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3 REALISTIC Ways to Change Your Diet
By Lisa Kilgour RHN
Many of us start the year with the best of intentions…and after a few months we’ve found ourselves off-track. We can see the person we want to be (fitter, more energy, a healthy glow) and the path to get there (eat better, exercise regularly, reduce stress)…but frequently we get sidetracked. Why? Because change is hard! Changing our everyday habits can seem very overwhelming, especially at the very beginning.
There are many obstacles that can stand in front of us, and the one I hear all the time is, “I want to change my diet, but my husband/wife/partner/family keep pulling me off track”. Sorry, that’s no excuse. Creating a healthy diet doesn’t need to be difficult and it isn’t something you are “on” for a few weeks at a time.
Let’s just throw away the word “diet” – eating healthy is a way of life, and you CAN work around your partner or family’s eating habits!
How? Try this:
- Stop thinking your diet is either on or off, black or white – A healthy lifestyle lives in the “grey”, it doesn’t need to be 100% perfect to be healthy. A treat in the morning is no excuse to eat junk food all day!
- Change the meals you eat alone FIRST! – Dinner (the meal most of us share with our family) is only one meal of the day…what about the other 2 meals and snacks? A healthy lifestyle can be created without ever touching dinner! Plus, dinner tends to be the healthiest meal of...
5 Forgotten & Cheap Superfoods!
Feb 20, 2012 • Categories: Superfoods • by Joy McCarthy
(If you prefer to watch a video on my superfoods, then check out this video I did on YouTube, there are a few surprises that are not mentioned below).
It’s not difficult to empty your wallet on the latest and trendiest super foods on the market imported from distant lands. While these foods have absolutely incredible health benefits that certainly make them superfood-worthy (coconut oil, raw cacao, goji berries), this post is about the forgotten and inexpensive ones that you might be passing by while grocery shopping.
What makes a food a superfood-worthy? High level of antioxidants, great source of vitamins and minerals that are proven in studies to be effective at everything from balancing blood sugar to reducing the risk of many different types of cancer. Here are my top 5 favourite superfoods:
1. Kefir: The “champagne of yogurt” is what this effervescent product of fermentation has been referred to and I agree! It provides you with a megawatt dose of active live bacteria. In fact, 1 tbsp provides 5 billion good bacteria and 240mL has up to 88 billion – that’s a whole lot of creepy crawlies!
This good bacteria is excellent for curing digestive problems such as ulcers, bloating, constipation and reducing bronchitis and pneumonia. Good bacteria is essential to a healthy strong immune system. Here’s more on kefir: http://www.joyoushealth.ca/2010/01/04/kefir-is-a-super-food/ and a delicious muesli recipe with kefir:http://www.joyoushealth.ca/2011/11/18/homemade-energizing-breakfast-muesli-recipe/
2. Whole egg: A wonderful source of low cost high quality protein. Notice I said, the “whole” egg? That’s right, you need to...
Okanagan Health Forum Presents the film “Forks over Knives” in Penticton
Events
This critically acclaimed documentary is showing in Penticton Thursday March 1 at the Shatford Centre & Sunday March 4 at the Creekside Theatre in Lake Country. The evening is much more than a film night. Come for Food Samples, a Documentary followed by an Expert Panel Discussion featuring: Rip Esselstyn, live via Skype from Texas, pro-triathlete for 12 years, pro firefight and author of the Engine 2 Diet Brenda Davis, Dietitian, author & international speaker Roger Crittenden, M.D. Family Practice Physician Tickets $ 5 – available at Nature’s Fare Kelowna & Penticton
Okanagan Health Forum Presents the film “Forks over Knives” in Lake Country
Events
This critically acclaimed documentary is showing in Penticton Thursday March 1 at the Shatford Centre & Sunday March 4 at the Creekside Theatre in Lake Country. The evening is much more than a film night. Come for Food Samples, a Documentary followed by an Expert Panel Discussion featuring: Rip Esselstyn, live via Skype from Texas, pro-triathlete for 12 years, pro firefight and author of the Engine 2 Diet Brenda Davis, Dietitian, author & international speaker Roger Crittenden, M.D. Family Practice Physician Tickets $ 5 – available at Nature’s Fare Kelowna & Penticton
Healthy Heart 4 Life Contest!
Contests
February is heart health month, but we believe heart care is a daily necessity all year long. What better way to help keep your heart pumping than to get outside and stay active with a new pair of snowshoes!
We are giving away 2 pairs of snowshoes!
How to enter?
At www.naturesfare.com/blog nature’s fare posts many educational blog articles and health tips to help keep you informed and prepared to make important decisions about your health.
- Step #1: Using the links below, answer the 5 heart health questions
- Step #2: Submit your response by March 9th to media@naturesfare.com
- Step #3: The winners will be announced on March 12th.
