Davina's Holiday Help

Hershey's chocolate kisses.  Creamy party dips.  Fried finger foods.

 

Temptation seems to be everywhere during the holidays, especially food that is unhealthy yet oh-so- delicious.  And precisely because it's the holidays, I always start out with good intentions but then end up giving myself permission to eat those sweet, creamy and fatty foods, don't you?

Basically, I need all the help I can get to keep my willpower strong while hanging out during the holidays.  Trust me when I tell you that I will find my way to bowl of nuts at any social gathering and eat all of the cashews!  It's true!  I need someone to tell me how to get back on track after sampling all those tasty foods that go right to my hips.  How else am I going to say "No!" to dessert buffets that are also calling out to me?

 

How indeed Davina?

 

Davina Sandground (www.nutritiongroove.com) is a health and nutrition counselor trained at the Institute of Integrative Nutrition where her teachers included Dr. Andrew Weil, Director of the Arizona Center for Integrative Medicine; Dr. Deepak Chopra, leader in the field of mind-body medicine; Dr. David Katz, Director of Yale University’s Prevention Research Center; Dr. Walter Willett, Chair of Nutrition at Harvard University; and Geneen Roth, bestselling author and expert on emotional eating.

 

I just received Davina's December newsletter focusing on eating sensibly and staying healthy during this time of the year when the last thing on your mind may be eating well.  Nutrition may also be the last thing on your mind when you are trying to recover from a loss and experiencing great stress in your life.  But your body needs even more extra care during this time and eating healthy may help you manage your emotions better and feel more in control of this painful time.

No matter what your holiday plans, whether you are determined to burn the candle at both ends or just chilling at a friend's house watching movies, here are Davina's smart and easy tips for navigating the nutritional minefield of the next few weeks:

Davina Sandground

As we head into the holiday season, I wanted to share a few reminders with you about how to not over indulge and end up feeling bloated. ~ Davina Sandground

Tip #1 – PRE-PLANNING

Pre-planning means that you always eat before you go to a holiday party. Make sure you have a healthy snack before you head out to the party. An apple with some almonds or hummus with vegetables will both do the trick. If you know you cannot eat certain foods at this party, make sure you have a mini meal before attending. You may want to have a small salad with protein or even a small bowl of cooked vegetables with tahini drizzled on top to keep your blood sugar balanced. (I always eat a healthy snack before I go to a party so I’m not ravenous when I get there).

 

It is okay to make the choice to indulge once in a while, knowing the next day you may feel the after-effects but you need to know exactly how to get back on track.

So what to do the day after?

Tip #2: EAT SIMPLE AND EAT CLEAN.

Make sure that eating over the next few weeks is clean eating. Making it through the holidays is about moderation. If you have a lot of celebration dinners and office parties it’s OK to indulge a little but be sure to “get back on the clean eating train”  at the very next meal.

 

Come back to the basic principles of clean eating. Eat fresh vegetables with lean protein. Avoid processed foods and drink plenty of water. Start your day off with a high protein breakfast like a two egg vegetable omelet so that you begin the day with balanced blood sugar. This will make it less likely that you’ll crave sugar and simple carbs.

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Tip #3 – FLUSH THE BLOAT AND ALKALIZE

UPON WAKING, DRINK LEMON WATER

Take 2 cups of room temperature water, and add the juice from 1⁄2 a lemon, a pinch of cayenne (optional), and 1 teaspoon of raw honey or a couple drops of stevia (use stevia if you are on a yeast cleansing diet).

MID-DAY, CRANBERRY DRINK

Add 2 tablespoons of cranberry concentrate (I like Knudsen’s brand) into 6 ounces of room temperature water or seltzer if desired.

BEFORE BED, DRINK A CHLOROPHYLL DRINK TO ALKALIZE

Add 1 tablespoon of chlorophyll to 12 ounces of water with the juice of one lemon.  Note: you can buy chlorophyll at any natural food store or Whole Foods or Amazon.

Tip #4 – MOVE YOUR BODY!

