A Day of Anti-Inflammatory Meals for Sustainable Weight Loss

Chronic long-term inflammation (what SO many people are facing today) is extremely harmful to our health. Not only does it lead to weight gain, but also contributes to obesity, type 2 diabetes, heart disease, autoimmune diseases, and other health conditions.

Thankfully, there is a lot we can do to reduce inflammation in the body just through our daily diet.

Some anti-inflammatory foods that I recommend to eat regularly include:

  • leafy greens (lettuces, arugula, kale, spinach, etc).

  • fermented foods like raw sauerkraut, kimchi and unsweetened organic yogurt or kefir

  • colorful vegetables (orange veggies like organge bell pepper, sweet potato and butternut squash, yello veggies like yellow squash, yellow peppers and onions, purple vegges like purgple cabbage, eggplants and purple potatoes/carrots/cauliflower, white veggies like cauliflower and radish, red veggies like beets, and of course ALL green veggies, including brocoli, green beans, zucchini, all green herbs, ETC).

  • colorful fruits - in small amounts at a time (blue/purple including blueberries, blackberries, plums; red including starwberries, raspberries, cherries and red apples; orange including oranges, nectarines, some varities of peaches; green including green apples and pears, etc.)

  • omega-3 rich proteins like wild-caught fish and seafood, organic grass-fed meats and poultry, as well as organic eggs.

  • nuts and seeds - ncluding walnuts, almonds, chia seeds, flax seeds, hemp seeds, sunflower and pumpkin seeds, etc., as well as nut and seed butters

  • other healthy fats including avocados and extra-virgin olive oil

  • fiber-rich legumes including: lentils, chickpeas, peas and all beans, as well as small amoutns of whole grains such as quinoa, wild rice, brown rice, millet, amaranth, teff, buckwheat, etc. (*only if your tolerate these ; reguardless I recommend sticking to small portions and cooking properly, always soaking before cooking).

Today I’m sharing a day of healthy, delicious and easy “anti-inflammatory” meals to get you started on your anti-inflammatory lifestyle!

Read More

5 Foods to Combat Stress & Anxiety

When people think of stress, they think mostly of work and deadlines. But there are so many other forms of stress that are impacting your health. And one of the biggest ones comes from the FOOD that you’re putting into your body.

The foods you eat can affect your hormonal balance and create inflammation in your gut, all of which can stress out your body.

Generally, when your body experiences any type of stress, its primary focus becomes controlling that stress. Your body will secrete more cortisol and adrenaline, which tells your system to “restock on the energy supply” even if it’s not really depleted. As a result, it makes you hungry and encourages fat storage. Yikes! (This is why I say, “stress can make you fat!”) Note: everyone is different and people respond differently to stress, but this is what most commonly happens.

And what’s interesting is that certain foods contribute to stress on your body, while others help alleviate it.

What are the key foods that creates stress?  

Coffee, alcohol, sugar, and generally, all heavily processed foods. They increase your stress hormone levels, and will feed the bad bacteria in your gut, causing stress in both your hormones and your gut.

What are the foods that actually help your body stay healthy and combat stress? 

Read my blog for 5 categories of foods that help your body cope with stress and anxiety, from the inside out!

Read More

10 Ways to Support Your LIVER and help you detoxify

Our liver removes all toxins, clears medications from your body, breaks down our food so we can properly process it, and even helps us with hormone regulation - so it is absolutely crucial that we take proper care of this essential organ!

In this blog, I share my 10 most important steps to take to better care for your liver (via simple lifestyle and diet habits).

Read More

March: National Nutrition Month - 6 nutrition tips for optimal health

March is National Nutrition Month, a month to help increase awareness about the importance of good nutrition for improving your overall health. Making healthy food choices and improving your eating habits (in combination with incorporating more physical activity and stress reduction into your lifestyle) can help prevent many chronic diseases, such as diabetes, heart disease and cancer. And of course, it will help you LOOK and FEEL better, have more confidence and be happier!

Here are 6 of my best tips to help you make healthier nutrition choices (to minimize risk of disease, reach and maintain your ideal weight, and feel better in your body overall).

Read More

8 foods to protect your skin from sun damage

You can spend all you want on improving your skin from the outside, but to get the best results, you also need to focus on improving your skin health from the INSIDE.

If you want beautiful skin, you need to start ADDING BEAUTY-PROMOTING FOODS into your daily diet (as well as reduce the foods that lead to oxidative stress and contribute to aging and inflammation).

This also applies to SUN-CARE. You can literally use food as sunscreen (in combination with your physical/mineral sunscreen of course). Apart from applying a good nontoxic sunscreen daily, it helps to consume certain foods that can help to protect your skin from the damaging effects of the sun's UV rays. 

