Crazy Sexy Life

We all know life can be sexy (YUM) and crazy (OY)...so how do we keep the two in balance?

Kris Carr's Crazy Sexy Life wellness hub delivers daily tips of goodness to keep you feelin' groovy!

And I was beyond thrilled at the opportunity to contribute to the discussion.

Here's my article 6 Steps Towards Emotional Wellness.

Enjoy and be well!

xo

Practicing Extreme Self Care

It's been an uber crazy month so far and not without some stressors. Fall is my favorite season but it's also the time when work gets really busy and includes evening and weekend hours. As a result, my food plan generally goes south this time of year. But the more hectic the work schedule, the more important it is to practice what life coach Cheryl Richardson calls "extreme self care." There are various components that contribute to our well being...cultivating and fostering meaningful and healthy relationships, nurturing our physical/emotional/spiritual/mental selves, and creating a harmonious living space and living within our means. For now, my focus has been on maintaining physical health...through food and fitness.

Staying late at the office always had me craving greasy or sugary comfort food...and coffee. When the pumpkin spice flavor would come in I'd be all over it. It actually came early this year...and I consumed it daily (with other pumpkin spice lovers) until it was gone.

Now I know what you're thinking. Everything in moderation. Unfortunately I don't have the will power to do that. I end up drinking one cup of pumpkin spice coffee. The next day I'm adding cream to it (stuff I shouldn't be drinking). Coffee seems to be my gateway drug. Next thing you know, I'm eating a cheese sandwich or grabbing a cappuccino once or twice a week (for the first time ever I watched someone make it and had no idea they put so much milk in it - damn). I am not supposed to even be eating dairy but when the going gets busy at work I find excuses for these foods...foods that are not part of my regular diet.

Luckily these digressive phases don't last long and I quickly get back into the routine of a clean diet. But I'd prefer to never get off track because I tend to go to extremes (even if it's only for two weeks at a time) and then suffer the consequences (breakouts, headaches, and lethargy). So I gave myself a clean slate and re-committed to doing a clean diet during one of the busiest work weeks of the year...partly because I wanted the week to be as stress-free as possible (and a clean diet goes a long way with that) and because I have a super fun event next week that I want to look good for.

Aside from clearer skin, I'm motivated to maintain a clean diet because it keeps my energy levels high (good if you must work long hours) and lessens the amount of stress I put on my body (ie no caffeine, mucus-producing dairy, and acidic effects from sugar, salt and processed foods). Yum!

So what did I consume this week?

* Daily probiotic
* Hemp, banana, honey, peanut butter, almond milk, and cinnamon shakes
* Black bean burritos with salsa, quinoa, onions and roasted red peppers
* Brown rice pasta with artichokes, tomatoes, onions and peppers
* Braised carrot soup
* Brown rice with pinto beans, corn, and sauteed onions
* Panang curry with tofu from Chabba Thai
* Yummy sweet potato lentil and minestrone soups from Couch Tomato
* Peanut butter and banana sandwiches (on days I didn't do the shake)
* Two 16 oz green juices daily (romaine, mint, grapes, apple, celery, cucumber, broccoli stems)
* Caffeine-free herbal teas
* Exercise (weekend runs and bike rides; 20 minute yoga or circuit training)
* 7-8 hours of sleep

And I still found a way to have some comfort food this week...inspired by this rainy day in Philly. I recently found an online recipe for a peppery grilled cheese and made some vegan tweaks with new add-ons for a super scrumptious treat.


Grilled CheesusIngredients:

*1/2 organic red bell pepper
*2 thin slices of yellow onion
*2 tbsp Vegenaise
*1/2 tbsp minced garlic
*1/2 cup Daiya cheddar style shreds
*4 slices whole wheat bread

Saute onions in a little olive oil until golden. In a blender combine the pepper, garlic and mayo. Brush a little olive oil on bread slices and add the cheese, onions and pepper mayo. Grill until you see the goods in all their glory. Wonder where Daiya has been all your life.

Side note on the green juices - I recently bought some Ball mason jars, inspiration courtesy of Kris Carr, at my hardware store. They are inexpensive, super cute, and nifty for bringing your juice with you wherever you go! I got the 16 oz jars...the perfect portion size with an air-tight lid to keep the juice fresher longer. I typically juice around 32 oz at a given time and store them to have as snacks the next day.

What do you do to practice extreme self care?

T2C: Losing Our Minds

A photo from Olivia's old apartment in Philly.

Your two favorite (wink wink) green health junkies are at it again. I’m teaming up with Olivia to launch a new weekly feature, A Tale from Two Cities (T2C), which will document various health and food adventures from our respective corners of the world: Philadelphia, PA, and Seoul, South Korea.

Our first blog title is not meant to announce an onset of psychosis or to imply that we have indeed gone bonkers. It’s true that our lives have gotten pretty darn busy (but extremely exciting) in recent months –an engagement and long-distance wedding planning from Seoul and a part-time gig with an awesome nutritionist in Philadelphia – and with such events naturally comes some stress and a need to unwind and just “be.” With that said, we’re focusing our first post on the very important topic of meditation and relaxation.

Jen ~ Philadelphia

I have always been a fidgety person. I still can’t manage to, well, sit still. My mind easily wanders and is cluttered with to-do lists, worries, thoughts of the future, and more menial wonderment of things like what’s going to happen on the next season of Dexter. And I imagine it’s this way for a lot of people. How can it not be? We live in a fast-paced culture with never-ending workdays, fast food at every corner, 24-hour news cycles, incessant tweeting and facebooking, and an urge to bring our blackberries with us on vacation. Oy! Where does all of this get us and what kind of world do we create for ourselves in the process? We need some room to breathe, people! And the only person who can help you is you.

