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Did you ever want to write a book?
Did you ever want to write a book? Many years ago, I wanted to write a book…specifically a mystery book. Mysteries were always a favorite read for me, and I had a great ending in mind. The trouble was, I couldn’t come up with a beginning or a middle, so I abandoned the project rather quickly. In recent years, the thought returned to me as I have been looking for ways to share my accidental recovery from chronic depression with others. I started to write a book several years ago, honestly without knowing what I was doing. I just started it as an online challenge to write five thousand words…
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What Processed Food Tastes Like and How We Got Here
What Does Food Taste Like to Us, and How Did We Get Here? Yesterday I was food shopping, which I actually love to do. My challenge was to find some sun dried tomatoes as my favorite brand seems to have vanished for the moment. My usual brand has olive oil and not much else which I love. It seemed everything I picked up had some kind of oil I won’t eat or sugar in it. In fact, why would you need sugar in sun dried tomatoes? All this made me wonder what processed food tastes like, and how did we get here? If you read your food labels, which I…
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How to Get Started with Healthy Eating
How to Get Started with Healthy Eating I thought it might be helpful to share some ideas for substitutions for your favorite processed foods to illustrate how to get started with healthy eating. I’m very respectful of how hard it is to change eating habits as the big food companies design their “food” to be addictive and hard to resist. We make clean eating promises to ourselves, and they might last a few days. Then the cravings for bread, sugar, pizza etc. just become too much. We fall off the wagon and get mad at ourselves; too often, we just give up. This pattern feeds into the yo-yo dieting, lose-gain-lose-gain…
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New York State Law Mandates Mental Health Education
New York State Law Mandates Mental Health Education I was running an errand yesterday and was listening to NPR while I was driving. The discussion was about a new law in New York State that requires mental health education in school curriculum. They definitely had my attention. Did you know that among teens and young adults, suicide is second only to car accidents as the number one cause of death? Stunning! Also, they said that one in five teens will struggle with mental health issues, but less than fifty percent of them will seek help. Also, for fifty percent of the population, the onset of depression or anxiety is typically…
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What Does “Glyphosate” Mean to You?
What does “glyphosate” mean to you? Let me ask that another way…If you found out you were eating the key ingredient in the week killer Roundup (known as glyphosate), would you care? I hope the answer is yes. If you are eating many common breakfast cereals and bars, then you are ingesting glyphosate with your morning meal. I want to share with you an article I read today. In it the author, Arman Azad of CNN writes: “In August, a jury in San Francisco ordered Roundup’s manufacturer, Monsanto, to pay $289 million in damages to a school groundskeeper who argued that the glyphosate-based weed killer caused his cancer. A judge on…
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Perseverance…in diet and in life…it’s everything
Perseverance The topic of this post is a bit different than what I usually share. I want to address the topic of perseverance and share a recent personal story. Perseverance relates to all aspects of our lives including health and healthy eating. Staying on track with the best food choices is not always the easiest or the most popular way to go. I speak from personal experience as this weekend I attended a family event with great food, not all of which were the best choices for me. My solution in these cases is most often to sample a small bit of the foods that are delicious but that may…
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Organic Apple Cider Vinegar and the Magic Elixir!
Organic Apple Cider Vinegar and the Magic Elixir! Confession time…this has been a process for me, and I’m still working on it. One thing that I love that has been easy for me to incorporate into my daily routine is apple cider vinegar. And not just any apple cider vinegar; organic apple cider vinegar. I often enjoy what I call an “elixir”. I make it partly because I really like it, and partly because I know it’s good for me! I use only organic apple cider vinegar, and Bragg’s is a brand that’s easy for me to find at my local grocery store. Apple cider vinegar is the fermented juice…
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What is a low inflammatory diet?
What is a low inflammatory diet? Surprisingly enough, you hear about a low inflammatory diet quite frequently now. It’s not complicated. In fact, it’s so simple that in our processed food world ironically, it’s confusing. There are so many diets on the market. Watching TV in January makes me crazy because of all the diet gimmicks and programs that are advertised after the holidays when many of us have eaten too much of the wrong foods, and we’ve gained excess weight. The question I always have is, if you subscribe to a diet, what happens when you have lost the weight by eating the food you’ve purchased from the “XYZ”…
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Allopathic or Functional Medicine. Which is right for you?
Allopathic or Functional? Allopathic or Functional? Did you know there are two basic schools of thought when it comes to our medical care? The definition of each and how we are treated by the practitioners of each school when we have a health issue is important for us to understand. Our typical health care system is based on allopathic medicine. Allopathic medicine is defined as, “a system of medical practice that aims to combat disease by use of remedies (as drugs or surgery) producing effects different from or incompatible with those produced by the disease being treated”. I frankly think of it as sickness care more than I think of…
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Inflammation and Cholesterol
Inflammation and Cholesterol Today I want to share with you some information about cholesterol. Cholesterol, by the way, is not a bad thing. In fact, cholesterol is your friend, and you need it. Before you think I’ve totally lost it, allow me to explain a bit about inflammation and cholesterol. Why in the world would cholesterol be a good thing? Isn’t our goal to get rid of it, or to get our cholesterol levels as low as possible? Cholesterol is found in every cell of your body. You need it to produce hormones, vitamin D, bile acids that help you digest your food, and you need it to produce cell…