Thin Strong Healthy

More About Going Gluten Free I think Dr. Mark Hyman is amazing!  He is the one who got Rob and me started down the real road to eating whole healthy food, getting our sugar under control and ridding me of my struggles with depression. In my most recent post, we began a general discussion of gluten, who should eliminate it and why.  Gluten and going gluten free is a much more complicated subject than you may think.  Just because food is gluten free does not necessarily mean it is healthy food for you to eat.  I read a post by Dr. Hyman that I thought you would find fascinating! I particularly…

Why Go Gluten Free? Many people decide to eliminate gluten from their diets due to a medical condition called Celiac disease. People with this disease lack the enzyme necessary to process gluten, a protein found in wheat and other grains. However, you don’t have to suffer from Celiac disease to be adversely affected by gluten. Even being sensitive to gluten and still eating it can really mess you up! If you have not been diagnosed with Celiac disease but suspect gluten might be affecting you adversely, try eliminating it from your diet, that is, go gluten free for a couple of weeks to see how you feel. It may end up being…

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…