When you consume more sugar and alcohol than normal your immune system can become compromised, so it’s extremely important to give it a boost. When you get exercise your lymphatic system is stimulated (in effect, you are its pump). The more you move, the more effective the lymphatic system works in keeping you healthy and warding off infections. Plan your exercise. We’re all busy but make it a priority. You’ll always feel great afterwards!

IMPORTANT FACTS TO REMEMBER

95% of your serotonin (the happy hormone) is manufactured in your digestive system.

80% of your immune system is manufactured in your digestive system.

Focusing on your digestive system is the gateway to being healthy AND happy!

Try not to abuse your digestive system. Treat it with kindness and it will serve you well.

I hope these few tips inspire and help you over the coming weeks. Remember, life can get crazy so you have to take care of yourself or soon you’ll be running on empty. Don’t let that happen to you.

I wish you a joyful holiday, peaceful end of year and a healthy 2014!

Hair's To You

Today I am giving a huge shout-out and a huge hug to a person I know who has just finished an intense round of chemo treatments and is dealing with the loss of their hair.

 

This person is showing so much courage and positive thinking in their intense and aggressive fight with cancer.  This person also happens to be the third person I have known to lose their hair during chemo and I totally get why this stage is so traumatic: hair loss makes the cancer obvious and visible to others.

 

From talking to these people about experiencing their hair loss, the first instinct is denial.  Each person tells themselves it will not happen to them and then they want to hold on to every strand of hair they have.  Our society happens to see hair as health.  In fact, lots of hair is equivalent to good health and vitality.

 

So when your hair starts to fall out in clumps from chemotherapy, most people, men and women alike, want to start wearing a wig.  The women's wigs are really nice but the men's wigs have a really long way to go in looking like real hair.  Instead, I think the men should go for it and just shave their heads.  It's a very Steve Harvey/Bruce Willis look (Harvey and Willis are not cancer patients just to clarify) and I think most women think it's sexy.

Steve Harvey

 

 

Bruce Willis

 

Plus there is something empowering about taking the initiative to decide to shave your head when your hair is falling out or when you are facing cancer in general.  This exceptional person I am thinking of today now just takes his hat off and shows you right away what is going on and then continues to talk about the positive things he is doing while receiving treatments.

 

Chemotherapy drugs are super powerful medications that attack rapidly growing cancer cells.  Unfortunately, these same drugs also attack other rapidly growing cells in your body, particularly those in your hair roots.

 

But the good news is that hair loss is temporary.  It's going to grow back, no doubt about that.  It may be a different color and it may be a different texture, but it will be hair and it will be yours.

 

Of course it is easy for me to say what looks good because I am not a cancer patient and am not experiencing the turmoil of cancer's life and death decisions.  I have the luxury of standing back and saying this is what I would do if I were losing my hair.  If it were actually happening to me, I probably would feel distraught and very scared.

 

And so I salute all cancer patients who are in the hair loss phase of their treatment.  May you continue to be brave, strong and resilient in your battle for wellness. 

 

We are with you!  

Movement As Medicine

When I spend too much time in front of the computer or television I don't feel right.

I don't feel as if my body and mind are working together as they were designed to do, and when this happens I know it's a signal for me to get up off my inactive butt and do something physical.

As in get the heart pumping and break a sweat.

 

It doesn't matter what you do, just get up and move.  Exercise anywhere and everywhere.

 

 

Exercise is a gift you give yourself because it can reduce anxiety, clear toxins from your system and just clear your mind and give you a fresh outlook on your day.  Even when I don't want to exercise, I convince myself to do some kind of activity because I always feel like a new person when I do.  Always!  It's amazing!

 

Our bodies are designed for movement.  Dance. Walk. Garden. Stretch. Play a sport.  Run.  It all works!

 

Here is a recent inspiring story from The Washington Post about the mental and physical benefits of exercise classes that a group of people diagnosed with Parkinson's take on a regular basis.  As the author, Lenny Bernstein, writes, "Here, exercise is therapy, perhaps no match for Parkinson's disease over the two decades that it generally inflicts misery on its 1 million victims, but certainly a dose of nonprescriptive relief in the short term."

