We are all so harsh on ourselves. I’ll be the first one to admit I struggle with constant negative mental chatter, directed at myself and others. It’s easy to be critical and dismissive, and stay living in that shadow waiting for your “someday” self.
When resentment is high, self-care is low. – Dr. Jen Landa
Think about that. It makes —-SO—-MUCH—-SENSE. You fly through your day resenting everyone you have to talk to, and everything that you have to do, and just hating life and waiting for the day to be over so you can start the hamster wheel all over again tomorrow.
No one is going to step in and stop the madness for you; you have to do it for yourself.
And here’s where SELF-CARE comes in. It’s a simple concept based on small gestures that you make toward yourself. It’s like your right-now self being considerate toward your future-self. Your partner and family and friends can support and take care of you to a certain extent, but there are certain things you can really only do for yourself.
And those things can be pretty fundamental.
Only you are going to make sure you eat enough good nutritious food, drink enough water, get some movement into your day, get to sleep on time. These are things we have to be responsible for as adults, but too often these hugely important priorities get pushed aside by all the other “STUFF” flying around in our day.
Then there are the other “less vital” things that can still have a huge impact on how you feel and behave. Only you are going to go get that haircut that is going to score compliments and put you in a great mood. Only you can decide to take 7 minutes in the evening and take a lovely lavender bath. No one else is going to tell you do these things, or help you make the time for these things.
You have the power to make every day a good day
It’s incredible how showing your future-self a little love with small gestures can completely change whether today is another humdrum-normal-crappy-whirlwind day, or a sparkly-shiny-fun-happy day.
So how to take better care of and show love toward yourself?
I found this lovely, heartfelt graphic created by Lucille Zimmerman on Pinterest. I don’t know much about her practice but I really like what she is sharing.
Print this out and post it somewhere, or keep it on your phone to refer to, or write down the points in your notebook. Make sure you do at least one of these things EVERY DAY. Show yourself a little love, and resentment, stress and negativity will have less and less power over you and your day.
Please share what works for you
How do you show yourself love? How do you ensure you make time for self-care in a busy day? Please leave a comment so that we can all help each other out! I know a lot of people struggle with this…how have you found success?
This is a follow-up to my previous post on anxiety. In addition to breathing techniques, music and other strategies I’ve talked about before, I’ve recently discovered the wonderful potential of essential oils.
Not just a pretty scent…
We all understand that smelling something pretty, like inhaling the perfume of a rose for example, makes you feel happy. But it’s worth understanding a little deeper, because the therapeutic power of essential oils goes a lot further than that.
Without going too deep into the sciencey part, when your nose detects a scent, it means that tiny molecules have evaporated from an object, and entered your nose. The molecules interlock with specialized receptors and communicate with the brain through the olfactory bulb. This captures information from the scent molecules, and actually helps to form and record memories.
Ever had a sudden flashback from smelling an aroma wafting from a restaurant, or the perfume of someone walking by? I can totally recall the moldy, nasty but comfort-inducing scent of my parents’ old minivan, for example (lol). When you think about it, scent has a profound effect on our memories, feelings and emotions.
What you inhale affects your health
We all understand that inhaling bad molecules from the air can negatively affect our health. Car exhaust, glue fumes, poison gases, cigarette smoke, mold spores and airborne viruses for example. We easily acknowledge that these things, which we can’t see with our naked eye, wreak havoc on our health when we smell and inhale them into the body.
So what if good, happy, healthy airborne molecules could do the opposite? Re-program our system for better balance and energy, and help prevent and reverse illness? Well surprise, they can! Essential oils are the lifeblood of plants; they are the substances that help protect and support the successful growth of the plant. When they are harvested through gentle methods from excellent quality plants, they form wonderfully rich natural medicines for the human body.
And it doesn’t stop there…
Out of all five senses, smell is the only one directly linked to the limbic system in the brain, which is our emotional control center. The limbic system is directly connected to the parts of the brain that control heart rate, digestion, blood pressure, breathing, stress levels, arousal, and hormone balance. What this means is that essential oil molecules can impact not just emotion, but the body’s physical function.
All of these physical functions compile to form the body’s sympathetic and asympathetic nervous systems. The asympathetic system is the one you want to activate to calm down and turn off the stress response. Influencing the limbic system with essential oils is one way you can directly activate the asympathetic nervous system, like pressing a “chill out” button.
In summary, the use of therapeutic grade essential oils can have profound effects on our physical and emotional well-being. Recent research is showing that essential oils may help relieve symptoms just as effectively as medication, but without the side effects of anxiety drugs.
The best essential oils for anxiety and stress relief
Frankincense
Frankincense is a beautiful, warm woody oil distilled from the sap of the boswellia tree. The sap is sustainably harvested in crystal form, as shown here. Then it’s steamed and the distilled oil is collected.
The sesquiterpene molecules in frankincense help calm anxiety and create feelings of joy and happiness, by stimulating healthy neurotransmitter and hormone production from the hypothalamus, pituitary and pineal glands.
I like to rub frankincense on my face as it helps smooth and heal the skin, and that way I can inhale its calming scent and get a prettier complexion while I’m at it.
Lavender
Lavender oil is distilled from the flowering tips of the lavender plant. Hundreds of pounds are collected and steamed to make the precious essential oil.
Lavender oil has been commonly used for centuries as an antiseptic, a natural antibiotic, an insect repellent and a calming sedative.
Lavender is well-known as a natural sleep aid to bring relief from insomnia. I like to put a few drops on my pillow before I go to bed, or add some to my epsom salt bath water.
During the day I also mix a few drops with a little bit of frankincense and rub on the back of my neck. This is a nice stress-relieving ritual; take a few deep breaths as you massage your neck and clear your mind a bit. The warmth of the skin helps waft the calming aroma into the air.
Citrus Oils
Citrus oils are made by distilling the oil-rich peels of fruits such as Sweet Orange, Bergamot, and Lemon.
They are excellent for the purpose of uplifting the mood, creating a sense of well-being and chasing away those dark shadows in the corners of an anxious mind. They are said to aid in the body’s ability to respond to stress and also help with circulation and detox.
I like to diffuse these oils at home for a freshening and uplifting vibe. You can also add a drop of therapeutic-grade citrus essential oils to your drinking water or to recipes.
