Discover the Components of Sustainable Weight Loss

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Butt in Jeans
Two weeks into 2017 … how are you doing with your New Year’s resolutions? Did your resolutions – like so many others’ – include an intention to lose weight? I’m going to go out on a limb and guessing that you aren’t having a great deal of success.

Now, I don’t doubt your intention or your efforts. Yet I do know something about how our bodies work. We women tend to focus on body size, or more specifically, on the number on our scale.

How long have you been fighting the battle? How many different plans have you followed – counting calories, skipping meals, depriving yourself, feeling hungry, and counting more calories? Yes, calories matter. But hormones matter more. Read more

Simple Truths for Wellness

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Keep It SimpleAs January comes to a close, how would you evaluate this first month of 2017? Were you, like so many others, working to improve your health by losing weight and changing your food habits? How is that going? Don’t beat yourself up. Let’s regroup and simplify.

I have written frequently about food choices and I’m not going to rehash that subject here. What I do want to emphasize is what I call eating hygiene – as simple as HOW you eat. Read more

Get A Positive Start Daily

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Good ThingsA new year has begun and 2016 is behind us. If you are like me, you have a new calendar and turning to January you see a fresh page before you … full of possibilities and potential.

Do you view each New Year’s Day as an opportunity to begin again? Why not consider each day that way? Each morning that you awake lays before you the opportunity to shift and grow.

You aren’t bound by your past. It doesn’t define your potential. You are a living being who has the potential to grow each and every day. Ask any parent with a baby who is just learning to walk. They will tell you their baby stumbles, plops down or rolls onto the floor, but they get right back up and try again. You did, too, when you were little! Read more

Spice Up Your Holidays – and Your Health!

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whole-spicesYou may consider this week as the home stretch for the holidays, or are you may just be getting warmed up with Christmas, New Years and then the buildup for Mardi Gras? How are you faring thus far? Remembering to care for yourself?

One way that you can care for yourself is to incorporate spices into your food, or even a cup of tea, to support your body with the benefits they offer. My list of possibilities is pretty long, but let me offer a few options to get you started. Read more

Strategies for a Healthful Holiday

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holiday-partyAs you look over this month’s calendar are your weekends filling up with social events which will involve the gathering of friends and family, not to mention a variety of tasty morsels and assorted bubbly or creamy drinks.

Have past holiday seasons left you with extra pounds displayed on your scale, a pesky foggy brain, lagging energy, and a nagging sense of “oops, I’ve done it again”?

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Give Yourself the Gift of Gratitude

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gratitudeWhat is your focus in these last few days before Thanksgiving? Are your thoughts dominated with a grocery list for the food you will prepare, the arrangements that must be made for guests, the seating arrangements or perhaps the calorie overload that comes with the traditional feast? Or perhaps your primary thought is where you will settle for your post-turkey nap?

All of these demands on your attention are significantly contributing to your stress level, which hinders your digestion, affects your cardiovascular and respiratory function, and makes you susceptible to viral illness.

There is a fairly simple practice that can improve your health, your relationships, your emotions, and your career … all in only 5 minutes a day. Curious?
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How Sensitive Is Your Body?

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caution-with-foodI’m a strong proponent of Hippocrates’ idea that our food should be our medicine and our medicine should be our food. Yet the adage that one man’s medicine is another man’s poison couldn’t apply more appropriately than in the topic of food.

Millions of people suffer from allergic or inflammatory reactions to the common foods they consume every day. For most of us, the thought of food allergies prompts a mental image of hives or a swollen tongue developing in response to eating a peanut. That is an example of an immediate allergy which results in an aggressive histamine reaction. These are serious, but not as frequent as you may think. Read more

Another Holiday Sugar High?

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halloween-candyWhat scares you most about Halloween – images of scary costumes and horror movies, or the effect that the sugar overload will have on the children you know?

When I was a child decades ago, candy was a part of birthday parties and holidays scattered throughout the year, but it wasn’t a daily source of calories as it is for children today. Few children come home from school each day without having eaten some sort of chocolate, lollipop, or sugary substance. It may even have come to them as part of their school lunch in the form of fruit juice or chicken nuggets with ketchup, to name a few options. Read more

Stoke the Fire in Your Gut

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stomach-acidIn prior articles, I have outlined the path that our food takes when we eat a bite. Starting with chewing, and then swallowing to send the food down the esophagus into the stomach, where it meets with stomach acid to aid in the next stages of digestion.

We aren’t aware of the intricate process that our food goes through once we swallow a bite. You may have heard the phrase “you are what you eat,” yet I would say that is not a complete statement. Simply eating doesn’t make the food become a part of you. It must be broken down into its constituent components – proteins into amino acids, carbohydrates into starches and glucose, and fats into fatty acids – in order for your body to absorb them. Read more

Edit Your Digestion – Chew!

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digestion-chartDoes your day revolve around the meals you eat, or is your schedule so tight that you give food little thought? Whatever your situation, you don’t likely put much thought into what happens as you eat.

That bite you take is just the beginning of digestion. Chewing the bite not only breaks up the food but mixes it with digestive juices. Swallowing sends the food down your esophagus into your stomach where it meets highly acidic stomach acid to continue the process of breaking the food down into constituents that can eventually be absorbed. When liquefied, the food (now called chyme) passes into the small intestine where it is joined by digestive enzymes from the pancreas and bile from the gallbladder. The small intestine is where absorption begins, finishing in the colon before excretion of waste. Read more