Now's the Time to Be NutriSavvy Start the year with the right resources to help you stick to your healthy-eating resolutions!

Happy 2024! Hope this year is full of accomplishments and happy moments for you and your family.

If you’re like most of us, you may have some wellness-related New Year’s resolutions. According to Forbes, this year 32% of survey respondents have a better diet resolution, 34% aim at losing weight and 48% will work on improving their fitness. Maybe these resolutions are just for you, or maybe your resolution includes making healthier foods for you and your family, getting everyone signed up in fitness classes, or removing sugared drinks and fast foods from your family’s diet.

But oftentimes, as the year goes by, we lose motivation and go back to our old habits that we were hoping to correct during the new year.

That used to be my case, year after year. Yes, I’d start strong, hitting the gym, following app diets and being a master at counting points, grams, calories, whatever. It wasn’t really until five years ago that I made a resolution that stuck for good.

It all started about six years ago, actually. When my other half, Jason, and I had our daughter we knew we wanted her to eat nothing but healthy foods. I made this my purpose and as we introduced her to solids, I researched everything and made her purées at home with nothing but organic fruits and vegetables. Then, one time, I stopped by a drive-thru to get myself a chocolate shake and she reached out for it. I didn’t give her any, of course, but I realized right then that to raise her with good eating habits, Jason and I were going to have to change our own habits too.

Our NutriSavvy Journey

It was a process, of course, nothing happens overnight. Many of us have been there. We research something online and find five completely opposing answers. It can get pretty confusing! I realized that parents need a reliable site with verified information to turn to. With my background in education, research, and mass communications, I made it my mission and New Year’s resolution to start working on creating this site. My first step would be to get formal instruction on nutrition. I registered to get a certification in holistic nutrition, and this eventually opened the doors to the Whole-Foods, Plant-Based (WFPB) world.

At first, I told myself I would never stop eating animal-based products, but that this certification made sense to me because I do believe that whole foods are what’s best for us. The more I learned, the more I realized animal-based products are not only unnecessary, but they are also detrimental to our health. I started to follow some of the WFPB super-star doctors out there, and I understood that the goal was to become fully WFPB and raise our child WFPB. But I also knew this couldn’t happen overnight for my family.

Funny story, that same holiday season when I made my resolution, I also gave Jason his dream grill. You can grill, you can smoke, you can even boil! The perfect trio. He was so excited and bragged about it with everyone we know! Then, a few weeks later, I told him that grilling meat was very bad for him and eating it was not good for us! Talk about a downer!

But we figured it out. We do what works for our family and we believe that every family should do what works best for them too.

For us, it wasn’t hard to drop poultry, pork, cold cuts in general, even eggs! Other than being a good example for our daughter, we also wanted to do what we can to stay healthy for her. Dairy was a challenge, though. We had already introduced our child to yogurts and cheese, and she loved them. I was addicted to cheese, and Jason would not even consider giving up dairy milk. But I switched to soy milk and stopped eating all forms of dairy and felt a change immediately. I also transitioned my daughter to cashew-based yogurt and small amounts of plant-based cheese. She recently gave it up completely and we’ve started making our own soy milk yogurt. Jason continued to drink regular milk with his coffee until one day he ran out and decided to give soy milk a chance. I asked him to try it for two weeks (that’s the amount of time it takes for our taste buds to adjust to new flavors) and he did. We haven’t bought anything dairy since. Seafood is out for me and my child, hubby will eat some if he craves it occasionally. As for steak, we started by allowing our family one exception a month, when Jason grills his famous steak. I don’t eat it anymore, our daughter tries a bit still, and Jason still enjoys it, knowing he’s eating so much better as a whole.

So, What Does It Mean to Be NutriSavvy?

It means having a better knowledge and understanding of three basic areas:

• The vast amount of whole, plant-based foods for us to choose from
• The nutrients they provide us with
• How our body uses these nutrients

Why plant-based? Because the benefits of following a plant-based diet include a significant decrease in the risk of suffering some of the most common life-threatening diseases: heart disease, dementia, diabetes, and cancer.

Why whole foods? Because highly processed foods have a tendency to be very unhealthy. They are packed with chemicals that can lead to cancer, and vegan processed foods tend to be loaded with coconut oil (one of the very few sources of plant-based saturated fats), salt, and sugar.

Whole plant-based foods alone can give us most of the nutrition our body needs to thrive. They give us all the protein, iron and calcium we need, together with most essential vitamins and all other essential minerals. Not to mention phytonutrients, which are key to fighting free radicals that often lead to cancer.

Understanding how our body uses these nutrients leads to better food selections too. For instance, our bones don’t just need calcium and vitamin D. We need vitamin K, which is not present in animal-based foods and we don’t get enough of even through multivitamins, but which is plentiful in dark leafy greens like spinach, kale or collard greens. Kale and collard greens are also fantastic sources of calcium, by the way. Knowing this might motivate us to eat more leafy greens because we have a tangible wellness goal, rather than just knowing “green leaves are good for us.”

When we are NutriSavvy, we choose our foods with purpose. We create balanced menus that are great for the whole family, including nutrients for early childhood development, nutrients that are good for our heart, our bones, our brain… we understand how every bite we take can help different parts of our body thrive. Of course, being NutriSavvy does not replace following the doctor’s advice for specific health concerns. It simply means choosing the best quality foods over harmful foods and choosing a balanced diet over fad diets.

But being NutriSavvy is also about enjoying what we eat. I sometimes make muffins, cookies or nutrition balls for breakfast. Why? Because I make them with oat flour or whole wheat flour, no oil, no sugar, and I usually add nut butter or fruits that make them delicious and incredibly nutritious. My daughter loves them! She also loves smoothies made with soy milk, oats, a little kale, dates and berries. Delicious and a great way to pack in some nutrients before school or dance class. My husband is still amazed at how a little black salt can make a tofu scramble taste like scramble eggs! And this is just breakfast! The possibilities are endless.

There is nothing boring or flavorless about a WFPB diet. When you’re NutriSavvy, you know this. You understand flavors, textures, kitchen tricks… Because here’s the truth: We will never stick to a new way of eating if we don’t enjoy it.

Back to Our New Year’s Resolution

Back to our New Year’s resolutions, here’s ours at NutriSavvy: In 2024 we will complete our initial content phase at benutrisavvy.com to help parents, families, and individuals become more NutriSavvy. We will encourage our readers to make the best nutrition choices for their families based on the information we provide and their own particular circumstances. If your family is 100% WFPB, we will help you keep it this way while giving you the tools to keep your nutrition balanced and delicious. If your family chooses to only switch one meal a day to WFPB, or one day a week, we will support you through this huge step as well.

Follow us on social media or subscribe to our email list so that we can keep you posted as we launch new content on our site. This has been a family effort that up until recently has happened behind the scenes with hours of research, writing, programming, and designing. 2024 is the year we get to share it with all of you and we just can’t wait.

Our 2024 Wishes for You and Your Family

From the bottom of our hearts, we wish that you and your family can fulfill all your goals and resolutions for this year. We wish you health, happiness, peace, and excitement. And we hope that we can be here for you, to help give you the information, support, useful tips and tools that you need to help you and your family Be NutriSavvy.

Here’s to becoming more NutriSavvy in 2024!