I spent the morning on Sunday getting great grocery shopping tips from a health coach. What an eye opener! I’ve been using the health coaching services of Krista Olsen of Prime Health Coaching for several months now, and she eagerly agreed to have a chat for my blog. I thought what better venue than the Vancouver Farmers Market in Kitsilano to bring my health coach and get some great tips and tricks to make an already healthy and sustainable experience even better.
Krista got her nutritional education at the Institute for Integrative Nutrition in New York after completing her undergraduate degree at UBC and living in Europe for a while. What I love about my sessions with Krista is that it’s not about feeling guilty for loving the foods we do, but it’s ALL about loving the food, the right food. There is no judgment; there is no being yelled at like some trainers at the gym. Krista works with what motivates a specific client, their goals, their lifestyle and teaches them how to experience food at a deeper level.
I firstly sat down and did some Q&A with Krista:
Silver: What inspired you to become a health coach? What has the journey been like for you?
Krista: I wanted to become a health coach after I had been trying to lose 20Ibs that I had gained with diet and exercise with no results! I was also experiencing distorted and emotional eating, and I knew that there was more to my weight-loss journey than just what I was eating, and working out. The weight gain was an outward expression of a deeper, inner problem, and I knew that I had to figure out what was really going on with me health wise for things to change and to see lasting results. A year and a half later, I am astounded by my turn-around and my approach to food, exercise, health, and taking care of myself.
Silver: What can people expect when they are working with a health coach?
Krista: Clients can expect to be totally listened to and supported by a trained professional that meets them where they are at. I have no predetermined expectations of my clients, and I am not invested in any particular outcome outside of what my client determines is right for them. My job is to make sure we get you there in the healthiest, most sustainable way. Clients can also expect results! I use a 6-month program because if clients follow my recommendations, it is life changing!
Silver: What kind of person would benefit from having a personal health coach?
Krista: The perfect client is the ready client, meaning someone who wants change for the better in their lives and is ready to open up and deal with some deeper issues that may be behind their health issues. I also work with clients that are emotional eaters.
Silver: What is your favourite thing about working with your clients?
Krista: I love hearing their stories! I also love how much I learn. It is the best feeling to see clients achieve results and to see the progression each session. There is more energy in their voice, a sparkle in their eye and an enthusiasm for life.
Silver: One of the biggest food challenges people face is what to choose when eating out at a restaurant or dinner party. Any tips?
Krista Olsen from Prime Health Coaching
Krista: Share your meal to cut portions. Never eat anything fried. Watch the drinks you order, as they can be loaded with sugar and alcohol (not that a little alcohol is bad). If you are vegan or vegetarian, bring a bag of nuts and seeds like hemp, sunflower, almonds, and walnuts to make sure you get some protein and healthy fats as many restaurants only have a simple garden salad for vegans.
Silver: Lastly, what are your top five favourite foods or activities and why?
Being Krista’s first time at the Kits Farm Market, I was so excited to be the one to show HER something new. Usually when we meet for our coaching sessions, she’s the one teaching me. This time, I got to be the guide! Yay!
Starting with my favourite booths at the south end, The Forstbauers and Klippers Organics, Krista reiterated how important dark, leafy greens are. They are great for the intestinal flora and they are an upward growing plant, so they provide uplifting energy to the body as opposed to grounding foods such as carrots and potatoes, food we associate with comfort. The variety of vibrant colours such as we see in rainbow chard become very appealing to us in the summer, which are packed with nutrients,enzymes and minerals.
Krista likes beets because they add sweetness and flavour, and the texture is very dense. They can be boiled, cooled and sliced into a salad or even eaten grated raw. With their natural sweetness, dressing isn’t even necessary.
On the topic of potatoes, aka carbs, I asked if there was a healthy way to enjoy them that would still satisfy our naughty side that likes carbs. Krista likes baking or boiling them and always eats them with the skins on, which is where the majority of the nutrients and fiber lie. They’re also great roasted with fresh thyme and olive oil.
It’s really important to purchase food that’s in season, whether that be fruits, vegetables, fish, etc. Very often, grocery stores stock food throughout the year that’s not in season because there’s a demand from the consumers for convenience. We want strawberries in February, and we’re willing to pay double for them simply for the convenience. But what ends up happening is that food gets grown artificially, one, and, two, it’s picked before it’s ripened, so it hasn’t had a chance to develop all the nutrients that it is supposed to contain. Thirdly, the food is sprayed with chemicals while in transit so that it will ripen artificially. Having a shorter time in between being picked or fished or butchered to when it arrives on your plate is best. Many farmers at the markets pick and produce food that was made just a day or two before market day.
“That’s where you just get to connect with the farmers. You get to see the food in its most natural state. I think that’s really wonderful.”
As we passed a booth for fresh corn on the cob, I asked Krista what she thought of the very controversial vegetable.
“Corn has gotten such a bad rap, but I don’t really think that applies to corn on the cob that’s grown locally and that’s organic and you’re buying at the farmer’s market.”
“Corn is a really happy vegetable. It’s yellow, it takes a lot of sun to grow. It’s a summer vegetable, and it tastes good. It’s sweet, so you get a lot of your natural sweetness from things like corn on the cob.”
“A lot of people have allergies to corn as well. One of the things that they can do is to cut out corn syrup, corn products and all the other foods and really eliminate that so then when summer comes they’re usually able to tolerate the corn on the cob that is organic.”
