It's the New Year!

I have always loved the fresh start of the New Year.  In years past it was always the start of a new diet, coming off of the sugar-laden fest of the holidays.  But because diet has been something I have worked diligently to change over the past few years, I no longer have this up and down.  I stick with my healthy diet through the holidays, maybe eating a few more natural sugar grams than I would have, but afterwards I make a small course correction and I am back, good as new.  It feels good to be steady and stable in this area after working on it for most of my life.  However, because I am not nearly perfect,  I continue to find other areas desperately needing my attention.  

This year I am working at becoming more consistent at daily exercise and daily scripture reading/meditation.  I involve myself in these habits throughout the year, but they definitely come and go more than I would like.  And when I add these practices to my morning, my day and my life go soooo much better.  So why would I do anything different?  Why would I NOT do them?  Who knows, but probably for the same reason I used to eat poorly and always feel badly and still go up and down with my food habits.

This life is a time to work on our weaknesses and imperfections and, in line with my religious beliefs, make an effort to become more like our Savior, Jesus Christ everyday.  If I don't work on strengthening my physical, spiritual and emotional self, I won't become more like Him.  And, believe me, I have got a loooong way to go! :-)  So here is to a fresh new start!  Let's resolve to be in a better place at the end of 2013 than we are now!

Difficult Behavior in Children

Have you ever thought that your child's difficult behavior might be caused from a food allergy or sensitivity?

If you have a good discipline system, if you are trying your best to teach good principles in the home, and your child continues to not comply, diet may be a good place to turn before you worry that your child is lost forever.

I have been through this with my children at varying levels.  One of my daughters goes into a rage when she drinks milk.  All four of my children exhibit more difficult behavior after eating anything made with sugar or white flour.  We have varying sensitivities with certain other dairy products.  My three-year-old will be extraordinarily oppositional only if she has eaten the foods she is sensitive to. 

Has it taken a lot of work to figure out these sensitivities and change our food choices?  Yes!  But has it been worth it to have greater compliance and happiness in the home?  Most definitely! 

Here is an excellent article by a lady who teaches parenting principles that I thought explained the behavior/nutrition link very, very well.

Top tips for navigating holiday food!

I have posted this the past couple of years, but I think it is ALWAYS worth re-visiting.  Our diets are a work in progress.  Every year that we practice wading through the holiday treats we get better and stronger!  It is almost impossible to expect that we will be able to bypass every single treat and not-so-nutritious food out there for the holidays.  But there are some things you can do to make it a little more successful - so you don't have to make such a huge New Year's Resolution to lose weight, or get back on your food plan, or whatever the goal.  And so you can simply feel good and more peaceful over the holiday season.    My holidays are so much more happy now that I don't overeat or eat sugary, fat-laden treats.  It took me a long time to get to that point, but it was worth the hard work!  Here are my top tips for navigating holiday food...

1.  Have a plan for what and when you will eat.  Without a plan it is impossible to navigate the food.  For example, eat a healthy meal before you go to a Christmas party or somewhere where there will be lots of treats.  Or instead of buying Christmas candy for stockings and having it around the house where you will graze on it all day, buy trinkets.  Or if you can't stand the thought of not having candy in the stockings, buy it at the last moment so it's not sitting around.  Another example (that I used in my last year's post) was to find other yummy crunchy treats, such as nuts, to put in bowls around the house rather than candy.  Now, of course you can overeat on those too.  But I can stop eating those much easier - yet get my crunchy fix!   

One of the most helpful things I did when I was trying to kick the sugar habit was to make a rule for myself that I had to eat my sugar at the end of a meal.  No eating it as a snack or snacking on it between meals.  You wouldn't believe the difference it made.  I didn't feel deprived because I knew I would be getting my fix.  But I had to eat it as a dessert after a meal.  After a while I ate less and less sweets, and eventually the treats just faded away because I stopped craving them.

2. Find some new recipes for tasty, healthy treats so there are things you can enjoy without the guilt.  Finding new recipes is super helpful in the quest to substitute old habits for new.  And there are lots of healthy treats you can make that taste good too and that use natural sweeteners. 

