If you are a sinus person like me, you’ve probably had your fair share of semi-sleepless nights, slumped in the most upright position you can manage, your mouth dry and cracked from trying to suck air into your congested head.
You’ve probably been on antibiotics several billion times to get rid of the thick mucus hiding out in your skull. Probably a bacterial infection, they said.
I actually have not had a sinus infection in awhile. Changing my diet made a huge difference! It’s sorta common knowledge among holistic health folks that eliminating dairy is the trick. It might be, I don’t have scientific proof. But it worked for me, along with eliminating sugar and taking better care of myself in general. That was back in like, 2007.
I’m off dairy again. Had to happen. During my pregnancy I craved milk, cheese, yogurt. And that’s fine because in organic, full fat, unsweetened form that stuff is great for growing a baby!
But come springtime, it’s not so good for my sinuses. Nope. Dairy creates mucus in the body, and I definitely do not need more mucus in the spring. Another reason to get off the white stuff is that milk protein can be notoriously difficult for little ones to digest. By staying off dairy, hopefully Danny and I both will be free of tummy upset and stuffed noses. Hooray!
Have you ever gone off dairy? Do you find it difficult?
Another post pre-written to hold us over while I’m in the early days of motherhood But I think it’s a good one! Can’t wait to be back blogging “live,” but in the meantime Danny has gained weight, had a great checkup with his pediatrician, and I’m eating like mad to keep up with a 9 lb. baby’s demand for food!
I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but frozen yogurt shops are kind of a big deal. I see one every time I turn around. Like Pinkberry. Are you familiar? Because apparently they’re in 14 states and 6 countries outside the U.S. And they have a catchy little song with lyrics like these:
“It doesn’t feel like I’m cheating when I’m eating it”
That’s funny, what would I be cheating on? Oh, that’s right, I’m supposed to be on a diet aren’t I? Obviously I have a weight problem or at least a body image issue. Because…I’m a woman. And I imagine the name “Pinkberry” is targeted at me. So it’s nice to imply guilt right off the bat, because women should feel guilty about how much they weigh and what they look like. Right. Thanks, Pinkberry! I almost forgot!
Maybe I’m exaggerating here, but I feel like every baby born to my friends has a food allergy of some kind. Peanuts. Soy. Milk. Wheat. Eggs. Fish. It’s become commonplace, almost expected. And we’re talking about pretty severe allergies here for the most part. There’s a whole other category of kids who have allergies that result in eczema or something less obvious and I bet they haven’t even been diagnosed yet.
Is it just me, or are food allergies going through the roof? Because thinking back to when I was a kid…I knew one boy allergic to shellfish. It made him puke. Um. I can’t think of anyone else, anyone carrying an epi pen or bringing their own food to birthday parties.
In this week’s New Yorker magazine, I came across an article entitled The Peanut Puzzle validating that in the US: “the rate of allergy is rising sharply…In the past decade, allergies to peanuts have doubled.”
This is not what an expecting mama wants to hear. I remember one of my friends warning me to stop eating peanuts when I got pregnant, so I wouldn’t cause my baby to have a peanut allergy. I’ve also received advice to stop eating common allergens (milk, eggs, soy) in my 3rd trimester so my milk won’t contain it – just in case baby is allergic.
And I thought about doing those things. I did. I bought almond butter instead of peanut butter. I skipped milk for a few weeks. But then I was starving, needing protein, and accidentally ate some eggs and cheese. Whoops.
What really concerns me here is why the rate of food allergies are on the rise. It just doesn’t make sense to be allergic to such nutritious, real food that has been part of the human diet for so long! If kids were allergic to Doritos, THAT I would understand.
Where do you begin when you’re trying to eat healthy? Should you ban all fried food? Start counting calories? I know, I know, how about using protein powders? It really can be confusing.
There are a gabillion dietary theories out there, and it may surprise you to know that I don’t believe any one of them is the answer. Nope, not Paleo, not South Beach, not veganism, not macrobiotics. That’s not to say these theories are wrong. I just don’t believe there can be one way of eating that works for everyone, all of the time. So tell your diet-crazed neighbor to take a chill pill.