Quality is important
Please take into account the quality of the essential oils you purchase. By using natural medicine you are already saving a huge amount of expense on conventional medical care, plus the lost time you would have wasted with being sick, plus the side effects and toxicity that medications place on the body.
So it’s worth investing in the best quality essential oils to apply and inhale into your one precious body.
Drug-store or health food store grade oils are often laced with synthetics and they have very few quality standards applied. I choose to respect my body and my health, and in turn get the best results (!) by only using the best essential oils. Here is where I buy mine.
Please share your tips…
What oils do you like to use to relieve stress and anxiety? What strategies do you combine with essential oils? Please share so we can all help each other! :)
After fully enjoying all the tastiness of multiple holiday parties over Christmas and New Years (no guilt or deprivation here!), needless to say my digestion has been a little off. More sugar than usual, and less fresh, whole and fermented foods have led to a bit of trouble with gas and constipation. I also started to feel a little bit of Candida symptoms today.
My clean eating dip recipe
I decided to whip up a tasty nutritious dip that would shut that right down, plus help boost my immune system and heal any inflammation that sugary holiday treats have left behind.
Real Food Recipe: Super Tasty Anti-inflammatory Anti-Candida Immune-boosting Dip
Prep Time: 10 minutes
Yield: Enough for 2 people for a snack. Multiply the amounts if you're making for a party.
A tasty snack or party dip that is just as healthy as the veggies you'll be eating it with. Treat this dip like a prescription to give your immune system a boost, bring down inflammation and stop Candida symptoms.
Also delicious as a burger patty topping, sauce for baked chicken, or as a dip with sweet potato fries.
Smush, peel and chop the garlic cloves as finely as you can. Leave them to sit for a few minutes while you prepare the other ingredients.
Pile everything else into a medium sized bowl.
Add the garlic, and mix well. Scoop it all into a clean bowl to serve. That's it!
Notes
Kitchen tip:
Chopping the garlic and then leaving it to sit for a few minutes allows the active ingredient, allicin, to increase by 8-10 times. This helps the garlic give you an even stronger immune and anti-Candida boost.
Nutrition tip:
Use this anti-inflammatory dip to alleviate symptoms of headaches, hangover, joint and muscle pain, indigestion, cold and flu, or Candida.
Recipe tips:
If you're not into spice, exclude the Frank's Red Hot. However, you should try to include the cayenne pepper as its medicinal ingredient (capsaicin) activates the medicinal ingredient in turmeric (curcumin) for stronger anti-inflammatory effectiveness.
Try adding in other tasty whole-food ingredients such as fresh herbs, lemon juice or hemp seeds for a different flavour.
This recipe contains lots of awesome active real food ingredients which should help with symptoms like headaches, joint pain, acne, digestion problems, tooth decay, and cold/flu viruses. It does this by providing natural anti-inflammatory and immune-boosting compounds as well as probiotics, good fats and minerals. Oregano oil itself has over 32 anti-inflammatory compounds in it! ** Make sure you only buy therapeutic-grade essential oils, as the ones you buy at the health food store are only for smell are not safe to consume. However therapeutic-grade ones are potent medicines for the body.
Treat it like a prescription and eat every last tasty drop! You’ll be scraping out the bowl with your fingers, trust me!
Eczema, psoriasis, acne, cysts, blackheads, whiteheads, milia, keratosis, dandruff, ingrown hairs. If you experience any of these skin issues, I feel your pain.
Having unattractive skin can be really difficult. Your skin is how the world perceives you, and if it’s riddled with any of the above, it isn’t easy to feel attractive, or even presentable.
Over $175 BILLION is spent every year on skincare and makeup, yet more and more people experience these problems and turn to spending yet more cash on medicating themselves, in the desperate search for balance and beauty.
Why it’s all a dirty money-grabbing trick
Here’s some news for you friends:
1. Applying washes, scrubs, creams, serums and other potions to the surface of your skin will do very little to actually improve your skin quality.
2. Your skin has a natural oil balance, and products only serve to strip off that oil (rendering your skin effectively a dry desert) and then force us to replenish that moisture balance artificially with yet more products.
3. Cosmetics are not legally considered food, and therefore have very few regulations applied, despite the fact that something you apply to your skin can enter your blood stream in less than 30 seconds. When you apply all those lotions and potions, you might as well be EATING all those toxic yuckies. Would you eat your sudsy body wash? Your perfumey moisturizer? Well surprise, you ARE.
According to this article by save-the-planet guru David Suzuki:
Some of the ingredients in beauty products aren’t that pretty. U.S. researchers report that one in eight of the 82,000 ingredients used in personal care products are industrial chemicals, including carcinogens, pesticides, reproductive toxins, and hormone disruptors. Many products include plasticizers (chemicals that keep concrete soft), degreasers (used to get grime off auto parts), and surfactants (they reduce surface tension in water, like in paint and inks). Imagine what that does to your skin, and to the environment.
We surveyed Canadians to see how many of the Dirty Dozen ingredients below appeared in their cosmetics, and our findings show that 80 per cent of entered products contained at least one of these toxic chemicals.
Your skin comes from the inside out. It’s a mirror of what’s going on inside your body. Literally your skin is a reflection of your digestive system; if your intestines are seething with crap food and gas and bacterial overgrowth, it’s likely your skin will look similarly junky. Whereas if your guts are glowing with wholesome real food and probiotics, your skin will glow and thrive in response.
You can’t out-product a bad diet
Have you ever heard the saying that you can’t out-exercise a bad diet? Well, you can’t out-skincare-product one either.
I can personally attest to this one. A few years ago, actually when I got my first full-time job after university, I was trying to figure out why I was getting sore lumps of cystic acne on my back. I tried all sorts of treatments, and even resorted to spending lots of my hard-earned moolah on special medicated bodywashes to try to fix the painful lumps. I also used extra-strength acne-fighting wipes, which gave me huge patches of super painful eczema, which I then had to go get a prescription cream from the doctor for. Talk about backward, pointless, multi-level bandaid solutions!
I’ve since made the connection that it’s totally linked with diet and stress. Now that I live a clean lifestyle, I can see the effect very explicitly: Every time I’ve gone on holiday this year, if I’ve let things get a little lax in the diet and sleep department, I notice very soon after that I start getting a little cystic acne on my back.
