I am looking people to share their story for two projects that I’m working on:
1) If you live in the Boston area, and have used conscious eating as part of your weight managing lifestyle, I would love to connect with you. There is a new, very cool sounding TV program about alternative health, and we’ve been talking about doing a piece on conscious eating. Email me if this sounds like you.
2) For a new website that has the goal of supporting people interested in launching a positive life change, I am looking for a few people to e-interview about the first 30 days of a new weight-management program – what you experienced, and advice for others taking the plunge. Again, shoot me an email if you’re willing to share.
Thanks!
Annie
This year I hit on a quick and easy recipe that did the trick for me. Through my 2-week cleanse this spring I had at least one of these Asian slaw-salads most every day. It’s rekindled my love of cabbage – which, being in the brassica family (with broccoli and onions), is a phytochemical-packed cleansing powerhouse.
Asian Slaw-Salad
What you’ll need:
- A good chef’s knife
- A clean cutting board
- 5 minutes
Ingredients:
- ½ c Savoy cabbage sliced thin
- ½ c Red cabbage sliced thin
- 1 slice fresh ginger, diced with skin trimmed
- ¼ c diced red pepper
- 1 medium carrot, diced
- 1 Tbsp fresh cilantro if available
- 2 Tbsp Asian salad dressing or
- 2 tsp sesame oil
- 2 tsp rice wine vinegar
Putting it together:
Toss everything together and eat.
I got into the ritual of making this in a beautiful bowl that I love to eat out of. This slaw-salad has been a mainstay of my 3pm-give-me-carbs attack. It usually worked, and when I still craved something starchier, a few crackers didn’t turn into a box of crackers after having a bowl of slaw. Sometimes I double the recipe, and sometime I have two. It’s very low in calories and nutritionally dense, and has lots of fiber, the secret weapon of the weight-conscious.
Let me know how you like it.
Annie
Spring is the season to open up the house, empty out the closets, and clear out the clutter and cobwebs. It’s also the time when those in northern climes might wince as they uncover their bodies (winter is such a great time to cover-up, burrow in and just forget about it, right?). I wish you just a momentary wince or none at all.
As a dietitian and yoga teacher, the idea of nutritional cleansing fascinates me. Each time I cleanse (I don’t fast and I only do very gentle cleanses, by the way. I think fasting and harsher cleansing can do more harm than good – more on this later) I reaffirm my everyday cleansing diet – that is, cleaning up my diet as a way of life. My spring cleanse this year was more about being strong in my own wellness than about nutritional goals per se. I have a tendency to allow stress from others’ poor lifestyle habits influence how I take care of myself. Since my fruit & vegetable cleanse with herbal support (I used Yerba Prima support products this time), I’ve worked harder to resist being swayed by well-meaning loved ones gifting me treats.
For the next couple months, I’ll tease this topic of nutritional cleansing and detox, let you what I’m thinking about it, and the resources that I have found helpful.
So first, why even do it?
Our environment has changed for the worse in the past 100 years. The EPA estimates a grand total of 4.3 billion pounds of the 650 toxic chemicals they follow were released into the environment in 2005. Other groups estimate that 1,000 newly synthesized compounds are introduced each year.
Toxic chemicals enter into our bodies through the air we breathe, the food we eat and the water we drink. While our bodies have an elegant system of removing toxic chemicals from the body (via the work of the liver, kidneys, lungs, skin and digestive system), there has been an increase of toxins in the environment, and at the same time a decrease in the nutritional quality of the average American’s diet. The deterioration of our diet (through eating large amounts of processed foods, chemicals and hormones, and not enough healthy fruits, vegetables and unadulterated whole grains and clean proteins) impairs the ability of our body to effectively detox. That’s the basic rationale for learning a little about detoxing and occasionally focusing on it as a means of maintaining overall health.
Here is the EPA’s brochure from their Toxic Release Inventory (TCI), and a more detailed report. You can find loads more information at www.epa.gov.
EPA 2005 Toxic Chemical Inventory (TCI) – overview brochure
You can find the full eReport on the EPA website.
In future postings, we’ll review the basics of nutritional cleansing, the mental aspects of cleansing, safe vs. not-so-safe cleansing, resources available to you, products I know of, and some non-nutritional cleansings.
May you be happy
May you be healthy
And may you stand in the light of your own truest self
Annie
I’ve been fortunate to have experienced lots of great vegetarian cookbooks this winter. The raw-foods movement has fascinated me, and there are flurry of beautiful books that inspire. I also love books by dietitians. RDs, in my opinion are well-educated and underappreciated, and while our professional organization tends to sell our collective souls too easily to the processed food industry and big pharma, please don’t let that detract from the wisdom you’ll often find among this crew – like anything, you need to find the good eggs. With RDs, they are lots of them.
