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 what 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 will never come. The day we open a garbage bag and get rid of all the unhealthy things in our kitchen, that’s 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 ahead!

We crave something sweet. If there’s no chocolate at home right now, but we’ve bought some dried fruit for our new healthy kitchen, you can easily satisfy that chocolate craving by putting cocoa inside a dried apricot… But if there’s still a pack of chocolate hidden away in a corner for a rainy day, that chocolate will be devoured in a frenzy.

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 the full motivation… Share pictures of your reform and the garbage bag and the things you threw away from the kitchen on your social media accounts and send me your pictures. 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.

Wishing everyone a healthy, happy, and sugar-free week.

With love,