Monday, November 26, 2012

Holiday Overhaul

You don't have to stop eating healthy in order to enjoy the holidays.

I think the hardest part about the holidays is making healthy food happen intensely around the lesser food choices. It takes practice but can be achieved with time and attention. For example, if pie is really going to be an inevitable event, then a large salad needs to make sure it finds your lips, and not the kind with fattening ingredients that end up making the salad a calorie nightmare. Have you seen the calorie totals on some of these fast food salads for example?? Add to that, the dressing and preservatives used. You are pretty much not getting too far health wise, if you're still loading up your salads with extra added calorie giants.

I have a few ideas that can definitely help you control your intake and cravings. Even if you've heard these ideas before, it will serve as reminders.

1) Have 1-2 apples in the morning on an empty stomach, with a 1/2 tsp. of Bragg's Raw Apple Cider Vinegar. I also recommend an acidophilus supplement.
2) Down a glass of water ten minutes before a meal. (no-brainer.)
3)  Drink hot tea with every meal, preferably black, green or white tea, because it contains L-theanine, which supports digestion and metabolism.
4) Have as many hot meals as you can. This also supports digestion.
5) Take triphala churna. The loose herbs can be mixed with water, but it is very bitter. However, it is said to balance all three doshas of Ayurvedic medicine. When one system is not in balance, the rest slide, eventually egging on illness. If you eat excessive sugar, this can lead to imbalance and physical conditions such as candida, or colds and flu.
6) While you're taking triphala churna, consider taking aswaghanda as well. This herb has an anti-stress, soothing effect on the body.
7) Drink Tulsi tea.
8) Deeply breathe and contemplate your food choice before consuming. Remember that food, as in love, is a decision.
9) Consider a day of raw food and/or juicing one day per week as a weekly health check-in. It is said that mucus builds from toxic matter (ama) staying behind after food is metabolized. Disease accumulates from having excessive mucus in the intestines.
10) Find kale super appealing, and use it for everything! Eat kale with a little olive oil and salt, or wrap around veggie meat, pickles, olives or other foods you like.
11) Make kale chips and salt them well. Crumble and use them as a healthy seasoning for foods.

Oh, and have some almonds. It helps to stave off hunger. But don't go nuts.

Thursday, November 15, 2012

Feel your Food.

What if you were to tap into your deepest level of discipline, take a quiet body scan, see what is going on inside of you without any judgment, poured a particular something in, and listened again? What do you think you would find?

I really think I opened up a can of worms with this one, because I proved to myself that listening would help me hear something. So I did. I did not want to eat cheese and white flour, so I took the kids to our city's wednesday night food truck fun and realized that eating out is mostly for those who aren't too concerned about their weight or health. At least that's how I felt after walking away from the trucks with a cheese quesadilla with a white flour tortilla and pinto beans. ...What??? Did I think they'd use a whole grain tortilla in the middle of Sunland? Well this might be what Sunland needs...

When that first mental note is hit, "I'm hungry," it usually sets off a chain of physical, reactionary events that cause one to make some hasty choices. Instead, listening to the mind speak of hunger, and feeling the physiological actions that follow, become a deeper breath, a widening of the eyes, and a lowering of the ear to the ground, in order to know what the body, mind and spirit, is really asking for.

Once you make the move to achieve a hot plate of something, place your hands over the edible subject, and feel its vibrations, revealing the power and energy that is contained in the food, that will become you, on a cellular level, within hours.