 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/wellness/dance-for-parkinsons-disease-movement-as-medicine/2013/07/02/77b57ffe-df63-11e2-b2d4-ea6d8f477a01_story.html

A Daily Om

We all need a mental health break, don't we?  I just didn't expect to find one downtown in a city park.

While walking down the street yesterday during lunch hour in the downtown area of the nation's capitol, I spied a large white tent set up across the street in a park known as McPherson Square.  The tent reminded me of one of those large white tents that people use at outdoor wedding receptions.  I could only see the back of the tent so, ever the curious one, I walked over to check it out.

Somebody must be promoting something, I thought, but from the first glance of it, I couldn't tell exactly what.

Turns out it was Mental Health; as in come inside the tent and take a rest from your daily work routine or from whatever is happening to you.

When I got closer to the tent, I could see a rather small blue, yellow and white sign saying "Mental Health Break, Noon to 7 pm, May 6."  Yes, I thought, this looks interesting.  The front of the tent was wide open and inside were low white tables and cushions for seating.  Small groups of people were sitting and standing, talking and reading.  Other tables were set up with free goodies such as blue balls that people could hold and squeeze to relieve stress or anxiety, and there also were water bottles along with green tea for drinking.  There was even a photobooth for quick laughs if you wanted to take silly pictures.

 

Children Practicing Yoga
Photo Courtesy The Daily Om

Thanks to The Chicago School of Professional Psychology, which was sponsoring the mental health event, people could also take yoga classes outside of the tent for relaxation under a cluster of trees. A few people taking a class that had already started were either sitting on chairs or sitting on mats with their eyes closed and arms stretched out, palms towards the sun.

It looked so un-DC.

Yet it was a unique concept.  Everything went to improving the human experience and community.

 

Here, a couple of blocks from the White House and The Washington Post, two centers of business that I think most people would associate with stress and hypercompetition, was a place dedicated -- at least for one day -- to finding your inner self and "happy place."

 

I associate, and I'm sure you do too, a mental health break or a mental health day to calling in sick from work.  We've all done it at least once in our work lives or know someone who's done it. Either you've been working on a project or just putting in too many long days and you need a break.  You're not really sick but you know you're going to get sick if you don't take a much needed break.  Thus, the mental health day.

 

 

But this mental health tent was sending a different message from what I could see,  which is: we are all capable of self-care at any time of the day in any place and with some practice, we can learn to  turn down the extraneous volume surrounding us and instead find inner calm and peace.

 

As author and wellness coach Kris Carr has written, "When you understand your mind you can harness its power to achieve more than you imagined possible.  The space between the noise is where God/dess lives.  There are many answers there.  Don't shy away from visiting."

 

Digging Deep

I have previously written about people I know who are fighting the good fight against cancer.  Three of them at this point are in good health while one is gearing up for the fight of his life.

 

He is getting ready for surgery next week and after that he enters an intense, aggressive program aimed at totally killing this sucker in its tracks.  He has an amazing attitude towards this scary situation and I admire his calm and even demeanor.

 

 

Put in the same situation, I know I would not be faring so well and I don't think I would be inspiring anyone with my raw reaction to fighting a cancer within myself.

 

From talking to my friends, they say that first comes the disbelief that your body is so sick; that your body is basically at war with itself.  Your mind and heart are racing, racing at an incredible pace and you can't catch your breath as you take it all in.  While trying to come to grips with what the doctors are saying, you sometimes detach from reality a bit and feel as though you are outside yourself.  I understand this feeling very well because in the first few months after my husband's death, I definitely was outside myself.  I think it is your mind's way of temporarily buffering you from what's happening and giving you a way to cope.

Facing pain, whether physical, mental or a combination of both, can be isolating.  There is an intense feeling of letting the rest of the world fall away as you focus with laser concentration on what you need to do, have to do, to find wellness.

 

It is now a time of digging down deep and calling upon God to watch over him.  It is a time of feeling human and vulnerable.  It is a time of pulling out all the stops to give love, support and everything else we as a family can find to throw at him as he faces and fights this dreaded, yet survivable, disease.