There is no point in spending all that time in the aisle of the store reading bottles figuring out which product to spend another $20 on, and then doing some 5-stage regime every morning and evening to fix your skin. This is exactly what the marketers want you to do.
You can ride the merry-go-round of potions and drugs for years, or you can get a much more affordable, more permanent, and more body-loving solution by fixing the problem from the inside out.
When your car isn’t running right, do you give it a coat of wax and touch up the paint? Or do you open the hood and actually get the engine repaired? We should treat our bodies the same way, seeking out and addressing the root cause of these issues instead of just slapping on the commercial, slickly marketed, bandaid solution that comes in the shiny bottle.
Step 1: Support your Liver
Another word for supporting your liver is ‘detoxing’. It’s a pretty flashy marketing term these days that is surrounded with all sorts of products and programs, but it basically just means supporting the liver with clean foods and smart supplements.
Your liver is responsible for trucking out all those nasty toxins that can come from food, the environment, plastics, products etc. If it can’t truck ’em out properly in your poop, your body tries to seep them out in other ways, such as through your skin. Hello acne!
These same detox foods will also help get rid of extra estrogen (in men and women both), which can be a contributing factor to acne and skin issues.
It can be really overwhelming to try and find good supplements that are worth your hard-earned dollars. My partner and I spend a lot of time researching this stuff, and here are the best we’ve found for B vitamins and a superfood greens powder that contains algae.
Garden of Life Vitamin Code Raw B-Complex – a highly absorbable real food-based B vitamin complex. There is no point taking cheap low-quality supplements that your body can’t absorb, therefore real food-based supplements are a lot more worthwhile.
Mighty Maca Greens Superfood Powder – a tasty mixture of South American maca (awesome health-promoting herb in like one million ways) and super greens, which you can get in little single-serve packets to bring along to work etc. I really like it mixed with a little lemon juice and then shaken in a big bottle of water to sip throughout the day.
Step 2: Supplement Wisely
Once you’ve taken care of the detox pathway, you can add in nutrient-dense foods and supplements which will literally help your body build better skin. These are some of the building blocks of healthy skin which are often missing from our modern diets.
Zinc: Personally I’ve found that if I eat pumpkin seeds or take a zinc supplement, the dry skin under my feet goes away (so key for summer!). I’ve heard it also helps hair grow thicker; I’m currently experimenting with that! Go for whole foods, or here is a great source for a supplement: Garden Of Life Vitamin Code Raw Zinc
Magnesium supports hundreds of important things going on in your body, and due to industrial agriculture our diet has become very magnesium-depleted. I prefer using Natural Calm Magnesium Liquid and either just mixing with some coconut oil and smearing it on, or making a simple DIY moisturizer that I use once or twice a day. You can find local stores to buy from, or here’s a place to buy online: Liquid Magnesium. You can also use their naturally flavoured tasty magnesium drink, although I find it a little sweet (depends on your taste).
Another option for magnesium is a simple epsom salt bath, which is also very effective. Dissolve 2 cups of salt into a bath and you only need 7-12 minutes for it to absorb. Grab some epsom salt here.
Collagen and gelatin are so key for soft, youthful, healthy skin. Make bone broth with organic bones at home, or take a good quality supplement like Great Lakes: Collagen Hydrolysate
Vitamin A: The animal form of Vitamin A is crucial for healthy skin. Keratosis pilaris is the official name for the little bumps that can form on the backs of your arms and elsewhere. These are easily treated with Vitamin A. Here is where to get the best cod liver oil supplement with highly bio-available Vitamin A: Blue Ice Fermented Cod Liver Oil
Step 3: Stop Abusing Your Skin
This step is a little counter-intuitive. Marketing would have us believe that if our skin is oily and acne-ridden, we just have to cleanse it more often and with stronger stuff. We are also told to use several different steps of skin care products at different times of day.
In reality, your skin maintains its own balance quite nicely,when it’s not constantly interfered with. It maintains a healthy pH and moisture level, as well as exfoliates itself consistently. People weren’t ugly ragged beasts in the days before they had 6-stage facial care product systems. We don’t need these things to survive and in fact our skin can be much more balanced and beautiful without them.
The skin has a delicate layer called the ‘acid mantle’ which gets destroyed by commercial cleansers and exfoliators. Basically the skin turns into a dry desert, and then we have to use serums and lotions and creams to artificially re-hydrate what we just removed. Totally pointless, and way confusing for the skin. That’s why we often find we get super oily too fast, because the skin is freaking out trying to re-hydrate itself after being stripped dry.
The other thing we hear often is to drink “lots and lots (and lots)” of water if we want nice skin. It’s true the average person probably doesn’t drink enough water. However it’s easy for this advice to go too far.
When you drink too much, the vital minerals in your blood become too diluted and you pee out too much valuable nutrition. Your kidneys can only process an absolute maximum of 1 L per hour at their highest capacity.
You should only be drinking around 2 to 3 L of water per day (depending on your size and activity level) – enough that your urine is not clear, but rather still pale yellow (perhaps a lemonade-like colour). Your skin will certainly benefit from being properly hydrated, but it’s a delicate balance.
Another great tip would be to purchase a filter for your shower head. This will remove much of the chlorine and prevent your skin from drying out so much.
This is the one we currently have and I’ve found it to be perfectly effective. It was pretty affordable, very easy to install and should fit any wall-mounted shower head. Sprite High Output HO2 with matching Chrome Showerhead
If I were buying one now, I would probably order this one online: Culligan Level 2 Wall-Mount Showerhead. It has really good reviews, plus massage settings :)
Step 4: Care for Your Skin Gently
There are so many wonderful ways you can nurture and care for your skin gently, rather than abusing it with chemical cleansers and smothering it with petrochemical-laden potions.
Exfoliating: Use a soft natural-bristle dry brush or natural sea sponge to gently disengage old skin. This helps circulation and lymph fluid flow as well.
Clean and Nourish: Apply coconut oil to the skin before washing or showering. Coconut oil is gently antibacterial and very nourishing, plus it is slightly acidic which matches the skin’s natural pH. Then, use filtered warm water (not too hot – it scalds and strips the skin). When you get out, you’ll find the perfect amount of moisture is left and the skin feels heavenly!
