Eating Well to Live a More Vibrant, Meaningful Life

 Sandi: Welcome to the unforgettable conversations podcast, where every week I introduce you to people from all walks of life, from experts in the fields to ordinary people who have had extraordinary lives. I'm your host, Sandi McKenna.

Today's guest demystifies why prioritizing plants as the center of your plate can be easy, delicious, and the best decision you might ever make. Her journey from the inside out has taken her from a protein-centric diet to embracing carbohydrates. She tells us what the best sources are, why we need them and how to choose food that makes you feel good for life. For the past 17 years, she has been helping people transform their bodies and their energy.

Her mission is to give you tools, resources, and the science to support you as you lean into plant-based eating and to live a more vibrant, meaningful life. She reveals what works and how to apply it for health, longevity, athleticism, and aesthetics. Her name is Celeste Anderson and she is the host of the Pivot to Plants podcast.   

Sandi: Celeste. How are you so nice to see you today?

Celeste: Oh, thank you. You too Sandi. I am doing really good. It's a beautiful snowy day here in Idaho. I got to take my puppy out and he's a working dog. He's a little mini Aussie and he absolutely loves the snow. He was trying to destroy the big snowball that I was rolling.

Sandi: Nothing like starting your day with fresh air. You are the embodiment of good health and healthy eating, but it wasn't always that way. So tell me about when you were growing up your younger self and what it was like for you then.

 Celeste: Oh yeah, absolutely. So I think, to be honest, I'm 45. I maybe had a leg up in that when I was the first child, the only baby my parents were vegetarians. So my first baby food was avocado and the happy baby, baby food grinder and banana. So I developed an affinity in my taste buds for those things, but then I have two brothers and the more kids came along.

Celeste: I think they were only vegetarians even for maybe not even a full year of my life. By the time I was a teenager. I think it was, you know, Costco Sam's club food in the freezer, and lots of,  lots of sugar, lots of granola,  peanut butter sandwiches, spaghetti piled on the plate. And one of the things that I didn't realize as a teenager watching my brothers eat, who are now both almost a foot  taller than me. I'm tiny compared to them. I was eating like them. I had no idea how to eat for my body size or my body type. I was just doing what my family was. And I ended up being pretty heavy as a teenager and as a cheerleader. And that definitely caused some body dysmorphia.  I started, counting fat grams and entered into the dieting at that phase.

Sandi: Where did you go from there? Because you are body transformation coach.

Celeste: Yes.  I work mostly with women and we focus on inside out transformation. This isn't always where my focus was because I ended up doing some bodybuilding, some competing, , initially people started seeking me out because they wanted to look like I did and going through that process and watching clients and in my own evolution. I realized,  I had a healthy experience in that. I, I loved myself and, and competing was a personal goal of mine that came with a whole slew of negative repercussions, but I saw my clients, achieving this image and then fighting to maintain it and not knowing how to love themselves back to a healthy, normal weight, even as an active person.

Sandi: How does one love themselves back to a healthy self? How, How do you do that?

 Celeste: I think ideally you start in that position,  it comes a lot from recognizing that your body is in service to you. Your body is there to provide you with the vehicle to live your destiny. If I can use that word or to live your best life to facilitate the things that are important to you and too often, the body is an afterthought.  If we don't take care of our soul, our bodies end up paying the price. Even if a woman who has achieved a physical transformation is not able to take care of her soul, her body will pay the price with over-training with continuing to restrict calories.

Celeste: And so I work with people on identifying where they could level up by loving themselves a little bit more. And each person is different.  A client I was talking to last night, we were really trying to identify why she self sabotages. One of the things that is pretty common is that women lay their lives down for the people around them.

Celeste: And we make ourselves definitely second place. And so in the kitchen, this is very common for moms even who are aware of what eating healthy is. It's just too hard to make yourself a priority when the family wants to eat differently. And so I provide applicable strategies to eat, to serve you, even if you're serving yourself something different from what you're serving your kids or your hubby.

Sandi: That's interesting to know because in my family  no two people eat the same. I love vegetables. I love colorful plate. I find that really appetizing where my husband would find that repulsive. I think a lot of eating healthy for me is about meal prep and meal planning. Do you have any suggestions about that? How you go about , planning for the week or the day so that you don't go off course like this morning  I didn't have time to eat anything healthy. I didn't actually have much healthy in the house, so I ate a piece of cheese. So how do you prepare.

