Clean Eating

A friend of mine at church told me yesterday that she was amazed at how healthy I look and wanted to get my entire eating plan. I haven't been running in forever and I have to nap way more now that I have MS, but whatever. Most days I feel pretty good. I haven't weighed myself since early January...so, I'm kind of curious how much weight I've lost. 

Here's what I'm not eating:

• sugar
• dairy
• grain (wheat, rice, corn, oatmeal)
• gum (or anything) with aspartame 

So, my diet is somewhere between the Whole30 (if you're not familiar with that, read this: http://whole30.com/step-one/) and paleo (if you're not familiar with that, read this.

I think how I eat is closer to paleo because I do have the occasional bit of sweet, like honey and maple syrup. On the Whole30, you don't have any of that for 30 days. 

So, here are my go-to meals:

Breakfast: eggs and avocado or this great frittata done in a muffin tin recipe or this awesome muffin recipe or these awesome waffles. I throw in some almond butter if I'm feeling super hungry. 

Muffin recipe: I seriously make these nearly EVERY week. They taste phenomenal out of the oven with almond butter on them. 

Frittata recipe: These can be refrigerated for a week of meals—economy is the scale here, people. 

Waffle recipe: This is a Saturday morning treat for me, usually. I go to this website a lot for paleo recipes. She is a bit wacky...but, the recipes are wonderful.

Snacks: nuts, beet/ginger/greens/orange/apple/carrot juice/banana smoothies, more nuts, carrots, fruit, avocado

Lunch: leftovers from the day before, large green salad (mostly with this easy dressing), avocado and other random veggies.

Dinner: something paleo (I plan two weeks at a time...and I'm still fine tuning what I like and what my family will tolerate or like). 

Here are a few websites I found great recipes and the websites have useful info:

http://paleomg.com/

http://detoxinista.com/

http://www.elanaspantry.com/ (I believe this woman has MS)

http://paleopot.com/

http://nomnompaleo.com/ (AWESOME recipes here)

Also, I never cook or reheat my food in plastic containers. Storing them in plastic is fine.

I try to get organic meats, but my budget often doesn't allow for that all the time. Maybe once I am an empty nester or something I'll switch to all organic meat...or maybe I'll move to a farm in the country and raise my own. Wouldn't that be awesome? My city boy husband would be a great farmer.  

Exercise, you ask? I do lots of yoga (like 4x/week), walk and swim. Seriously...I'm not the same person I used to be with exercise. For me and exercise, less is more and my body is feeling stronger than ever...it's weird. 

Has clean eating helped you? Are you a fan of clean eating? 

3 Tips to Boost Your Immune System

If you missed my webinar last night on the tips for boosting your immune system, here it is again.

This video is about 30 minutes long, so if you don't have time to watch it, here are is the outline of the top 3 tips:

Tip #1 Eat right and take good-quality supplements. What you consume creates an environment for health (or illness).

The food choices that make the biggest difference for me are eating lots of raw veggies and fruits, avoiding refined foods, avoiding sugar and drinking lots of water.

As promised in my last blog, here's my daily beet smoothie recipe:

• ½-1 chopped, raw beet (Don’t like beets? Substitute one cup of carrots)
• 1 Tbsp raw ginger
• 1 whole apple (I like Pink Lady the best for this smoothie)
• 1-2 frozen banana
• 1 cup  or more of beet greens/kale/spinach
• coconut milk or orange juice (creamier with coconut milk, sweeter with orange juice)
• 1.5 cups ice

Blend like crazy until smooth.

Tip #2 Move your body, but don’t exhaust yourself!

Exercise is great and feels so wonderful. Since getting sick I have found the two best exercises to support my immune system have been yoga and walking...but, the main key I’ve found is to get my pulse up and breathe a lot, but don’t push myself to exhaustion.

In a New York Times blog, several studies with mice and flu bugs showed that mice who exercised to exhaustion were so depleted in their T-1 immune helper cells that they were more likely to get sick than the mice who either rested or exercised mildly.

Tip #3 Rest and manage stress.

In today’s world, we tend to do things too hard. Taking time outs, breathing and generally listening to your body and giving it what it needs when you feel overwhelmed or overloaded. I've learned about that through experience.

To purchase doTerra oils, you can purchase them here — that site is also a great source for more information and a good health blog about essential oils.

If you have any questions about healthy living, feel free to post here.

Immune Boosters - Whether You Have MS or Not

I'm pretty open about my recent diagnosis of MS. Most people with whom I've talked express their sorrow for me and those who know me wonder why this happened in the first place. My own mother and I discussed this at great length when the diagnosis was made. I felt like my body had betrayed me. For years I had given it healthy foods, plenty of sleep, reduced stress and kept it fit by exercising six days a week.

