less junk in the trunk

The official start of my Integrative Nutrition program is just days away.  Part of my warm up includes practicing taking people's health histories.  Last night I practiced with Jen, a fellow IIN student in Atlanta.  Right now, the purpose of this is is not to offer advice or recommendations, but rather to practice listening; to clear my head of all the events of the day and really hear what the other person is telling me; to ask questions with the intention of really getting to know the overall person better.  Practicing this will help me to better serve my clients once I'm equipped with the knowledge to make recommendations to help them reach their health goals.

Talking about my own health history and patterns with food was an eye opening experience.  It helped me to realize that I have had a relatively easy time incorporating whole and healthy foods into my life once they make sense to me.  Over the years of my adult life, I've looked at certain foods as fun projects in an attempt to integrate them into my life and actually enjoy them.  Once I got excited about the nutrients in a specific food and how they could help create balance and well being in my body, it was almost effortless to incorporate these foods into my diet.  Some past examples include lentils, garbanzo beans, black beans, dark green leafy vegetables, bok choy, sweet potatoes, brown rice, millet, raw pumpkin seeds, almonds and even drinking more water.

I, like many people, struggle most with sugar.  When I was a kid, my parents called me "Junkfood Junkie".  My ambivalence about whether that was the result or cause of my ensuing sweet tooth aside, the fact remains that I still have it, but now have the tools to eliminate those cravings more often.  My diet growing up was dichotomous to say the least.  On one hand, I was fed a fair share of spaghetti dinners in front of the tv, waffles with peanut butter and syrup, gooey salads oozing with heavy mayonnaise based dressings over iceberg lettuce, chicken-a-la-king over white rice.  However, the same people who prepared these meals for me also sent me off to school with a brown bag carrying a sandwich on pumpernickel bread and a piece of fruit.

When I was about ten, I remember that my mom announced that she would no longer be buying soda.  She belonged to a CSA, took foraging classes, made sumac tea instead of kool-aid, sauteed lambs quarters from the garden, served salads with dandelion greens and twigs (I swear).  She was not especially talented in the art of flavoring, but she gave me a foundation from which to draw upon and an awareness of organic foods, whole grains like millet, lentils, tofu, kale...  Granted, she had a hard time getting me to eat more than one bite of some of those, but I realize now that she was extremely progressive in her awareness of whole foods.  As a side note, we also had a cabinet full of tinctures that she'd made herself from herbs or roots.   

Every summer she brought amazing foods into the house that I still enjoy seasonally to this day.  Things like steamed artichokes with a lemon-butter dip, cucumber dill salad with yogurt instead of mayonnaise, gazpacho, watermelon and other seasonal fruits.  I'd like to talk specifically about gazpacho.  People seem pretty aware of the health benefits of lycopene, which is found in tomatoes.  Partly this due to the marketing of products that usually also contain too much sodium as well as high fructose corn syrup**.   Gazpacho is a great way to incorporate this fantastic synergy of nutrients from whole vegetables with incredible health benefits.  The following is my favorite recipe so far for a quick and delicious warm weather meal.

In a food processor, combine the following:

3 organic tomatoes cut into chunks

1 clove organic garlic, peeled

1/2 organic sweet yellow onion

2 Tbs. organic extra virgin olive oil

1/2 organic cucumber, peeled

1 organic green pepper

pinch of sea salt

fresh ground pepper to taste

puree until contents flow like liquid but are still a bit chunky

slowly add 32 oz. of tomato or veggie juice of your choice (I use this because it's easily available at my farmer's market - if you can find any organic tomato or vegetable juice with lower sodium, that's preferable)

Chill and serve cold.

My own personal preference is to chop up organic cucumber and organic red, orange or yellow bell pepper and add to the soup with some whole grain croutons that you can make yourself from high fiber bread.

This meal is much more filling and satisfying than you may think if you've never tried it.  You can even make it more filling by adding garbanzo beans either whole to the soup or in the food processing phase which adds more fiber per serving. 



