top 5 Meal Delivery Services for Varied Diets Meal services have become extremely popular in the last 5 years. So popular, that it can be overwhelming to choose between them. We broke down our 5 favorite meal services here! Cook Unity Cook Unity offers personalized restaurant-style meals from successful and even Michelin Star chefs. Recipes are developed with the guidance of a nutritionist. Each meal is individually portioned which makes this meal service a great option for a single person who may not want to cook dinner nightly. Appetizers, desserts, and pantry goods can also be included in this meal plan! Cook Unity gives users flexibility when it comes to pausing or rescheduling the meal plan. Examples of meals include Honey Mustard Salmon, Tomato Basil Cod with Asparagus, Chili Roasted Shrimp, and Stuffed Delicata Squash.   Trifecta Trifecta, which is delivered from California, provides customers with organic, Paleo options including wild-caught seafood and grass-fed meats. Customers can be in control of their meal plan by choosing the exact carbohydrates, proteins, and veggies for each meal. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner options are available to choose from. Trifecta is very flexible, but the amount of meal combinations one can create may seem overwhelming. Examples of meals include Fiesta Veggies and Chicken Breast, Salmon and Asparagus, and Santa Fe Peppers and Flat Iron Steak. Olivia Cooks for You Have a private chef cook affordable, weekly meals for you! Olivia Williamson is a classically trained, Brooklyn-based chef. She delivers to the NYC and Brooklyn area weekly and her meal plan has no commitment. You can cancel, pause, or reschedule at any time. Her meals are microwave and oven safe and just require simple reheating! She uses the same suppliers as those you would find in the grocery store, which keeps the cost down. She varies the menu weekly and they always include vegetarian, pescatarian, and meat-based options. Examples of meals include Spicy Shrimp and Chorizo with Rice, Organic Soba Noodles with Organic Vegetables and Creamy Sesame Dressing, Grass Fed Ribeye Steak, Mashed Organic Potato, and Parmesan Roasted Asparagus, and Crispy Kale Salad with Garlicky Organic Chickpea, Corn, and Cilantro Salad with Shredded Organic Carrots. Provenance Meals Provenance offers ready-to-eat meals that are created by wellness experts that target specific issues such as gut health, inflammation reduction, and increasing energy. These meals and snacks are described as “gluten-free, dairy-free and refined sugar-free” and composed of organic and local foods. This Brooklyn-based company offers meat-based, vegetarian and vegan meals, snacks, smoothies and other beverages to its customers. Examples of meals include Vanilla Chia Pudding with Chocolate Avocado Mousse, Lemongrass Chicken Ginger Soup, and Red Lentil Mac and Cheese with Sun-Dried Tomato Pesto. Portable Chef Portable Chef provides customers with fully cooked meals using ingredients purchased directly from small, locally-based farms. Their meals are ready to be eaten after warming. This meal service offers flexibility in terms of food preferences and dietary requirements as well as portion sizes. Portable Chef regularly delivers to Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, and Bronx as well as Hudson Valley and parts of New Jersey. Farm-to-table breakfasts, lunches, dinners, and snacks are available to choose from. These meals look delicious, although the portions seem small. Examples of meals include Sweet Potato Pasta with Kale and Mushroom. Dijon Chicken with Farro and Root Vegetables, Corn Jalapeno Soup, and Quinoa Patties with Purple Cauliflower.

Embrace Wholesome Living with the Five Pillars of Positive Nutrition WOMENS’S HEALTH BODY CLOCK DIET, RODALE 2015 Adopt an “All Foods Fit” Philosophy All foods provide nutrition but in different amounts based on nutrient composition and quantity consumed. Adopting this “everything is A-okay” attitude will automatically help you learn to eat all foods in moderation and prevent you from feeling deprived and restricted from eating foods that happen to have made some magazine’s “do not eat” list. Of course, All Foods Fit is not a green light to eat all foods, all the time, in any amount. That would be silly. Let me make the point this way: One meal or even one week without fresh vegetables will not affect your metabolism and body clock, but one week of restricting your calories or eating extra-large calzones and pints of Cherry Garcia certainly will. The All Foods Fit philosophy is your escape from the dieting roller coaster. And it’s an awesome way to avoid the confusing information about food and diet that’s making your head spin. Food science is constantly contradicting itself. First we’re told to eat carbs, and then we’re told to avoid carbs at all costs. We were also told that fat was bad, but then we learned that fats such as olive oil, avocado, and other monounsaturated fats were needed for good health. I mean, of course we need fat in our diet. We especially need omega-3 fatty acids, since our bodies cannot make these essential fatty acids. That’s why they’re called “essential”! We learned too much vitamin A may cause cancer. Well, anything in excess can become unhealthy. Even attempting to be too thin or too healthy becomes harmful. So science is really telling us to be moderate: Eat lots of different foods in moderation and be mindful of the types of foods that keep you satiated and those that drive up your blood sugar. All Foods Fit means “no crazy restrictions on deliciousness” as long as you’re eating mindfully. 2. Use Neutral Food Language Sorry, I don’t like the latest pop diet phrase: Eat clean. I understand the prescription to encourage folks to choose fresh foods over processed ones. But you see it’s that same ol’ good versus evil, eat this, not that approach to nutrition that can lead to body clock disruption. Think about it: What’s the opposite of a clean food? A dirty one? A McIntosh apple that slipped out of your hand into the mud? By adopting neutral food language, you eliminate the judgments that can fuel guilt and become a real Debbie Downer at a dinner party. So out with the food labeling. Ben and Jerry aren’t bad guys. Eating kale won’t get you into heaven, but if you eat too much, your skin may turn orange. I’ve heard people call carbohydrates the devil incarnate, yet apples, sweet potatoes, beans, and quinoa are carbs, and they’re pretty darn healthy to eat. Let’s make a deal: Foods aren’t good or bad. They’re just food. 3. Be an Honorable Eater Often a client will visit me and say she had a bad day and feels guilty because she had some chips at lunchtime or Dunkin’ Munchkins with her coffee at a friend’s place. “I was bad today,” clients will often say, or “I ate an Oreo.” Or “Ugh, I ate through all my points before noon, so I just gave up and ate my way through the rest of the day. What a loser. I’ve got no discipline!”       