3. Don't beat yourself up if you do eat a few treats.  Just move on to the next meal and make a better choice next time.  This may take some practice...at least it did for me.  I was an "all or nothing" person.  So I had to learn how to be gentle and accepting of myself when I ate something that I hadn't planned to eat or when I ate more than I had planned.  I had to erase the thinking that if I "messed up" at one meal, then I might as well mess up for all 3 meals.  The minute you eat something outside of your plan, just renew your efforts for the next meal.

4. Try to center your activities around things rather than food.  There are so many fun things to do over the Christmas season, that it is entirely possible to center your traditions around everything but food.  We do.  Of course we have a few things that the children love that they look forward to eating.  But for the most part the fun comes from things like the nativity set that the kids play with all season long, decorating the tree, the advent calendar with little trinkets to look forward to everyday, the music, the lights, and, last but not least - the real reason for the season.  There are soooo many things to fill your season with fun without the food.

Believe!

As I have helped people with their health the past couple of years, I have thoroughly enjoyed helping people find the beauty of natural healing.  It makes so much sense.  It is gentle, noninvasive, and it works!!!!  Maybe not overnight.  But it is a wonderful process and creates permanent healing. 

HOWEVER, I have struggled with one blaring thing.  I have been working on letting go of it, because it is not my issue.  But it is a blaring thing, nonetheless.  And it is worse with people you know and love.  This is it...no matter how much you say you will try anything, no matter how much you want something to be better and feel better -  if you don't truly believe that it can happen then it won't.  Simply put. If you aren't quite sure that essential oils will work better than tylenol or other pain meds, if you aren't quite sure that a supplement like ASEA can heal you starting with every little cell in your body, if you don't believe that changing the way you eat will dramatically improve your quality of life in every way, then dabbling in it and trying it and doing it for a little while and then saying it doesn't work - that's just a formula for failure.

I challenge you to believe that there is another way!  Believe that you can figure out a way to relieve your pain, believe that you can reverse diseases like diabetes and heart disease, believe that you can let go of your weight and leave it by the wayside.  Get to the root of your problem and truly HEAL.  FOREVER!  Believe that there are tools that God has given us in this world, to naturally heal us!  Believe that there are solutions.  I can't wait to build my business and guide more people to heal naturally.  My life has been greatly enriched and continues to be enriched as I find new ways to heal and feel GREAT.  Not just good, but GREAT!  It has been a long journey for me and taken a while to navigate and figure out what really works best for my own body.  But it has been so worth it!  I don't miss eating what everyone else eats, for I have found food that makes my body sing that tastes wonderful to me.  I don't miss going to the doctor's office to get antibiotics.  I don't miss relying on doctors to tell me what is wrong.  I feel so empowered to have learned how to be the healer in my own home.  I challenge each of you to look deep inside, see what is missing, and BELIEVE that there is a solution to your problem!  And if you need help, I am here!  Email me at wholefoodswholelife@gmail.com for pricing and coaching programs. We will be Certified Health Coaching soon!  But for now check in with Whole Foods Whole Life.

Welcome to Certified Health Coaching!

We have created Certified Health Coaching as a means to help strengthen families.  We believe that the importance of a strong family in today's society is paramount and many of the societal ills today can be cured by the collective effort of strengthening families.  Enter life's stresses, unhealthy food, lack of exercise, and all-around lack of time, it is hard for parents to help in creating this change.  Our hope is that through this coaching, we can help transform you, and in turn you will help transform and strengthen your family!  There is nothing better than a happy home.  We are here to help you attain that goal!

These are some changes you can expect to see through the work you will do with us at Certified Health Coaching...

Increase in energy
Increase in mental clarity
Decrease of stress and overwhelm
Increased immunity (i.e. milder and less frequent illnesses)
Decreased cravings
Weight loss 

Cravings

Do you have cravings?  For sugar or carbs or even things like cheese?  Are they strong and irresistible?  Strong, hard-to-beat cravings indicate that something in our body is off-balance.  If you explore where they are coming from, you will be taking the 1st step to getting rid of them.  And, believe me, life is much more peaceful without those nagging cravings! 

