Day 3 Post 1: Feel Good Foods! Hey everyone! Today is a good day because I get to chat with you about one of my favorite topics: Food! 🍽️🍓🍇 Isn’t it amazing that we can nourish our natural production of feel-good chemicals with certain foods? Let’s have a look at the good mood foods! 😊 🍌 FRUITS AND VEGGIES Did you know that eating more fruits and veggies is linked to lower rates of depression? And a special shout out to bananas and winter squash! They’re both high in vitamin B6, which helps us make feel-good neurotransmitters such as dopamine and serotonin. 💡Ideas to try: · Add sliced bananas to your oatmeal. · Roast cauliflower or broccoli florets with olive oil and seasonings (roasting makes them deliciously sweeter). · Stock up on frozen veggie mixes for convenient and quick sides for your meals. · Make a fruit salad with a variety of seasonal fruits like citrus, fresh pomegranate seeds (yum!), and kiwi. 🍓BERRIES Berries are also packed with phytonutrients called anthocyanins, which have been associated with a lower risk of depressive symptoms. 💡Ideas to try: · Sprinkle your favorite berries over salads. · Add strawberries or blueberries to your smoothie. · Top your yogurt with berries. 🌰NUTS AND SEEDS Did you know a 10-year study linked moderate nut intake to a lower risk of depression? While we don’t know exactly why, we do know nuts and seeds provide tryptophan, an amino acid that your brain needs to make mood-boosting serotonin. They also include some carbs, which help tryptophan to reach your brain. 💡Ideas to try: · Add nuts and seeds (eg, pumpkin seeds, pistachios) to salads for a satisfying, flavorful crunch. Garnish winter squash soup with toasted pumpkin seeds. · Sprinkle chopped nuts (e.g., almonds, walnuts) over your oatmeal or yogurt. · Keep your favorite nuts and seeds on hand as an easy snack when you are feeling peckish! 🐟 FISH Research suggests that eating fish regularly may be good for your mood. Fatty fish – salmon, in particular, is rich in the kinds of omega-3 fats that are linked to lower levels of depression. 💡Ideas to try: · Roast a fish such as salmon with olive oil and herbs––and add extra fillets for future meals. · Turn a salad into a protein-rich meal by topping it with salmon you cooked last night. · Make fish tacos with avocado, slaw, and a creamy yogurt-based sauce. Sounds good!! 🍫DARK CHOCOLATE (70+% cocoa) It’s not just the decadent flavor that boosts your spirits. Cocoa contains mood-enhancing compounds called theobromine and phenylethylamine. Dark chocolate is lower in sugar and higher in flavonoids, which have been shown to increase blood flow to the brain. Now that is a good excuse to have some chocolate!! 💡Ideas to try: · Try 1-2 squares of dark chocolate as a treat. · Melt dark chocolate and drizzle it over sliced bananas or mandarin orange segments for a satisfying dessert. 🍛BEANS AND LENTILS These are both excellent sources of B vitamins, which support our natural mood boosters like serotonin, dopamine, and GABA. Beans and lentils also provide complex carbs, which support our production of serotonin. 💡Ideas to try: · Make a delicious lentil curry with red or brown lentils, coconut milk, and a blend of Indian spices. · Make a veggie chili using canned beans, tomatoes, and frozen corn. · Pick up some hummus (or make your own!) to enjoy with sliced cucumbers and carrots. 🙂 🌱PROBIOTIC FOODS A healthy gut may lead to a better mood. Research has linked probiotic food consumption to less depression. Foods rich in gut-supportive probiotics include kimchi, yogurt, kefir, kombucha, miso, tempeh, and naturally fermented sauerkraut. 💡Ideas to try: · Make a creamy low-fat plain yogurt-based dip or dressing (instead of using sour cream). · Try kimchi as a zesty condiment for your sandwiches, burgers, or rice bowls. · Add naturally fermented sauerkraut (like Bubbies) to sandwiches. What are your favorite foods from the ideas above – or perhaps one of your own? How do you like to eat them? There are many of the ideas above that I love!! Please share your favorites. Nota bene: The source of the citations below (pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov) I used frequently when I was teaching middle school science…. . This is a highly respected source of high quality studies, and you can trust the information reported here. From Sue Lamdin, Making Spirits Bright. References: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26691768/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6769512/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29516224/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6769512/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27472373/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24117885/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24117885/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17723028/ https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0899900718307329