Balance: If you feel the need to tone or tighten the skin, a 1:10 mixture of raw apple cider vinegar to filtered water is a gentle, natural way to do that. If your tap water is very mineral-rich (and has a strongly basic pH, you’ll know if you get white build-up on your kettle) then the vinegar rinse may be a good idea.
Detox and Repair: Sweating every day is so important – it’s the skin’s natural cleansing system and it’s so easy. Just google “quick interval workout” or similar on youtube, and you’ll find any number of ways to get a quick sweat on in less than 10 minutes. No excuses!
The other absolute vital factor is sleep. This is when your skin repairs itself and becomes its naturally gorgeous glowing youthful self. Your hormones (your body’s messengers and signalers) also need sleep to stay balanced and effective. You’ll know how shitty and haggard your face looks after an all-nighter or a long flight or what have you. Sleep is sooo important. Sleeeeeep.
The Skintervention Guide
This is a good overall good-skin approach, however if you have a particular condition or concern, and want a detailed protocol (aka user-friendly, hand-holding, day-by-day action plan) to fix your skin, I have a GREAT recommendation.
Instead of spending another $10, $30, $50 plus dollars on another hit-or-miss product that is advertised by air-brushed models, I would highly recommend checking out Liz Wolfe’s Purely Primal Skintervention Guide.
This guide is a deep dive into what exactly is going on underneath each specific skin condition. What imbalances might be happening or what might be setting it off, and exactly what to avoid, what to eat, and what to adjust in your lifestyle to bring things back to normal. In fact not only to normal, but even better than your skin has ever been.
The author, Liz Wolfe, is an absolute POWERHOUSE of awesome actionable info. Her style is friendly and practical so it’s easy to read. Useful and empowering, not boring or overwhelming.
Don’t smear on another cream and hope for the best – rebuild healthy skin from the inside out instead, using a proven system from an established expert. The image below will take you straight there for more info…
Do you have any tips or success stories to share on how you’ve overcome skin concerns? Or any good books, supplements, protocols to recommend? Share & help others below!
I’ll be the first one to put my hand up and say I feel like I’ve spent a lot of my life struggling against my body. Having a naturally stockier build, or ‘sausage body’ as I like to lovingly call it, I definitely went through a chubby phase in my tween years.
Struggling to lose weight & feel good
It’s a classic story a lot of people can probably relate to, men and women alike. Working through puberty, wanting to look good and feel attractive, all while being bombarded by all sorts of confusing, conflicting and media-hyped messages about fitness and nutrition. I remember always being told that if I exercised enough, I could eat whatever I want. However, being a bookish kid, I usually didn’t exercise much, but still wanted to eat tasty snacks. So I would feel guilty about food and always be trying to “eat less and exercise more”.
How guilt-inducing, frustrating and exhausting is the Eat Less & Exercise More approach?!
All too many people, myself included, find that that whole thing only ends with disappointment and hating your body even more. It’s high time for a better strategy.
Surprise: you’re an animal!
Here’s a thought: last time you went to the zoo and you were looking at those chimps and gorillas, did it strike you how similar they are to us? How despite all our fancy clothes and perfumed soap, we’re really just animals too?
Animals don’t sit around stressing about whether they ate too many bugs or leaves, they just know what’s right for them to eat, and how much, and they just go on enjoying life with a fit, muscular, healthy body. Shouldn’t we feel that way too? Wouldn’t that be incredibly liberating?
If we look at ourselves as the ‘humanimals’ that we are, living in our habitat, we can gain insight into what our genes are programmed to thrive on, and understand why we may seek out or crave certain foods. From that basis of simple knowledge, we can move forward eating and enjoying food care-free, while having that fit, healthy, happy body.
Understanding the ‘humanimal’ mind
You’re going to be so relieved after you read this. There is a solid scientific reason you crave, dream about, and feel drawn to all those tasty sugary naughty junky foods. Your brain is literally programmed to be able to pick them out of a crowd.
The reason is that we’ve evolved very little since we were hunter-gatherers, living off of the land and what we were lucky or clever enough to find/kill that day. Therefore if we were scanning the landscape and there is a calorie-rich food source visible (let’s say some nice sugary berries) our eyes snap right to it and we feel alarms in our brain like “FOOD! RIGHT THERE! OMG FOOD! EAT! EEEEEAT.” This is because in general the hunter-gatherer approach would be to eat more when food is available, since we don’t know if it will be available tomorrow.
Well, your brain has precious little, if anything, different from that hunting-gathering ancestor of yours. So you get precisely those same EATRIGHTNOW signals when you slap eyes on an ooey-gooey grilled cheese sandwich, or a picture of a chocolate cake. (I started drooling typing that, wow. There’s the animal brain for ya!)
Cravings are not a bad thing
We’ve been taught and guilted into feeling like whenever we crave a food, we are naughty naughty bad and we should just quell that down and control ourselves. If we give in to cravings we will just be fat and ugly forever.
Newsflash: those cravings are literally programmed into your DNA. They are your body telling you what it needs right now.
But, this message comes with a very important caveat. These days, our body’s signals can be a liiiiiittle bit confused, what with our modern flashy environment and unnatural foods and chemicals and distractions, etc. So, your body may be telling you that you “need to eat 2 burgers and an ice cream after yes definitely the ice cream”, however there is a lot at play there.
You also may crave more food after you’ve just eaten because the food may not have been very nourishing, or you may be needing water. Therefore your body sends signals to eat more because it is seeking more water or nutrients.
It doesn’t know how to tell you “I need vitamin C!” or “Feed me some omega 3’s!”, all it can say is “eat!” and hope that it can get some of what it needs from there.
Our ancient brains are overwhelmed in this modern world
Studies show that historically food would definitely not have been constantly available, and we would have been a lot more programmed to be able to survive off of fat stores. We would be easily able to switch to burning our body fat to get us through a few days of not finding much food.
The problem is nowadays we have food available constantly. Our monkey brains are programmed to pick out high-carb, sugary foods to be able to survive and get energy fast, but now we’re literally surrounded by those foods, at arm’s reach, ALL the time. And our monkey brains still want them just as bad.
Foods high in carbs and sugars convert to fat the fastest when we eat them. They are a quick easy source of energy and our bodies just love to store them away for later use. That includes a sweet potato or whole-grain cereal just as much as a cupcake or chocolate bar.
