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Tag Archives: health
Healthy Action of the Week: Try An Exotic Fruit or Vegetable
This week’s healthy action is about breaking out of those “food ruts.” What’s a food rut? You know how sometimes life gets us in those predictable routines? Well a food rut occurs when because we are busy, lazy, tired, or somewhere in between all of the above we find ourselves eating the same combinations of foods day in and day out. Not this week! I challenge you to take your gorgeous self over to the grocery store and pick one fruit or vegetable you have never tried before and make a meal of it. Google up on its nutritional benefits and possible recipes. Who knows? You may find a new veggie love in the process. -Xo Raw Girl
Have you checked out my new online classes yet? In my new course, Staying Ageless 30+ you will learn about Diet Basics, Lifestyle Factors, and elements of Longevity that promote an ageless way of life. Over the course of three modules you learn what to eliminate from your diet to stay ageless, how to ensure your body is receiving adequate nutrition, powerful detox rituals you can incorporate to increase your longevity, beauty remedies that will leave you glowing, and how to exercise effectively and get results. In addition you will learn health lessons directly from renowned longevity and health experts that will equip you to transform your lifestyle. You can still enroll! Check out the class HERE to preview the curriculum our save your seat! -Xo
Things You Can Eliminate to #StayAgeless!
You can still enroll in our class, Staying Ageless 30+! To find out more and preview the curriculum click HERE.
How to Create a Self-Care Plan
Self-care is completely essential to thriving and feeling at your best. Some people think of self-care as selfish, but it really is not. In order for you to be out in the world at your best, and also give to others, you must do that from a full place. Self-care helps us to fill “our well” so that we are not showing up for others from a depleted place, which can lead to resentment and anger. Before we take care of our kids, jobs, work, we must take care of ourselves.
Self-care involves areas such as the need to connect with our tribe or closest friends and family; taking care of our physical and psychological health; managing and reducing stress; intuitively listening for and honoring our emotional and spiritual needs; sustaining healthy relationships; and achieving balance across personal, school, and work commitments.
Each and every one of us is different, so it’s important that our self-care be tailored to our unique needs, wants, and preferences! Below is a template with some sample answers that you can use to create your own self-care plan with a few minutes of reflection. Once you go through this process, schedule into your calendar a few of the tasks you would like to try that will feed your mind, body, or spirit. If you don’t already have a plan I encourage you to sit down and create one today. So much ends up on our to-do list from day-to-day so if you fail to plan, you will fail at taking care of the most important person in your life, YOU. –Xo Raw Girl
SECTION ONE:
| Self-Care Dimension
|
Current Practices
(List all that you currently do) |
Frequency |
| Physical | · Gym/ Exercise with Trainer
|
· At least three times per week |
| Intellectual | · Reading a new book
· Social media fast
|
· Weekly
· Once a week I shut down all social media |
| Emotional |
· Meditation |
· Daily meditation |
| Spiritual |
· Meditation · Prayer · Church
|
· Daily meditation & prayer, Church once sometimes twice per week
|
| Social | · Church Group
|
· Once every two weeks and ongoing |
SECTION TWO:
| Self-Care Dimension
|
New Practices
(List all practice you are COMMITTING to doing on a regular basis) |
Frequency
(How often do you commit to doing these) |
| Physical | · Try Capoeira as a new form of movement
|
· Once a week |
| Intellectual | · Write in my journal
· Listen to my favorite music · Schedule regular thinking time
|
· 2-3 times per week
· at least twice a week · at least once per week |
| Emotional | · go for reflective walk
· Connect with a good friend |
· once a week
· at least once a week |
| Spiritual | · go for reflective walk
|
· once a week |
| Social | · Call one friend and schedule something fun
|
· Once per week |
| SECTION THREE: | |
| What can you let go of? What is no longer serving you?
|
|
| What do you do now for self-care or to manage your stress that no longer serves you? Answer in the space to the right.
|
|
|
SECTION FOUR: |
|
| How will you eliminate obstacles to your self-care plan? Answer in the space below.
|
|
|
|
|
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Have you checked out my new online classes yet? In my new course, Staying Ageless 30+ you will learn about Diet Basics, Lifestyle Factors, and elements of Longevity that promote an ageless way of life. Over the course of three modules you learn what to eliminate from your diet to stay ageless, how to ensure your body is receiving adequate nutrition, powerful detox rituals you can incorporate to increase your longevity, beauty remedies that will leave you glowing, and how to exercise effectively and get results. In addition you will learn health lessons directly from renowned longevity and health experts that will equip you to transform your lifestyle. You can still enroll! Check out the class HERE to preview the curriculum our save your seat! -Xo
Make an Epic Comeback! 4 Ways to Boost Your Resilience & Health
When life gives you lemons…Bounce Back!
