In my article last week, while discussing “Healthy Eating Step by Step,” I mentioned kitchen reform. What is this kitchen reform?

When I was first diagnosed with diabetes, the doctor’s voice echoed in my ears, saying, “If you continue eating what you’re eating, you’ll die at 40.” I threw everything in my kitchen in the trash, crying. I didn’t know what I would eat after that, but I knew that what I was eating would kill me. What was “everything”?

– White flour, pasta, white rice

– Chocolate, wafers, sugar

– Diet packaged foods (because back then I was always on a “diet”)

– Colorful, diverse chips

– Carbonated drinks, ready-made fruit juices

– Crackers

– Jam, molasses, honey (molasses and honey aren’t that unhealthy, but at the time I urgently needed to regulate my blood sugar, so I didn’t eat them either)

That’s what I call Kitchen Reform. Doing this once in your life is enough to transition to healthy eating.

We eat whatever we have in our kitchen. That’s a fact. If we wait for it to run out, thinking, “I’ll finish this pack and then switch to healthier versions,” that day never comes. The day we open a garbage bag and get rid of all the unhealthy things in our kitchen is the first day of our new life.

For example, are you making pancakes? If you have white flour in the pantry, you use that. But what if you don’t, and the only flour you have is whole wheat or spelt… or chickpea flour…? Those pancakes are made with those flours. And boom, we’re already 1-0 up!

We craved something sweet. If we don’t have chocolate at home right now, but we’ve bought some dried fruit for our new healthy kitchen, we can easily satisfy that chocolate craving by putting cocoa inside the dried apricots… But if there’s still a pack of chocolate tucked away in a corner for a rainy day, we’ll devour it in a fit of madness.

I invite those who want to start eating healthy but keep putting it off to undertake a Kitchen Reform. To help you do this, I’ll give you my full motivation… Share pictures of your reform and the garbage bag and the things you threw away on your social media accounts and send me your photos. I will periodically hold raffles among those who send pictures and give away a copy of my book, Sema’s Healthy Kitchen.

Is today the day? If you really want to, you can do it now.

I wish everyone a healthy, happy, and sugar-free week.

With love,

Sema