Gut Health…How Your Digestive System Works We’ve discussed how important your gut health is to your entire well-being.  Too often, modern medicine gives us the impression we can eat anything we want with no consequences as big pharma will have a pill to fix everything.  Not true!  We are responsible for our health as a result of what we eat, so let’s take a look at the digestive system to have a basic understanding of how it works. Your digestive system is a series of several parts. In addition to accessory organs like the gallbladder and liver, you have your stomach, small intestine, large intestine and pancreas. Each part of…

What Is a Healthy Gut and Why Does Gut Health Matter? I know it seems like the subject “du-jour”, but you truly are what you eat.  “Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food” Hippocrates, (c.430 BC).  Words to live by, and words to live well by.  There is a huge movement afoot of people who are realizing they can change their lives by changing what they eat, and what they eat affect their gut health.  I am one of them. My life has been transformed in the past year and a half by a gradual change in my diet.  This is not something that happened overnight, but rather an…

Eating well on vacation It’s one thing to go on vacation with your husband (you can eat the way you want). It’s entirely another challenge when you go on vacation with another couple who in no way eats the way you do! We just had a terrific time in Florida with our friends Warren and Kathy. They eat very differently than we do, however, so we knew that would be a challenge. We were their guests at a house they had rented near Sanibel Island on Matlacha (matt-lah-shay). The first thing we did was go food shopping. We bought eggs, berries, smoked trout, ripe avocados, olive oil and balsamic vinegar,…

Eating well in the airport How do I make sure I am eating well in the airport while I’m waiting for a flight? Actually I did pretty well. Because it was very early morning flight, I had gotten up at 3 AM. It was a little early to face eating breakfast, so I hadn’t eaten very much before I left the house. I had a slice of Socca (recipe below) with raw almond butter on it and half a cup of coffee. I had packed more Socca and almond butter for the flight, two hard-boiled eggs, cut-up celery, peppers, cucumbers and some hummos. All this was in a small lunch…

FLC Syndrome…I’m suffering from it, and it’s my own fault…why? When I was working on the last section of my book, “Eat Your Blues Away”, I titled it “How to Prevent a Back Slide”.  It focused on the problem of how you keep yourself eating clean and avoiding the temptation of a donut now and then (my all time favorite!), a piece of crusty white Italian bread with Gorgonzola cheese, or something else that used to be an irresistible treat. I’m currently coming out of a few days of FLC Syndrome, a condition coined by Dr. Mark Hyman.  FLC stands for ”feel like crap” which many of us do as a result of the way we eat. …

Big business is banking on you and me screwing up…Fast food companies, fitness establishments etc. are counting on you and me not keeping our commitments to ourselves and not achieving our health and fitness goals.  What do I mean by this? Here’s a great example for you.  Gyms and fitness companies plan on you and me buying a membership, showing up for a while, and then giving up on getting in shape.  How do they plan for this?  They oversell memberships; in fact, if everyone who bought a gym membership showed up, they couldn’t accommodate everyone.  You know how busy it is at the gym right after the holidays when people…

How to Choose the Right Diet for You Which diet is the right one for you? The truth is, I think dieting is not the best way to lose weight.  To be on a diet implies it’s for a finite period of time which invites the yo-yo effect of weight loss, weight gain, weight loss, weight gain… and so it goes. Most people think it’s simply a matter of trying many different things and then choosing what works. Even more importantly than choosing what works is sticking with what works. What really works and what is best for your long term health is a life style change and a commitment to clean eating rather…

  Become a “Healthyist” You are probably wondering what in the world a “Healthyist” is.  Since we came up with the term, we decided we should also come up with a definition for you, so here it is: “Healthyist” – noun – One who is committed to enjoying health and vigor of body, mind and spirit. This is a journey my husband Rob and I have been on for many years, but most seriously since the fall of 2012.  At that time, we realized that some health issues he was experiencing were the result of taking statins in a high dose for several years.  (If you are on statins, I…

3 Ways to Quickly Relax and Decrease Stress There’s no question that stress causes disease. It’s been directly linked to obesity, diabetes and heart disease just to name a few. It also negatively affects your immune system and can make you feel grumpy, tired, and just plain unhappy. Unfortunately, in our fast paced world stress is a part of life. There are bills to pay, friends and family to get along with, and challenges to overcome. The good news is how you handle stress is completely within your control. When you’re feeling stressed you can let your emotions take over, or you can take steps to instantly relax and decrease stress.…