From Clueless to Kind

 

Stella’s Bedside Table reviews The Kind Diet: A Simple Guide to Feeling Great Losing Weight, and Saving the Planet by Alicia Silverstone.

 

With passion and compassion, Alicia Silverstone distills modern information on diet and holistic living, and offers you smart, warm and delicious regimens to transform your life.

The Kind Diet is more than research and recipes, it is a spirited way of living.

 

 

With an introduction on Alicia Silverstone’s pesonal journey of vegetarianism to veganism she begins the journey to show you how to become more sensitive to all the important parts of life, including love, nature, and your deepest, truest self.

 

What you will learn in The Kind Diet:

1. Make friends with grains and vegetables (Forget any freak outs about carbs, the glycemic index and counting calories – I couldn’t even tell you how many calories are in a stick of carrot let alone a glass of champagne, and like Alicia, that’s The Kind way!)

2. That by eating a varied plant based diet you can strengthen your immune system, beautify your skin, increase your energy, and reduce the risk of cancer and other diseases.

3. How to prepare healthy, nourishing foods to enhance the joy and peacefulness of your life.

4. Prioritise food – as in real food, from farm to plate. Not processed, chemical ridden products that look like food.

5. Learn how a plant based diet helps our planet by keeping down the consumption of fresh water, oil, coal, and the precious rain forest, as well as move away from world hunger and the equitability of food distribution.

 

 

diet: (noun) a way of living, or thinking, a day’s journey

 

 

 

What The Kind Diet stays away from:

 

Meat

Alicia’s  journey through her personal challenges with food at the peak of her acting career to her love of animals lead us into The Kind Diet’s take on meat.

While you may or may not be vegan or vegetarian, having an insight into what the animals you are consuming do to your body is important. From contributing to cancer, to health and digestion issues, you will understand how animals are farmed, the antibiotics and hormones they are given (and thus you consume),  and about the pathogens they carry.

It’s interesting to stop and ask yourself, am I built to eat this?

Then there is the damage done to the planet. America alone uses 29 billion gallons of gas annually just to make beef burgers! From oil usage to forest destruction, oxygen depletion and the destruction of our global biodiversity. It can not be denied that eating beef, pork, chicken, or fish means you are stepping heavily on the planet, (and this isn’t even taking into consideration animal cruelty).

It is a personal choice, and a big one. But while the decision to consume animals is yours to make, The Kind Diet gives you an insight that you have perhaps previously not been aware of. Informed choices are better choices, so think what is best for your body and our planet.

 

 

Diary

Another key ‘nasty’ Alicia refrains from and asks you to reexamine your beliefs on. Not only is dairy unkind to the planet but it is messing with your hormones and heart; from hormones in milk to the fallacy that dairy is the only source of calcium. Alicia points out, “the fact is humans can’t drink milk from other animals,” and the interesting thing about this is that we are the only animals on earth that continue to drink milk after infancy, and not even our own, but the milk of another species! Can’t say I’ve seen a goat drink cows milk, nor cows drinking from their mothers after they’re grown up. They wean themselves naturally. Alicia goes into depth about the misinformation we have been given about dairy being essential for our diet, the disease connected to milk, including weight gain, cancer and asthma, and how milk does not prevent osteoporosis.  Read more about the dairy myth here.

 

 

White sugar  

In a nutshell consuming white suger will;

Suppress your immune system

Put you on a blood sugar rollercoaster

Leach vitamins and minerals from your blood and bones

Contribute to making you gain and retain fat

Contribute to insulin resistance and diabetes

 

Read about a Kind Lifers “overcoming sugar addiction” success story here.

 

 

Processed foods

Alicia’s tip, “stay away from really crappy food. You know what I’m talking about: fast food; neon-colored or sparkly foods; canned, frozen, or boxed foods that have ingredient lists a mile long.”

With most of these so called foods having suspected carcinogens or contributor to obesity and heart disease, there is a reason they are called ‘junk food’.

I’m 100% with Alicia on this one too. If it’s processed I won’t put it in my body.

 

 

The Kind Diet opts for:

Whole grains including brown rice, millet, corn, quinoa, wild rice, farro, barley (not for the gluten free), whole oats (not for the gluten free), and more…

New proteins such as beans, tofu, tempeh, seitan (this one is not for the gluten free among us as it’s made from gluten!)

Vegetables (organic & GMO free) – Alicia’s top 5 include; kabocha squash, leeks, and burdock.

Desserts using sweeteners like brown rice syrup, barley malt (not for the gluten free), maple syrup, Agave nectar, fruit.

The Kind Life Magic foods  include unpasteurised miso, umeboshi plums (Alicia’s hangover cure favourite), pickles, sea vegetables.

 

 

Alicia lays out 3 types of ‘kind diets’ to choose from:

Flirting – Where you pop your toe in the vegan waters and see how it feels for a day a week or so to not eat any meat, poultry or dairy.

 

Vegan – From  vegetrian to omitting all animal products from your diet. (Although this is only ‘vegan on the plate’, a vegan lifestyle is much more than that and extends beyond your food consumption to the clothes you wear and the kindness you give yourself extends to the kindness you show for all living creatures and our Mother Earth. Read about transforming from vegetarian to veganism here.

 

Superhero – Loosely based on a macrobiotic diet. Super hero panty faves include but are not limited to;

Whole grains:  brown rice and quinoa

Grain products: mocji and polenta

Beans: azuki, green lentil and black beans

Vegetables: leafy greens – collards, kale, bok choy. Root vegetables – carrots and burdock. Others – onions, brocoli, celery etc

Magic foods: unpasteurised miso, umeboshi plums, dried shiitake mushrooms

Seasonings: sea salt and brown rice vinegar

Oils: olive and sesame

Sweeteners: brown rice syrup and maple syrup, fruit – local, seasonal, fresh or dried – raisons and apricots

Beverages: kukicha tea, apple and carrot juice

Nuts and seeds: almonds, walnuts, pecans, pumpkin and sunflower seeds

 

 

Read  Alicia’s Kind Kitchen Essentials Here

 

 

The Kind Diet is an eye opening adventure through reconnection; what we eat and what our body needs. You will learn how to consciously choose these foods for a better mind, body, soul and planet. But more than that,  The Kind Diet is a guide on transitioning from where you are to where you may like to be. It offers you a variety of plant based options and nourishing insights to enlighten your personal journey from the plate to helping care for our planet. With 100 delicious recipies, tips on meal planning and stocking your pantry, to pressing questions and answers on nutrition, food substitutions and more. You will find The Kind Diet is a unique resource if you are ready to make a change and improve your wellbeing.

 

For all you mama’s to be and those StellaTriber’s preparing their beautiful bodies for mamahood, you may also be interested in The Kind Mama, A Simple Guide to Supercharged Fertility, a Radiant Pregnancy, a Sweeter Birth, and a Healthier, More Beautiful Beginning. This is Alicia’s latest book coming out in April, but you can pre order now.

 

 

Be KIND to yourself, be KIND to others and be KIND to our Stella, Mother Earth.

With Love, S*M

 

What is your favourite transition book StellaTribe?