In working with people and also from my own self-experimentation, I've uncovered a golden truth.  Filling our bodies with nutrient dense foods calms our bodies' "screams" for the non-nutrient dense foods.  Seriously, it is that simple.  Most of our bodies are SCREAMING for nutrients!  Good nutrient dense food.  That is often where that craving is originating.  (There are other reasons that can be explored in another post, but this is the most common.)  Sugar and processed foods are going into our bodies and our bodies are then craving more of the same.  Once we fill them with nutrient dense foods, we discover that the "screaming" slowly goes to yelling, then even to talking.  And eventually it turns into a whisper or doesn't even have a voice at all!  And that is when we have a greater ability to by-pass the same nutrient void foods we were once craving.

I have a friend who decided to get some nutrients into her day by making a green smoothie every morning.  She included lots of fruit to calm the bitter taste of the greens. And that helped her to enjoy and look forward to the smoothie every morning.  After a short while she experienced amazing results.  She said that there was a large cookie sitting on the table that would have normally called to her until she ate it all.  This particular morning she started eating a few bites of it and set it down - surprising herself that she didn't want to eat the rest of it!  She was so grateful that the cravings were settling.  And it was all because she answered her body's call to balance itself with some good nutrients.  Our bodies have a language.  They literally speak to us - through cravings, through aches and pains, etc.  If we are experiencing these things, it is our bodies' attempt to tell us, "Hey, something is off. Something is out of balance.  Help me!"  We can re-balance our bodies and feel better as we listen to what they are saying to us.  It takes some practice, it takes some effort and some true listening.  But once we become more in tune, we will be able to find solutions to our problems and be on the path to greater physical and emotional health.

How I found ASEA

I don't get into product hype.  I've been introduced to many products through attending the Institute of Integrative Nutrition, as well as from my personal quest for supplements or products that would help me when I was ill.  I felt compelled to turn down things that sounded too good to be true and made promises of healing.  Not that they weren't decent products, just that they weren't the right thing for me to be taking at the time.  At the time I was focusing on how I could heal through dietary interventions. It required a lot of experimentation and trial and error.   And I wanted to do everything I could do before I took a "magic pill" or the like.

Along the healing path there were certain practices that were clearly helpful to me.  Taking digestive enzymes, exercising, increasing my consumption of greens and raw foods, to name a few.  It's now been over 2 years since I started healing.  And, recently, I literally hit the dietary wall - so to speak.  In other words, the optimal diet for me (high on the raw foods) was no longer working in all respects.  At this point I would call my health issues minor, but there are still some there.  So I switched some things up with my diet (eliminated a few problem foods and lowered my raw food consumption) and the problems I was having disappeared...but other problems came.  It was a little disconcerting, because they were problems that I had said good-bye to quite some time ago.  They had disappeared when I increased my consumption of green smoothies and salads.  As I thought about the fact that I might just have to settle for one set of problems, I prayed to know if there was something else that might help.  I had exhausted all possibilities with my diet.  I had studied nutrition and diligently applied the principles to myself and my healing.  I had really done all that I knew how.

Enter ASEA...I had read about this amazing supplement quite a few months ago when a former doctor of mine introduced it into his holistic practice.  But on this particular day, when I was "searching", I came across it again.  I started reading about it and was convinced that this was the missing link for me.  Fast forward 6 weeks, and the benefits that my husband and I are receiving from this "signaling molecules" supplement are truly amazing.  It has already reversed some of the problems I mentioned before.  My digestion is improving, some intermittent fatigue has gone away, tendonitis in my left arm is gone, and even my nails are getting stronger!  I expect to see even more improvement as I stay on the supplement.  The greatest result for my husband so far is that his weight has budged - downward!  He had tried everything (cleanses, diets, exercise) and it was clear that he had some metabolic issues that were preventing him from losing weight.

That said, we have decided that this product is worth sharing!  We hope it can benefit your lives as it has ours.

Please visit our website:
wholelife.teamasea.com

If you are interested in more information, you can fill out a form on the website, you can contact me directly at wholelife@teamasea.com, or even leave a comment here.