Since we’re all about uplifting spirits here, we’ve GOT to talk about the brain benefits of getting your body moving. Did you know that regular physical activity can do all of the following for you? ☺️ Boosts your mood naturally. Exercise stimulates endorphins, your body’s own mood-lifters. 😅Relieves stress. Working out helps you chill out by reducing your stress hormones (adrenaline and cortisol). 🌟Helps you get your Zzz’s. Don’t we all feel better after a good night’s sleep? Exercise has been shown to help you fall asleep and sleep better in general. 🚀 Supports your memory and thinking skills. Exercise promotes the production of new brain cells, and studies suggest that it supports the health of brain cells and the growth of new blood vessels to the brain. 🧘♂️ Gets you out of your head.From walking to workout classes, exercise brings you to the present and helps you forget the day’s annoyances so you can feel calmer and clearer. You can see why we’ve got movement on our Tracker! What physical activity are you doing today? Share below so we can cheer you on!👇 REFERENCES: Exercising to relax https://www.health.harvard.edu/stayin…/exercising-to-relax Exercising for Better Sleep https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/…/exercising-for-better… Effects of Physical Exercise on Cognitive Functioning and Wellbeing: Biological and Psychological Benefits – Frontiers https://www.frontiersin.org/arti…/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.00509 Exercise can boost your memory and thinking skills – Harvard Health https://www.health.harvard.edu/…/exercise-can-boost… (Diane Prather in Making Spirits Bright Challenge. Ask me for more info and to be with us. We have 2 more days)
Cheers to the holiday season! This busy time of year is always full of holiday events, parties, get-togethers, and seasonal activities. The kids are out, family members are visiting, and there’s so much to plan and do. But whether you’re aiming for your holiday best or just trying to minimize holiday stress, it’s always important to keep your wellness in check during this season. It’s important to make healthy and nutritious choices with all the holiday meals, buffet tables, and extra calories. It’s also essential to make time for your physical and mental health before your daily to-do lists are filled to the brim.
Thankfully, prioritizing your health doesn’t have to be overwhelming! Here are six simple ways that you can stay on top of your nutrition and make healthy choices during the holidays.
Don’t forget to take your vitamins. Adequate nutrition is a must, especially during the holiday season. And a simple way to stay on top of your nutrition is to take a daily multivitamin. While making healthy food choices is important, the truth is even the healthiest of diets may not always provide all of the nutrients your body needs. Most diets have nutritional gaps, and while vitamins should never replace a healthy diet, they are a great way to fill in those gaps. Need help with finding the right multivitamin? Everyone has different nutritional needs depending on their age, gender, diet, and health. So a great way to find out exactly what nutrients you may need is by taking the Meology™ Assessment. Meology will create a personalized supplement plan based on your diet, lifestyle, biology, and health goals.
Start the day with healthy food choices. When you start your day off with a healthy, protein-filled breakfast, you are setting yourself up to continue making healthy choices throughout the rest of the day. Try to incorporate lean proteins, whole grains, vegetables, and fruit into your breakfast. If you need some ideas, try savory breakfasts in place of high carbohydrate breakfasts. I have lots of recipe ideas for that. Your daily blood sugar balance will love you when you do savory. And if you’re pressed for time in the morning, try incorporating a protein smoothie, using one of our great products for a quick and convenient breakfast full of protein, fiber, vitamins, and minerals. As the day progresses, continue to make healthy food choices at lunch and dinner. But don’t feel bad if you treat yourself during a meal! There’s always opportunity to eat healthy dishes at the next meal.
QUICK TIP: When it comes to holiday meals, try using a smaller plate to help you control portion sizes and be more selective about what you put on your plate.
Keep your immunity in check. With the cooler weather combined with holiday busyness, immune health should be a top priority. One of the simplest ways to support your immune system is to make sure that you’re getting the powerhouse nutrients vitamin C, vitamin D, and zinc. Vitamins B6, B12, and E, folic acid, and selenium also help support your immune health at the cellular level. You can get these nutrients from a diet full of dark leafy greens and citrus fruits, but it’s hard to get enough from your diet alone. We have a drink mix that will supercharge your immunity with a combination of three immune-fueling blends that include vitamin C, vitamin D, and zinc.*
Be good to your gut. It always feels like your digestive system has to work overtime during the holidays. That’s enough reason alone to take care of it! But the digestive system does more than just transport food from your mouth to your stomach and intestines to process. A healthy digestive system is linked to your physical health, mental health, immune health, and more, which is why it’s very important to take care of your gut health. We can help you learn all about how to take care of your gut health and, some ways you can promote gut health include cutting back on sweets and sugar, getting plenty of sleep, eating probiotic foods, and supplementing with pre- and probiotics They are designed to work together to promote comprehensive digestive and immune support.*
Find time to exercise. Your fitness routine is sometimes the first thing to go during this season. But you can still celebrate the holidays without sacrificing healthy habits! Try holiday activities that get you to move or go outside, like hikes, pumpkin patches, holiday light displays, and ice skating. Add physical activity to your holiday errands by walking or biking to places when you are able. De-stress your holidays. Take a deep breath and let it out. We all know life gets a little stressful around the holidays. But the great thing is that it’s predictable. Don’t forget to take some time for self-care, and don’t be afraid to say “no” to things you can’t handle. Thankfully, many of the tips above also help reduce stress, including good nutrition and exercise. Stay healthy this holiday season.
