Want to eat better? Cook.
People who cook at home are healthier – studies like this one suggest they eat fewer calories, more nutrients, less sugar and more fiber. When you eat better, you feel better, look better and just might live longer. It’s worth it – you’re worth it.
Want to really eat better? Learn to cook (and eat) at Kripalu.
When people come to do yoga at Kripalu, the largest yoga and holistic education center in the country, they rave about the food. The food there is rave-worthy, filled with fruits and vegetables lovely prepared into delicious dishes.
A couple times a year, I team up with Kripalu’s Executive Chef Jeremy Rock Smith to offer a program called Nutrition and Cooking Immersion. Over the course of a five night program, we take you through the basics plus of a mindful approach to nutrition, and the basics plus of preparing delicious balanced whole food cooking tips for home.
I think of this as the perfect program – the perfect balance of information (I teach nutrition and mindfulness in the morning) and experiential learning (in addition to mindfulness experiences in the morning, the knives come out – in a good way – in the afternoon). Through the week, you put together – while understanding why – a balanced meal with variations. What you leave with is a plan. And some skills. And the know-how to feed yourself. Well.
What unfolds looks a little like this:
Sunday night: Welcome and introductions – of each other, of the program.
Monday & Tuesday morning: The new basics of whole-food plant-based nutrition
Wednesday: Supporting positive change
Thursday: Planning for success: meals, recipes, shopping lists
Friday: Take it home
Now, let me tell you about my colleague Jeremy.
To say that Jeremy is entertaining is an understatement. He’s funny. I’ll let you be the judge of just how funny he is. He’s not only funny, however. He brings the goods. Even foodies learn a little something new from Jeremy. He’s designed the afternoon cooking session to give you cooking tips and the principles of whole food plant based cooking, and then a flexible framework to help you make it seasonal and flexible and varied.
Five-day Transformation
I’ve been teaching this program for 7 years or so, and I love to see the transformation that happens to people from Sunday night when we come together – nervous, afraid it ‘won’t work’, stressed from life, to Friday morning – roaring to get back to our own kitchens, confident and ready to go, rested and yoga-ed up. Another part of the secret sauce is the bonds you make with other people in the program – I have a growing Facebook group of grads of the program, and years later, they’re still cooking.
So, if you want to get into your kitchen with a little more enthusiasm and a little less angst, see you there.
If you want to bring whole-food plant-based eating into your life, and learn cooking tips to do that, see you there.
If you want to know the why 0f eating – and the how of eating – see you there.
Here’s where you can check out all mu upcoming workshops.
Be well.