Have you noticed some people can endure breakups, deaths in the family, unexpected mayhem at work, and somehow come out of the storm looking like Olivia Pope, strutting in a room, glowing and repeating her classic mantra: “It’s handled.” There’s a part of all of us that wants to be Olivia Pope in those crazy crisis situations in our lives, but the reality is that when the veggie hits the fan, it can feel like the world is coming to an end!
Resilience is the key to our epic come-back, and is also in my opinion one of the greatest markers of health. We know bad things happen in life, it’s more a matter of whether or not you can weather the storm and how quickly you recover and get back in the game. The textbook definition of resilience is successful adaptation and swift recovery after experiencing life adversities. In shrink language: secure attachment (especially in childhood), experiencing positive emotions and having a purpose in life are three important psychological building blocks of resilience. Resilience can help protect you from various mental health conditions, such as depression and anxiety. Resilience can also help offset factors that increase the risk of mental health conditions, such as being bullied or previous trauma. If you have an existing mental health condition, being resilient can improve your ability to cope. Below are a few ways you can boost your resilience and make an epic comeback from life’s challenges that will cause your friends and fam’s jaws to drop. If you are going to go through hell, may as well look like a goddess emerging from the flames! Xo Raw Girl
- Heal Your Inner Child. For those of us (raises hand) who may have had crazy childhoods that left deep emotional wounds, part of creating resilience is to deal with our past trauma and rebuild our self-worth and self-esteem. For years I thought my traumas were resolved only to find out there were patterns repeating in my life that were a result of some past wounds that were still affecting me subconsciously. How do you work through this? Journaling is great, seeing a therapist can help to. If you can’t afford a therapist check out the book Self-Therapy by Dr. Jay Earley which can help you work through the same process on your own at a fraction of the cost.
- Keep Your Immunity Up! When crisis hits, we immediately become more susceptible to disease or illness. That’s why its imperative we do not wait before the veggie hits the fan to take care of our daily vitamins and immune boosters. Vitamin C is essential, and taking a daily multivitamin can go a long way. Want more on the importance of vitamins? Check out this PAST POST.
- Practice a Daily Mindfulness Ritual. Mindfulness has been show to decrease stress, reduce the likelihood of contracting a host of diseases, and can also assist with keeping the mind positive in times of crisis. When things get rough it’s easy to slip into that downward spiral of thinking, and what mindfulness can do is help us to pay less attention to that negative chatter that keeps us in negative Nancy mode. Some practices that can work wonders: daily meditation, yoga, Qi gong, walking meditations in nature.
- Connect to a Higher Power. The Practice of organized religion is slowly becoming scarce in our modern world, as people seem to feel they don’t have time. The amazing thing about faith however, is that it can provide some assurance during times of crisis. Church communities or spiritual organizations with like minded believers can provide essential support when weathering life’s storms. In addition to this, many people fid that when they can give their problems over to God, stress reduces, and a deeper sense of peace and positive expectation emerges.
Healthy Action of the Week: Self-Care Ritual
Hi Gang,
I’m starting a weekly call to healthy action to get you thinking about various aspects of your health. Hoping that these will assist you in not just learning about new nutrients or supplements, but actually start to make changes day-to-day. For the first healthy ritual I challenge you to pick a self-care activity you feel you need the most and do it daily. Whether it be meditation, long walks, or taking a long bath, find a way to take care of you in a way that makes your heart sing. As we prioritize ourselves and establish rituals, we fill up our well of goodness we have to bring to our work, families, and life in general.Next week I will give you a template you can use to make your personally tailored self-care plan. I hope you will complete it or give it some thought! Here’s to loving a lot on YOU this week! -Xo Raw Girl
The Many Reasons to Love Avocado
If I had to profess my undying love to any particular fruit or veggie, it would be a hard call between avocados and coconuts. What is not to love about this amazing creamy fruit that can be combined with both sweet and more bitter meals. Plus I can make yogurt or pudding with it, smoothies, and add it to salads. Since I have long been rescued from the hell that is processed food addiction, I would say avocados do for me what ice cream or yogurt does for die hard dairy lovers. The creamy texture, literally makes my heart sing, and ears perk up when I hear someone say the lovely name avocado. Oh, and the joy of cutting one open and it being completely perfect! I could go on and on. I know I’m tripping, but I really love them that much. They are also on my list of aphrodisiacs, so perhaps (***clears throat and bats eyelashes***), avocados are exciting for me in more ways than one. For grown folks only: the name avocado comes from the Aztec word ‘ahuacatl’ which, um, literally, um, means testicle (I don’t like that word, hence the hesitation). I assume you can guess that avocados got the name from the way they look. So beyond just eating avocados, you also have the option to make some dirty jokes about them. LOL.