Making wellness a priority doesn’t have to be hard. Follow these simple steps, relax, and enjoy the festivities! May your holidays be merry, bright, and healthy. (above test is a slightly tweaked message from my long term branding partner
We have more tips, recipes, supplements and more to meet the above categories. We are backed by robust science, experience, clinical insights, and more. All products are100% guaranteed, too. Thoughts, questions…?
These statements have not been evaluated by the FDA, and are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease, and you know…
Making Spirits Bright 4 Days of Gifts and Giveaways
In honor of the holiday season, we are here to lift spirits, have fun, and ease stress! 🎉 The Holiday Season can be filled with joy and fun, but also stress. In this challenge we are going to focus on how to lift your spirits with wellness tips and education to help you stay positive. Giving is one of the best ways to spread love, but it can also a major stressor. We’re making it easier on you this season by giving you tons of fun gift ideas for that won’t stress you or your budget! You are in for some treats! • 4 days of gifts and giveaways • A daily Challenge of self-care and positivity practices • Our favorite stress-less tips and the science behind them • Lots of cool and affordable gift ideas For our CHALLENGE, we’ll aim to do these feel-good activities each day: • Daily gratitude • One serving of a mood-supporting food • 15 minutes of You time (eg, self-care, journal, meditation) • Random act of service • 30 minutes of movement
Reading Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, which I wish I had read decades ago. It may have made a huge difference in what I did or didn’t do when I was with the Board of Health and many other endeavors. Here we are now. Her message(s) did create change, unsustainable, unfortunately. The book was published in 1962. We have learned since then that what you do to your genes lives out to at least 4 generations. Why are we so ill now? Could it be in part related to the ubiquitous damage to our future health done then. Then add into the mix, what we have done in different and enhanced way to add to the damage since? I don’t know. I just can’t fathom why we continue to destroy our selves, our kids, our grandkids we love so much. We know the answers, the cause and effect. Why do we ignore them? I could question this ad nauseam, and the whys. Follow the money is one that comes to mind…and I will leave it there. The Great Holidays are upon us creating Joy, love, reflection, remembering, sharing, sometimes sadness, and great expectations for the New Year which is only a few weeks away. Do you think we can get out of the complacency, denial, status quo, kicking the can down the road, and get something sustainable done to change this so we can have a healthy and robust future? Lip service won’t cut it, action may. Your thoughts–
The Holiday Season can be filled with Joy and fun, but also stress. Next week we will focus on how to lift your spirits with wellness tips and info, and more, to help you stay positive.
