Wellness and Wealth
Wellness and Wealth
Elevating Focus and Productivity through Nutrition with Evelina Dimitri
Unlock the secrets to boosting your focus and productivity just in time for the bustling holiday season by tuning into our insightful conversation with holistic healing expert Evelina Dimitri. With her extensive background as a registered nurse and advocate for holistic health, Evelina shares invaluable insights on the power of nutrition in maintaining mental clarity and balance. She passionately emphasizes the benefits of consuming local and organic produce, alongside a harmonious mix of proteins, carbohydrates, and healthy fats, helping you avoid the pitfalls of extreme diets like keto that can disrupt your body's natural equilibrium.
Explore practical strategies to enhance your dietary habits, even amidst the busiest of schedules. Evelina and I discuss the importance of meal planning, selecting fresh whole foods over fast food, and the potential hidden traps of seemingly healthy snacks like nuts and granola bars. By understanding your family's dietary preferences and learning to read labels effectively, discover how to make healthy eating both manageable and affordable. This episode is packed with tips and myth-busting advice to empower you on your journey to better health and well-being.
Connect with Wendy Manganaro:
Hi everyone. This is Wendy from Wellness and Wealth. Thanks for tuning in to another released podcast. As we move into the holidays, it's a good time to speak about today's topic foods detrimental to focus and productivity. I'm here with our special guest, evelina Dimitri, and I'm really excited to have her on as a holistic healing expert. So of course, I'm going to read her bio and then we'll get right into it.
Speaker 1:Evelina is a registered nurse and holistic healing expert. She is your guide to vitality, joy and fulfillment. Over the past 10 years, evelina has been studying and practicing holistic modalities to bring natural healing and addressing root causes of illness. Evelina is passionate about helping you return to nature and to return to health. Welcome to the show. Thanks for being here with us today. Thank you so much for having me, wendy. I'm excited about this because I've done a lot of shows on mental health, all sorts of health stuff, so I'm always like it's good to break into physical health where we're talking about food, and I just find that's really important too, that there is many sides of that self-care and eating well is one of them. So I'd love for you to talk about what the idea of eating healthy is for you.
Speaker 2:Sure. So for me, eating healthy means foods in the least altered state, so the local vegetables and fruit. I know that in today's world, people, they are working, so obviously we have to buy some foods from supermarkets. But to me it means going to local farm markets, purchasing food that didn't travel from miles and miles away in other countries, just local foods, organic foods that I can prepare myself, so I know exactly what are the ingredients in my food and what I'm eating. And also, to eat healthy means to eat in harmony, meaning not favoring one group of foods, not avoiding, for example, carbs are bad or all protein are bad, animal protein or carbs, not bashing one group of food but make it all balanced. So we need all food groups, we need right amount of fats and the right amount of carbohydrates and the right amount of protein. And when the food origin is clean, pure, that makes the food really healthy.
Speaker 1:I like that. I have a local grocery store, but it's all the local farmers that are in there and I won't buy any produce from any of the bigger stores anymore, because this one store has all of the local produce that come in, and so I think that there's something to that and I feel better knowing that I'm buying from the local farmers. We have a lot of them in the town that I live in. I actually live in the blueberry capital of the world and I have a blueberry farm as a neighbor. Wow, lucky you.
Speaker 1:I often talk about when I was a kid, I was born with cancer and my mother was shopping in health food stores and local farmer's market before it was trendy Because someone had told her this will help her, and so I think I've taken after that. We're not to have McDonald's or any of that stuff when I was growing up because it wasn't the healthiest foods for me and I like that. You're talking about a balanced diet, because a lot of times people go for that fad one. I'd love for your experience to talk about what that does to your body when you get into extreme dieting one way or another.
Speaker 2:Sure. So our bodies are like designed machines, right. So, just like your car, it needs the right amount of gas, the right amount of oil, and in ancient medicine it's called the yin and yang. So there is a harmony. And when we start eating, for example, the keto diet is very popular, so it's a lot of animal protein and a lot of oil, and that actually swings your body's dynamic into one direction, and people often will tell you that oh, I have these side effects and they try to find cures for different symptoms they are experiencing.