Because these foods burn the fastest, they often leave us in the lurch. We swing from “Mmm yummy i’m full that was delicious” to “OMG I am HANGRY, FEED ME NOW”, waaaay too fast.
The thing is, once you understand WHY you have cravings and get hungry way too often, it’s so easy to re-program your approach to work WITH your genes and that crazy monkey brain.
It doesn’t need to be complicated. The monkey brain is simple, and we can have it in our palm in no time. How to get there you ask? It’s all about breaking the sugar/carb addiction, and choosing more nourishing foods.
Eat good quality protein – Organically raised, happy, free-range animals and fish. Dairy and eggs from the same.
Get good sleep – Those hunger signals we were talking about before get just sooo much more confused when you are tired. The energy has to come from somewhere, and if you’re not rested, you’re going to be mighty tempted to get it from a chocolate chip muffin.
Use a proven plan – I love programs like the 21 Day Sugar Detox, which is wildly popular and gets rave reviews left right and center. It’s a fast and well-tested way to press the reset button and learn how to work WITH those genes instead of against them.
Lose the body shame! – Once you understand what you’re genetically programmed to want, you realize it’s not your fault. Using a simple program like the 21DSD teaches you to be confident in the right food choices, enjoy eating, and get on with living life! Enough said!
I hope you’ve enjoyed these guidelines on how to make your genes work for you.
If you want a well-engineered plan to take away all the mind-sweat and give you an excellent kickstart, more info on the 21 Day Sugar Detox can be found by clicking the image below! Cheers!
If you’re experimenting with any sort of real food, whole food, ancestrally-based eating regime, you may have found that you feel sort shackled to your kitchen. Planning, shopping and preparing meals every evening can be a lot of work.
Personally I have breakfast and lunch at work during the week so when I get home after work I have to make dinner for that night, plus breakfast and lunch for the next day.
I can imagine with kids this would take on a whole new level of difficulty, because of the sheer volume of food needing to be prepared, and also the time that’s needed every evening. I kind of understand why my mum used to just pop a frozen pizza in the oven sometimes…
But, once you’ve experienced how a paleo-type diet can majorly boost and repair your health, you can’t really just go back to those frozen pizzas! Luckily there are ways to “hack the system” of meal prep to achieve your paleo eating goals without blowing your budget or your evenings on food.
Hacking the paleo meal prep system
The key is planning out your meals in advance, and then having a concentrated shopping session and prep session. Planning first allows you to be a lot more efficient with the whole operation. You mastermind the whole week first, and then never have to think about it again. No coming home and thinking “what’s for dinner…” and standing in front of the fridge for 10 minutes trying to come up with something.
Shopping all in one go means you save a whole lot of time, rather than popping to the store or the market in dribs and drabs whenever you need something. Then, prepping or cooking all in one session, all according to your meal plan of course, gets you all set up for the week. That way on each day during the week you only have to “assemble” your meals, rather than make them.
The 4 stages of fast paleo meal-making
This is a basic process on how to make your path to eating tasty paleo meals fast, painless and stress-free.
STEP 1: Plan
Put together a plan for what you’ll be eating each day for breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks. Then write out a shopping list corresponding to the plan so that you’ll have all the ingredients.
SMART TIP: Write the list in the order of the areas of the supermarket, or grouped under “fish store”, “farmer’s market”, “Whole Foods” etc, according to where you shop. That way it’s much easier to keep track as you work through the list.
ANOTHER SMART TIP: Subscribe to a service like 20 Dishes, which produces your meal plan and shopping list for you, based on how many people you’re feeding, and any special requirements like if you’re on the autoimmune protocol or low FODMAP. Their meal plans are specifically configured so that you can make a week’s worth of meals in 1 hour!
They also provide an “action plan” to make your time most efficient. This takes away the problem of wrestling with 5 recipes at once trying not to burn anything. 20 Dishes provides a step by step roadmap to prep everything at once in an organized and efficient way.
STEP 2: Shop
Armed with your list, make the circuit of your supermarket or local shops to collect all your goods in one fell swoop.
STEP 3: Prep & Store
This is where that 20 Dishes meal prep action plan really helps; all the mental work is done already so there’s no need to flounder around trying to get things done. It’s proven to take only 60 minutes so I know I don’t need to make any more time than that in my day. All the meat gets cooked, veggies get chopped, and salads get prepped. Then everything goes in the fridge or freezer in pre-planned containers so it’s very grab-and-go.
SMART TIP: Get enough food storage containers (preferably glass!!) so each family member has their designated breakfast, lunch and snack container. That way you can just make an assembly line and slap it all together. Here are some great containers that are non-toxic: Glasslock 18-Piece Assorted Oven Safe Container Set
STEP 4: Assemble
Each day when you get home, just pull out all your pre-prepped goodies, heat up any parts to be heated, and assemble on the plates. That’s it! So satisfyingly fast and easy.
SMART TIP: For those parts that need to be heated (ie meat), you definitely want to be storing in glass (as mentioned above) as this will skip even another step for you – those glass containers can go straight in the oven! That way you’re avoiding the yuckiness of the microwave as well. Coooooool.
Well, that’s about it folks. You’ve got my basic fast paleo meal prep system laid out here, and then if you’re wanting to save some more time and mental sweat on getting those meals planned and prepped for each week, I definitely recommend checking out 20 Dishes. Even just thinking about it I can feel that burden lifting off my shoulders…ahhh. :) The image below will take you to more info.
I’m writing this article having just finished my 1-year holistic health coaching certification through the Institute for Integrative Nutrition a couple of weeks ago.
This article is to share my experience with the IIN program and to help you discover a potential path into better personal wellness and maybe even a career in the health field, if it interests you. (Also check out my Become a Health Coach page!)
The buzz around Institute for Integrative Nutrition
I’ve read a lot of different comments and so-called “reviews” on Integrative Nutrition around the internet, and I noticed some of them weren’t even written by people who completed the course, they were just based on an outside point of view or hear-say.
Personally I think that’s pretty unfair, and I wanted to contribute an honest run-down as someone who has actually done the course.