Celeste: Yeah. And that cheese served you, right? So I'm just going to backtrack a tiny bit.
One of the first things we need to do is unravel the guilt associated with food or not making the best choice possible. Because our body is here to serve us and our minds and our body connected that physiology is looking for how do we get the need met? Right? So if you're hungry and that's what you have, and you put that in your mouth, your body is like, check, we got our needs met.

Celeste: Maybe it wasn't ideal, but it's still out to keep you alive and make sure you can do what you want to do for the rest of the day. So personally, I do some meal prep some weeks and sometimes I don't and it's because I would consider myself an eclectic eater. I like different things all the time. So one of the first lessons that I do, and I'm so glad you asked me, because I love sharing this, that I do with clients.

Celeste: If possible, if they're local is we do a grocery store to walk. And we go shopping together because if you don't have healthy food in the house, how are you going to eat healthy?  Our diets are really the result of convenience, whether it's meeting a need right now, or having something on hand that we can put in our bodies, that's going to make us feel better and help us feel better on the longterm. So we do a grocery store lesson. We put all of the seasonable, fruits and vegetables, I'm really big on color, really big on fruits and veggies in the cart. And then we pick the appropriate,  starches, like yams.

Celeste: So we put healthy proteins that comes from plants, healthy, starchy carbs, fibrous carbs, fruits, and healthy fats in the cart. When we come home, I've done meal prep, or I teach people meal prep. We kind of put together what are we going to do for the meal? And so one of the simplest ways to do this is when you prepare food is make extra.

Celeste: Just as simple as that. Even if it's just, you make twice as much. So that next time you have something to pull out of the fridge that you know, your body's gonna thank you for. There are people and I have written meal plans for people where you're eating a more, monotonous diet or you're pulling from different recipes and kind of repeating them, repeating them, repeating them.

Celeste: And you can either do that two different ways. It really depends on your preference and your personality type as an eater. One, the simplest, I think is just bulk cook. It means if you're going to make brown rice,  or polenta or sweet potatoes or white potatoes, red potatoes, whatever, if that you pick your starch and. Make a lot of it and then just keep it in the fridge. And, you know, that's part of your meal that you can add to your meal and then prepare your proteins for a plant-based eater that might mean marinate your Tempe and tofu, or have beans, whether canned, rinsed and drained on hand or, somebody that eats other Types of protein, pre-prep that, and have it on hand.

Celeste: And then also fruits and veggies, which seems to be the most important thing. And also the hardest thing to get in our diet because when we're busy, it takes time to wash chop and all of that. So it's very handy to have it on hand. Prewash it pre-chop it and just have it in the fridge so that you can put it together for your meal. If you're going to be a bulk prepper. Or you can pick healthy recipes. There are so many out there. You can just Google them and if you put healthy or low fat or vegetarian or vegan in front of it, you're going to come up with a slew it's you probably going to make four servings. So you're going to have extra, just divide it up and put it in the fridge for later.

Sandi: One of the problems that I have with fresh fruits and vegetables is longevity. How do you keep them without having to go to the grocery store every day or the farmer's market every other day? Is there a way, a special way that you should treat your fruit and vegetables to have them last longer?

Celeste: This is a good question. And you might not like my answer, but if fruit and veggies are going bad, it means because you're not eating them. So really we want to purchase what we're going to eat. And then I do recommend going to the store twice a week, three times a week when I run to the store, it's usually because I'm out of greens.

Celeste: So we buy those big pre-washed organic baby greens, power greens, spinach for smoothies and salads. And then some of my other things, they're like the colorful carrots. Those are always going to keep fruits should be kept on the counter, once they are right, so that, to give validity to your question, take an avocado.

Celeste: If an avocado gets ripe, you're not ready to use it cause maybe you bought them at Costco and now you have five that are ripe. You can put that ripened avocado in the fridge. If fruit like bananas are getting too dark for you and you're not going to do some baking, then freeze them. They're perfect for smoothies.

Celeste: And I'm actually a huge proponent of frozen fruits and veggies because one they're usually the veggies are blanched. They're going to cook faster and they're not going to get wasted. You use what you need. And they were usually picked in season. So because they had to be flash-frozen, they're going to be at their peak of nutritional potency.

Sandi: Being the first of the year, so many people are like, okay, I'm going to start this year out eating healthy, eating right. What are the easiest steps that somebody could take? My belief is, and I think, probably your teachings are like this, that eating healthy automatically a good body will follow.