Errrr. Do you hear me slamming on your brakes? Stop what you’re doing! Change your focus from counting calories, using points, or using a body scale as a way to determine your worth as a human being. Instead let the thought of “valuing and honoring your body” help you establish healthy eating habits. It may sound something like this: “Today I listened to my body—I ate when I was hungry and stopped when I was full. I ate a kale-tofu salad for lunch and had cookies with milk for a side. What a great day!” 4. Don’t Treat Yourself Like a Dog Say it with me: Dogs get treats, humans eat snacks. That’s right—going forward, I want you to stop thinking of tasty tidbits of food as a reward or treat for “good” behavior. Food is food. It is eaten for fuel and other reasons, but we don’t place certain food types on a pedestal to be worshiped as special and craved. This mentality is likely to cause you to overeat this “treat” and wreak havoc on your body clock. Instead treat yourself to vacations, flowers, and new lipsticks as rewards for your accomplishments. But keep food out of it.   5. Love Fat; It’s Not Your Foe Whether it’s fat on your body or in your food, stop judging it. It’s not bad or ugly or evil. In either place, food or body, it’s natural, healthy, and needed. Fat in your food is an essential macronutrient. You can have fat on your body and be beautiful. Whatever names you were called as a child, whatever comments people make about your body, just know we all are imperfect in our own ways. The Body Clock Diet is about balance with your biological systems. If you’re trying to attain the perfection you see in the Photoshopped pictures of models in magazines, you will set yourself up for a broken body clock. So let’s neutralize the negativity surrounding the word fat to help our society redefine beauty and overall health. You can be healthy with fat on your body. You can also be unhealthy with fat on your body. Don’t judge a book just by its cover.

Explore Beyond Judgment: Embracing Curiosity in Nutrition By Rebecca Jaspan MPH, RD, CDN, CDE and Laura Cipullo, RD, CEDRD, RYT When we go to school for nutrition, we are taught to be science detectives.  Since no one client is alike, it is our job as dietitians to dig deep into our clients’ histories and truly understand where they are coming from so we can best support their treatment, uncovering clues, asking questions, and coming up with solutions as a team (the client, the RD and even the therapist).  At the same time, we work with our clients to be their own detectives, to become curious about their food and body surrounding thoughts and behaviors. We ask clients to use the science and education we provide to better understand the WHY of the metabolism, hunger, and even body changes.  While most individuals have learned to judge their food and body, we would like to introduce the concept of curiosity. Judgment is known to many clients as the inner “Food Police” (that voice that tells you “I shouldn’t be eating this”, “I already ate, I shouldn’t be eating again”).  That’s your voice of shame, a self-defeating, negative voice that ultimately breeds disordered eating.  The definition of judgment is “the ability to make considered decisions or come to sensible conclusions”.  However, judgment usually bears a label of good or bad. Once these good/bad conclusions are made, they tend to become the “truth” in your mind and it closes you off from the reality of an experience. On the other hand, curiosity is “a strong desire to know or learn something new”.  One of the 10 principles of Intuitive Eating is to Challenge the Food Police.  Enter what we call the Food Detective.  The Food Detective is the voice of curiosity, the voice that explores “I wonder why I am so hungry after eating my lunch” and or “I observe every time I get my period, I feel increasingly hungry a few days before.” The answers to these questions can be used as information to understand the why. Curiosity allows for compassion and a willingness to explore the science or psychology around the food and or body.  It also keeps you open to the possibility of learning something new and allows for constant flexibility to understand why a food or a meal may be filling on one day versus another without creating a good or bad label. Let us give you some examples.  Let’s say you’ve eaten your three meals on a particular day, and feel very hungry and not yet satisfied.  While you want to eat more food, your Food Police is judging you for already having consumed enough food for the day. Your new voice, the Food Detective, can come to rescue and be curious. It notices you have eaten three meals today but recognizes the need for more nutritional fuel. The Food Detective allows you to eat another snack or meal and observes you are now both satisfied and sated. There is no label associated with this observation. Food Detective Questions To Ask Yourself:   Curiosity about the situation allows you to look at it through a compassionate and educated lens rather than an anxious and self-defeating one.  Here’s another common scenario we often hear from clients.  You have an uncontrollable craving for chocolate every night after dinner.  You try to ignore it and maybe eat fruit or ten low calorie options in an attempt to satisfy the craving. However, the desire to eat chocolate is loud and only gets stronger. Your Food Police is shaming, making you think that craving sweets is bad. You may think you have no willpower. Meanwhile your mind and body are screaming, “I WANT CHOCOLATE!!” louder than ever.  STOP. Get curious. Perhaps you identify you are craving a sweet just because it tastes good and you want to eat for pleasure. Now you can decide to eat or not to eat. Now you can eat without a label of good or bad. If the desire to eat chocolate remains strong, explore what happens when you allow yourself to have a piece three nights in a row. Does this neutralize the craving? Eating experiences are never black and white. Explore, be curious and do not have expectations. At LCWNS, we encourage clients to challenge their Food Police and instead choose the Food Detective voice.  Be curious, ask questions and use compassion rather than being judgmental, closed minded and shaming.  When we start to practice reframing our thoughts from judgmental to curious, eating can become the joyful experience that you deserve.