 ** I did a quick google search for lycopene and the fifth search result was Heinz.  Apparently Heinz realizes it is in everyone's best interest to appeal to the growing "green" market.  I think that's great.  While it does matter to me whether large corporations make these changes for profit or from pure philanthropic intent, the former is better than nothing, but it seems to me that deeper change would result from the latter.   I'm a little confused.  On the HeinzSeed page, it says that their proprietary tomato seeds are grown "using traditional breeding techniques (no genetic modification)".  However, on this site, it appears that Heinz is affiliated with Monsanto. 

Because there is not any regulation where genetically modified food must be labeled as such, whenever possible, I buy organic produce, I never buy conventional produce on the dirty dozen list, and when buying packaged foods, whenever possible, I buy organic, non-GMO and always read the ingredients and nutrition information.  For more about Monsanto, please watch The Future of Food for free on Hulu.  It is an eye opening documentary.  Also, check out this link for some information on why genetically modified foods may be dangerous.

It hasn't been forever, even if it feels like it.

Today I made a batch of ginger lime and put in a $250 supply order for the other batches I've got planned before my nutrition courses officially start.  Moving forward, moving forward...

Move over John Hughes of 1987.

 **Note:  please scroll down and pause the music from a previous post if you need to before reading this.  You will want to press play on the music in this post after reading.  Sorry for the inconvenience ;) **


As much as I love Bon Iver, I had to replace its spot on the one album play list of my life with something more upbeat in an effort to help me continue to move towards the light.  I've been doing well, with minor setbacks here and there.  A nice Irish lad with whom I've been spending some time lately gave me a cd by a band called The Temper Trap.  You may know them from their song on the 500 Days of Summer soundtrack, but another song 'Fader' has caught my attention.  It's got a sound byte that reminds me of Little Red Corvette, but upon closer inspection, I've found that it is not the same as I had originally thought.  It does have a 1987 flare to it.

Dig if you will the picture:

A crowd of hostile old people who just can't relate to today's youth sits in a high school auditorium awaiting the annual talent show.  Meanwhile, backstage is a group of four guys who have formed a band, waiting to perform for their disapproving parents.  One main guy in particular has had it rough.  His dad thinks he's wasting his time, money and potential and they've fought viciously about it; his mother is worried about what will become of her son and they both sit in the audience scowling and anxious, respectively.

The curtain rises and the band starts playing with a tension visible in their eyes.  As they play, the camera cuts to a row of feet in the audience and a few of them begin tapping.  Slowly but surely, you see fingers tapping, heads bobbing to the beat...   they're winning the audience over.  The kid's parents are resistant.  They see the audience enjoying their son's music but don't want to concede.  Finally, at the reprise or coda or refrain, whatever it's called, the parents give in and admit through their expressions that their son's desire to entertain has been validated and they accept his choice and direction in life.  The music keeps playing as you see the son and the parents embrace after a nervous look from the son and the screen freezes and credits roll.

I could totally have bee a teen dramedy director in the late '80s if I had been an adult with the right music in hand...

Music Playlist at MixPod.com

See Dick Run

Just a short while ago, I got an email in response to one I'd sent to Dick a few days ago.  In an instant I went from the positive, happier place I've recently rediscovered, to feeling sick to my stomach, angry, shaky, resentful; yet longing for more contact with him.  If you have been following my blog for the last month or so, you're well aware that Dick has made me completely out of my mind crazy.  I began to wonder why there are those certain people that have such a drastic effect on you when the rest of the time it's not so hard to just go with the flow.

In my warm up classes for Integrative Nutrition, I've been introduced to the concept of food as secondary nutrition, where our fundamental or primary nourishment comes from other areas of our life such as relationship (both romantic and not), physical activity, career and spirituality.

If I may make an analogy..