Thank you for being here.  Peace.
 

Nutritionally Yours

The loss of a loved one can literally take your appetite away.

 

You find that you can barely get out of bed and food is not appealing at all.  You feel as though you are walking through cotton candy.  All of your senses seem dulled and off.

Sadly, these symptoms are considered to be pretty normal for a person grieving.

 

I remember at the reception after my husband's funeral I really didn't want anything to eat.  I had a yogurt before going to the church for the funeral mass but that was about all I could handle.  People kept giving me plates of food and I held the plates while talking to people but then I would put it down somewhere hoping no one would give it back to me.  Later on, even though I wasn't hungry, I did force myself to eat part of a turkey sandwich because everyone seemed so worried that I didn't want anything.

 

I soon realized that I needed to eat smarter and take care of myself.  I was responsible for raising my son and I needed to be strong for him.  My thirteen-year-old son had just lost his father and if he saw that his mother didn't care what happened to her, then God knows what would happen.  I needed to show him that part of grieving was remembering to eat healthy.  If I fell apart and I ate junk or skipped meals, then I knew he would feel the same way about his life and I couldn't have that happen.  I might not have cared about myself at that point, but I did love and care about him. 

 

I started being aware of what I was cooking and especially made sure that we always ate a good breakfast, not the breakfast we felt like eating: doughnuts, pancakes, coffee cake and sometimes even pizza.  Never had pizza for breakfast?  You should try it!  Totally delish!

People don't tell you this but grieving is hard work.  It's exhausting being under so much stress every day.  If you don't feel like eating, then you have to remind yourself to at least eat to give your body strength.  Or think of it this way:  there is so much going on that is out of your control at least you can make your own choices with regard to what you eat.

Going to the grocery store after someone you love dies can be dicey.  Aisle after aisle, you can be reminded of all the different foods your loved one ate and how you probably won't be buying those items anymore.  For me it was Ovaltine.  But there's also another way of looking at a trip to the grocery store.  I have heard a few people remark that food shopping can gradually become a kind of adventure because they can start to buy food that they always really liked but their spouse or partner couldn't stand.

Either way, you are trying to stretch a dollar and you deserve to be healthy.  Below is the link to timely story published in The Washington Post on Wednesday, Feb 27 discussing food shopping in the grocery store, saving money and learning to make those 'aha' wellness decisions:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/food/shopping-for-healthful-food-on-a-limited-budget/2013/02/25/ebe6a91e-7b88-11e2-a044-676856536b40_story.html

January Baby

 

 

 

I am a January Baby and yesterday was my birthday.

I am happy to have a birthday (Elvis and I were born on the same day!) but I wish I had been born at a different time of the year.

 

By the time my birthday arrives, people are usually burnt out from the holidays.  Throughout the years, I have found that friends and family are either on a diet in January or they had spent too much money on Christmas so they are back on a budget in January.  Sometimes I have received gifts in Christmas wrapping paper and sometimes I have received one gift that is for Christmas and my birthday together.

 

I think it's an early January thing.

 

I like warm and/or hot weather much better than cold weather so I envy those people who have birthdays when it's warm.  They have it made in the shade so to speak!

 

But yesterday in Washington, DC it was a beautiful day.  The sun was shining and there was no snow on the ground...Yeah!!! And as I walked down the street from my office to meet a wonderful friend for a spontaneous birthday lunch (those are the best!), I thought about all of my blessings and the huge positives in my life.

 

I work hard to stay healthy and I will continue to do that this year but I also want to learn to meditate.  I think meditation would add a sense of calm to make mental being that I don't always have right now and would help me feel me more mentally fit.  There is a mind/body connection that I need to address because research -- and life experience -- shows that stress drains the body of energy, causing it to function less effectively.

 

I also have reached a stage in life where I no longer wait for things to happen.  I like to learn new things and to put myself out there a bit.  What's the worst that can happen?  Let's see...I could fail and look foolish (like that's never happened before!) or I could succeed (YES!).