All I can say about IIN haters is this:
Preventative healthcare (or often called “alternative”, even though it should be the main and primary approach to wellness, except in the case of an emergency) is a growing field, and its success threatens the monopoly that conventional medicine currently holds.
I think that scares a lot of conventionally-educated professionals, and companies who make a lot of money off of feeding pharmaceuticals to desperate people who don’t know any better.
This is not to say that I think IIN is for everyone. That’s definitely not the case and I wouldn’t recommend jumping into the course without a good amount of research and consideration.
All I can do is share my own experience, and hopefully that will help you gain more insight and help you get to wherever you are hoping to go with your health and your career.
Me before IIN
Before I enrolled with the Institute for Integrative Nutrition I was working in the interior design industry, which is what I studied in university. Actually working in your field seems to be a feat in itself these days, however I had discovered that I found it pretty shallow and un-fulfilling.
I would spend free moments at work googling natural solutions to health issues and the nutritional power of real foods. I was fired up about natural health and I wanted a certification to round out my knowledge.
Here are a couple of pages from my workbook at the beginning of my studies with IIN.
Feeling stuck & knowing you have more to offer
You can see I felt stagnant in my job and really wanted to do something more meaningful and valuable.
I knew preventative, holistic health & nutrition was where I should focus for a career shift, because I literally couldn’t stop consuming information about it, and would talk someone’s ear off about it if they gave me half a chance. To this day when I catch up with my partner Will in the evening I’m usually raving about some cool new health or nutrition thing I researched that day.
Pros & Cons of IIN
I did a bunch of research before jumping into enrolling in a nutrition program, and I definitely had doubts about IIN.
My main reservation was how cheesy and almost cult-ish their marketing seems. I didn’t like how their site tries to push you to speak with a representative, and doesn’t actually give that much information about the curriculum besides some over-arching statements like “learn 100 dietary theories”.
When I eventually did talk to an enrollment advisor on the phone, I found her to be pretty vague in answering questions about the program, and kind of pushy and seedy.
However, the pros out-weighed the cons for me in the end, because there are some seriously AWESOME, UNIQUE things about IIN’s school and program. Here are some of the highlights from my perspective:
Learn from anywhere. I wouldn’t have been able to enroll in nutrition school if I had to attend classes, because I have to keep a full-time job. I listened to my lectures during my commute or while cooking dinner, and then spent a couple of hours on the weekend doing workbook exercises and taking notes.
Personal growth & business education. Unlike your average university education where you learn a whole lot of theory but then have no idea how to succeed in the real world, I really liked that IIN’s curriculum walks you through a gradual process of personal development, so you can clarify your ‘offering to the world’ and really make it a marketable, appealing package. This is exciting and useful whether you want to sell your services to the public, or just be able to convince yourself and your family to make a lifestyle change.
Mind-blowingly awesome lecturers. The contributing faculty at Integrative Nutrition is basically a who’s-who of the alternative health world. Dr. Deepak Chopra, Dr. Andrew Weil, David Wolfe, Sally Fallon Morell, Dr. Barry Sears, Gary Taubes and Dr. Mark Hyman were some of the highlights for me. These are some of the absolute top names in forward-thinking nutrition and health. The cool thing is the IIN lectures are very recent and fresh so you get to hear about their latest work and research hot off the press.
Highly inspiring graduates. Although the marketing and enrollment process wasn’t that appealing to me, I got past that hurdle by checking out how successful some of IIN’s grads are. Some of the ones I find most inspiring are Isabel Foxen-Duke, Christa Orecchio, and Alisa Vitti.
What IIN did for me
As soon as I enrolled with IIN, I had this huge, glowing, vibrating feeling of having opened the door to destiny or something. It was totally awesome.
During my year at IIN I’ve been able to:
present a series of wellness lectures at a large corporate office
land a paying client
connect with other students around the world who are valuable friends and contacts, and see how they have applied their IIN knowledge, whether for personal healing and growth or in a business context
learn how to take great care of myself and start showing myself a lot more love
learn a boatload of actionable techniques and strategies for lifestyle change and healthy eating, which I’ve applied to myself and also helped others
start and maintain a yoga and meditation practice, which is a huge step considering any type of spirituality or practice was a LONG shot away for me, one year ago
have my mind expanded about different nutritional approaches that can work for different people
learn how to market my services in a loving, genuine and valuable way
feel like I’ve finally found my mission in life that I can never get enough of!!
Some warnings or things you should know
As I said earlier, my goal with sharing this experience is to help others gather information and make the smartest, most informed decision. Here are some things you may want to be aware of if you’re considering studying holistic nutrition:
It’s not an automatic job – just like when you go to university or college you attend classes and study and write tests and graduate, and then you have to go out and pound the pavement yourself. You have to produce marketing materials (like a CV, or a website, or whatever) and make yourself known to the world. IIN is the same way. There is A LOT of juicy and inspiring information shared in the course, but actually doing the work is up to you. Making a new career happen, by yourself and for yourself, will be the scariest and most difficult thing you will do, but also the most exciting, exhilarating and rewarding.
You will learn conflicting theories – I read one “review” of IIN (again by someone who hadn’t actually attended the course) where they said it was a “confusing and misleading” school that taught “many opposing theories”. That’s the interesting thing about nutrition – it’s not like math where there’s only one right answer. It’s more like politics or religion, where people are very quick to defend their personal preference, but a lot of different approaches CAN work and be effective. I see this as a positive point of IIN in that it doesn’t indoctrinate students with one “correct” approach such as veganism or macrobiotics or the blood type diet etc. It touches on all of these (and many more), exploring the pros and cons and suggesting where they might work for different individuals in different situations. This helps you experiment with applying or recommending different approaches that might be uniquely effective for you, your family or your clients.
You will not be forced to do the work, and the tests are easy – surprise, there will be no one pestering you and watching over your shoulder to make you do the work. I found that IIN required a lot more independent motivation that even university did, since it’s distance learning and it all depends on your own passion and fire to make it happen. The tests in the IIN curriculum are simple and basic, more like a walk-through or overview of the information. However the information on offer is very in-depth and complex and it’s all there for you if you’re hungry for it.