You’re gonna find out what works for you!
Here are 8 ways that you, or anyone, can upgrade your diet starting today. And they’re simple, just like eating should be.
Clearly I’m on some kind of a breakfast kick lately. Which is odd because I’m really picky about breakfasts. For awhile, all I ate was porridge made from quinoa or millet or teff – all of which make a fantastic meal – but we need variety, right? Read on for one of my cereal picks and a chance to win your own box.
Heck yeah, free breakfast doesn’t have to mean doughnuts!
I often mention Uncle Sam’s cereal as one of the few brands of boxed cereal I ever buy. Have you tried it? I like it because whole wheat kernels are the first ingredient, followed by flaxseed, salt, barley malt, and a handful of B vitamins.
Going off dairy was the very first change I made to my diet. And boy oh boy was that a difficult decision to make! No dairy? Ohmigod what am I going to eat?
I remember it well. But I was suffering from tremendous sinus infections and something had to be done. I heard that dairy could contribute to that sort of thing – plus, I had a sneaking suspicion that it was milk that caused my stomachaches.
It took a little getting used to but going off dairy made me feel so much better, I didn’t care. My digestion started functioning properly and the sinus infections lessened, then went away. Of course, I also started cleaning sugar and other garbage from my diet so that helped. But dairy…that was my first bold move.
Cut to some years later and you might be surprised to see a half gallon of (always organic!) milk in my refrigerator. It’s funny, after my stomach healed I could tolerate milk again. And in moderation as part of a clean diet, I’m not getting those sinus infections. (Fingers crossed!)
So what gives? Is dairy good or not? Should you go off it?
Well, that depends. Milk, especially raw milk from grass fed cows, is very nutritious. But when it’s pasteurized, heated to crazy high temperatures in the name of killing bacteria, many of the nutritious qualities are lost. Most proponents of milk are specifically talking about raw milk. If that’s something you are interested in, check out RealMilk.com for more information.
Milk is a build-up food. It’s meant to grow big, strong cows, or goats, or humans. Need to lose weight? Probably want to cut back on dairy. Too skinny? Maybe quality milk is just what you need.
Milk is advertised as a great source of calcium. But it doesn’t quite add up – in a country that consumes great quantities of milk we have high rates of osteoporosis. In China, traditionally milk is not part of the diet at all. Yet rates of osteoporosis are low. What gives?
If you’re worried about calcium, look to whole foods like dark leafy greens, almonds and anchovies for calcium. And avoid caffeine, which leeches calcium from your bones.
When I drink milk – and I do, now – I always buy whole, organic milk. That’s a whole food. Skim milk is a partial food. I believe in feeding my body food in its most natural state possible. Plus, whole milk tastes amazing. I mean, if you’re gonna do it, do it right! That said, I usually limit my intake to a splash in my tea in the morning, something like that.
Milk replacements? Eh. I drank soymilk and felt virtuous for awhile. But then I read the label and realized it’s full of sugar! I switched to unsweetened. But then I learned about phytoestrogens and all the reasons to lay off consuming so much darn soy. Hmmm. Now what?
Almond milk, oat milk, rice milk? Maybe. It’s all processed, to a degree, if it’s being sold in the supermarket. I mean, you can make almond milk yourself. But you know what’s even easier? Banana milk. That’s what the video above is about because it’s something I use several times a week. It’s fast and about as natural as it gets when it comes to a white, milky substance for your morning cereal. If you’re like me, morning cereal means Uncle Sam’s or another unsweetened brand, or a whole grain porridge or something like that. Banana milk lends a litttle creaminess and a little sweetness. What’s not to love?
Oh, and the blender in the video is the Magic Bullet. It rocks. Makes a great gift!
Before we get going, have you entered to win free Khaya cookies yet? How about a trip to Cape Town? If not, enter here.
Osteoporosis. Is it a problem?
