3 Recipes: A Day of Eating for Your Thyroid
The Thyroid in Five is a free 5-week thyroid reboot program that walks you through four weeks of topics to heal your thyroid, step-by-step. The cornerstone of this and nearly all functional medicine thyroid treatment strategies is nutrition.
The Thyroid in Five food list is considered an elimination diet, removing the foods that cause inflammation and trigger an autoimmune response against your thyroid or other cells. In doing so, we also add in foods that are nutrient-dense, giving you lots of vitamins and minerals to recover your thyroid.
Here's a sample day in the life of thyroid-friendly eating. Notice how fun and colorful all of the foods are! By removing gluten and dairy, we start to ease up the level of thyroid destruction. With low-inflammatory foods, we reduce the continuous slow-burn immune response and what I'll call "whole-body swelling and puffiness" that (over time) could eventually cause immune system dysfunction, or autoimmunity.
Ready to eat your way into good health? Let's begin!
RECIPES IN THIS POST
Chicken sweet potato hash with avocado
Citrus salmon salad
Greek Lemon Chicken with garlicky zucchini noodles
...And if you like these recipes, you might also enjoy the Sweet Potato Chicken Pot Pie.
Breakfast: Chicken Sweet Potato Hash with Avocado
When you're transitioning over to a gluten-free, dairy-free eating habit, breakfast can be a confusing time. Here's a hearty on-ramp breakfast recipe that our Summit Coaches clients love so much, they never look back at cereal!
Serves 4
Ingredients:
2 medium-large sweet potatoes, diced into 1/2-inch cubes
4-6 precooked chicken-apple sausage links, sliced into discs (Look for a sugar-free brand, like Aidell's)
3 medium apples, diced into 1/2-inch cubes
2 large or 3 medium avocados
4 Tbsp coconut oil
Salt to taste
Directions:
Heat a high-sided sauté pan or pot to medium heat, then add coconut oil to melt.
Add sweet potato cubes to the pan, covering with oil and sautéing for 10-15 minutes or until soft all the way through and slightly browned.
Add a shake of sea salt to the sweet potatoes to bring out their natural sweetness.
Add chicken-apple sausage discs, mix well, and heat until warm.
Turn off the heat and add diced apples to the mixture.
Serve in bowls topped with sliced avocado.
*Tip: This hash tastes wonderful with a runny egg on top, if you can tolerate eggs.
Lunch: Citrus Salmon Salad
Salads can sometimes be incredibly boring. Add in some unexpected ingredients to make your food more exciting, like fresh or dried fruit or nuts. Don't settle for the "house salad" way of eating your veggies! Make a bigger batch or throw in mason jars to have lunch ready all week.
Serves 1
Ingredients:
1 generous handful of salad greens of your choice (arugula, spring mix, herb mix, romaine, radicchio, etc.)
1 service of smoked salmon (wild-caught & sugar-free preferred)
1/2 orange, peeled & split into sections
1 small handful of macadamia nuts
Simple salad dressing of your choice (try lemon juice + olive oil + dried herbs)
Directions:
Toss all ingredients and enjoy!
Tip: Be creative - switch out oranges for grapefruit, or macadamia nuts for walnuts. Various greens can also completely change the flavor - arugula adds a spicy flavor, while romaine is more neutral, and sprinkling in radicchio adds some bitter. Salad mixes with herbs also add unexpected punch.
Dinner: Greek Lemon Chicken with Garlicky Zucchini Noodles
This is the kind of meal you can make for your dinner visitors! Using chicken thighs instead of breasts, and cooking them in lemon juice makes them virtually un-ruinable. Zucchini noodles, or zoodles, are great substitutes for pasta - since you can spiralize anything (carrots, sweet potatoes, zucchini) a spiralizer is an all-time favorite kitchen gadget.
Serves 4
Greek Lemon Chicken:
Get the full Greek Lemon Chicken Recipe here.
Zucchini Noodles:
Ingredients
6 medium zucchinis
2 cloves of garlic, minced (from a jar will work quickly)
Olive oil
Salt to taste
Spiralize the zucchini, or buy it pre-spiralized from your local health foods store.
Heat a sauté pan to medium, add olive oil, minced garlic, & zucchini noodles once heated.
Allow the zucchini noodles to heat through without getting watery, about 3-4 minutes. Make sure to keep on pushing the noodles around the pan to heat them evenly.
Remove from heat, plate, and salt to taste.
Drizzle with a turn of olive oil to add taste.