 

I'm not talking about forcing a situation, rather the idea that if there is something you have always wanted to try then go ahead and try it.  You can't wait for certain circumstances to present themselves because then you might be waiting a long time.  I don't want to look back on something years later and wonder what would have happened if I done such and such a thing.

For me, the simple life, a life full of friends, family, good health and my dear readers is the life well lived.

Without those essentials I have no base or foundation of being.  Those essentials give me purpose and an endless supply of resources to celebrate the gift of life every year.

Take Care

Vick's: A Quick Home Remedy

I am fighting a cold and a cough.  I thought it was a 24-hour thing but it has lasted longer than I expected.  I probably caught it from someone in my office because lately there are a lot of sneezers and coughers around me.

 

This is not the time of the year to feel sick.  I have been constantly washing my hands to prevent picking up germies but obviously this wasn't enough.  I haven't started my Christmas shopping; I have ideas but haven't yet gone online to find the particular gifts I have in mind.  Plus, the work pace has stepped up because people are trying to wrap things up before the end of the year.

 

I need energy and positive thoughts.

 

What to do?

 

Number one on my list is Vick's VapoRub.  It is mentholated and contains eucalyptus and the combination of the two ingredients is magical.  You might remember this from your childhood.  It comes in a little blue jar and you can find it at any drugstore.  Last night I could not breath through my nose at all and my son reminded me that I used to give him Vick's when he was little and he was stuffed up.  Presto!  After a few applications, I can breath again and my cough is getting a little better.

 

After that, the only tried and true things I can suggest are: hot tea (with honey, if you like), lots of fluids such as juices and soups, soft tissues (there are some that have Vick's in them) and rest, rest, and more rest.

 

I went to bed early, slept through the night (thank you Vick's) and I am glad that I did because I know my body needs all the energy it can get to fight this bugger.

 

Be careful out there and please take care of youself!

 

Good luck!

Staying True

 

Thought For The Day

 

(With Thanks To The Silver Pen)

 

 

Everyone should have a dream or two.  They can help motivate you and keep you moving forward.

 

Sometimes you can have a dream for fun as in "If I ever hit the lottery, this is what I would do."  I always say to myself that if I ever won the lottery or all of sudden inherited a lot of money, I would buy a house at the beach.

 

Then, there are the everyday dreams you can have about your personal life or your work.  Try to be realistic and not "pie in the sky" about what it is you really want.  Breaking down your everyday dreams into manageable goals could be one way of achieving them.  Think about what works for you.

 

But don't give up on your dreams.  They are important for healing your soul and keep you on course.

 

Kale-Full

If kale is so good for you then why does it taste so bad?

I am trying to eat more kale this year because everywhere I look I see articles about the incredible health benefits of eating more kale.  Kale is that dark leafy green vegetable that you find in the same section of the grocery store where the lettuce is shelved.  It looks like it would taste good but it's deceiving.  At least it is to me.

According to WebMD, kale is a powerful antioxidant, kale is high in fiber, kale has zero grams of fat, kale lowers cholesterol, kale is super rich in vitamin K.  Eating a diet rich in the powerful antioxident vitamin K can reduce the overall risk of developing or dying from cancer, says a study in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

Kale is the superstar of vegetables and I'm a fool not to eat more of it.

Taking care of yourself by watching what you eat and resting helps you heal.  Listen to your body, and learn to be aware of its stress signals.  When you are feeling anxious about your circumstances, try to relax by closing your eyes, taking deep breaths and keeping your breathing regular. 

I want to like kale, I really do.  But the flavor is so strong, and to me, it's not in a good way.  I smell the kale before I even try to eat it and I am so turned off that I have to remind myself that kale is good for me in order to continue.  I tried coating it in olive oil and spreading it out on a baking sheet and baking it to make kale chips but I thought it tasted awful.  It was so yucky that I had to spit it out.  I couldn't stand the taste.

Tonight I am going to try my sister's suggestion of mixing the kale leaves with olive oil and sauteing it with some garlic.  Now that might make it taste A LOT better because I love garlic.  I certainly hope it's better because I have to find a way to eat more of this great vegetable.

What are your favorite ways to eat kale?