My mom has started hearing from her doctors that she’s losing bone density and of course this worries me. For her, and for me! Certainly we are both at high risk for osteoporosis: we’re slender, small-framed caucasian women! Oh, crap.
Well, it’s becoming more and more common for women to be prescribed medications to help stop bone loss. It’s clearly good business, as I see they have Sally Fields touting Boniva (one of my favorite names for a prescription drug…isn’t it cute? And so is she! Wait, wait, that’s marketing getting into my brain! Aughh) As with all prescription drugs, you just gotta wonder…is there a better way? After all, too much calcium in our bones can lead to an even greater danger: brittle bones with no flexibility. Now THAT is going to cause fractures.
If you want to have strong, healthy bones you need calcium in your diet, sure. But you also need certain vitamins and healthy fats to help your body make use of the calcium you ingest. Ms. Colbin noted that the dietary risk factors for breaking bones are:
1. Too many nightshade vegetables (eggplant, potatoes, tomatoes, etc.)
2. Diet high in refined sugar and grains
3. Not enough dark, leafy greens,
4. Not enough good quality fats
The first thing that comes up when you think about calcium is…Milk. Of course. The dairy industry has spent a gabillion dollars on marketing to sear in our brains the connection between milk and calcium and strong bones. According to some experts in the holistic nutrition world, you actually don’t need milk at all in your diet. Milk from mothers is great for babies. Milk from cows is perfect for calves. But as a full grown human being, milk is unnecessary and often the cause of allergies and digestive troubles. Ms. Colbin states that milk is inappropriate for women in particular as we are milk-makers…milk is supposed to go out, not in.
However, then you have those on the other side of the fence who swear by milk – and typically raw milk. You have Sally Fallon and the Weston A. Price foundation who go to great lengths to extoll the virtues of the creamy raw white stuff for it’s nutritional value, probiotics and live enzymes. After all, whole milk (not skim or 2%) is a whole food. And that’s what we are supposed to be eating, right? Whole foods are good!
Well.
We’re not going to solve this conundrum today, folks. To milk or not to milk? I say, do what’s right for you. If milk doesn’t sit well in your belly, or if you prefer a vegan lifestyle, then fine. If you love milk and want to find good quality organic and even raw milk, that’s cool too.
And while we’re on the topic of choosing milk or no milk, remember that milk substitutions are really not “health foods.” For instance, soymilk is neither a whole food nor something that is healthy by the glassful because of the phytoestrogens in soy and the sugar almost always added to processed soymilk. Many people say that milk causes congestion and mucus buildup, and if that’s true for you then stay away from all milky-quality foods like almond milk or rice milk. I mean, really, you don’t need to have a white liquid in your diet! So if you can’t do whole organic milk then just skip the milk category altogether.
Ms. Colbin offered this idea which is quite nice: If you really must eat cereal and you must pour something white on it, blend half a banana with 1/2 cup of water and use that! (I tried it – it’s good!)
But back to the idea of healthy bones.
So, we know we need calcium, and the fats and vitamins that occur alongside it in whole foods. We need less sugar, fewer refined grains and more dark leafy green veggies.
Here’s a bone-building recipe I came up with that will knock your garlic-loving socks off. My mom always made this as a quickie dinner when I was growing up so all I’ve done is added veggies and swapped out the pasta. Kale is a great source of calcium, as are anchovies!
Anchovy pasta with kale
1 head kale, chopped small including stems (any variety, I used red curly)
2 Tbl. organic butter
1 lb. whole wheat pasta (I used fettuccine)
5 cloves garlic, chopped
1/2 cup extra virgin organic olive oil
2 cans anchovies (chopped) and liquid they are packed in (sardines also work)
1 handful fresh oregano, basil or parsley, chopped
1/2 cup water
S+P
1. Cook pasta according to package directions.
2. While it cooks, heat butter in a large pan over medium high heat. Add kale and toss with some salt and pepper. When kale is soft and stil bright green, set aside in a bowl.
