We often re-evaluate how we are living our lives.  There are some moments when we reach a turning point and decide that what we are currently doing is no longer working for us. You know you want to make changes but don’t know how. You’ve tried every single diet and exercise program under the sun but you either can’t lose weight or you just put it straight back on.

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One of the most important changes for health is the food you are putting in your mouth. There are also other things to consider such as eating to help balance your hormones as well as exercising for your current age which if you are in your 50s is very different to when you were in your 20s and this is something I teach all of my patients.

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To be able to stick to a new way of eating there needs to be motivation.  If your motivation comes purely from “I want WEIGHTLOSS” then chances are that you will give up at some point in the first month or two (or even week), become disheartened and start to think that what you are doing is no longer working and then just give up.  The focus here is usually on the numbers on the scales. I always say what are we counting, kilos of what? kilos of fluid retention, kilos of muscle, kilos of fat. Unfortunately your scales cannot differentiate between these leaving you feeling down and that nothing works. These are self-limiting beliefs. But I understand. You have tried it all, every new diet and nothing works. This is because those programs have let you down. They are focusing on losing kilos or counting calories.

However, if your motivation comes from the perspective of “I want HEALTH” and you begin to make conscious choices about your food based on how it either fuels or harms your body, weightloss actually becomes a byproduct of this. 

So let’s change the way we think about food and choose:

A lot of the times when I ask my patients about what they eat I hear the same thing. “I eat pretty healthy I always try to eat salads.” Everyone’s go to is always salad.  There is a lot more to healthy eating than just salads. For some people the thought of salad being the only option to healthy eating is also a big deterrent to making the big change. Who wants to eat like a rabbit all day? Not me that’s for sure.

Eating healthy can be a big lifestyle change and a whole new education and part of that and probably the most important part of that is to understand what NOT to eat.

As a Naturopath who is also a teacher, I like to explain things as easily as I can for everyone to understand.  I believe that there are two types of food that are linked to the majority of our diseases and our health outcome, because cause different reactions within the body and they are:

Acidic Foods can lead to inflammation

while

Alkalising Foods help lead you towards health

A major mechanism to understand is that when the body feels it needs to protect its organs against the constant supply of damaging acids from inflammatory food the body then produces fat cells so it can pack some of the toxic acid waste into them leading to weight gain that is difficult to budge.

There are also studies showing that mental health conditions such as anxiety and depression can be connected to an imbalance in your bodies pH levels as well as your gut microbiome which is greatly influenced by the food you eat.. 

Some signs of inflammation in the body from acidic foods are:

• fatigued even with sleep
• insomnia
• weight gain
• difficulty losing weight
• insulin resistance
• fatty liver
• brain fog
• shortness of breath
• headaches
• lack of appetite/no hunger signal
• increased heart rate/palpitations
• high blood pressure
• irritable for no reason
• frequent infections, colds and flus
• dry skin
• acne at any age
• hormonal imbalances
• frequent yeast infections
• joint pain and pain in general
• chronic allergies and sinus pain
• sensitive teeth and gums

All systems of the body are affected by over consumption of Inflammatory foods

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This does not mean if you eat these foods that you will get disease it means that if you are genetically predisposed (family history) to certain diseases and then eat these foods you will reduce your ability to fight off diseases and you may trigger and then feed the disease including cancer and disease will grow when given the opportunity and the right environment. The body is always trying to find balance and keep the body at ease (homeostasis), when eating these types of foods they put the body off balance making it harder to get rid of any invaders that are trying to put the body at dis-ease. When the invaders grow, we get SICK.

Chronic (long term) inflammation leads to weight gain and disease. By reducing the inflammation then a byproduct is weight loss and you become more disease resistant.

Top of the list of inflammatory and acidic foods are heavily processed foods. Take-away, fried foods (fast food chains) is a big one but so are a lot of the easy convenient processed (packaged) foods that we put in our cupboards and feed ourselves and our kids. (because there is never enough time to prepare real food, there really is time, it all depends on your priorities).  Anything that comes in a packet with an ingredient list is processed. Choose your level of process wisely.

Read the label and check exactly what you are putting in your mouth before you buy. I teach my patients how to choose packaged foods that will still keep them moving forward on their health journey. I call them simple swaps or fallback foods. Better processed food choices for the days where you really don’t have time or haven’t created your healthy habits yet. In addition to ingredients look at country of origin. In Australia we are losing a lot of our farmers to overseas imports, this is more than just the dairy and cattle farmers. What about the ones who grow our tomatoes, buy Australian NOT Italian.  Ask the supermarket if they have an Australian product rather than an imported one, the more people who ask the more likely they are to make change.  Chickpeas is a big one for me, only one brand (Edgell) of the tins of chickpeas sold in our supermarkets are Australian and yet we have a big agricultural industry of pulses.  We need to ask more questions to improve our food security.

When changing your mindset on food choices there is a lot to unlearn.  Old habits die hard. There are many stories that we have been told in order to keep certain food industries running. They may all not be exactly true.  eg you need dairy to get your calcium. Total myth. Certain industries have a lot of influence on government decisions and what information is told to the public.  It is important to learn more about these problems and be able to make your own choices.

Below is a link to a documentary called What the Health.  It gives a bit of insight into how certain organisations completely ignore the World Health Organisation when it comes to food suggestions related to diseases. It’s also on Netflix.