Consider a person who is overweight because they eat a surplus of calories each day but (s)he is still hungry despite eating so much.  If this persons caloric intake consists of heavily processed (read: packaged) foods, it's pretty much guaranteed that they are not consuming the nutrients necessary from and available in whole foods that grow in their own 'packaging' and end up malnourished.  The person's body would naturally crave nutrition which could register as hunger and cause them to eat more and more of the food they're used to; processed and nutrient lacking foods, perpetuating the cycle of hunger, malnourishment, and excess weight.

For a short time I was replete with infatuation.  You've been there...  food no longer becomes necessary when you're deep into a new person.  When all of the sudden the "relationship" became hollow, I craved more and more of it in an effort to satiate myself, but it wasn't working.  When he tossed me crumbs, I scarfed them down but was left ravenous.  I craved him more and more the emptier our interaction became.  That's what happened just now.  I have been going about my life the last week finally feeling pretty happy most of the time and not thinking of him every moment of the day like I was or even every day for that matter... no more dreams of him either.  I felt free.  Then this email came through.  It contained the phrase "No hard feelings" (yeah, no shit..  I'm the one who got hurt,)  and all of the sudden I was transported back to that miserable place where I was craving more, knowing that no matter how much I obsess, it would never give me what I need.

I have no doubt that a couple days of 'out of sight, out of mind' and I'll forget even feeling this way tonight, but I found this insight helpful in avoiding judgment of myself for having those feelings.  It's not even about him even if it feels like it is.  I knew after my visits there that I would not have been happy and would have quickly moved on.  I need the physical stuff to be fiery, magnetic, passionate, communicative, fun; I need to feel like the other person can't get enough of me. You'd think with two scorpios it would've been super hot, but I guess the spark just wasn't enough to light the fire for him.  Whatev...  I've finally remembered that I am still a hot bitch!  (new & improved and now 18 pounds lighter.  what? I didn't tell you about that?  I will later, just remind me)  Still, it would've been nice to be in sunny California and for it to have been my choice to leave when I was ready instead of being hurt and not understanding what happened.  I've lived through worse and the hurt will fade with time.  I already feel better at the end of this post.  Thank you Jebus, my sense of humor survived.  I don't think I could live without it.

“A man is but the product of his thoughts; what he thinks, he becomes.” - Ghandi

After several weeks slumped in deep dejection, I am starting to feel and act like myself again.  After sharing with some new people and gaining some new perspectives, I am starting to think that everyone has one person who shows up at such a time in their life and makes them absolutely crazy and act completely out of character.  I'm glad that mine has come and gone relatively quickly and now I can get on with my life.

Last week I enrolled in the Institute for Integrative Nutrition and am halfway through my warm up classes to prepare for the official start on May 3.  This first step has me feeling very excited and hopeful for the future of my work life.  This program feels like it was developed specifically for me and I wish I could express how amazing it feels to have discovered a potential way to integrate my passion for whole and preventative health with a career.  I know that this is an important landmark for me and am more passionate and enthusiastic about my future than I can ever remember being.

Not only can I feel this change in my attitude, but my behavior is indicative of a return to my higher self.  I have been taking care of my body again.  Granted, I was running while in my gloom, but it was purely to keep me from going over the proverbial edge.  I have returned to preparing meals for myself, going to bed at a somewhat decent hour, washing my face before bed...  I have begun to wake up renewed with gratitude instead of despair.  I have been working hard to surround myself with reminders to focus on these things and the life I intend to create rather than the things that are an illusion of the past or "lacking" in the present and I believe this is a big part of the return to the joyful person I knew that I was.  Thank you for not abandoning me in my time of crisis and negativity.  I did not intend to spread my misery, but I feel as though I did to a degree. 

I hope that many of you will follow me on my journey to becoming a Health Counselor.  Right now, this blog has become more about me than it has about soap and I don't know whether I want to compartmentalize and start a new blog or keep it all one for now.  I am contemplating starting a new blog on wordpress for my nutrition and health learnings and insights.  I encourage you to please share your thoughts and opinions on what you would prefer as visitors to this blog.