3. Rinse out pan and add olive oil over medium heat. When hot, add garlic and allow to turn golden. Then mix in entire contents of anchovy cans, water, herbs, water, S+P. Bring to a simmer and reduce to low.
4. Combine cooked pasta with anchovy sauce. Top with a generous scoop of kale.
Ok I know what you’re thinking. Bathing suit season is here and the LAST thing any of us needs is more fat.
But, I’m here to tell you that yes, that’s exactly what you might need.
Let’s start at the beginning, which for me was in high school. When I started attending my private high school, all the girls were worried about eating fat. For lunch they ate a plain bagel and drank Snapple. These were all skinny girls. So, to my 14 year old mind, the no-fat plan made sense.
I started refusing to eat anything that had fat grams on the label, much to my mother’s chagrin. What about olive oil, she said? Olive oil is healthy!
I said, “Mom, olive oil has 14 grams of fat per serving.”
She said, “There’s no fat in eggs! Eggs are good for you!”
I said, “Moooommmmm, there are 5 grams of fat in every egg! You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
I was irritable, as most teenagers are. I also got sick a lot. When I went away to college, my digestion went from bad to worse. I had fainting spells and we wondered if something was wrong with my brain. Tests were always negative. I was fine, according to doctors.
After college I had a conversation with my mom about how I was feeling. I told her that I just didn’t feel healthy, even though the doctor said I was. I didn’t feel hearty. I was weak. My mom asked if I was eating well. I said yes, but I felt like no matter what I ate it just wasn’t being absorbed. I could drink water all day and still feel dehydrated!
I was totally functional through all this. It’s not like I was lying in a hospital bed. I was working and going to the gym and by all standard measurements…I was fine. Except I was so NOT.
Skipping ahead a number of years, I’ll just summarize by saying that I’ve cleaned up my diet a whole lot. I started eating whole grains and lots of vegetables. Processed food got the boot. Duh, I mean, you’re reading this blog so you know that.
But fat? I still didn’t want to be fat. I kicked sugar and was happy to cook with just a drizzle of olive oil.
And then came weekend 3 at the Institute for Integrative Nutrition. Sally Fallon (author of Nourishing Traditions and founder of the Weston A. Price foundation) was our guest speaker. I had heard about the work of Weston A. Price and admired his research. If you are unfamiliar, dig into the WAP website, pronto my dears!
Basically, Dr. Price found that people from indigenous cultures all over the world ate very different diets but had common health characteristics. They did not suffer from the diseases we see in the West. When people from the villages moved to industrialized areas and were exposed to processed foods for the first time, THAT’s when they got sick.
What does this have to do with fat? Well, as Sally explained, traditional diets ate meat – with all the skin, organs and fat included. Some cultures ate little meat but plenty of milk – whole, raw milk. In short, naturally occurring fats were an important part of their daily diets.
You’re probably thinking, yeah, but I don’t run after yaks all day. Those people burned more fat than I do. That’s why they could eat all that stuff.
Maybe. But the truth is, our bodies require a certain amount of fats to function. Here’s an excerpt from Nina Planck’s Real Food that struck me so important I just have to share it with you:
The vital role of fat in digestion is illustrated by an obscure condition called rabbit starvation, caused by a diet exclusively of lean protein…the symptoms are lethargy, nausea, diarrhea, weight loss, and eventually death. Without fat, digestion literally fails and you starve – even if you’re eating plenty.
Bingo! That was me! But there’s more.
Did you know that your brain is 60% fat? And that mother’s milk has a greater proportion of fat to protein than cow’s milk? Fats are clearly very important for human development. Not only that, they’re important for fertility too! And I’m not just talking unsaturated fat here…I’m talking full-on saturated animal fats. (From healthy sustainably-farmed animals of course.)
But heart disease is our #1 killer? How can we eat fats knowing that they are going to clog our arteries?
Let’s refer back to Weston A. Price. His findings very clearly showed that natural, traditional foods led to good health but processed, modern foods were to blame for a sharp decline in a population’s health. So, is it really about saturated fats being bad for us? What about our man-made hydrogenated margarines that have proven far more deadly than any fat that comes from nature?
