family
This year, my husband and I are doing the holidays a little differently. We’re still going to see the family and eat pumpkin pie, but we’ve decided to do it all in a different frame of mind.
Specifically, without guilt.
Do you ever feel guilty around the holidays? The first thing that comes to mind is food – we eat more than we should or the ‘wrong’ types of food and then beat ourselves up for it. Or maybe it’s guilt that you aren’t doing enough, aren’t throwing the most lavish party or buying the most perfect gifts.
Maybe it has to do with family. I know people who trek around on snowy holidays visiting 4 sets of parents! Do you feel you have to see everyone, make an appearance? Maybe this year you say, “See you next week” or “Let’s have dinner in February.” Would that be even remotely possible? Consider it.
One year we drove home from the holidays in our rental car, drank a bottle of wine and fell asleep on the couch. We were emotionally spent and mentally shaken. We left the car outside and totally forgot to return it on time. (Luckily, the car company didn’t charge us the hundreds of dollars in overage fees they could have – happy holidays to us! Whew.)
That is not how I want this season to end! It’s all about making choices that are right for us, drawing boundaries, and taking care of ourselves physicaly and mentally. Maybe one or two relatives will get annoyed. Maybe our front door will go without a festive holiday wreath. And maybe we’ll decline a party or two. Who cares?
My intention for the season is to bring happiness and joy into my life and the lives of those around me. How can I bring happiness? I’ll have to create it, and spread it. I will eat things that make my body happy, I will sleep until I am well rested, and I will spend time with people who make the holidays a celebration. I will not feel guilty about the choices I make.
What about you? What will you bring to the holidays?
Of course, one thing you’ll probably need to bring is something to eat! Here’s a super easy dip that everyone will love:
Holiday Hummus
1 15 oz. can chickpeas or white navy beans, drained and rinsed
1 cup roasted squash puree (any kind will do, I used Delicata)
1/4 cup tahini
1/4 cup olive oil
small handful fresh thyme leaves
S+P, to taste
Everything goes in the food processor – just blend it up. Try whole wheat pita or pumpernickel bread for dipping. It’s also great as a spread. Remember – it’s sweeter than hummus so it may not taste great on some vegetables. Experiment, and enjoy!
This post is part of Food Renegade’s Fight Back Fridays.
November 12th, 2009 | beans, family, happiness, quick and easy, recipe, winter | 16 Comments »
It took me three years from the time I decided to leave my career in advertising to when I actually did. I remember the first day I considered a career change – I was in my office with the door closed, searching the internet for nutrition schools.
After all, I had started college as a physical therapy major and got straight A’s. When I changed majors to graphic design in college, it was mostly because I didn’t like the idea of working in a conventional hospital or outpatient setting. But now, here I was deciding that the health field was maybe a better fit after all.
My mom suggested I take a look at a holistic nutrition program she’d heard about: The Institute for Integrative Nutrition (IIN). “Mom,” I said, “That doesn’t look like a real school. I need a degree to be taken seriously. I want to do this right.”
Trouble was, my degree was in art. And to apply to any masters programs in nutrition required a bunch of science courses I had never taken. Plus, these masters programs were wicked expensive and required fulltime attendance. Hmmmm. I looked into the jobs I’d get as a Registered Dietitian and saw that at least in the Boston area everything was a job in a hospital. This was not for me.
I shook off the idea of nutrition and carried on, working in advertising, changing companies and then freelancing. I was looking for something but I really wasn’t finding it. And of course, it’s SCARY to change careers. It’s easier to keep your eyes down and get through the day. And the next day. And the next.
During my yoga teacher training I got to know people who made their living in non-mainstream ways. There were massage therapists and reiki practitioners, acupuncture students and of course, yoga teachers. I guess it got me thinking. These were successful people doing what they loved. So I took another look at IIN.
This time, it was the right time. I read all about the program online and signed up the very next day. I was able to do that because I didn’t need any pre-requisites and I didn’t need to rearrange my life. I simply had to decide that I could travel to New York about once per month for weekend classes. Totally doable! People literally travel from all over the world to attend IIN. All I had to do was take the bus down from Boston. And, the tuition was affordable. I paid in full.
Fast forward to last January. I started school and the very first person I met on the very first day was Laura:
There were tons of people – about 1500 of us in that room! Laura and I sat together and saw Joshua speak for the first time. Joshua is the founder of IIN. He is also the main teacher. Sometimes he’s serious and smart, and sometimes he’s really funny.
Either way, he’s the kind of speaker that keeps you engaged and listening, never nodding off in your seat. I learned so much from him by the way he related to others. I never had a teacher who could talk about death and sex and emotion and food in such a smart, calm way.
But we had lots of other great speakers: Sally Fallon, Paul Pitchford, David Wolfe, Marion Nestle, Howard Lyman, Barry Sears and Deepak Chopra to name a handful. This is world class stuff, people. This is cutting edge information that goes way beyond the political and nonsensical USDA food pyramid.
Sometimes, students became the teachers by sharing their experiences with the group.
And sometimes we got a taste of each other’s talents that went far beyond health counseling.
We made friends. Every weekend, that crowd of 1500 people had more and more familiar faces. We had lunch together in Central Park,
and dinners together at restaurants around the city. Here’s a group of us at Pure Food and Wine on our last class weekend:
We learned a whole lot about nutrition and even more about working with people. I like to say that the school, for me, was 50% about food and 50% vocational training. I really learned HOW to go about counseling others and how to start and market my private practice. Robert Notter runs the business training part of IIN and his guidance was invaluable. I never would have figured out on my own how to get an email newsletter or teleseminar together!