Giving is one of the best ways to spread love, but it can also a major stressor. Giving without having an expectation for a reciprocal gift is ideal, and may be difficult to carry off. However the rewards are greater if you do, mentally, spiritually. We’re making it easier on you this season by giving you tons of fun gift ideas for that won’t stress you or your budget! And these are gifts of health, an interesting concept. Get in touch if you to learn more…
My answer to a question for a definition of highly processed foods-
Michael Pollan has a nice thought about that: “If it is a plant, eat it. If it is made in a plant, don’t eat it. Some are more processed than others. Any process changes the raw materials in some way. The most egregious are the additives. So trimming meat to make it ready to cook is minimal change, unless you age it or leave it unrefrigerated for too long. When you grind it, for example, and add multiple ingredients you are processing it. Many of the ingredients are flavor enhancers, preservatives, meant to stretch the raw materials so they cost less to make-often with the idea of increasing the profit, etc.. Many of the additives are very questionable as to their potential side effects and long term adverse reactions, such as cancer, Parkinson’s, dementia. Even those on the GRAS list are not tested for safety and are still used. I tried a new frozen ravioli, gluten free, with some really great Rao’s marinara Sauce and they were delicious. On further examination of the ingredients I found a mold inhibitor in there. Now I do not know why a frozen product needs a mold inhibitor added, even tho it is on the GRAS list. So, now that product is off my list. It is not an item I have in my kitchen either-the inhibitor, that is. The other thing about highly processed foods is that this is probably the first time in the history of Homo sapiens that those ingredients have been put together. We don’t do to well with that, as we are seeing now. Living Downstream, Our Stolen Future, The Body Restoration Plan, the books mentioned in the post, and many more, including several articles in National Geographics over the years, are telling the drastic story and we are not listening or taking action. We were sprayed with DDT every summer when we were kids. We used to follow the tractor and play in the fog. We are lucky to be alive. This was before Rachel Carson exposed that. Now we just ship DDT out of the country to others. There is no conscience where money is involved. Google “toxic load” and see what pops up. It is scary and we deserve to be so. Perhaps starting with Our Daily Poison will cover the topic well. You can use her bibliography for further resources. I choose to eat organic and mostly plants, supplement wisely, and choose to leave the processed foods on the store shelf, and highly recommend the Classic Mediterranean Diet and lifestyle. 1 Dec 23
My recent comment about 1 of 3 of us will end up with Alzheimer’s dementia created some comments. A few things came to mind. There may be a downward trend in age of start of symptoms. This suggests that people are younger when they get the disease. Why. Why are we one of the most ill [populations on the planet? There is no absolute answer, as there are no absolutes in medicine.. Highly processed foods are getting some blame. Our daily toxic bath has a high degree of suspicion. Talk and data about that go way back. Rachel Carson in Silent Spring exposed DDT. Others have exposed Glyphosate. (see America’s Two Headed Pig by Leah Dunham, a local author); PFAS has had a lot of publicity in the past few years. Lead, mercury, aluminum. Then there are the deficiencies in our bodies-magnesium, Vit D3, B12, effects of Celiac disease, on and on. Pogo said years ago “We have met the enemy and he is us”. There are things we can do. The biggest effect comes from starting early, before the onset of symptoms, and even way before that. Most of us have missed that opening chance. So start now and be on the 2/3 side of the three who prevent the diseases. I am adding Parkinson’s disease to this as well. We don’t need highly processed foods for anything except to be lazy. May I suggest this class of foods and much of the quick meal replacements and pre made snacks are simply bad planning if we choose to use them. Start with school lunch programs and go to the other end of things and get changes made in our meals offered to the elderly population. These categories need a lot of improvement. Sugar wreaks havoc on our immune systems and we usually have many contacts a day with sugar. Read a snack bar label, count all the different sugars and add the total. A four ounce chocolate pudding has 27 grams of sugar added. Tastes really great and is 7 tsp of sugar. It is slow self destruction. So, besides sidestepping all of the above take a peek, as in read, hilite, take action, with info in “The Mind Diet by Maggie Moon. A scientific approach to enhancing brain function and helping prevent Alzheimer’s and Dementia. If that doesn’t grab you, try Chronic by Dr. Steven Phillips and A Silent Fire by Shilpa Ravella. And then there is the Classic Mediterranean Diet and way of life. It is the most researched anywhere. Don’t change it. The lifestyle and social affect are a very large and important component. Bon appetit. And we used to say when we sold them, that if you are not using an air purifier you are the air purifier. Water, cool, clear water, anybody. Not from a bottle, may be best through a quality purifier at home though. Also, Our Daily Poison by Marie-Monique Robin, who also wrote: The World According to Monsanto.
Day three with three squares. Worked outside for quite a while. The home made pea soup and the last of the Thanksgiving leftovers were calling me and were a welcome warmer upper. It was a wind chill cold here today. Getting acclimatized for X/C skiing. I do have roller skis just in case. The Habit Tracker is some of what we have been up to this week in the Gut Health Reset challenge…
Along with the lessons in the Healthy Gut Reset that is running now, through the week ( you can still be part of it, say YES in messenger), are the benefits of the 7 day cleanse. This program has over 20 years of clinical experience, is safe and effective. It is particularly wise after the recent Holiday and to set you up for the oncoming Holidays, and your proverbial New Years Resolutions. If you’re looking for digestive support, looking to jump-start your weight loss, or simply want to feel more energy, try the 7-Day Healthy Cleanse. Our 7-Day Healthy Cleanse combines a carefully selected combination of Shaklee supplements with a supporting diet plan to help you feel better in one week. Guaranteed.* See the attachment for more details. I am a clinical dietitian, ask your questions. You may want to PM those.