So what groovy benefits do you get from eating avocado, which is also known as ‘alligator pear’? Well, they happen to be one of the healthiest foods on the planet! Avocados contain 25 essential nutrients including vitamin A, B, C, E, K, copper, iron, phosphorous, magnesium, potassium, protein, phytochemicals, and fiber. You would actually need to eat at least two bananas to get the amount of potassium in one avocado. Avocados have a large fat content, almost twenty times the amount of fat in other fruits but they are extremely good-for-you monounsaturated fats. People often worry that because of this avocados will make you gain weight. Not the case, I’ll get to that in another post soon. If you eat avocados from Florida which are huge, note that they have 50% LESS fat than the Haas kind, so they are sort of the “low-fat” brand of avocados.
Onto the long list of fabulous things the wonderful fruit named avocado can do for you. Some key benefits include: maintains a healthy heart and reduce risk of heart disease, efficiently lowers bad cholesterol and can boost good cholesterol, helps to regulate blood pressure levels, has anti-inflammatory properties that help ward off inflammation related diseases, promotes eye health and prevents macular degeneration, regulates blood sugar levels, reduces the risk of stroke because of high levels of folate, protects against breast cancer and has been shown to inhibit prostate cancer, contains glutathione which fights free radicals in the body, boosts immune system, slows aging, and encourages a healthy nervous system. If all of those benefits alone were not a mouthful add to that the fact that avocados are known the world over for boosting the health and natural glow of your skin.
My challenge this week is: How many ways can you eat an avocado? While I go off to work on that, I hope you have now been convinced that avocados are an awesome food to add to your diet. As much as I would love to keep my love for them all to myself, I know there’s more than enough love to go around so you can count on me to continue spreading the gospel. -XoXo Raw Girl
Effective Natural Sleep Aid: Valerian Poppy
Even the hustlers who claim they “grind” 24-7 and survive on three hours of sleep, can’t debate that eventually the human body will crash if you do not get enough rest. Not sure if you all heard about Ariana Huffington’s come to Jesus moment where her lack of sleep let to a serious injury an stitches in her face, chronicled in her book Thrive. Even a CEO needs rest, and she discovered that she actually performs better and makes better decisions when fully rested rather than trying to run the rat race on empty. It’s clear that this AHA! moment was the catalyst that eventually caused her to leave the Huffington Post and move onto found Thrive Global where she promoting health, wellness, and good old sleep.
Recently, a friend reached out to me who was having sleeping problems about whether or not she should take medication. It has become all too commonplace for those with sleeping issues to resort to taking sleeping pills which can have a myriad of side effects known and unknown. She unfortunately lives in Los Angeles, where popping sleeping pills is like eating candy. Everyone seems to do it. The better solution is to look at your lifestyle, caffeine intake, stress, or racing thoughts and get to the bottom of what you can change to get some real long term sustainable rest.
After giving this advice to my friend, I then told her as she is working on it to give Valerian Poppy a try as a natural remedy to help her sleep on the interim. I used Valerian Poppy as a sleeping aid when recovering from a bad car accident that left me in so much pain it was hard to get to sleep. I would put a few drops in water and I was usually out in 10-15 minutes. Again, I believe dealing with the source of the issue is always best, but this herbal remedy may be something you want to give a try if you are really struggling. Like any herb, can have interactions with other medications so I recommend you take it alone or speak to your doctor about any potential adverse effects of mixing with your current medication. The exact effective dosage isn’t exactly clear either, so the safest bet is to experiment without overdoing it. I usually put one dropper full into a glass of water.