Speaker 2:And that's why it's important to include all food groups in the right amount and make sure that all meals have the right amount of protein, the carbohydrates and the healthy fats, because your body knows what to do with it. It doesn't shock your body to just give it one amount of high amount of carbohydrates. For example, there was this person, the banana girl, that was eating 30 bananas a meal, and that is also not so great because your body's overwhelmed. So balance and harmony like that is the homeostasis, like we call it. Your body is always trying to achieve harmony, so we have to just keep it balanced and that will be the optimal way to live.
Speaker 1:Oh my gosh, Three bananas. I've never heard of that. That's a new one. I've heard of the keto. I could imagine that, because you can even put your body into shock taking too much of one vitamin of any type I think it's only E or something that I forget which one it is. There's one that you can't do, vitamin A. I knew there was one that you couldn't do with, but the rest of them, if you have too much of it it actually can harm your body Like it's not healthy.
Speaker 2:So harmony and balance is the key.
Speaker 1:Wow, yeah, I would say so. And interesting that you talked about the keto and having too much of the. I've had friends on it and I'm like to me. It felt like that. It was so one-sided. I was like that can't be that good to have all of that fat all of the time. I couldn't imagine like being able to do that and feel like I could function. So I understand that and I can understand where my body would feel sluggish if I did too much of just that one thing Right, and it's not only the kind of food, it's also the manner in which we prepare the food.
Speaker 2:So if it's a lot of grilled foods, a lot of fried foods, that manner of preparing the food also affects our bodies. Our body has a shorter time processing and breaking down the food. The keto diet involves a lot of grilling the steaks and frying in air fryers. So not only it's about the ingredients, but it's also good to eat steamed foods and some raw foods as well but it's also good to eat steamed foods and some raw foods as well.
Speaker 1:So my husband had a heart attack a few years back and the doctor suggested to him that he become vegetarian right after it.
Speaker 1:So we tried it and I swear that was probably the most if there's any vegetarian vegan people, but it was literally the most unhealthy we'd probably eat, because everything seemed like if you go to a vegan restaurant or you go to a vegetarian restaurant, it was like vegan junk food. This does not seem healthy. It was so fried and everything, and he actually had to come off of that because he was eating worse than when he ate before he had the heart attack. I guess there are healthy ways to do it. I'm not saying that there isn't, but this idea of everything is healthy just because it's vegan or vegetarian. We found out quickly it is not.
Speaker 2:That's correct. Actually, all the trending vegan foods are now the most processed foods with so many bad ingredients. So not only the food that they make is processed itself, but the ingredients to make the vegan food have been processed through different ways, and the oils are made with solvents, and that's why it's very important to read the ingredients on the boxes.
Speaker 1:Somebody told me that and I started looking and I was like, oh my gosh, you think that there's only one thing in here and it's a whole list. And I didn't realize, like all of those Kashi bars that are supposed to be healthy. I started reading back of the labels and I was like this is packed with stuff that I can't even read yeah, it is actually hard to digest.
Speaker 2:They have a lot of oils that are hard to digest, so not good for focus for sure.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly. So how did you get into this? Because food can help you with focus and productivity. I'd love to hear your backstory and how you really found that out.
Speaker 2:I found that out through my own struggles. I had a lot of issues with frequent sinus infections, so a lot of congestion around my eyes, my upper respiratory system, a lot of congestions in my head, in the forehead, and also a lot of struggles with energy. So waking up in the morning not feeling like getting out of bed, not feeling we want to wake up and run and start your day full of energy, and I did not feel like that at all. So I felt very sluggish and I started researching. I'm a problem solver and I'm a planner, so once I have an issue, I'm just going to dig and research until I find a solution. And yes, it all boils down to food. It just was simple as that. It's what we eat affects how we feel. It affects our bodies, affects our energy level, affects our mind, our mindset, our mood, whether we are depressed, anxious or whether we are full of energy and full of joy. It's all the fuel that we feed into our bodies.
Speaker 1:I could see that. So what are the signs that food is making one sluggish Because I know tiredness is usually your first thing that something's wrong somewhere. You're always tired. Right, it could mean so many things, but what are the signs that their diet is making them not be able to complete the day?
Speaker 2:So the easiest way is to journal everything that you eat so you're going to find out what foods are contributing to this. So the feeling of sluggishness, the feeling of heaviness, the feeling of fog, the foods will have the same quality. They're going to be heavy, oily food. They're going to be the lattes with all the whipped cream and the caramel and this sugar syrup, and there's going to be like a bagel and cream cheese and a pizza which has a lot of cheese and a lot of dough, right. Everything that has this density is going to create exactly the same response in our bodies. It's just very simple.
