Mira Dessy, The Ingredient Guru, is an author and public speaker, helping others to navigate the grocery store’s packaged food stock, decipher confusing food labels, and understand both the relationship of food additives to poor health as well as the benefits of real food. She is the author of the book The Pantry Principle: How to Read the Label and Understand What’s Really in Your Food. Mira is also an instructor in the NTA’s new course, Foundational Wellness. In the module, Designing Your Environment, she teaches how to give your fridge and pantry a makeover, define your why, and manage social pressure and resistance from friends, family, and colleagues. 

In this video, Mira discusses:

How it can be difficult to make healthy choices when you’re surrounded by seemingly endless foods, products, and social obligations that can derail your best efforts. By proactively designing your environment and learning how to deal with these obstacles effectively, you enable yourself to make consistent, forward progress toward your health goals. The Foundational Wellness module, Designing Your Environment and what you will learn:

• – How to give your fridge and pantry a makeover
• – How to define your WHY, create effective systems, and take action
• – How to manage social pressure and resistance from friends, family, colleagues, and more

Practical resources to make it easy for you to redesign your environment to support optimal health:

• – Common household toxins to avoid
• – Simple recipes for making your own non-toxic cleaners
• – Houseplants to purify the air in your home
• – Safest kinds of cookware and food storage containers
• – Clean and safe beauty, skincare, and personal hygiene products

Mira’s tips for changing your environment

• – Be mindful and don’t be afraid to go slow. Change is difficult and takes time.
• – Master the thing that’s in front of you, then move on to the next thing (ex: remove all the artificial colors, then work on removing certain ingredients)
• – Get curious about the ingredients in your food and do your research! Those extra ingredients are not added for your health benefit, but usually for manufacturing convenience

Learn more about Mira and check out more tips on her website here.