Celeste: Yes, correct.  I've put aesthetics before health and even my last competition was to get to the stage no matter what. And I really hurt my body in that process.  Just to share a little bit about that real quick in case people see the first of the year, everyone's like, I'm going to get on a diet.

Celeste: Well, a diet is not sustainable. A diet is meant to be a short-term means to an end. So you really need to pick a lifestyle because as you put good nutrition, which is information in your body, your body will produce beautiful, healthy results. But  when you go on extreme diets, the body is going to swing that pendulum really far back the other way. People usually end up with muscle loss during the dieting phase. Which slows metabolism and then because their body has been used to not consuming adequate calories, the weight comes back on in the form of hormonally active fat tissue, and now the body becomes resistant to weight loss because it's in survival mode.

Celeste: I definitely advocate, picking a lifestyle, something that you think I could eat like this every day. You know, or most of the time. And then secondly, my best tip would be, find a buddy, get a friend, get a support group. Especially if you're trying something new, like a plant-based or a plant-centric diet.

Celeste: And I'm saying plant-based because I want to emphasize whole food plant product plants. Not just vegan because Oreos and Coca-Cola are vegan too. If you're trying something new find a friend or find a free support group that is going to support you. And can be accountability partners for you.

Celeste: And if you don't have that, get a coach. There are people out there that their heart really is to serve your best self and they want to support you in that process.  Make a plan. Make a plan that you can follow count your little wins. There's this thing that we do that is called the compliance confidence wheel.

Celeste: And so if you pick something, you know you can succeed at say, you just need to drink more water or say, you need to put some vegetables on your plate or that you can definitely dial that up to eating five, eight cups of veggies a day, but start with something that you can say, nine out of 10, I can do this consistently every single day.

Celeste: Make yourself a chart. Keep track. Keep track of your wins. After two weeks of building that new habit, add something else.  One of the things that I heard once, I just think it's so, it's so funny to me because I've definitely been in that position of someone said,  what would you like for your birthday? Would you like a thousand dollars or would you like to be 20 pounds lighter?

Celeste: And if you've been struggling with that 20 pounds for a year, two years, three years, you've tried this diet, that diet and keep failing, our souls are dying just to have some kind of satisfaction that we can achieve the thing that we value as important to us.

Sandi: What are your feelings on the scale? Weighing yourself on a daily basis, a weekly basis, a monthly basis.

Celeste: That's a great question. Thank you. Um, mixed, it really depends on the individual. If somebody comes from like an eating disorder background, no, because you are a lot more valuable than a piece of metal. That piece of metal is not going to tell you your worth for the day. If someone needs accountability weighing every day can be valuable so that you are accountable to what did I put in my body yesterday? Understanding that with anything like that it's a metric, we are not going to continually lose weight every single day or stay the same every single day.

Celeste: We're going to go up and down. So watching the trends and saying, is this trending in the right direction? So in general, I would have people step on the scale if they were working with me and report to me weekly or bi-weekly. And if we didn't get a good reading, we'd take it again another day, not a good as in something we wanted to see something we expected based on their compliance.

Celeste: How do you feel about the scale? Just curious.

 Sandi: You know, it depends on the time of the year.  It also depends on how my clothes are fitting. If my clothes are fitting well, I could care less. If they're not feeling so great, then I need to get on the scale and get things back under control. Like most people, I think my weight fluctuates and  I do notice it does correlate to how well I eat.

Celeste: Yeah, so we want to feel good and look good. Right? And there are so many non-scale ways to measure whether or not we are achieving the health that we want to be experiencing on a day-to-day basis.

Celeste: And sometimes people get fixated on the scale too, in that they could be losing weight that's not necessarily fat. So we're not just interested in the scale of going a certain direction. If you stand in the mirror naked, you're going to know what's going on with your body, you know?

Sandi: Absolutely.  Food, especially,  fresh fruits and vegetable are basically medicine for your body.  I've heard you talk about tomatoes and tomato sauce.

Celeste: Yes, tomatoes are one of those things that I occasionally crave. I think it's really interesting that, um, as you become more intuitive with your body, you kind of know what you need and you, you crave that thing.

Celeste: And I'm not talking about craving ice cream because I have found myself face down in the ice cream, in years past way, too many times that was not healthy. Tomatoes especially cooked tomato sauce, this is one of the benefits that we hear from the Mediterranean diet.  The marketed Mediterranean diet is nothing like what was actually eaten in that area when these studies were done or when the data was achieved.