Speaker 1:That's interesting because I'll admit I'm a coffee drinker. It's the one thing that I really have not given up by any means. But it's true though, because I noticed that even with that, if I drink too much of it, it still doesn't work for me anymore. I've cut down immensely from what I used to drink in coffee, but that's one of those things where people keep tricking their mind if they drink more coffee and it doesn't really work. And then you add in all of the sugars and I'm sure it brings you up and crashes you right down. Correct? I could see that, definitely after a big meal of even heavy. So when you work with people and you're talking about their diets, from your experience and I like that idea that the heavier the food, the more sluggish we're going to feel Is it things like sugar too much sugar that's making your brain feel foggy?
Speaker 2:So not feeling focused is going to be that heavy meal that when you sometimes eat your meal and then right away you start feeling sleepy, it's often like you eat a burger and french fries, so again that's loaded with oil, or like a steak and mashed potatoes.
Speaker 2:When you eat a large meal, it also means that you've eaten more than you should. We should eat to 75% fullness, not more than that. But the foods that are contributing to just this lack of focus are going to be those heavy creams, all dairy, all the cheese and all the dense carbohydrates. So I'm just going to make it simple and give you like the worst menu for the day would be a bagel with cream cheese and coffee with cream for breakfast, so that's one. For lunch, let's say that's a cheeseburger and french fries fried in oil and cheeseburgers are also fatty and cheese on it. And then you come home and let's say for dinner you order pizza, which is cheese and dough, and then let's say for dessert you have ice cream. That's a recipe for complete brain fog, lack of focus the next day.
Speaker 1:That's interesting. You're saying dairy has a lot to do with that, because a lot of people think that it's dairy, that it's automatically good, especially not necessarily milk. People are always funny with milk, but when it comes to the cheeses they're like oh no, this is good, I couldn't live without it. They don't realize that could be causing it. So when people are preparing their foods and you're talking about there's a more holistic way of eating, I was taught. The other thing is that if you are going to a big grocery store, you shop on the outsides of the grocery store. You don't go down the aisles in between Eating with that. What's the best way to prepare food? Is it more like clean eating? And then I know paleo was really popular for a while, which was like a step down from keto and Whole30. There are so many things out there, but what is in between, when we're talking about cooking style, so that we are getting healthy oils instead of the oils that are not?
Speaker 2:good for us, sure. So 20% of preparation gives 80% chance of success. So what is really important is to write down things that you like to eat, write down the menu and then find healthy ingredients. And we have to know that in the morning our bodies like to eat something that is easily digestible, and then the digestion peaks at lunchtime so we can have a bigger meal and then again in the evening we should have a lighter meal that is easier to digest. And, yes, shopping around the aisles, so buying clean products, but it's really all about planning and being prepared, so then we have more control over what we eat.
Speaker 1:So question for you we're going to have women out there who are like, yes, I want to eat healthy, but it's difficult for them to understand because they have kids, their own business. Is there a shortcut like batching meals still a healthy thing where, as long as it's prepared well, so that they can get through the week with running kids all over the place trying to take care of their business? Because that's the thing, even for me, when I'm done it, it's like if I am not, like if I don't want to spend a Sunday thinking about what we're going to eat for a week, I know it's going to be not a well-planned out week and I have to take that time to do it. So for those that are busy, is there any shortcuts or tips you can give them so that they can feel like they're eating healthy? Because a lot of times if you're driving kids around, suddenly mcdonald's is there or wendy's are there, it's bad for you, but it becomes that easier thing because of a time management issue.
Speaker 2:okay, sure, so if you shop in a supermarket, you see there are weak things that are already like pre-cut, pre-chopped. They're frozen vegetables, right, we can always reach in the freezer and and there's frozen vegetables. We can also do meal prep, where we can prepare some protein ahead of time and then use it as we go. But also it is important to know yourself and know your family how much they eat and what they eat your family, how much they eat and what they eat. So, for example, like I know, in the morning I already have my breakfast planned. I know who eats what for breakfast, the same for lunch and dinner and in between, like a snacking. It should be like fruit, an apple, so it's not something that comes from the package. Fruit are great to fill you up before you eat your main meal. For example, there are days that I'm also busy and I know I'm going to be hungry, so I eat two apples and the fiber fills me up, so I have time to delay my main meal.