One good egg I’ve been blessed with connecting with this winter is Jill Nussinow, MS RD, The Veggie Queen. She’s a California-based nutritionist, and I’ve found her cookbook an inspiring one for the everyday cook (which, for the most part, I am). Jill is a fan of mushrooms, as am I, and she’s into her pressure-cooker. The appeal of a 12-minute soup, or 5-minute mashed potatoes tell me that last year when someone left this cute little pressure-cooker in our house (long story) that I was right to keep it. Now I have some coaching about how to use it and why to pull it out from the back of that bottom kitchen drawer. Her cookbooks is lovely to hold, and features culinary tips as well as a view into her Farmer’s market lifestyle. Jill illustrates, I think, the degree to which sustainable eating really is a lifestyle.
Find out more about Jill and her book The Veggie Queen, at www.theveggiequeen.com.
Another recent entree in the vegan cookbook genre that I’ve been having a good time with this winter is Blossoming Lotus’ World Fusion Cookbook. This is another beautiful book – this one in full Technicolor, high production value loveliness. Healthy cats in Kauai know Blossoming Lotus well – and if you ever make it to the north shore here, a meal at the restaurant is a must. It’s a great place to bring your non-veggie friends to see just how delicious and refined vegan cuisine can be.
So I’ve been cooking from this book through the winter, and the one drawback for really wide appeal is that it’s very Hawaii-centric. Many ingredients just aren’t available or as good off-island. And, the secret to many BL dishes is pureed macadamia nuts! Heavy cream it isn’t, and I suppose if you are living the vegan lifestyle you can boost the healthy fat a bit, but for those who must be weight conscious, just know that you’ll need to be conscious of how much of those fab rich sauces you slather on you veggies.
Another small detraction is the cutesy recipe names. Now, just being in Hawaii tends to make the most hard-nosed Easterner a little whimsical. But I think the book would be stronger if it settled down in that area a bit.
Overall, it’s an inspiration. A beautiful book to hold, and some great ideas that really could be modified to accommodate the possibility that not everyone can live in paradise.
Find out more about the book and their very cool scene at www.blossominglotus.com/about_book.htm
Happy healthy eating.
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The first Symposium on Yoga Therapy and Research (SYTAR), organized by the International Association of Yoga Therapy (IAYT), was held January 18-21 in Los Angeles. It was a gathering of yogis and yoginis, medical professionals, researchers, and those who develop and sell products to the aforementioned groups.
First off, by any measure, this conference was a great success. It sold out very quickly – I spoke to many yogis who’d wanted to go but hadn’t acted quickly enough. I believe that many yoga teachers across the country are witnessing the therapeutic possibilities of yoga in their own clientele. So the topic is ripe for discussion. And, I believe the organizers of the conference approached the frankly impossible task of finding common ground between the scientific community (the quantifiers), and the yogic spiritual practitioners and teachers (the revelers in the unknowable).
I love yoga conferences. I love to be around dedicated yoga teacher-practitioners. They put out a great vibe – as one woman said to me in the bathroom “who ARE you people? – it feels so good to be around you!” (she was attending a community college meeting in the same hotel). I was moved and ticked to attend scientific sessions that were launched with the chanting of ohm. Somehow, that both made the information presented resonate, and reminded me not to take it too seriously.
Many of the presenters provided outlines of their talks, and some of these may be helpful to yoga practitioners who were not able to attend. You can find a range of download able pdf-outlines of sessions and of breakouts at the IAYT website. You can find additional information from some of the presenters websites – those I attended who’s website info was helpful to me include Matthew Taylor PhD, PT, Amy Weintraub, Leslie Kaminoff who’s an impressively active blogger and Larry Payne PhD. Another blog that would be of interest to those of you thinking about the integrative therapies like yoga is The Integrator, John Week’s blog. I’ll do more features on some of these and other excellent practitioners I met at SYTAR.
I’ve been back from the conference for a couple weeks now, and the initial impressions have ruminated a bit. There has also been some rumblings and feedback from other attendees of the conference. A feast for thought came out of this meeting. A natural topic for this group was the development of standards for yoga therapists, and moving toward reimbursement and licensure. There were a number of warnings from clinicians (Chiropractors, PTs, RNs) that moving in that way will definitely result in more oversight, less creativity and time per client, and probably a reduction in pay scale for the yoga provider. Even as a clinician myself (I’m a Registered Dietitian), I came away thinking that perhaps moving toward licensure and reimbursement was not a good idea for the yoga community.
Feedback from the conference which I found fascinating was Megan McDonough’s observation that while most of the attendees were female, most of the presenters were male. The Kripalu Yoga Teacher’s Association listserv had a richer discussion, but you can get the cliffnotes on eSutra. It was a very male-dominated meeting, which I at first thought was indicative of more linear scientific nature of the topic. But then I thought perhaps it was because of the clique of PdD male yoga teachers who seem to have dominated the conversation – there are definitely master level, PhD-level yoga teacher/researchers out there, so yep, this should change next year. And it seems that feedback has been received by the organizers too.
All in all, a great effort, a beautiful dialogue. I’ll go to SYTAR next year.