Sally Fallon told us that she eats half a stick of raw, organic butter in her oats every morning. She said that the fat in dairy products is essential for absorbing vitamins and calcium. That low-fat dairy products leave the body questioning where the rest of the whole food is…leading to ice cream cravings!
I did a little experiment. I started adding butter to my oats. A tablespoon, not a stick. Boy was it gooood! And within days, lines I had begun to accept in my face started to disappear. I’ve gained no weight and I’m now cooking with butter at almost every meal, along with other naturally occurring fats like coconut oil, olive oil and sesame oil. I’m avoiding man-made modern fats like margarine and canola oil. This all seems to be in line with eating organic produce – it’s like getting back to pre-industrialized times in the food supply.
Turns out that of course my mom was right. I’ve been trying to convince her to enroll at the Institute for Integrative Nutrition because she’s a natural.
If you don’t believe any of this talk about fats, just consider the past 20 or 30 years and the plethora of low-fat/no-fat products in the supermarket. By now, Americans should all be very slender!
But we’re not, are we? Shoot. There goes THAT theory.
Finally, last weekend Max and I took our first trip to a local farm! So awesome. It felt like another world. I mean, I didn’t have any cell phone coverage out there. Crazy, right? It was worth it though. Even when buying the most expensive eggs at Whole Foods I wonder…gee…does this company debeak their chickens? Am I eating eggs from chickens who are stuffed 10 to a cage and never see the light of day? What about the milk I’m buying? Has this cow been fed hormones and antibiotics to keep her producing milk constantly, even while preganant? Is that the kind of business I want to support?
I digress. But seriously, this is what I think about when I shop. That, or I’m thinking damn I forgot my reusable bags again!
So we’re driving down a dirt road past a sportsman club and lots of trees, wondering where this farm is…then, well, we saw the cows! Big, brown, furry looking things. Cows are furry? Did you know that? I did not. They were all hanging out, eating grass, covered in mud. Everything smelled kind of…good. Earthen, sort of. Max assured me that this was only because it’s still cold in Massachusetts. In the summer, the smell would probably shoot past “earthen” to downright “stinky. Ah, well.
Inside the barn everything was on the honor system. We bought fresh eggs and milk, beef and pork and left a check in the jar. Simple stuff. They also had yogurt, duck eggs and goose eggs! Maybe next time. I’ll admit the prices were a bit higher than at the store, but not by much and the freshness can’t be beat. This is quality food that I can feel good about. When was the last time you thought THAT about a Subway $5 Footlong?
Ok, ok I can hear what you’re thinking: “Go to a farm, is she crazy? i don’t even have time to go to the bathroom!”
So for you folks, you’re in luck! It’s time to join your local CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) for summer shares! Joining a CSA allows you to experience farm fresh foods without ever seeing a dirt road. They truck it in, and everyone subscribed goes and picks up their share once a week at the local dropoff point. For anyone in Boston interested in a CSA, please email me and I’ll give you the deets about one in Central Square or one in Medford. For all my lovely readers outside of the Boston area, check out LocalHarvest.org to find a CSA near you.
Finally, if farm-hopping sounds crazy and a CSA is too much commitment, I urge you to look for your local Farmer’s Market. This summer I’ll be spending a lot of time at the Medford Farmer’s Market but there are markets all over the place. Go look. Seriously. Prices at the market are always good and the food is fresher than the stuff that travels on planes, trains and automobiles to get to the supermarket.
I help busy people find balance in their over-worked, over-stressed lives. Trust me, it's not an all-or-nothing situation! A few shifts in diet and lifestyle can rock your world like they did mine. (And if you're a health coach, I can help you do the same for your own clients.) Read on
But I think it’s a good one! Can’t wait to be back blogging “live,” but in the meantime Danny has gained weight, had a great checkup with his pediatrician, and I’m eating like mad to keep up with a 9 lb. baby’s demand for food!