READ MORE for eight foods rich in phytonutrients that may help protect your skin from sun damage, and promote healthy, beautiful skin.

Read More

8 Holistic Tips to Help Reduce Risk of Breast Cancer

October is breast cancer awareness month; a month to raise awareness about our need for Cancer prevention education, something I’m passionate about ESPECIALLY since we’ve discovered how much we can do with food and lifestyle to lower our risk

Today I’m sharing 6 important doctor recommendations to lower your risk of breast cancer, plus 8 more holistic tips to help reduce your risk of disease in general.

Read More

Need a boost of energy? Try these tips and recipes

Check out my blog for 8 TIPS TO BOOST YOUR ENERGY and 2 DELICIOUS METABOLISM-BOOSTING, ENERGIZING RECIPES to start off your day right and give you energy all day long.

Read More

Anti-Inflammatory Diet: 3 steps to lower inflammation naturally

I wanted to write about the anti-inflammatory diet because, even though I’m against “dieting”, this isn’t really a diet; this is about creating a lifestyle of limiting inflammatory foods and regularly incorporating anti-inflammatory foods and lifestyle choices to support better health. It’s something that has helped me immensely, and I can testify that it supports gut health, hormonal health, and maintaining a healthy weight WITHOUT dieting. Following these tips that i’m sharing below will help a lot towards achieving your health goals, I promise!

The food we eat — and don’t eat — can help lower and even prevent this chronic inflammation, to help us feel better, lose weight and reduce our chances of illness.

Today I share 4 ways to enhance your diet and lifestyle to help you reduce inflammation and feel better overall.

Read More

4 Foods for a Healthy Brain

There are so many things we can do in our day to day to support our brain health, even through our diet. Remember to first use FOOD AS MEDICINE. Incredibly there are many foods that have proven to boost our brain health and help prevent early “ageing” of our brain (preventing memory loss, etc).

Here are 4 “foods” that you want to consume regularly to support a sharp mind and overall brain health (plus helpful, easy tips on how to implement them in your day to day).

Read More

One Type of Stress We're all Facing – and 8 tips to decrease it

Nowadays, we are all experiencing some degree of oxidative stress in our bodies, which is keeping us from attaining our health goals. It can negatively impact our fertility, our ability to reach our ideal weight, our ageing process…. and more.

So what causes oxidative stress, and how can we decrease it?

In this blog, I lay out the key contributors to oxidative stress and 8 tips to reduce it in your day to day life.

Read More

11 Tips for Balancing Blood Sugar

Sustaining balanced blood sugar levels (aka blood glucose levels) and minimizing swings in blood sugar is absolutely paramount to weight loss, and moreover, to a healthy lifestyle and avoiding disease.

The good news is that there is so much we can do through small DIET and LIFESTYLE changes to support our blood sugar levels and simultaneously boost our overall health.

Today in my bog I share 11 tips to keep stable, healthy glucose levels (which simultaneously support healthy weight loss).

Read More

Food as Medicine: Fighting depression with Holistic Nutrition

Did you know that antidepressants are some of the most prescribed medications in the world (and the most popular psychiatric medication)?

WHY IS THIS IMPORTANT? Because I am convinced that in many cases (that are not SO severe), there are many “natural” holistic tools that one can apply to feel better and avoid taking anti-depression meds - and these tools help treat the root cause, and come with no side effects!

Additionally, in the cases where medication is absolutely necessary, there are many lifestyle and diet factors that can support your depression treatment to make the results more effective (and hopefully help you become less reliant on the meds).

READ MORE FOR 5 NUTRITION TIPS TO HELP YOU BEAT THE BLUES AND SUPPORT YOUR MENTAL HEALTH.

IMPORTANT NOTE: I am not a doctor, and depression can certainly be a serious medical condition that requires medical attention. So if you suffer from depression, please call your doctor for a diagnosis and a treatment plan that works for you.

Read More

February Love Food: Beets

Many times people fear beets because of their sweetness and high sugar content, but by cutting them out of your diet, you’re missing out on all their awesome, healthy-boosting properties.

And actually, beets can help you stay slim, have balanced hormones, balanced energy, and more.

READ MORE to learn more about the awesome benefits, HOW to eat beets, and get my super easy hormone-balancing juice recipe.

Read More

OMEGA-3’s 101: Benefits and Best Sources

Surely you’ve heard about the wonderful benefits of Omega-3 fatty acids. You’ll see it in marketing of nutrition labels, and you’ve probably read about it in my blog and Instagram, where I always try to include omega-3-rich foods in my meals.

But maybe you've wondered, WHY ARE THEY SO IMPORTANT? What exactly are they, and should you really care?

