Monday, January 5, 2015

9 Healing Steps to Get Your Health Back on Track from the Holidays

It's January.  Time to rev up your health!!

Feeling puffy, bloated, brain-fogged and lacking in energy from the holidays?  Or maybe you simply want to clean up your diet and lose a few pounds after a month of over-doing.  Here are our essential tips for an anti-inflammation, super greens loading, energy-making, brain-clearing January.

We promise you, follow these tips and you will be operating in tip top condition in a matter of days.

1. Go Green-- Have a Super Green Smoothie for breakfast.  We love our breakfast smoothies and drink them year round.  They pack in the nutrients, are easy to digest and give you plenty of energy.  Just try them for 3 or 4 days and you'll never want to go back.



2.  Eat a big salad for lunch--  Go ahead, make it big.  Toss in lot's of greens, but make sure to add in at least one handful of super greens* for extra inflammation-fighting power.  Then add in your favorite fruits or veggies and some nuts if you like.  You can top it all off with a little chicken, tuna, salmon, hard boiled egg or leftover meat if you like to have the protein.  Skip the cheese--dairy is inflammation promoting.  Make your own salad dressing (store bought salad dressings usually have high fructose corn syrup and GMO soy oil).  And be sure to include a little flax oil in your dressing. Its high omega-3 count makes it a powerful inflammation fighting weapon. (Go here for more information on omega-3s and recipes for flax oil salad dressings.)



By the way, a wrap with lots of super greens is another great choice.  Throw in your favorite raw veggies. These can be great with hummus and baba ganoush.  Go here for information about gluten-free wraps and how to make your own.

3.  For dinner choose a protein plus two veggies--  Make both your side dishes veggie-based.  One veggie can be a salad, if you like.  If you're feeling like you need a little something that will give you that "stick to the ribs" feeling, make the second vegetable a baked sweet potatoe or roasted winter squash--drizzle the pastured butter on heavily and top with sea salt and freshly ground black pepper.  If the butter is from pastured cows, it is high in omega-3 for inflammation fighting.

Organic Italian Sausage, Zucchini Noodles with Peas and Sweet Potato Fries.
4. Snacking--  If you feel hungry between meals...eat.  For snacks try coconut yogurt, almond yogurt, bone broth, cocoa made with almond milk and Coconut Secret, tangerines, apples with almond butter or chopped up with chopped walnuts.  Slice an avocado in half, drizzle it with lemon juice and add salt and pepper.  For more snack ideas, go here.


5.  Drink...all the water you want.  Other great drinks are fresh vegetable juices, coconut water, almond milk or coconut milk.  You can make your own lemonade with filtered water, fresh squeezed lemon juice and stevia.  For hot drinks, try green tea or herbal tea.  Make cocoa using almond milk, cocoa powder and Coconut Nectar.  Drink as much homemade bone broth as you like--it's unbelievably healing.  Make up a big pot and dip into it for a cup several times a day.  Here's our recipe for making broth.  




6.  Get off sugar.  Sugar is an inflammation creator.  Plus, eating sugar spikes your blood sugar, causing your pancrease to pump in extra insulin.  This causes your body to increase fat storage.  You don't want this.  

The One Day Sugar Cure.  It can be hard to get off of sugar if you're really addicted, which can easily happen over the holidays. Here's an unconventional idea, but it works and will get you off sugar in one day. Give yourself permission to eat anything you want for the day as long as it's not sugar or any sort of sugar substitute or sweetener, whatsoever.  Good news, you can eat potato chips and French fries today.  In fact, eat as many potato chips, French fries, hash browns and baked potatoes with butter as you want and, particularly, any time you crave sugar.  You'll find that one only wants so many potato chips and French fries, and then it's over.  Wake up on day 2 ready to face the world without sugar.

Once you're off sugar, use stevia and low glycemic Coconut Nectar as your sugar substitutes.  No, they don't taste just like sugar.  But you'll get used to them and after awhile you'll grow to enjoy them like you used to enjoy sugar.  You'll find that you don't miss sugar at all.

7.  Avoid dairy--  Get off the cow's milk products.  They cause inflammation.  Exceptions are pastured butter (taking the milk solids out seems to remove the inflammation source, plus pastured butter is high in inflammation busting omega-3s) yogurt and kefir made from raw milk and sheep and goat milk products.  (However, if you have dairy intolerances or allergies, you may not be able to have any dairy.  Read here for further information on what dairy you can have and why.)

By the way, eggs are not milk products and they are perfectly fine for you to eat, unless you have an egg allergy.  Just be sure you choose eggs from pasture-raised chickens.  These are high in beneficial omega-3 fatty acids which are anti-inflammatory.

8.  Avoid gluten--  Gluten is yet another source of body inflammation.   You don't need it this month. Besides, you have plenty of other delicious foods to eat.  You'll find you won't even miss it.

If you get desperate, and only on occasion, buy store-bought gluten-free breads, wraps and pastas. Avoid the gluten-free sweets entirely, they almost always have real sugar.  Also, get used to checking labels.  Many gluten-free manufactured products simply replace the wheat flour with high glycemic starches like white rice flour, tapioca flour, arrow flour, potato starch, corn starch.  These all have even higher glycemic loads than wheat flour, which means they spike your blood sugar and create inflammation.  Use them only rarely.

9.  Have an occasional treat--  We are regularly adding gluten-free and low gluten, sugar-free recipes to this blog.  There are currently quite a few bread, cookie, pie and cake recipes and more are going up on a regular basis. We'll also be publishing a cookbook shortly and it includes many great recipes for treats including pizza dough, pancakes, candy, muffins, etc.  In the meantime, remember that even these gluten-free foods are "treats" and don't over-do.



Chocolate lovers, go right ahead.  Have a little chocolate.  A small square of dark chocolate after meals is fine.  We especially like Lilly's stevia sweetened chocolate bars.  Also, use your cocoa powder. Stir it into almond yogurt along with a little Coconut Nectar in mid-afternoon, if you find you have a sweet tooth.  If it's cold outside, make a cup of cocoa.  



For more information on why it's important to avoid inflammation, see here.  

Finally, every recipe on this blog is an anti-inflammation recipe.  Feel free to cook and eat anything you find here as part of your healing, super health, energy rev-up January.  

*What's a super green?  Super greens have extra inflammation fighting power.  Super greens are the dark leafy greens such as spinach, chard, kale, arugula, amaranth, quinoa, bok choy.  We also like to think of some of the dark leafy lettuces as well as herbs such as basil, parsley and cilantro as super greens.


2 comments:

  1. Great post! I like your post as you have shared some beneficial steps that can help us to regain our healthy life back after holidays. Green smoothies are really very beneficial for maintaining our good health. Thanks for sharing such nice blog…

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    Replies
    1. You're welcome Rachael. Thanks for the kind words!

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