Contest Questions: (click the links or visit www.naturesfare.com/blog to search the title)
1.Plaque buildup is a condition called_______________ or coronary artery disease. (BLOG23/02/2011: Love your Heart! Facts and tips about cholesterol)
2.The active ingredient in ___________________ is a compound called 3nB, acting as a diuretic and vasodilator. It reduces blood volume and increases arterial diameter, decreasing the pressure on the walls of the arteries. (BLOG23/02/2011: Love your Heart! Facts and tips about cholesterol)
3. What are the 3 steps that can be taken to lessen the side effects of statin drugs? 1) 2) 3) (BLOG 19/10/2011: Heartache from mainstream heart care)
4. List 3 of the 6 tips to keep in mind when lowering cholesterol? 1) 2) 3) (BLOG 19/10/2011: Heartache from mainstream heart care)
5. Heart disease is not just a disease of excess, it’s primarily a disease of deficiencies. The risk is greatest if you have dangerously inadequate levels of protective nutrients like...
A Personal Mission: Define Your Wellness By Deepak Chopra, MD, FACP
A basic outline for prevention has existed for more than thirty years, but wellness has had a hard time making real headway. Old habits are hard to break. Our society has a magic bullet fixation, waiting for the next miracle drug to cure us of every ill. Doctors receive no economic benefit from pushing prevention over drugs and surgery. For all these reasons, compliance with prevention falls far below what is needed for maximum wellness.Visualization is courtesy of TheVisualMD.com
Rather than feeling gloomy, my focus has been on getting the individual to take charge of their own wellness. This can be a considerable challenge, since we are each unique in our bodies but also unique in our pattern of bad habits and poor lifestyle choices. More than 40% of American adults make a resolution to live a better life each year, and fewer than half keep their promise to themselves for longer than 6 months. Conditioning is hard to break, but the key is that the power to break a habit belongs to the same person who made it – the turnaround amounts to giving up unconscious behavior and adopting conscious new patterns.
Once your mind begins to pay attention, your brain can build new neural pathways to reinforce what you learn. Much is made of the brain’s ability to change and adapt – the general term is neuroplasticity – but I think science has been slow to catch up with wise experience. It has always been true that applying awareness in...
Feeling Tired or Tense? Have a Drink … of Water!
Some experts recommend drinking 10 glasses of water a day. Others recommend drinking only when you feel thirsty. But a new study shows that even mild dehydration can affect our mood, lower our energy level, and cloud our thinking.
The University of Connecticut’s Human Performance Laboratory conducted two studies of young men and women. The subjects weren’t couch potatoes or high performance athletes. They were healthy and physically active with most getting 30 to 60 minutes of exercise each day.
Participants were properly
hydrated the evening before being tested. The next day they walked on a treadmill to induce dehydration. Then they underwent cognitive testing for vigilance, concentration, reaction time, learning, memory, and reasoning. The results were compared to test scores obtained when they were fully hydrated.
Whether participants walked for 40 minutes on a treadmill or sat around relaxing, all experienced mild dehydration. (Mild dehydration is a 1.5 percent loss in the body’s normal water volume.)
“Dehydration affects all people, and staying properly hydrated is just as important for those who work all day at a computer as it is for marathon runners, who can lose up to 8 percent of their body weight as water when they compete,” stated Lawrence E. Armstrong, one of the studies’ lead researchers and professor of physiology.
“Our thirst sensation doesn’t really appear until we are 1 or 2 percent dehydrated. By then dehydration is already setting in and starting to impact how our mind and body perform.”
Effects of dehydration on women
Women appeared to...
Large Natural Retailer Abandons GMO Fight?
After many years of fighting against genetically engineered (GE) seeds and crops created and championed by Monsanto, national proponents of natural and organic agriculture, like Whole Foods Market, Organic Valley and Stonyfield Farms, have given up their struggle. In exchange for bringing their opposition to a standstill, Whole Foods has asked for some form of compensation to be paid to those farmers who experience losses due to the contamination of their crops by Monsanto GE seeds.
An article found in the Organic & Non GMO Report details projections made by Jeremy Rifkin, founder and president of The Foundation on Economic Trends and noted critic of biotechnology, predicting that without the regulation of genetically engineered crops the organic industry will suffer serious contamination. According to Rifkin, biotechnology has created two separate scientific paths.
The hard path manipulates nature with recombinant DNA technologies, while the soft path uses genomics to gain a higher understanding of genes. Rifkin believes that the soft path will lead to better stewardship for sustainable agriculture, while following the hard path will result in the death of the organic industry and environmentally responsible farming.
Unlike Organic Inc., the group consisting of Whole Foods, Stonyfield and Organic Valley, Rifkin does not believe that coexistence can be achieved between biotech and organic farming. Currently there is no requirement for GMO products to be labeled in natural or conventional foods. The only certainty is that organic products will be free of GMOs, as organic compliance strictly prohibits GMO presence in any certified organic products.
Nature’s...