I wanted to address this topic because, YES, you should care. Omega-3's are extremely important for your health. And being informed on the topic is important because not all omega-3 foods are equal, and it's good for you to know why, and which ones you need to consume. 

Read More

5 Reasons Why I Eat Ginger Every Day (+ recipes)

Luckily for me, I naturally love spicy foods, and I’ve found that a lot of the spices/ herbs/ condiments that I love most are also awesome for my digestion. One of these miracle digestive spices is GINGER.

Ginger is a widely used condiment, that’s part of the same family as turmeric and cardamom, all of which are great for our health. And like turmeric (which most of you know is a powerful anti-inflammatory agent if you read my blogs), Ginger also anti-inflammatory properties, in addition to to tons of other benefits (beyond digestion!). 

Read below for 5 BENEFITS OF GINGER (as well as recipes and tips on how I use ginger in my daily diet).

Read More

8 Ways to Activate Your GENES For Better Health & Weight Loss

One of the most fascinating studies that I've come across is regarding how we can program our genes to improve our health through food and lifestyle choices. YEP. If you eat poorly and live in stress, you make yourself even more susceptible to gain weight, but when you feed your cells the right way, that can start changing the behavior of your genes so that you (and your children) will have a tendency to be thinner and live longer.

We are all born with a FIXED set of genes (aprox 23,000) that determine our physical characteristics such as hair/eye color, and certain childhood diseases. Then we have many more gene mutations, which affect how genes express themselves in your body. And while we cannot change those 23,000 genes, new studies (called epigenetics) show that we CAN change the expressions of these genes, that direct our biochemical processes, and make us more/less likely to get certain health disorders.

Healthy aging is mostly due to how we “communicate” with our genes through our diet and lifestyle. OUR FOOD IS INFORMATION to our bodies, constantly giving “instructions” to our genes. If we eat nutritious, real food, it sends “good health” instructions to our genes. If we regularly eat foods loaded with sugar, trans fats and chemicals, its simply “bad data” for our genes that will stop our body from properly functioning.

Read More to learn 8 of the most important steps that you can take every day to optimize how your genes behave, helping to “turn on” the genes that promote good health (and “turn off” the genes that promote illness): 

Read More

Why You Should Be Eating More Chocolate

Halloween is around the corner, and many of us are worried about the temptation of all the candy and chocolate all around us.

But the good news is – you CAN indulge in chocolate and stay healthy! Dark Chocolate is loaded with fiber, protein and important minerals (including magnesium and iron) and contains an ideal fatty acid profile. Having about 1 ounce of organic dark chocolate (75-90% cocoa) and/or adding some raw cacao and cacao nibs to your homemade healthy treats - is a healthy and delicious addition to your diet.

READ MORE for some awesome benefits of consuming dark chocolate, and to learn what to look far and brands I recommend!

Read More

What I Eat to Keep My Hair Healthy, Strong, Long and Shiny

I love that I’m always getting compliments on my hair, and while part of it is definitely genetics (and luck!), I have come to realize that what I eat has a big impact on the health of my lovely locks. 

Do you want to have shinier, thicker, stronger, sexy hair (that doesn’t easily break or fall out)? Instead of spending a ton of money on products (that are possibly damaging your hair in the long run), focus on increasing the foods in your daily diet that are key for nourishing your hair. (Note: this applies for men, too!)

Here are 7 nutrients (and foods rich in these nutrients) that will help you get fabulous hair:

Read More

Why You Should Add Turmeric to Your Diet

Turmeric is a yellowish-orange colored spice, most commonly used in Indian curries, and is one of the most powerful anti-inflammatory and disease-fighting agents on the planet!

It has been used as a medicinal herb in India for years, and recently has been discovered worldwide for its medicinal properties. Studies have shown the benefits of Turmeric to be just as effective (and MORE effective in some cases) than Ibuprofen, Advil, and many prescription medications.

Here are some the proven benefits of curcumin, the most active ingredient in Turmeric:

  • Help lower inflammation. (This is HUGE because low-grade chronic inflammation has been linked to many common diseases, from heart conditions to Alzheimer’s and cancer)
  • Controls blood sugar spikes and insulin resistance
  • Helps regulate high cholesterol
  • Boosts immunity and the antioxidant capacity of our body
  • Helps manage Arthritis symptoms (and generally, works as a pain reliever!)
  • Can lower the risk of heart disease
  • Has anti-cancer properties, helping to prevent the growth of cancer cells
  • Can improve many skin conditions like Eczema, and more!

It's amazing, and a little goes a long way. Plus, it's so easy to incorporate into your diet. Here are some of my favorite ways to use turmeric:

 

Read More