Want additional information about sleep that could help you revolutionize your rest? Check out the book Power Sleep by Dr. James Maas, a world renowned sleep expert. That book changed my life and made me a bit of a sleep natzi in college. I’m sure you will find once you have experienced true, good quality rest, you’ll start getting a little gangsta about your sleep too. -XO
Mineral Monday : Iodine
What mineral is required for thyroid hormone synthesis, regulates cortisol and immune function, and is a powerful antioxidant? Iodine, which may seem like an insignificant mineral is required for all of those things and more. Currently the world is using less and less iodized salt for preparation in food, and this places many of us in danger of becoming iodine deficient. Deficiency in iodine causes abnormal swelling of the neck or goiter, lethargy, fatigue, weakness of the immune system, slow metabolism, autism, weight gain, depression, and in women, iodine is essential for maintaining breast health. Breast cancer incidences in Japan are virtually nonexistent because women consume twenty five times the amount of iodine that American women do. Iodine deficiency is also the most preventable cause of brain damage. Pregnant women who are deficient are at higher risk for having a stillborn child or one with birth defects. For veggie lovers who are vegetarian or vegan, if you are not including seaweed in your diet, you are putting yourself at greater risk for deficiency. Is it me, or did seaweed all of sudden get really sexy? Keep in mind you can add seaweed to soups, make nori wraps or veggie sushi, sprinkle dulse flakes on your salads, and more to ensure you get your iodine in.
The recommended daily allowance for adults over 19 years of age iodine is 150 micrograms daily. It’s important to not consume too much iodine because toxicity can also cause health problems such as gastrointestinal upset, acne, increased salivation, fever, nausea, vomiting, and elevated levels of thyroid hormone. The best way to boost your iodine intake on a vegetarian diet is to incorporate sea vegetables into your diet such as: kelp, dulse, nori, wakame, arame, hiziki, kombu, irish moss. Black eye peas and navy beans also have a decent amount of iodine, strawberries, cranberries, organic yogurt, navy beans, cheese, and potatoes.
Most minerals have inhibitors, or nutrients that can block the proper absorption and uptake by the body. In the case of iodine, goitrogens are substances in chemicals, foods or drugs that can interfere with iron uptake in the thyroid gland. Goitrogens are found in soy products, cassava, sweet potato, peanuts, pine nuts, raw cruciferous vegetables such as cabbage, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts, broccoli, turnips etc. Don’t get spooked about consuming these foods, which have other nutrients that are beneficial to the body; just take care especially if focused on increasing iodine intake to not consume meals with these foods at the same time of iodine supplementation.
Ensuring that your iodine intake is optimal can prevent radiation induced thyroid cancer, decrease the pain of fibrocystic breasts, and also prevent mental retardation, which is a direct result of iodine deficiency. Although it is not always the first mineral that comes to mind are essential, clearly the lack of iodine can have a drastic impact on health. Hope this article inspires you to do a double take when you pass the seaweed in the grocery store! Just make sure that the seaweed you choose to consume is organic and free of heavy metals. -XO Raw Girl
References:
-
7 Foods Rich in Iodine. (2015, February 25). Retrieved January 30, 2017, from http://www.globalhealingcenter.com/natural-health/iodine-foods/
- National Institute of Health. Iodine. Office of Dietary Supplements. Fact Sheet for Health Professionals.
- Gastaldi R, Muraca M, Beltramo A, Poggi E. Iodine deficiency and its consequences for cognitive and psychomotor development of children. Italian Journal of Pediatrics. 2014;40(Suppl 1):A15. doi:10.1186/1824-7288-40-S1-A15.
- Zimmermann MB, Boelaert K. Iodine deficiency and thyroid disorders. Lancet Diabetes Endocrinol. 2015 Apr;3(4):286-95. doi: 10.1016/S2213-8587(14)70225-6. Epub 2015 Jan 13.
- Ross, A. C., Caballero, B. , Cousins, R. J., Tucker, K.L. & Ziegler, T. R. (2014). Modern Nutrition in Health and Disease. (11th ed.). Baltimore, MD: Lippincott, Williams & Wilkins.
- Zimmerman, M. (2001). Burgerstein’s Handbook of Nutrition. Micronutrients in the Prevention and Therapy of Disease. New York, NY: Thieme.