Remember that there are always two sides to every story.  Although this documentary comes from the perspective of plant based eating which is 80% plants and 20% protein of your choice (in this documentary they choose plant protein), this way of eating can be overwhelming and seem all too hard to get the right balance of nutrients.  I created the Toxins Be Gone program which is a complete holistic detox to incorporate the TBG diet, to show you how to make the transition to eating more plant based super easy with an easy to follow program that can help you transition from eating the way you currently do towards a more plant based diet. I always encourage more veggies and whole foods and less processed acidic and inflammatory foods and guide all of my patients towards eating for health. There is plenty of evidence with the World Health Organisation connecting inflammatory and acidic foods to disease.  There is also a tonne of research to show that a diet high in animal protein will lead to many diseases. My program helps you to make gradual changes to choices for healthier less inflammatory and acidic choices.  Doing it gradually helps with permanent change. You need to know how to use the new ingredients or they will just be wasted and you will give up. I also include meal plans to get started with these changes straight away and then teach the strategies to make permanent change to your health.

Hi my name is Melissa Callaghan – I am a Bachelor qualified and accredited Naturopath and Nutritionist who specialises in reducing metabolic inflammation as well as improving gut health and balancing hormones.

In my many years working in clinic with my patients I believed that even though everyone had different illnesses there must be one thing that everyone has in common. Our society was just getting sicker and sicker. The most common conditions people go to hospital for are heart conditions, diabetes, obesity, and mental health. I questioned why this was getting worse and worse and occurring in younger age groups more and more.

So I made it my mission to try and get to the bottom of this and I spent years searching for answers. I knew there were contributing factors to people getting sick such as toxins and that these needed to be removed to prevent further sickness but not everyone was exposed to the same toxins. Yet the same illnesses kept filling our medical system. Type 2 diabetes, heart disease, mental health issues and obesity. I’ve worked in all these areas for years there must be something in common. I asked myself.

Then it hit me, everyone eats. It must be in the food. I began a journey of discovery and found that it was the ingredients in our food creating metabolic inflammation at a cellular level in our bodies. This was blocking pathways so no wonder we couldn’t function properly. 

It all began to make sense. If I can create a program that helps people see food from a different perspective then I may be able to help reverse and prevent all of the conditions that people came to my clinic with and combine this with my natural medicine formulas to catch you up and help you feel better quicker.  

Conditions like:

– Metabolic syndrome
– Central adiposity
– High cholesterol
– High blood pressure
– Inflammation
– Type 2 diabetes
– Depression
– Anxiety
– Fibromyalgia
– Migraines
– IBS
– REFLUX (so common)
– Brain fog
– Hormonal imbalances
– Adrenal fatigue
– Chronic pain
– Endometriosis
– PCOS
– Fibroids

Honestly the list goes on. There are so many conditions connected to metabolic inflammation.

I began spending endless hours researching through all of the scientific evidence to find research papers to back up my findings. From here I began to create a program.  One program that would help EVERYONE.

I put together all of the similar components that I was already doing with each of my patients that followed the same path and I put them all together for everyone to follow.

I then began to add in the recipes and focused on creating meals that were delicious, quick and easy to prepare and that the whole family would love.

There was one last thing that I needed.  Over the years I had researched many many other programs and have seen many people try these programs only to unfortunately go right back to where they started or worse after they finished. This even happened to me.

I vowed to myself that the most important component (other than regaining health) was for everyone to be able to sustain the new lifestyle. I created a program that is completely flexible. You can go intense when you need to and not so intense when you don’t.

You can change your habits and stop the cravings, binge, and emotional eating. This a big part of what I do. I help you to understand your relationship with food and turn it into a positive one so you will never feel guilty about eating ever again. When you can see the subconscious programming and the habits that got you to where you are and learn skills to change these it becomes easier to sustain a happier, healthier life.

After getting the ball rolling I begin to use this program in clinic with my patients and within weeks and months I was seeing huge success.  Blood test markers were correcting themselves. People were no longer borderline diabetic, blood pressures where going down, cholesterol was going down, Drs had to reduce and remove medications. Reflux was non-existent and fat and kilos began to melt away. Most of all health began to increase.

I knew I was on the right path.

In my clinic I have been putting my patients through this program that I have called it “Toxins Be Gone Holistic Detox program”. The program incorporates a detox from inflammatory foods as well as working on changing the habits that lead you to choosing inflammatory foods in the first place (usually emotional eating).  As well as the education of how certain foods and toxins impact your body, the program works on removing toxins that are preventing the mind and the body from working effectively, helping to improve insulin sensitivity, reduce risk of diabetes and heart disease and help to reverse conditions you already have like high blood pressure or high cholesterol. Sometimes making changes can be difficult which is why a major component is working on the subconscious choices and reprogramming your habits and mindset.

Where other programs have let you down before and you feel like no program will ever work, this program fills in the gaps that those programs have lacked to set you up for success. It’s holistic rather than just focusing on food or exercise. There is so much more to what got you to where you are today.

Improvements are seen so quickly which helps keep you motivated. There’s also a beneficial side effect of eating for health = weight loss. Most patients lose 6-8 kilos in the first 6 weeks.

What if the solution was as simple as changing your diet and your mindset. A growing number researchers believe that it is and that you can prevent or even reverse several of our worst diseases.