“How do you get your family to accept a real food diet when all they want are chicken nuggets?” “My kid is a picky eater. He eats cereal three times a day. What do I do?” “I want to eat ‘healthy’ but I crave a sugary snack every afternoon (and evening, if I’m honest)!”

The struggle is real! You are now convinced of the basics: that eating a healthy diet means eating more real, whole foods, and less of the food-like processed stuff that comes in packages! Bravo! But how do you go from the head to the heart (or should I say to the mouth)?

These random symptoms—rashes, hives, reactions, pain—are the body’s way of waving a red flag at us. “Something’s wrong! Pay attention! HELP!”

The holidays can leave us like our bank accounts: depleted. So it's not the time to set ourselves up for failure with lots of unachievable resolutions. Here is my suggestion for what to do instead.

So, no promises today. No “three tips for a tinsel-perfect holiday.” Nope. Instead, I am offering you some ideas on how to have a healthy-ish holiday season, with reasonable, actionable strategies for getting through December and early January intact, happy and healthy…for the most part.

Supermarkets selling sodas and processed foods are blocks away from the open-air markets with “mamitas” selling the produce from their gardens by the roadside. Monsanto and Bayer have reached the Sacred Valley and are persuading farmers to replace their natural varied corn crops with their one variety of corn (from genetically-modified seeds). Mining is generating incomes for small towns, but simultaneously polluting their drinking and irrigation water. Villagers are fighting back, but their voices aren’t always heard. As you can see, there are multiple threats to the health of the people and the land of Peru.

In Quechua, there is no past. There is no future either. This concept took a while to sink in for me, but once it did, it gave me a better idea of how we should live...today.

Jodi Ledley had debilitating migraines. Once she learned to avoid MSG (and other excitotoxins like it), she found herself on the path to healing. For years, she's eaten only at home. There, she has been able to control the quality of the food and avoid the additives that caused the neurological disruption that triggered her migraines.

Sticky tip: Chipotle is one of the few fast/casual places Jodi found where you can enjoy a meal that is MSG- and GMO-free! (By the way, I don’t have stock in that company, so I do not benefit from your eating there! But Jodi mentioned it, so I thought I'd pass the tip along.)

For vibrant health, we must attend to our spirit/mind/emotions—what I call the “x” factors that impact our wellbeing. To nourish this part of us, we need to do things that fill us, lift us up, bring contentment or make us feel vibrant and alive.