The Spartan Diet: an act of liberation
How to set yourself free and transform your life.
The Spartan Diet may sound restrictive. In fact, it's actually flexible and liberating once you eliminate unhealthy and industrialized ingredients from your kitchen and your life and learn how to cook in the Spartan Diet way. More importantly, it can be customized and tailored to your individual preferences, nutritional needs as well as food nutrient bioavailability. You'll almost certainly eat a much wider variety of ingredients than you ever did, and you’ll be able to customize the diet to match your age, gender, health history and even your personal values and belief system. If you are vegetarian, vegan, a raw-foodist, a Paleo-dieter or adhere to some other diet, the Spartan Diet version is the healthiest way to do that. I’ll tell you how to “spartanize” your diet for optimum health and a strong immune system.
Specific diets tend to emphasize different results -- weight loss, fitness, athletic performance, longevity, healing and disease avoidance. On the Spartan Diet, all this comes with the territory. But I aim even higher: The goal of the Spartan Diet is for you to be as vibrantly alive as you possibly can be. Living a whole life and to the fullest is only possible when you practice a total health approach lifestyle eating the most nutrient dense, immunity-boosting foods.
Note that Spartan Diet rules are not something I, the author, am imposing on you, the reader. I'm not calling on Congress to impose new food laws or shaming anyone into healthier living. I believe every adult should eat exactly what they want to eat, and for whatever reasons they choose. Some care more about the convenience of eating the foods they are familiar with (or addicted to) and less about health. Many prefer what we would call "junk food," are aware of the negative health effects, and choose to eat them anyway. And I support that right to choose.
I have developed eating and lifestyle rules that, when you choose to follow them and make them your own, result in incredible health and vitality. I believe in freedom. But, as the Roman Emperor Claudius said, "No one is free who does not lord over himself."
The Spartan Diet is not for everyone. Embracing this lifestyle means saying "no" to sweeping categories of seemingly delicious and tempting but nutritionally poor or inferior foods. If the Spartan Diet sounds restrictive or confining, you'll be happy to discover that saying no can be an act of liberation. Saying no to food addiction, and to foods that make us fat, weak and sick is to say no to needless suffering and dependence. Saying no to processed industrial food is to discover the incredible joy of fresh and delicious natural food. Saying no to a sedentary lifestyle, stress and unbalanced living is to say yes to energy, strength and self-empowerment that can't be truly understood unless personally experienced.
My objective is to inform and inspire. I’m not here to convince you to embrace the Spartan Diet. I’m not trying to convert anyone. But if you’re looking for the healthiest diet possible to become as healthy as possible, the Spartan Diet is right for you. -Amira
Recipe: Creamy Butternut Squash Soup
Delightfully warming, deliciously creamy and surprisingly filling, this vegan butternut squash soup makes a wonderfully tasty and nourishing meal. It’s loaded with wholesome goodness and offers plenty of fiber and antioxidants important for strong immunity and gut health.