I can’t believe how much learning was packed into this program. We were treated as adults, with many opportunities and very few rules. Do you learn best from reading? Then read. Do you learn best from listening? We got tons of extra lessons via live speakers and mp3s. There was constant support on the online forums – a place to ask questions and talk to other students. In my opinion, the practical assignments were the most helpful. They were the ones that got us out there and doing the work, talking to people, making contacts and doing real work in the world.
Throughout our months together, students did amazing things. Heck, I did amazing things! We watched one woman heal herself from chronic migraines and countless others experiment with diet and lifestyle to achieve better health. An anti-GMO group formed, people started making raw chocolate bars to sell and the GLBT family got together to create Out For Wellness. Everyone started working and making money sharing their love and support with clients.
And 7 months later…we graduated! Many of us will continue on in the Immersion Program – a free 2nd year where we’ll have conference weekends and provide support to the incoming class. In addition to my certification as a health counselor, I’m also certified by the American Association of Drugless Practitioners. Sweet!
I’m really glad I got to experience IIN in person. It was worth the many bus rides to NYC. I made so many wonderful friends and found strength in doing something like this for myself. But the Distance Learning program is the wave of the future!
Many people seem to find me and email to ask about IIN, so I hope you have all found this post helpful. If you have any questions at all, take a listen to my answers to some frequently asked questions and don’t hesitate to email me at michelle@findyourbalancehealth.com.
July 31st, 2009 | family, happiness, New York, nutrition school | 29 Comments »
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.
How do you feel about eating fats in your diet?
I realize this is a radical notion, to eat fats. So here’s more reading if you are interested:
http://www.westonaprice.org/knowyourfats/index.html
http://nymag.com/restaurants/features/17130
http://www.foodrenegade.com/fat-is-where-its-at
http://kellythekitchenkop.com/2009/04/canola-oil-last-time-random-reader-question.html
June 29th, 2009 | dairy, digestion, family, fat, nutrition school | 53 Comments »
Mother’s Day is not far off and I’ve been thinking quite a bit lately about how I learned to cook and appreciate food because of my mom and grandma. I wouldn’t be doing this work today had I not been brought up with an appreciation for home cooked food! (If you live in the South Shore area and are interested in learning to cook healthy meal for your kids, please check out my upcoming class Healthy Meals for Busy Moms.)
As a tribute to our moms and also to Real Food, I’m kicking off a Mom’s Real Food Recipe Carnival! Here’s how it works:
1. Choose a recipe from your mom, grandma, etc. Bonus points for Real Food recipes!
2. Post the recipe to your blog by May 10th (Mother’s Day). IT DOES NOT HAVE TO BE A SCANNED IN RECIPE. You can just type out the recipe you remember or love from your mom.
(No blog? No problem. Leave your recipe/thoughts in the comments of this post!)
3. From your blog entry, link back to this post. You may also include this Mom’s Real Food Recipe Carnival graphic on your site to help spread the word!
4. Email me at michelle@findyourbalancehealth.com to let me know when your post is up and I’ll include a link to it here.
To kick things off I thought I’d share some recipes from my mom and grandma. The one above is from my grandma’s recipe file, something I am lucky to have since she passed away. I treasure her collection not only for its contents but for her handwriting, her ideas and the glimpse it gives me into her life. I love the cards that are beat up and stained because I know she made that recipe often.
When I was a kid I only knew escarole as “Scharole” since that’s how everyone pronounced it! Often we had “Scharole” Soup, the kind with mini meatballs. Boy, did I love that one. (Though I usually picked around the greens to eat the meatballs only.) Again, only years later did I find out that the rest of the world calls it Italian Wedding Soup! Here’s a recipe from my grandma’s box using escarole in a different way, with pasta and prosciutto:
Now here’s a recipe from my mom. Growing up, my mom always made me help her in the kitchen. I thought I was helping, or doing chores, but what I was really doing was learning a lifetime of cooking techniques and receiving a very special gift. I look forward to one day having my kids in the kitchen with me to teach them the same thing. My very favorite meal growing up was her Eggplant Parm. Mmmmm.
And finally, a recipe written in my own grade-school handwriting. I remember one afternoon we were visiting friends of the family and they kept me busy by asking me to write down the recipe for the scones we had that day. I found it in my grandma’s recipe box years later.
Now it’s your turn! I look forward to reading all of your entries!
Our first entry is from Shweta at Bonne Nutrition
She has entered two Indian recipes from her childhood: Khara Pongal and Sweet Mango Dosa. They both look terrific, thank you Shweta!
Next we have a Hollandaise sauce from Laura’s mom
Not only did Laura contribute a recipe, she STARTED a blog in order to share her family story and recipe with everyone. Wow! Way to go the extra mile!
Houseonahill has shared her Gran’s Tea Biscuits!
I love the photographed recipe and story about her Gran from New Orleans. Very sweet!
Shweta is back with Mung Dosas and Green Peas chutney
What a lovely green meal! Thank your mother-in-law for her chutney recipe for us!
Karen remixed her mom’s recipe for Mother’s Day
Mom’s tuna and lemon souffle gets an upgrade to her delicious sounding Leek and Spinach Souffle.
This Carnival is running through a few fridays as part of Food Renegade’s Fight Back Fridays!
April 28th, 2009 | family, recipe | 15 Comments »