However, when I now see how quickly I'm getting a handle on things in comparison to some with MS who take years (I'm not kidding) to get their disease under control, I realize my body is more of an ally than a foe in this. I have created an environment for health and therefore, my body is responding by giving me a quicker recovery. I'm not going to say that I'll never have another exacerbation or lesion or problem from MS, but I will say that I'm better able to cope with and heal from the problems that arise because I've fostered a healthy environment for my cells.

When I think about all the people who get MS and suddenly have to make drastic life changes, I'm grateful. I already eat clean and take excellent care of my body. I take it one day at a time and am constantly praising God for blessing me with such a good life, lots of positive support people and loads of great information and tools to help me continually improve my health.

I've now had my second infusion of Tysabri (disease modifying therapy drug) and I'm feeling pretty good. One thing this drug is supposed to do is slow down the destruction of my myelin in my brain. Lesions are given time to heal and no new lesions develop…is what they tell me. Wanna know why? My immune system is suppressed.

Goodie.

Part of making myself as healthy as possible now, so I can combat the MS includes adding more nourishing foods to my already super clean way of life. I haven't had any processed flour or sugar in nearly five years. Now I'm eating almost entirely paleo (no/low grains and absolutely no wheat).   So, here are some of the things I'm doing to help my immune system fight off bugs.

• drink 12 to 16 ounces of water first thing in the morning
• daily detox with lemon and peppermint essential oils from doTerra in my water bottle
• beet detox smoothie every day (Dr. Wahls, who is known for her natural healing methods in reversing her own MS gave me this idea). The recipe I like best are shared in this 30-minute webinar . I've been tweaking the recipe for a while and I'm excited to share it! If you want the recipe, I share it in this post and video.
• take fish oil, vitamin D and a B-complex mix along with vitamin C and several other vitamins I'll detail in another blog
• go for a walk every day
• do yoga 5x a week (or more)
• practice daily, conscious positive thought
• breathe
• go to bed when I'm tired—no matter what!

So, what kinds of immune boosters have you found to work? For more tips and an in-depth talk on how to boost your immune system, check out this post and video. 

Green Smoothie Recipe

Today, I'm a guest blogger on my friend, Emily's blog, Is This Really My Life. She's doing a whole week of blogs on green smoothies. I'd bookmark that site, if I were you. My smoothie featured on her site was one a friend shared with me. He and I share the same aversion to processed sugar, but love a sweet smoothie once in a while.

After reading Yoga Journal for two years, I finally tried one of their recipes and fell in love with it. The reason it's green is because of the honeydew and mint...so, I guess it's more a mint green smoothie than anything else. This tasty drink cools you off on a hot day and tastes exotic and fresh, like you're vacationing on Tahiti.







Here it is:
1 to 2 cups of fresh honeydew melon
1/2 to 1 cup of water
1/2 tsp sea salt
1/4 tsp coriander
2 Tbsp lime juice
8 to 10 fresh mint leaves

Blend everything and enjoy.
By the way, Yoga Journal has a great article on their site right now on how to build a great smoothie, along with recipes. Check it out!

Tapas for Toddlers

Toddlers are a riddle. Their moods and tastes seem to change frequently making meal time with toddlers a conundrum. Preparing food for a toddler is something of a guessing game. Most of your hard work can end up on the floor rather than in their tummies. Until now. I've found the best way to satisfy the pickiest of eaters is to offer a healthy variety in what I call tapas for toddlers. Getting a little one to eat their meal is less of a struggle and more like a fun-filled adventure when there are plenty of choices.

I came up this idea because of the changing tastes of my toddler and I'll keep tweaking it based on her preferences. You never know what your child is going to like. Why waste time making a big meal only to find it on the floor or worse (body paint, anyone?). The idea is to notice which food choice they gobble up fastest. Here are some ideas for tapas for toddlers:

• carrots
• raisins
• walnuts
• almonds
• crackers
• bite-size peanut butter and preserves/banana sandwiches
• snap peas
• apple slices
• orange slices
• lunch meat
• pretzels
• dried apricots
• bite-size cinnamon toast
• cucumbers
• beans (e.g. garbanzo, kidney, white beans, etc.)

Normally with the example in the photo, she'd go for the strawberries first, followed by the meat. Today, she went straight for the snap peas (see photo), followed by the oranges. The meat and the yogurt were a big fail. Guess we'll be striking those from the menu for a while. I'd love to hear about your experiments with tapas for toddlers. What works for your little ones?