Everyone will choose a different path to get to that breathing space. I’m not one for traditional meditation on a regular basis…not yet. I’ve tried it and it doesn’t appeal to me right now. In the meantime, yoga is serving quite nicely as my meditation and “me” time. I deem twenty minutes of it a day to be an accomplishment. My other current “go-to” inspirations for centeredness are passages from Eckhart Tolle’s The Power of Now and Kris Carr’s recent vlog on taking mini-vacations every day.

I highly recommend Tolle’s chapter “Freeing Yourself from Your Mind.” Newsflash! You are not your mind! He recommends monitoring your thoughts as an outsider (without judgment) to observe thought patterns, especially those that are repetitive, negative, and subsequently destructive. In doing so, you can practice being fully present in the “now.” When I last did this exercise I felt as if a weight had been lifted…no worries…just happiness…just being. As for the mini-vacation exercise – that starts tomorrow. Got to start planning. Might simply entail a 15-minute break/walk during the workday or a 30-minute “check-out” at Starbucks with a girly magazine. How do you unwind? How do you get centered?

Olivia ~ Seoul

If someone told you they knew of something that would help you be more productive at work, sleep more soundly at night, and improve your overall happiness, you’d probably be clamoring to find out their secret. Especially when you found out it was free, could be done anytime, anywhere.

Meditation, of course, is all of this, and more. So why don’t we all sit down and let go every day? Or, more precisely: why don’t I have a daily meditation practice yet, even though I’ve been practicing off and on for over five years and love love love the benefits?

The honest truth? I don’t know. So I’m letting this little write-up serve as a reminder for some of my favorite meditation tidbits. With any luck, this will inspire you to take five or ten minutes in your day to check in—or check out.

• Even five minutes a day can make a big difference

• If you exist, you can do it. You don’t need any props or special knowledge. You don’t even need a secluded space (though it can be nice).

• When in doubt, close your eyes and focus on the breath as it passes through your nose. If your mind is being particularly uncooperative, go ahead and count to a given series of numbers as you inhale and exhale. (For example, inhale to 5, exhale to 7.)

• If you do it before bed, it will help calm what I call “hamster brain”—that incessant racing of thoughts that you don’t want to be thinking.

• If (when) a thought keeps popping up, go ahead and acknowledge it, thank it for coming to the party, and tell it you’ll give it your full attention to learn from it later. But now is not the time.

• It provides many of the same benefits of a glass of vino (relaxation, a ritual for letting go of the work day, an increased likelihood of cracking a smile) without those pesky price tags/calories/toxicity.

Check Green Junkie Living next week for more resources and techniques to take your meditation practice to the next level.

Namaste!

An Inconvenient Truth

I just finished Dr. T. Colin Campbell's The China Study, a book that my dear friend Olivia sent to me as part of a fabulous care package from Korea. I put off reading it for a few months, mostly out of laziness and because I wanted, for a little while, to avoid the advice that lay within the pages of research: consider saying "So long" to meat and dairy.

The author, with almost 30 years of research under his belt, concluded that consuming a whole foods, plant-based diet is one of the most important contributions one can make to his or her health. The China Study, dubbed the "Grand Prix of Epidemiology," documents the most comprehensive study conducted on nutrition and its relation to cancer and chronic illness. Campbell also includes prominent studies by other researchers who have similarly focused on the connection between diet and health on multiple sclerosis, autoimmune diseases, osteoporosis, and heart disease.

Bottom line: when it comes to health, Campbell advocates a diet without meat and dairy, influential "foods" that play a role in chronic illness. Despite the telling research, I wondered about The China Study's reach into the mainstream. How convincing is this book and would it inspire people to give up meat? I'm not entirely sure of the answer. I would guess that most people reading the book are uber health nuts, researchers, doctors (fingers crossed), or people facing a serious illness. It's usually in sickness that people will seek such books, researching and committing to lifestyle changes in the hopes of healing their bodies and reversing and preventing future illness.

It's frustrating that a book with so much to offer people hasn't gotten more attention. There are many explanations for this, of which I'll name a few. First and foremost, the meat and dairy industries have done a good job of marketing their products and are steadfast when it comes to lobbying and protecting their financial interests. Meat and dairy are pervasive and they are not going away anytime soon. It subsequently makes a diet without these products seemingly peripheral or even radical. Secondly, food is political. People with ties to various food industries, with much to lose or gain, have held seats on advisory panels and positions within government organizations. Case in point: Six out of eleven members on the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee had ties to dairy, beef, egg, and even Slim-Fast companies! Conflict of interest? I think so!

Lastly, food is cultural, emotional, and personal. Accepting a whole foods plant-based diet means, for many people, letting go of traditions, comfort food, and a way of eating that is commonplace and natural to them. A change in diet seems most likely to occur when health is compromised and it becomes a necessity to remove certain foods. For me, removing dairy was such a necessity. And while I started a meatless challenge to support a friend's Lenten practice, the research on animal proteins has convinced me to permanently abstain.

Regardless of your orientation to meat and dairy, I recommend checking out The China Study. It's an important contribution to the literature on the relationship between diet and health.

Check out Kris Carr discussing her cancer journey as influenced by The China Study. Note that she discusses several different food plans (macrobiotic, raw, alkaline). They all involve whole foods plant-based diets with different preparations.

Have you read the book? What do you think about Campbell's research?