Discipline and healthy eating Healthy eating is truly so simple that in our society, with the “food” choices that are easily available to us, it can be challenging and can require self discipline. The fast food we can grab on the go does not serve our long term health, and there are many nuances to the foods that appear healthy that we must learn and consider when making choices as to what to put in our bodies. I was talking with a friend yesterday, and she was saying how wonderful it is that different aspects of our bodies recreate and regenerate themselves constantly. In theory, over a period of time,…

Depression and the Fall Season Does Fall Make You Depressed? Fall always made me more depressed than usual. Maybe it was the shadows or the shortening of the daylight.  I live in New England, so everything freezes and dies.  I don’t know…but I always lived in dread of the approaching fall season. I began writing a book last fall (which I am getting closer to completing finally) about how I cured my depression by changing how I eat. I wanted to see how I did again this fall.  Was last year just a wonderfully aberrant year, or had I really conquered the worst time for my depression by changing my…

Fluoride is Poison When I walked into my dentist’s office last month for my semi-annual teeth cleaning appointment, I was greeted by a very large, definitely hard to miss poster telling me not to forget to have my fluoride treatment to protect my teeth against cavities. I know at some point I’ve had a fluoride treatment, but not for many years. For the past few years, as I’ve become more health conscious and frankly less trusting of what the mainstream media/advertising tells me I should be doing/eating/using, I’ve been avoiding fluoride in any form like the plague. Did you know that in the U.S. it’s illegal to add fluoride to…

Lead in Lipstick Is there poison in your cosmetics? There may be lead in your lipstick! I recently discovered that the makers of my favorite health lipstick (I bought it in bulk, but am running out…) have stopped making it. This has started me on a quest to find and share with you the best lipstick.  I’m talking about lipstick that is not tested on animals, lipstick that does not have lead in it (I’m not kidding) and lipstick that is made with healthy ingredients but that is creamy and long lasting. Did you even know your lipstick may have lead in it?  When you think about it, it makes…

Depression sucks…the life out of you… Two important people have suffered from depression and have died in my world/the world in the past three weeks.  One is Michael, and one is Robin Williams.  Anti-depressants didn’t work for either of these men.  Michael, we suspect, was self-medicating to try to feel better, and Robin Williams hung himself. Having struggled with depression for many years, in fact until about a year ago, I can tell you it’s a lot of work being depressed.  It takes a ton of energy to function, and it sucks the life and the joy out of you.  Being depressed is, well, depressing… Someone recently wrote…”the saddest part…

How Eating Whole Foods Can Help You Lose Weight As Americans, we are always pre-occupied with weight loss.  We should be; we have become a very over-weight nation.  There’s always some new pill or tonic being advertised; some new fad diet in the weight-loss industry. Lately it seems trends are heading back to what nature intended us to eat – good, wholesome foods. We hear a lot of talk about whole foods, but what exactly is a whole food anyway? Whole foods are foods eaten just as nature intended them, without any change or processing…simple, no chemical additives or preservatives. Every food designed by nature has a purpose and an effect on our…

Healthy Living to Combat an “Off” Day What to do when you’re having an “off” day. Some days are just not fun no matter what you try to do.  Maybe work isn’t going smoothly or you have challenges in your personal life.  Sometimes you just feel off… I’ve grown to call this feeling “chemical” because I think the balance in my brain can get out of whack relative to endorphins. I’ve also come to realize it’s usually something I’ve done, not done or eaten that has contributed to how I’m feeling.  That’s not to minimize what’s going on, but to say I might be handling it differently or better if…

Eating Clean Once you’ve cleaned out your pantry, your refrigerator and your freezer, what do you replace it with?  Think colors and for goodness sake, avoid the beige processed fast foods! Start with vibrantly colored fresh food.  Go for dark red and green leafy and cruciferous vegetables, beans, grass fed organic meat and poultry if you’re a meat eater.  Wild sustainable fish if you’re a pescatarian.  Buy as much organic as you can find or afford. I know people try to change how they eat.  It’s a seductive world out there in the food industry.  Keep in mind, there are diabolical people whose mission it is to keep you addicted…

Eating Clean I was talking with a friend the other day… we’ll call her Gracie here.  Gracie was telling me her doctors had prescribed an anti-depressant to control her mood and to help her through her day. We started talking about food and eating and drugs and all that important stuff that can make or ruin your day, days and your life. She told me about how she had consulted a while back with a nutritionist to try to learn how to eat to feel better and lose some weight; I call it “eating clean“.  She ended up so confused, she didn’t know what to do.  She stopped eating entirely…

Natural Hair Conditioner… Use Organic Coconut Oil! Last week, while we were preparing for our niece’s wedding, Rob took a picture of me with Katie and Ricky (bride and groom) at the wedding venue.  When I saw the picture, I said, “What is that on my head that’s supposed to be my hair?!”  Granted, it was very humid that day, but I looked like Phyllis Diller had stuck her finger in an electrical socket! I set off on a mission to change that and ended up in the hair care department of my local drug store.  I was desperate.  What I found was stuff that cost at a minimum $35…