Celeste: But coming back to tomatoes and lycopene. Lycopene is one of the best preventative and protective, nutrients that you can get for heart health lowers, blood pressure.  It's amazing for your eyesight. It's amazing for your skin. It's in the carotenoids family. And if we try and eat the colors of the rainbow we're going to get all of the different micronutrients and phytonutrients that are both disease preventative. Um, they help longevity. They're anti-angiogenic, meaning  they don't let cells that have gone rebel in our body create their own source of blood.

Celeste: We don't want a, you know, like a tumor benign or not to have its own source of blood. So that's why there are foods that are anti-angiogenic. There are foods like broccoli, for example. Broccoli emits certain compounds. Broccoli's the only vegetable that does this, that has specific reactions that are anti-cancerous.

Celeste: And when people think of that and they're, maybe they're not concerned about cancer. Well, we have cells that are mutating all the time. And if we eat a nutritious diet, our body is going to naturally detox. It's going to kill those cells and they're going to be removed from our bodies. So it is an important process to think about all of the different things that vitamins and minerals in the colors of the rainbow provide to us.

Sandi:  Another thing that I've heard you talk about is how people, are trying to just literally omit carbs from their diet because they think they're the devil.   Can you explain to me the difference between good carbs, bad carbs? Is there such a thing?

Celeste: Yeah, there definitely is. And, the thing that, we really need to understand is that when we look at macro nutrients, carbs fats, protein included. Those are like your three main macronutrients. We have come to an idea of reductionist eating, just like reductionist medicine, which is treating or eliminating a particular item without understanding synergistically, how these things work together to create a certain effect.

Celeste: Years ago, carbohydrates were the staple of energy. They were seen as what you need to get through the day. The early farmers and agriculture community in America or across the world had very carb, heavy diets. In South America, we're talking about beans, corn potatoes, and squash. In India, rice lentils. In China, obviously lots of rice.

Celeste: We don't often look to those countries now and see people who are still involved in agriculture, who are less westernized having obesity problems or even diseases of the affluent.  When we look at carbohydrates, we really need to embrace that they are our brain and body's preferred source of energy.

Celeste: We want to eat carbs in their most, whole form possible. So that would mean whole grain rice, brown rice. It would mean whole potatoes. It would mean whole lentils, legumes, beans are starches that have a lot of resistant starch in them. They also have very healthy protein.  It's fun to know that the longest-lived populations in the world what's known as the blue zones. They eat a cup of beans a day at a minimum. And so it's really interesting that in my nutrition philosophy, I have evolved from how do you look good to, how do you look at and feel good and live a really long time disease-free? Right. So carbohydrates in our society, when people think of pizza or chips, they're thinking carbs. They're thinking, oh, you know, I, I ate those carbs and that's why I'm fat.

Celeste: Well, pizza or chips, both per calorie are actually more saturated fat than carbohydrates. If you look at the label and you see that a bag of chips, I think that there's maybe 140 calories for a serving and there's seven grams, seven to 11 grams of fat. And there are about 12 to 14 or 20 grams of carbs and two grams of protein.

Celeste: If you multiply those out by their caloric value, that being nine calories per gram protein and carbs being four calories per gram, you're going to find out that there's actually significantly two thirds or so more calories coming from fat.  Fat in conjunction with carbohydrates in the body, especially that type of fat, saturated fat, is more easily just stored. If we think of our stomach and our digestive system as a community, they don't know what to do with that fat.

Celeste: It's like, well, we'll just pack it away for later in case there's a famine, but there just aren't famines in America. So we ended up carrying it around on our bodies. So I think that's the big misconfusion. Even, even sweets, even baked goods like donuts, people think carbs are actually per calorie, a donut is more fat than carbohydrates.

Celeste: So we want to eat carbs in there, least white refined form. As a whole, as close to nature, produced it as possible and eat it for energy.  Be your own wellness Sherpa. Discover what do I need to make me feel good? How much do I need to provide me with the energy that I need?  A lot of women find that in the evening they're having these sugar cravings.

Celeste: Typically that is because they didn't nourish their body-brain connection with enough,  quality carbohydrates throughout the day. And so at the end of the day, your brain, your body is going, how we need something. And then we end up having a sugar binge.

Sandi: If that happens, if you end up after dinner, and most people like something sweet or something, a little sweet.  How do you handle those cravings? What can you have that's a good option?.