Krista also noted that the amount of corn in one ear comes to about half a cup, a proper serving size for a starchy vegetable. When you are eating processed corn like corn meal, corn flour, corn syrup and the like, the amount of corn it takes to produce half a cup of processed product takes many, many ears of corn. It’s also a very denatured form of corn.
We also got a chance to speak to Donna at Blue Comet Seafoods, who is the wife and mother of the family-run fishing team. When not running the farmers markets and being a dedicated grandmother, Donna is a health consultant at Semperviva Yoga in Kitsilano. We had a great conversation about the farmers and merchants and how we as shoppers love buying from the people who grow and catch our food.
“That’s why people love coming here. There’s a huge connection with the farmers and their food here. You know where your food is coming from. You know how it’s grown especially if you know – like, I know all the farmers, and there are certain carrots that I’ll buy from a certain farmer because it’s in their soil and it’s amazing.”
All of Blue Comet’s seafood is Oceanwise approved. As well, all of their salmon is sashimi grade. That means the fish is frozen right on the boat after being caught and treated at -40 degrees. This week I took advantage of the fact that they had tuna sashimi in stock as well. And this goes back to buying what’s in season and buying local. That way it is fresh and you’re maximizing your nutrients. My food didn’t travel very far, and I know it’s fresh, treated well and carried with love to my market before being carried with love to my table.
Grilled sockeye salmon on a bed of wilted pea shoots and red peppers
We wanted to know about the different types of salmon species and what made each unique.
Sockeye, which is the most popular is also usually the most expensive. It has the strongest taste.
Coho has a similar taste. It has a firmer flesh and is a bit less expensive.
Spring has a less intense flavour but is more moist and is the highest in omega fatty acids.
Pink salmon has a much more delicate flavour. It is also the smallest fish too.
Biodynamic tomatoes, yellow and red
Donna highly recommended the Snowy Mountain produce booth next to theirs. She highly touted Walter’s farming philosophies on biodynamics, so we had to go over and check it out. Their produce I must say had the most stunningly vibrant colours!
Krista Olsen with Paula Luther of Chickpea Nutrition
We spoke to Paula Luther, who is a registered holistic nutritionist and has been working for the Snowy Mountain farm for years, commuting between the Similkameen Valley and Vancouver. She was kind enough to explain the definition of biodynamics and why that term should matter to us.
“It was developed by Rudolf Steiner. He was the father of Waldorf education. And it is certified organic with another level on top of it. It’s what we could call closed-loop farming. So everything that’s needed for the farm is generated on the farm. So they have horses that serve as tractors. The manure is composted and then reinvested back into the soil as opposed to buying manure compost from a farm down the road. They have bees for pollination. They do specific herbal preparations. And it’s really about the soil vitality and looking at the farm as an organism unto itself. And there’s also planting and harvesting with the moon cycles.”
Biodynamic cherry tomatoes
Apparently food grown biodynamically is healthier and hardier, has more vitality and has stronger, more intense flavour. We sampled some of the various tomotoes in season; they were firm and juicy and bursting with taste. Biodynamically-grown food also has a much longer shelf life.
“There’s lot of talk about food security. It’s become more and more kind of the sexy thing. And so we’ll talk about 100-mile diets and all of that, but really if we want food security, we need farmers and we need farmland.”
“… so it’s so great to see farmers markets and making those direct connections with the people who are growing the food and having that money go directly into their pocket, like minimizing the middle people”
Krista also noted that as consumers we just automatically think that all farmers grow this way, that they use their own manure, that they are self-sustaining. I think it’s eye opening to learn that most are not yet inspiring to know that some are. We need to as consumers become huge supporters of this and create the demand so that it becomes the norm once more.
Krista says:
“You need that connection on the farm so that when you eat the food you take in that connection too, and I’m really about the energies in food, like how we eat it and how we think about it and what that does for our body, what that does for us.”
“If you cook your food with stress under a stressful environment, you’re going to take on that energy. And that’s a lot of restaurant food unfortunately. And we’re eating out in restaurants more than ever; look at how we are. We’re stressed out, and we’re often living in a crazy, rushed environment.”
Lastly, Krista was kind enough to leave us with a few of her favourite quick and easy recipes:
Biodynamic Tomatoes
Recipe 1: Summer salad
Krista’s favourite salad is fresh basil, tomatoes and a bit of feta with olive oil and balsamic vinegar. She has this salad every day.
Recipe 2: Egg-free breakfast scramble
For people who have an allergy to eggs, a tofu scramble can be a great alternative. Many people think soy products like tofu are tasteless and therefore shy away from them. I like to think of tofu as a blank canvass where the tofu will take on whatever flavour you want to paint it with. For breakfast, sprinkle tumeric and cumin on scrambled tofu, fresh tomato, onion, zucchini, mushrooms for extra denseness and top that with salsa and cilantro.
Recipe 3: Caraway salad dressing
For a great homemade salad dressing, Krista is a huge fan of caraway seeds. Lightly toast caraway seeds in a pan. Once cooled, add them to olive oil and some white wine vinegar and honey.
For more information on how health coaching can help you achieve your personal goals, visit Krista’s website and book a FREE initial consultation with her online at Prime Health Coaching or via email at krista@primehealthcoaching.com.
Cheers and good eats
Silver
***I love showcasing local food establishments, food products, food services and food businesses and the amazing people behind them. I’m always looking for people to feature in my articles, so don’t hesitate to contact me; I’d love to tell your story!***