You get what you put in – I’m commenting again on other reviews of IIN that I saw before I chose to enroll, where the writer was complaining about basically not having an Ivey league accreditation and high-paying job handed over at the end. IIN is a certification, not an automatic ticket to the top. I believe that IIN is good for people who have that insatiable drive to engage with the world of holistic health and really feel that that is their mission in life. It’s not for those who just might want to dabble in a little bit of reading about nutrition, because they will not get much out of this course. If you want to do some casual reading, try just checking out some blogs or buying a couple of books on the subject, rather than engaging with a big investment like IIN that requires a passionate self-starter.
Is the IIN Health Coaching course worth it?
For me, it was totally 100% worth it. I’ve taken a huge step toward becoming the valuable, in-demand wellness professional I want to be, and learned so much about how to share that offering with the world. And judging from the comments, inspiration and excitement buzzing around the roughly 1500 other students in my enrollment class, they are all absolutely loving their IIN experience as well.
Who is IIN right for?
people who want to shift into the wellness profession but do not want to spend 4 years doing a degree. IIN arms you with the practical skills to get in the field and start counselling clients in one year, and you can even start while you’re a student.
people who want to start an incredible personal growth journey, regardless of their profession. A lot of the students in my class were working on their own health issues or wanted to help those in their family.
people who already have a related certification but want to expand their offering. This would be people like doctors, nurses, dentists, personal trainers, acupuncturists, social workers, dietitians, massage therapists, etc etc. The IIN approach is called integrative for a reason – it brings wellness knowledge full-circle to help counselors improve their clients’ lives from all sides, not just diet.
Who should not enroll with IIN?
people who need someone else to organize or direct their activities
people who don’t believe that nutrition and lifestyle practices can affect your health
people who cannot be bothered making a change or trying something new
people with a closed heart or judgmental outlook
The Thrive Primal IIN Discount Scholarship
If you’re feeling informed, engaged and inspired by this article, I’m excited to say that I’ve been given license to share a discount with my readers of up to 25%! To get the full discount, you have to pay the tuition fees in full before March 20. Click here to find out more and access the discount.
If you enroll through the above link, I will receive a small payment that goes toward keeping this site running, so I can continue to share this valuable information. If you appreciate the effort I put into sharing this info, it would be awesome if you could enroll through my link. Thank you!! :)
Questions or comments?
As a proud and thriving graduate of IIN I’m totally keen on helping other passionate people have the same awesome experience I had. If you have questions I would be happy to help you out, just get in touch via the contact page.
Also check out my Become a Health Coach page for some interesting articles about why health coaches are so important to the future of healthcare, and to grab free info about the IIN program. Cheers!
Autumn brings to mind such lovely images, scents and memories. There’s so much delicious produce to buy and favourite recipes to make, all while getting cozied up again in knits, plaid, denim and leather that’s been stored all summer.
This fall I’d like to help you learn about some wild foods you can harvest from your local landscape, so you can branch out from the supermarket or farmers’ market and get all the amazing juicy nutrition that foraged undomesticated foods have to offer.
Where to find wild foods
I’ve had success in urban parks, along river valleys, beside country roads, and exploring trails stemming from dog parks. Once you know what to look for, your eyes start to see tasty wild foods everywhere! :)
What to collect in the Fall
I’m a beginner forager, so I’m not well-versed with the full list of what you could haul in. So far this season I’ve picked up sumac, wild apples, crab apples, may apples, puffball mushrooms, wild ginger and wild leeks (ramps). I’m also experimenting with foraging acorns, nettles and pine nuts.
This post won’t serve as an exhaustive list but I’ll go into some depth on what I’ve learned so far on how to find, harvest and process those wild foods I have experience with, for tasty, nutritious and unique meals.
Foraging for sumac and wild apples
Sumac and apples are pretty easy to find as far as foraging goes. Apples may be untended domesticated cultivars (ie abandoned orchards, or trees that are the “babies” of orchard trees that got pooped out by a bird or whatever and grew somewhere untended). Or they may be wild apples, which are sort of like the apples that would have been found here before settlers came and starting breeding only perfect, big round juicy apples. Domesticated apples are kind of like if you compare wild strawberries vs domestic strawberries – tiny, tart and delicious vs big, GMO and watery. Wild apples are more potent in their antioxidant power and have more varieties of wonderful flavours.
Crab apples vs wild apples?
You may be thinking, oh yeah wild apples! Like those little shitty crab apples that are sour and only taste good when you cook them! Wild apples are actually a little different in that they are the predecessors of our tasty big modern apples. They are just smaller and more concentrated in their flavour. You can recognize that they might remind you of apples that you know, like Gala or MacIntosh or Golden Delicious, but they’ll be like smaller gnarled cute forms of them.
Crab apples on the other hand hang more like cherries on the tree, are much smaller, and are very tart. They are more drop or oval-shaped, not really apple-shaped.
Foraging apples and safety considerations
If you’re ever in doubt of whether a fruit you’ve found is in fact an apple, you can cut it in half along its ‘equator’ horizontally. If it has a star shaped profile with 5 seeds, then it’s an apple.
If you’re harvesting near a road or agricultural area, make sure you wash them well before eating to get rid of airborne chemicals.
I’ve heard that if you find a wormhole that is heading from the inside apple to the outside, this could harbour bacteria. Feel free to just trim off any yucky parts and enjoy what’s left. It’s still a free, delicious, nutritious apple!
Where to find wild apples?
We’ve had luck in an urban park by a river valley in Toronto, a little distance from the river in more dry grassland type spaces. Also along road-sides in the country near Stratford, Ontario. You could try checking the tree maps on FallingFruit.org and see if there are any marked in your area.
What to make with wild apples?
You can experiment with apple sauce, apple butter, apple pie, stewed apples, apple jelly, apple juice or cider, apple vinegar. I’m sure that’s just a start! This weekend we made a beautiful apple crumble from our foraged apples, pears and may apples.
The recipe for wild apple crumble with homemade paleo vanilla ice cream will appear in a later post, which I’ll link to when it’s done!
Foraging for sumac
Sumac is also easy to find, you’ve probably seen it everywhere and not even realised it! It tends to change colour dramatically in the fall and becomes quite striking.
Hold on, isn’t sumac poisonous!?