Celeste: I love this. I love this because I'm one of those people that like something sweet after dinner.  It kind of helps us physiologically if you're this type, know that I'm done eating for the day and I'm satisfied.

Celeste: I did,  good work. You, you made it through another day. Here's a treat. I like, personally to have something that is either fruit or bean-based. So bean-based sounds a little bit weird, but I'll tell you,  a bowl of blueberries or frozen cherries can be delicious. You can sprinkle some cocoa powder. I don't use sugar very regularly in my diet, so I would probably use some monk, fruit, sweetener, or liquid Stevia.

Celeste: Have something that has the fiber and the nutrition and the fruit, because that's going to signal to your brain that you got, what you needed. It's going to turn off your craving and your hunger signals faster. So that's huge.  So I love berries. I love cherries. I've done baked apples are delicious. We don't need to fear carbs at the end of the day. It might be what we need to seal off the eating cycle.  Another thing that I love to do is make black bean brownies or even white bean blondies. If you look on the internet, there are tons of recipes for these it's basically beans, oats.  You rinse them really well so that they don't have any beany flavor.

Celeste: Have you ever made any of these by the way? I bring them to parties. And I used to try and not tell people what was in them, but I just can't help myself. I'm like these have beans in them. You're going to love them.  Some of my biggest, black bean brownie fans are my nieces who are not eating a puritanical diet by any means, but they really love these.

Celeste: So it's a lot of good things. It's usually cocoa powder rolled oats, beans. Again, read the recipe, drain rinse really well. You need a high-powered blender or a food processor. Then you add your sweetener of choice, some leavening agent rising agent, and they turn out really, really great.

Sandi: Oh, they sound delicious actually. Well, I'm a fan of beans, so I don't shy away from putting them in just about anything I think that would be a good thing to try.  What if somebody is,  overwhelmed with life, basically. What are three things that they can do tomorrow or tonight, or today that if they incorporate this into their life it will get them on the track, then they can add more stuff in.

Celeste: That is a really loaded and powerful question. We do deal with so much overwhelm and I would come back to the inside-out transformation, recognizing that our behaviors are actually the result of our beliefs. So first we need to tackle beliefs.

Celeste: I would make yourself some affirmation cards.  I would find some type of meditation or prayer or way that you can spend time in your heart actualizing these thoughts and these ideas so that when you get up, you have come to a place of centeredness and belief that you are worth the work and in the moment that you're completely accepted and perfect.

Celeste:I had some of these moments as a teenager when I was not at all loving of my body. I had gained a lot of weight. I was trying on a robe, I think in a Penny's. You know, those mirrors in the dressing room, never make you look amazing.  I looked at my body and I was just disgusted at how much weight I had gained.

Celeste: I was working at a food bank and just eating all of the leftovers, you know, all of the free food. It was lots of process, lots of yummy things. I was putting that gross creamer in my coffee just by the cups probably. And I looked at myself and I shamed myself and we need to stop doing that.

Celeste: The spirit inside me said I love you. You were perfect and you're completely accepted. And I believe that that's the voice of God in us.  I had a whoa moment where I realized, how can I judge myself when I am not being judged by the ultimate force in the universe. If I am completely loved and accepted and perfect who am I to stand and say, no, I know better than you. Right? That was a real wake-up moment for me. So I want everybody to know that you are, you are perfect. You are divine. You are created in a majestically beautiful way.  Believing that and knowing that dialing into that is going to be your number one tool to change the way you feel and the way you think. From there build a few actionable steps. And if you really are overwhelmed, I mean, the first thing that came to me honestly, is to get some help. There are so many people out there that want to help you get a coach, join a group, dial-in. If you can't afford that, that's fine.

Celeste: Find somebody on Instagram or tik-tok that is putting out great loving content that helps you identify with who you really are. So we see ourselves as who we are in the present but I want people to see themselves as who they are five years from now. And so when they embark on a new lifestyle, we're not going to call it a diet.

Celeste: When they embark on a new lifestyle, I want them to look five years in the future and say, okay, if I do these things, one thing at a time, putting one new habit in place at a time, five years from now, what will I look like? Maybe I won't lose 20 pounds in two months. But five years from now, I will have not been dieting.

Celeste: I will have been incorporating these things into my life. I'll be happy, vibrant, and I won't be feeling like I have to stay doing this thing if I want to keep looking this way.