Speaker 1:That makes sense. And then the other thing I've heard and I could be wrong there's nuts that are good for you and there's nuts that are not great for you, because a lot of people do the trail mix and everything with granola, thinking that they're really healthy. And I read the back of the labels and I'm like there is all sorts of stuff in here and it is not healthy.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so a lot of these granola bars. They have a lot of sugar, so they are not appropriate for everybody. If you have kids that play football and they are very physically active, or if a person is very physically active and they have great digestion, yes, they can handle a granola bar or a nut bar, but also the nuts are highly difficult to digest. They are dense in proteins and fats. They are not a good snack or just your stomach takes a while to digest and that can actually create some disruption in our digestive system. So it's not something like for every day, to be honest with you.
Speaker 1:And I've learned that the hard way, because for a while I was on an almond kick and I ended up disturbing my stomach About all and all dried nuts.
Speaker 2:Actually, they have to be soaked before we eat them. If they are not roasted, they have to be soaked for 30 minutes in hot water and then we can eat them. Otherwise it can lead to really upset stomach.
Speaker 1:Interesting. So I have one last question for you, for our female entrepreneurs that realize that maybe their diet isn't where it could be and they feel unproductive Is the first thing writing down a list, or what is the first thing to shift the mindset one that we're too busy to be able to eat healthy, because that's a big mindset issue is I'm too busy. And the other one is that people think it's really expensive and I don't know if I totally agree with that. I think that it doesn't have to be. So what's some solutions to like, easy solutions to a way that they can start to think of it differently and then how to become more mindful of their eating habits?
Speaker 2:Sure. So I think sometimes it's just learning the hard way. In that moment when we feel sluggish and lacking energy and brain fog is hitting us on a day where we have plenty of time, is to say I have to make a change. And what I tell my clients and everyone is we have one body for life. This one body has a potential of serving us over 100 years and eventually it will catch up with us. What we feed our body, what we put inside it, will catch up sooner than later. This sluggishness is not only to improve, it's going to get worse. And then come the diagnosis, and then we are just like out of source. We don't know what to do, so we have to go the pharmaceutical way. But the solutions can be really simple and they can be right in your kitchen. But planning is also very important Just writing down what do I eat every day, and the best part is that so many foods can be substituted for healthy foods.
Speaker 2:Sometimes it's not even about what we eat. It's about what kind of feeling this food gives me. So I almost eliminated 90% of different candies desserts I was never into candy, but I like cakes and different desserts. And now I eat dried fruit, and it gives me the same satisfaction because it's about eating something sweet. So I eat dates, I eat figs, I eat dried fruit, and it gives me the same satisfaction because it's about eating something sweet. So I eat dates, I eat figs, I eat dried pineapples, and it gives me the same satisfaction that my body craves. But it's a one ingredient, without all the process.
Speaker 1:This has been very insightful and I really appreciate you coming on and talking about this because it's self-care on every level and we could be doing all of the mindset and physical exercise and then eat awful and it quickly feels undone. And I like being able to look at it at a holistic level, that when we take care of ourselves, we're taking care of all of it. I know you have an offer for our audience if you want to share what that is and I'll put the link in the show notes, sure, so I have a checklist of not so common tips to improve digestion.
Speaker 2:Though it will not be something like probiotics, it's very based on ancient medicine and digestion is the center of everything in our body. I have this list of tips, so your listeners and anybody can reach out to me and I will happily send them that list and it will greatly improve their digestion. And then everything starts from there.
Speaker 1:It can be like changing that's awesome and so, yes, you can reach out. I will have Evelina's social media links under her name on podcast so you can reach out to her and get that list. That'll be great. You can send her a DM on internet or Facebook and we'll have the links for her. So thank you so much for being on the show with us.
Speaker 2:That was great. Thank you so much, wendy, it's been a pleasure.
Speaker 1:Pleasure. Thank you, and to my audience, I hope you have an abundant week. If you loved what you heard today, please subscribe for other self-care tips as we go along for female entrepreneurs and if you love Dentalina, make sure you leave us a review. Thanks so much.
