On Sunday May 10, millions of Americans will celebrate Mother’s Day with regional flavors across the US. Mother’s Day is a unique holiday because it is one that has interesting ancient roots and has been adopted and adapted by many countries worldwide.
We met with Krystal Hammett, owner of Alternative Wellness Solutions and certified nutritionist to discuss what it takes to make a healthy diet. Krystal has helped clients with a variety of health and nutritional issues improve their health and lifestyles. When it comes to food, Krystal helps her clients tailor their diet to meet their nutritional needs.
One of Krystal’s passions is treating those with PCOS, a hormone imbalance common to women of reproductive age. Learn more about PCOS below.
Krystal Hammett
Owner of Alternative Wellness Solutions
Certified Holistic SpecialistContinue reading
Do you like to go all-in on a workout and then reward yourself with junk food that completely negates all of the time, sweat and effort you just put in? Well, when put that way, it sounds pretty silly. Unfortunately, people do it all the time. A common scenario goes like this: you start working out to lose some weight and get in shape, but lose interest in the exercise because you fail to see the results. How does this happen? Why is it so hard to shed pounds and get shredded? Most likely, there is something going on with your diet that is slowing down your progress. According to our guest, “nutrition is 85% of the battle.” When you combine exercise with the proper diet, then you start see the desired results.Continue reading
We at Healthy Gourmet have talked with nutritionists, dietitians, clients, family and friends about leading a healthy lifestyle and the main obstacles that get in the way. The most common obstacle that everyone cites? Time management.
Somehow, the most important thing in maintaining a healthy body, a healthy nutritional diet, falls by the wayside in our busy days. The morning rush to get to work on time takes precedence over making sure you get a healthy breakfast (especially in Houston). From a nutritional perspective this is so backwards… wouldn’t we all have more productive work days if we took the time to eat a nutritious breakfast instead of a quick, sugary treat that leaves us in a slump an hour later?Continue reading
If you have tried to lose weight, you know the struggle. There are hundreds of diets that claim to be the quickest, healthiest, best way to burn fat and lose weight. We’ve heard the big names and heavily branded diets like Atkins, Southbeach, Keto, Paleo, and Raw food just to name a few. How can you decide which diet is best for you?Continue reading
Consistency is key to maintaining a healthy lifestyle. As we can probably all attest, eating “really well” for 5 days in a row (while it is a great start!) does not mean you will have lost that post-vacation weight or solved your pre-existing health conditions.Continue reading
We believe a healthy diet is key to living a healthy life (I know… profound, right?), but if everyone’s bodies are slightly different, how do we know what a healthy diet means to us, personally? This is the goal of Nutrition Response Testing, a non-invasive system for analyzing the body and determining the root cause of maladies within it. Included under the NRT umbrella is muscle testing, acupuncture point testing, reflex, and chiropractic testing to determine toxicities, allergies, and other harmful things in the body. It is a growing practice, often used in holistic approaches to medicine, yet still considered somewhat controversial within the US medical community.
A couple weeks back, we had the pleasure of sitting down for a Healthy Chat with Dr. Serge Gregoire (Dr. Serge), owner of Mind and Body Solutions in Friendswood, TX. We talked diet, nutrition, and trends, and how they play into Nutrition Response Testing, which is a huge part of his practice. He even commented on how Healthy Gourmet’s meal delivery service has benefitted his clients. That just feels great!
Dr. Serge Gregoire
Owner of Mind and Body Solutions
PhD in Nutrition
Clinical Nutritionist
Herbalist
Dr. Serge: So I’m Dr. Serge, I’m from Quebec Canada. I did my PhD in [nutrition at] McGill University in Montreal. I moved to Boston ten years ago for my fellowship on heart disease at the Harvard Medical School, so right now I am the owner of Mind and Body Solutions. So, we are a Wellness Center. So, basically we use a holistic approach to treat people, so we look at the diet, we look at the deficiencies, we look at hormones, ect. so we focus on female issues at the end of the day, so we see a lot of adrenal fatigue and thyroid issues, migraines, headaches, and all those issues that women will suffer.
HG: What makes your approach to achieving a healthy diet different?
Dr. Serge: Muscle testing is the name of the umbrella of what we do in the office. So it’s a muscle testing, so we use muscle reflexes to assess the body based on acupuncture points. And so is that in acupuncture they put needles right? So but this is temporary. After a few days the problems come back and that’s why you have to do acupuncture all the time. Like chiropractors, you have to get that adjusted all the time before it holds. So its the same principle that we do with nutrition response testing but is based on nutrition, what the body is lacking. Because again, if you eat fast food you don’t have any nutrients in the food you eat, so the body is deficient. And my goal is to fill out the deficiencies in the body. So we change the diet and with the food and we give them some vitamins to fix the deficiencies and as we do that, they’re good.
HG: Where does food and diet fit in to your holistic approach?
Dr. Serge: The biggest part of what we do is teaching them what to eat and what to cook what to buy. Diet is everything. We are what we eat, right? So we try to teach them what to eat. We customize a diet plan with them because we believe that everybody’s different, right? So each patient that we have, we have a diet for them, customized for their own needs.
HG: How do you approach helping clients with pre-existing health conditions?
Dr. Serge: My recommendations are based on the symptoms of the patient, and they are based on my testings that I do with people. So we use nutrition response testing one of the tools that we can use to pinpoint food sensitivities, and based on that we can cater, or change the diet based on what we receive. For example, I have this patient with chronic pain… joint pain arthritis basically, end of the day, we find out that that patient was sensitive to wheat and coffee with my testing. And then when they gave up these foods, when they came back today, the patient, this morning, He told me that the pain went away. So, this is what we can do with food so we look at the food to avoid, and the food to add back to the diet.
Dr. Serge: One of the biggest myths that I see, or confusion, is about fat.
HG: What are some crazy diet myths that your clients have brought to you?
Dr. Serge: One of the biggest myths that I see, or confusion, is about fat, which on the other side is a high-fat diet… I am a big fan of the Paleo diet, or the keto diet, and the diet is mostly based on eating animal protein and veggies or the fat intake is higher than what they recommend in the States, so a lot of people get confused or they get scared to eat that much fat. But we know today from so many studies that actually it’s good to eat good quality fats, like eggs, and bacon, and fish, and nuts, ect. So that’s the biggest thing I have to fight with my patients, to show them that you need healthy fats in the diet.
HG: What are the most common obstacles to leading a healthy lifestyle?
Dr. Serge: The main one that I see is time… People don’t have the time anymore, they don’t take the time to shop and cook. That’s how you guys come to help us is you prep the food for them so that’s the main thing is for them to go back to cooking, and most people don’t take the time, or they’re too busy. My testing is really thorough, it goes really deep into what’s going on into the life of the patient. We look at toxins that patient may be exposed to. It can be from work or from the house, could be mold exposure in the house, so we really look at the patients, and his life styles. So, that’s the whole concept of what I do at the end of the day.
Healthy Gourmet had the pleasure of sitting down for a Healthy Chat with Patty Martin-Stewart, registered and licensed dietitian, and Founder of Sugar Land Nutrition, in Sugar Land, TX. Patty helps her clients lose weight, get the nutrition they have been lacking, and maintain healthy lifestyles by focusing on food and diet.
At Patty’s practice in Sugar Land, each client’s health is monitored on an individual level from the ground up. Patty starts by figuring out her patient’s resting metabolic rate. Basically, that is the energy required to keep your body functioning while resting. So if your work requires you to sit in an office, Continue reading