Sandi: Well, that's awesome. That's great advice. If you have a place to start, you can get moving and you can get motivated. Taking that first step. If you don't take that step, you're never going to get anywhere. You're just going to stay in the same spot in the same situation.

Celeste: I, 100% agree. And my journals through the years have been my best friends. Especially when I was,  competing and failing or that time that my daughter made a birthday cake.

Celeste: This was my first competition and I don't compete anymore. I just want that to be clear. And I think that that can be very destructive for body image and the way that you see yourself. But, , I remember she made this cake and I was like, put that out of sight. She put it in the garage. I went and I sought it out because my body was starving.

Celeste: I was literally starving the fat off.  I was so upset. I cried and I felt like I had completely lost. I hadn't even gotten to the finish line and I had already lost.  I think that when we take time to get out of our heads, identify what's really going on, especially in that place of overwhelm, even just making a list.

Celeste: I don't know if this is true and I don't know what you think about this, but I think sometimes for women we can handle so much. And then there's one thing it's like the straw that broke the camel's back. If we can identify, this is the thing that I really need to take care of right now, it could be anything, it could be making a phone call.

Celeste: It could be,  taking care of that thing, getting it off your plate, getting it out of your mind out of your soul, out of your energy so that you can actually do the other things. But sometimes we need to just come to a place and put it all on paper. Find out what's really going on and know how to make a plan from there.

Sandi: So this afternoon, I'm going to the grocery store. What do I buy?

 Celeste: I mean, at what grocery store do you go.

Sandi: I go to several, I have a Sprouts and I have an Aldi and I have a Publix. Then I have a Costco, so I shop everywhere.

Celeste: Oh, I love it. , when I lived in Florida, I loved the little fruit stands and I was a poor college student. I could eat for like $20. I mean, I might eat watermelon for a couple of days, but, they were so great and it was fresh and it was seasonal. So. The first thing I would do is,  Obviously you have a broad array of places to go.  I would make a plan of how many fruits and vegetables. If you're going to do the green smoothies, if you're going to focus on getting more fruit in your diet, I love fruit and salad too.

Celeste: I'm kind of one of those people that sometimes likes to drink my veggies and sometimes would rather chew it. So I'll put fruit on a salad and it just kind of breaks up the taste.  Definitely fill the majority of your cart with as many fruits and veggies that you can know that you're going to consume.

Celeste: Remember that frozen is fine if it's not in season. At sprouts, I would get your organic greens, root vegetables. And again, think about the fact that I'm bringing this home. I'm going to have to prepare it.  Sometimes, if I buy a bag of sweet potatoes at Trader Joe's, I'll bake the whole bag,  you can refrigerate those.

Celeste: You can even freeze them. So think about bulk cooking and what you can make that you can use future what you can reuse. I also love to recommend to people that they eat GBOMBS, which is an acronym for greens, beans, onions, mushrooms, berries, and seeds.  These six, foods have the most powerful phytonutrient of any. So I try and include them in my diet every day. So starting with seeds, we've got flax and chia, and those you can sprinkle on your salad. You can make a chia pudding, you can put flax in your smoothie. I do recommend buying at whole because it is a volatile fat. It contains alpha-linoleic which the body transforms into DHA, which is really important for brain function.

Celeste: Even a teaspoon of flaxseed a day is so powerful in preventing hormone-related cancers for both men and women, breast and prostate. So there's no reason in the world that we can't make a little effort to put a little flax in our diet because it's such a small amount. If you do buy a whole, and you're not going to use it in a smoothie pre-grind in a coffee grinder a bit, keep it in the freezer and then add it as you would.

Celeste: That's your seeds.  Berries. I love berries. Berries are also one of the most pesticide-ridden,  foods. The EWG environmental working group comes out every year with a list of the dirty dozen and the clean 15. We do need to get our berries organic. But good news, you can get them frozen and that's just fine.

Celeste: Mushrooms are superfoods. Even one button mushroom a day has a profound effect on preventing breast cancer.  I'm talking about a white button mushroom and today we have the ability to eat all of these cool mushrooms like oyster mushrooms, lion's mane. Have you played with any of these?