You’re right, there is one type of sumac which is poisonous, and according to my readings it’s pretty bad too. But luckily it’s very easy to tell the good one from the poison one! Poison sumac has:
white berries
grows in very wet swampy areas
smooth reddish branches
Whereas the sumac you want to be foraging, which is called Staghorn Sumac, has:
red furry berries in a cone shape
grows along roadsides and everywhere else but in more dry woodland areas
furry brownish branches, thus the name Staghorn
So clearly you would need to be pretty confused to mix up those 2.
How to harvest Staghorn Sumac
Harvesting Staghorn Sumac is pretty darn easy. Just clip off those nice fluffy berry bundles and pop them in a bag to take home.
How many should you take? Well first of all, ensure you are respecting the plant and the ecosystem. You should aim not to forage more than 10% of any plant/berry/root/mushroom etc that you find. That way you will ensure the plant can continue to grow for years to come and bring joy and sustenance to other animals (that includes humans don’t forget!)
The other consideration is what you want to make. We made sumac-ade, a refreshing drink, from the sumac that we picked this fall. I found that one head of sumac berries makes one nice tall glass of drink. So that will give you an idea of how much to pick based on your party size and how thirsty you’re all going to be after all this foraging! :)
How to make Sumac-ade
A drink made from sumac is probably the laziest and easiest way you can use your foraged bounty. I know that sumac also has many other medicinal and nutritional applications, but at this particular time I just wanted to enjoy some wild sustenance right quick.
The steps are simple:
Push the furry berries off of their stems into a bowl, just with your hands. If you find the furs to be irritating, you could wear gloves.
Add fresh water to the bowl, about 2 Cups per head of berries. This could be hot or cold water depending on your goal for your drink.
Let the berries soak for about 20 minutes – you can also mush the berries with your hands or with the back of a spoon to encourage their juices to come out.
Strain the juice into a glass, and if you’re doing the cold version you can add some ice if you like!
It’s that simple! So are you wondering what it will taste like? I thought it was quite a bit like cranberry juice, except a lighter gentler version. Really tasty and refreshing, plus the pink colour is gorgeous! I plan to experiment with cocktails in the future…
Foraging for May Apples
So the confusing thing about May Apples is they are not ripe in May, nor are they apples! They are ripe in late summer – early fall (or mid-summer in warmer areas) and they are a strange fleshy fruit that has a pleasant light taste. They are ripe when they are firm and yellow, like a pale lemon yellow. Find them by noting their 1-2 umbrella shaped leaves on a Y-shaped stem, and one single fruit coming from the middle of the Y. You can eat them as is, add them to salads, or make a stewed preserve out of them if you find enough!
Safely identifying may apples
Note that to the inexperienced eye, hogweed has sort of similar-looking jaggedy edged leaves (although hogweed is MUCH larger). Hogweed is a super dangerous plant that can cause chemical burns to the skin. It’s easy to tell the difference though because hogweed is tall (3-5 feet or taller) and has large flowers that have a similar structure to Queen Anne’s lace. The may apple plant is only about max 18″ tall and has white blossoms that look like apple blossoms in the spring.
Wild Leeks (Ramps)
When Will and I learned how to forage wild leeks (also called “ramps”), our leader Peter (from Puck’s Plenty) led us up off the track into a sparsely wooded area and explained how we were standing in a wild leek patch. I was sort of confused and was looking around and asked where the plants were. Peter started pointing them out, and then I started seeing them everywhere under our feet! It’s funny how when your eye gets trained to spot something, you can’t believe you never noticed it before.
How to harvest and prepare wild leeks
The wild leeks will be in bunches, 2/3 buried like you can see in the image above on the left. You can take a spade or small shovel, and gently pry up the whole bunch of leeks (be sure to leave enough to allow the patch to continue to thrive). Then just shake off the worst of the dirt, and stick ’em in your bag! The images above show them washed (top right), and then sauteeing in grass-fed butter (bottom right) – YUM!
I just sauteed them whole, but you could also chop them up. Wild leeks have a delicious spicy taste that is divine with a pork roast or with creative mexican dishes. Next time I’m definitely serving them up with some raw grass-fed sour cream.
Wild Ginger Root
Peter taught us how to harvest wild ginger root without disturbing the plant. First identify the plant by its heart-shaped leaves (pictured below), and then run your hand down and find the main root. The roots are partially above ground so they are pretty easy to follow. You’ll see the main root that has the leaves attached, and forking off of that root will be secondary roots. You can gently tug the secondary root above ground and then snip off a few inches. That’s it! The secondary roots will grow back and you’ve got yourself a tasty aromatic flavouring.
How to find and use wild ginger root
We found our wild ginger on a moist slope near a creek. The plants are about 6″ tall. If in doubt of the plant’s identification, just snap off a little piece of root and sniff it!
We chopped ours up and used it in a stirfry. You can also simply steep it in just-boiled water to make a tea. It has a lovely scent and mild flavour.
Gem-studded mini puffball mushrooms
Mushrooms are a whole different story, as I’m sure you’ve heard. You never want to go foraging for mushrooms unless you’re very experienced (or your guide is!). Luckily Peter is a long-time forager and he taught us about one species that’s pretty fail-safe. It’s a type of mini puffball mushroom called the Gem-studded.
Where to find mini puffball mushrooms
We found our mushrooms in a damp and shadowy pine forest. They enjoy the sparse floor created by all the pine needles. Just take your knife and gently press toward your thumb to cut off the puffball part of the mushroom.
How to make sure your puffball mushrooms are safe
This species is easy to identify because of its little “gems” – the protrusions covering it. Peter didn’t mention any dangerous look-alike species. Another safety net is to cut the mushroom in half vertically – it must be white all the way through.
How to use gem-studded mushrooms
Will and I fried up our little puffballs in butter. They turned beautifully golden but kept their shape, unlike a lot of mushrooms that shrivel when cooked. They had a nice almost ‘meaty’ texture, and unique flavour. Definitely worth trying! The day after our foraging trip we even went out in High Park (Toronto) and found a few more little puffs. They seem to be quite common! We felt confident in identifying them since their gem-studs are so distinctive.
In Conclusion…
I hope this post helps you in your foraging adventures!
Hopefully you’re successful in locating some of these tasty edibles in your area, and may your body thrive on their delicious flavours and juicy wild nutrition.
Let me know if you have any questions and I’ll try to help you out! Please share foraging stories, recipes or tips in the comments below…
