Staying Healthy Overseas: 6 Easy Diet Adjustments
Check out the first installment of "Staying Healthy Overeas."
Food is a central part of my family living overseas. There aren’t movie theaters, nice parks to stroll through, or hipster roof top hangs to watch the sunset from; so, we spend our time eating. And when we aren’t eating, we are figuring out how to create the food we don’t have access to. We have gotten good at it—a little too good for our waist lines.Eating is not just an activity to entertain ourselves—it is also dangerously comforting. After a hard day of battling language barriers, crazy drivers, and foreign bureaucracy, it feels good to eat a hamburger on a toasted bun with hand cut fries. When I am missing my family, it makes me happy to curl up with a movie and a slice of homemade pizza. On birthdays I love to make breakfast casserole and German pancakes. I realize all this is a little over dramatized, but food can become a real source of entertainment, comfort and much more when you are sequestered in a remote part of the world.
My first two years living overseas, my diet was pretty heavy, mostly because I was lazy and not a good cook. I also found it hard to get fresh and clean fruits and vegetables. When there were fresh veggies, I couldn't wrap my mind around
.Since my first years, I have realized that I need to make more of an effort for my family and me to eat healthy overseas. Living abroad is not just an adventure or a really long vacation—this is our real life, and what we put in our bodies matters for our long and short-term health. Here are a few habits I have adapted in recent years to help my family stay healthy around the table and on the road.
1.
Go Green
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One of the biggest game changers to my diet was growing my own greens and herbs. I could never bring myself to buy spinach from the market for a salad since I was worried about bacteria. So last year I planted kale, arugula, and swiss chard in my back yard, and within six weeks I was eating salads from my garden.Here are some of my favorite salad recipes that will hopefully inspire you to make your own variation with whatever ingredients you can source locally.
Taco Salad: Taco meat or fajita chicken served over chips or corn tortillas, kale, arugula, tomato, avocado, mango, onion, cilantro, sweet peppers, corn, and black beans drizzled with a BBQ lime vinaigrette.
Mango-Avocado Salad: Arugula, farro or quinoa, mango, avocado, walnut or almonds, onions, goat cheese or parmesan, with a sweet chili lime dressing.I add honey to that recipe to sweeten it. Here is the recipe where I originally got the idea.
Apple Quinoa Salad: Check out the recipe here but basically it is apples, quinoa, almonds with a honey-lemon vinaigrette. I don’t have any quinoa usually but I substitute it with something similar to farro that we have in Ethiopia. I also mix in kale or arugula which the recipe above doesn’t call for.
There are obviously a lot of other ingredients I don’t have access to here in Ethiopia. I substitute when I can, and I look for salads that use local ingredients.2. Bring on the Heat.If you don’t have access to clean greens and you can’t grow them yourself, try soups full of spinach and kale. Make your own bone broth and still get your greens in with some of these recipes. Don’t even get me started on how good homemade bone broth is for you.3. Spice Things Up.When I get sick, the girl that helps me around the house makes a soup with every herb and spice under the sun, which comforts my soul and heals my body. I am a home remedies nerd—for every aliment, I look up what home remedies are recommended. It doesn’t matter what it is that ails me—garlic, ginger and coconut oil are almost always near the top of any home remedies list.Even when I am not sick, I make sure I am always cooking with lots of herbs and spices—like garlic and ginger—to help build up the immunity of my family. Other spices and herbs you should look into cooking with more are cinnamon for digestion, turmeric because it is anti-inflammatory, and cilantro for its good source of minerals—and that is just to name a few. Check out what herbs and spices are easily available at your local market and then figure out how to incorporate them more into your diet and meal planning. For a complete list of the health benefits of herbs and spices checkout this website.4. Get Blending.My blender is a lifeline for breakfast and afternoon snacks—quick, easy and healthy. There are those mornings without power that I have to come up with a new plan, but 75% of the time we have smoothie bowls for breakfast. A smoothie bowl is a smoothie, in a bowl, topped with whatever you want. I top my smoothie bowl with homemade granola, bananas, shredded coconut and strawberries. To make the smoothies, I freeze mangos and bananas, or whatever other fruits are in season. I blend the frozen fruit with milk or coconut milk, dates or honey, and sometimes I add a nut. Check out this link for smoothie bowl inspiration. 4. Ancient Grains.I find that we in the West know very little about the nutritional value of grains. Grains can be hard on digestion but are loaded with vitamins and proteins that are important.To make salads and soups a little heartier I have been adding a grain like quinoa, farro or barley. It is always tricky to figure out what grains I actually have access to, since they go by different names than I am accustomed to in my passport country. I have experimented quite a bit with the local grains, and it doesn’t always work out, but I have had some success with the sorghum, teff, and barley that are grown locally.5. Supplement, Supplement, Supplement.Any of you gotten some weird bowel movements from living overseas? I am not even sure where to start—but I don’t think my stomach will ever be the same. There is so much bacteria in my host country that my stomach isn’t used to that can cause me and my family to get sick and turn our stomachs. Two supplements that have really helped are daily probiotics and olive leaf extract after eating something questionable, or when we aren’t feeling well. Probiotics said in digestion, balance bacteria in your gut, build resistance to bad bacteria, and have a slew of other benefits. (Making your own yogurt can also help with gut issues.)6. Cut Out Sugar Where You Can.I gave up sugar in my coffee and started adding powdered coconut milk or coconut oil. I had a number of guests this spring that were paleo and it really helped me cut back on the sugar in desserts, sauces and drinks. Sugar is one of the worst things in our diet. It would be hard to cut out all sugar, but it is a huge win even if you can only cut back on it in one or two areas. Check out this article on why sugar is toxic for us. Honey is a great substitute and much better for you.Living overseas can be overwhelming and trying to change ALL unhealthy things out of your diet is not realiastic. Maybe there is just one change you can make to your and your families diet that will help you stay healthy and overall improve the longevity of your life overseas. How are you staying healthy living overseas? What changes have you made to your diet to stay healthy? Are you doing something you never thought you would do like making your own bread or growing your own greens to stay healthy? Please share in the comments!SaveSaveSaveSaveSaveSave