Celeste: They're really fun. I love them too. And I actually,  have worked a little bit at a vegan kitchen and she has turned mushrooms into meat. She makes the lion's mane clam chowder, which is no clam, but it's lion's mane. Just get some mushrooms, you can dry fry them, or you can cook them with a little bit of oil, garlic, and salt is pretty much all you need. They are 30% protein. So they're an incredible way to get plant protein into your diet. Mushrooms, every day. Onions, anything in the allium family, which includes onion, scallions, shallots garlic. Also one of the most beneficial compounds for the immune system.

Celeste: Some kind of onions raw every day. If you're using garlic, if you are adding it to a recipe, try and chop it up first and mince it first and then add it last. It actually takes a few minutes for the chemicals to oxidize and come to their most beneficial result when you put it in your meal.

Celeste: Then of course it beans which believe it or not, I used to not be able to digest beans or like I liked them, but I could not digest them.  I was joking to my husband last night, I just like live the beans and rice diet.  I've been cooking black beans from a can.  I'm not that fancy. I like fast and easy, delicious meals. I don't want to spend more than 20 minutes max. I've been cooking them and then using with some pre-cooked brown rice and some salts and taco seasoning in a frying pan. You've got that really beautiful Mexican rice.

Celeste: Either add it to a salad or a bowl, like a buddha bowl,  nourished bowl, burrito bowl, type of thing. Put in a tortilla, whatever beans are amazing. There are so many different kinds. Try them all. Then greens. Greens are the most micro and phytonutrient-dense plant food. That's also the least caloric that you can put in your body.

Celeste: I'm not talking about an iceberg lettuce salad. You actually need dark leafy greens like baby kale, chard,  mustard greens,  arugula, which is also called rocket.  I think it's the most simple way to get these is in the prewash tubs. Earthbound makes them, and they're organic and you can just add them to your smoothie, to your salad, warm cook them in a pan before you add them to your meal.  The key is eating enough greens.

Celeste: I like people to eat a pound of greens if possible a day, and that would include broccoli and other things in the brassica family. Just get them in your diet when you're doing a salad one of the best tips I have for people if you're using those, put it out on a big cutting board, take a bunch of big handfuls, chop it up into little fine pieces.

Celeste: So you're not trying to get a fork full and move your mouth around this big piece of lettuce, make it up into little tiny bite sizes.  You're actually eating a green dense salad then at the other things on top of that. So GBOMBS greens, beans, onions, mushrooms, berries, and seeds.

Celeste:  You'll be golden. I can tell you, you're already healthy you glow. And this is just thanks for asking these questions. I'm so glad that your listeners are going to be able to participate in taking some of this advice and putting it into action.

Sandi: I'm so excited to share this with them because it's so important that you work on the inside out. And if you can incorporate some delicious food in the process, I'm all about it.

Celeste: Yeah. Yeah. The, and the very cool thing is this, this is a synergistic relationship that we have with our body. Too often, we're disconnected from our bodies. And that's kind of where we have where the dieting culture fails and has stolen life from food. Food is fuel. Well, food is a lot of things, right. But when you are working on yourself inside and you're putting good nutrition in your body, Everything starts to change. You start to feel better. You think better. Your digestive system is communicating with your brain loving thoughts to yourself.

Celeste: So it's just a beautiful symphony. Start inside, use the outside tools and watch it snowball, keep track of your successes and apply it to yourself through the process.

Sandi: Celeste, where can listeners find you?

Celeste: The best place to find me is on Instagram. I'm at Celeste, C E L E S T E dot Ariel, a R I E L L E. It's my first and middle name. That's where I'm posting stories, where I'm posting recipes, and if there's something you want to see, just DM me. I am here to serve.  I want to put out information that people are hungry for that would actually help them get over the next hurdle, make the next obstacle into an opportunity, and then I'll be there to cheer you on.

Sandi: Celeste is so inspiring. So many healthy gems in today's unforgettable and delicious conversation. There were a few things I'm going to implement right away. Here are three of them.

Sandi: One, I'm going to enlist a friend and join the Pivot to Plants Facebook group so we'll have some accountability partners to keep me on track during this healthy eating journey.

Sandi: Two. Not only am I going to drink more water, but I'm going to keep track of how much I consume. I'm going to make myself a chart and keep track of my wins. And after a couple of weeks of building this habit, I'm going to add something else.

Sandi: Three, I'll be including G bombs daily. Greens, beans, onions, mushrooms, berries, and seeds. We got to start somewhere, right.

Sandi: What's your takeaway from today? What are you most excited to try for more healthy inspiration and tasty recipes? Check out Celeste Anderson on Instagram. 

Links are in the show notes below.