If you find yourself wishing you had eaten one less chocolate egg this Easter season, I am sure you are not alone!

The last few weeks have been a sugar fest for adults and children alike, and the most obvious results are a lack of concentration, poor sleep, sluggish digestion and a weakened immune system.

It is time to go on a spring cleaning mission and eliminate the sweet left-overs! One of the tastiest ways to do that is to embrace a few days of juicing. It is simple to do, it tastes fantastic and your cells are already smiling just thinking about all this goodness coming in!

You need very few things: a good quality juicer is a must, veggies and fruits – preferably organic – and a few add-ons like an avocado or nuts which will not go through the juicer.

For the rest, let your imagination take flight…I love to make my juices mainly vegetables, with a little fruit added in for sweetness. Lunch today was celery, carrots, zucchini, parsley, ginger, cucumber, an apple, a pear and one peeled lemon. Adding beets is fun, colorful and very tasty.

For a little twist, pour the juice in a Vitamix or similar mixer, add an avocado and a few nuts. It will become a creamy concoction that replaces lunch without leaving you feeling like you missed anything.

Do this consistently for a week, instead of lunch. You will feel energized, lighter in body and mind, and your cells will do a happy dance!

Spring always reminds me of a brand new box of colored pencils: vibrant yellow daffodils, soft pink petals and blue primrose.

But most amazing are all the shades of green that come up in the spring. I don’t know about you, but my lawn has turned greener by the day this past week…

There is nothing that heralds spring better than the first blades of new grass, that shout-out from mother nature that it is awake and ready to grow.

From a health perspective, there is a reason for eating spring’s glorious greens. In older times, before trucks and planes that transport our food from thousands of miles away, winter was a time for root vegetables, stored grains and meats. There was very little green food to be found, we ate local foods by necessity, not choice. Spring, and its first green growth, was a welcome change in a fairly bland winter diet.

The body, after having gone through the Vata season of late fall and winter, changes to the Kapha season of spring. Kapha is represented by cold, wet and humid conditions, melting snow and muddy fields.  Even though this year has been very uncharacteristic for a New England winter, Kapha season is here for the next couple of months and it may be the reason why getting up feels harder lately, why energy seems to be in short supply and why the couch is more inviting than the gym! If you feel this way, you are probably in good company…If your dominant dosha is Kapha, you are most certainly feeling it even more.

What’s a Kapha to do? Eat greens!

It is time to detox that winter lethargy and greens are bitter and astringent, two of the tastes that help when Kapha is acting out a little.

Today, it is not very difficult to find vegetables and fruit all year round. We certainly do not have to wait for months for the first green weeds and leaves to sprout. But our bodies still crave this bitter-tasting, energy-giving offering: dandelion greens, sorrel, lamb’s lettuce, fiddle heads, arugula or spinach. The health benefits of eating leafy greens are numerous. They are loaded with vitamins A and C, as well as several of the B vitamins. Just one cup of these greens provides 70 percent of the daily recommended intake for vitamin A and 20 percent for vitamin C. Greens are also a rich source of iron and calcium and numerous trace minerals. Dark leafy greens such as spinach and kale also are good sources of vitamins K and E. Eating organic greens ensures that you get a healthy load of phytonutrients that offer anti-oxidant and anti-inflammatory benefits.

If you are lucky enough to live a little off the beaten path, you can gather your own wild greens; fiddle heads and dandelions are plentiful if you know what to look for. If you feel unsure about the harvest, a great book is “Edible wild plants” by John Kallas.

Dandelion salad is still one of my favorites! When you pick them really small, they are still reddish in the center and tender. My mother used to serve it with a homemade oil and vinegar dressing, tiny pieces of crispy bacon and egg slices. With a piece of homemade bread, it was a dinner fit for health!

Picture courtesy of Patrick McDonnell “Guardians of Being”

We love to feature guests blogs at Satya Wellness. The following is contributed by my friend and colleague Dr Patti Bartsch, PhD of Naturally Unbridled.

Is the Hippocratic Oath Hypocritical?

First, do no harm?

What would Hippocrates Say?

All medical doctors take the Hippocratic Oath which includes the phrase “First, do no harm.”  If doctors are so concerned with what Hippocrates believed, why aren’t they honoring his motto of “Let thy food be thy medicine”?

Something like 6% of medical schools offer a nutrition class and in most of those it is an elective.  We know that “we are what we eat” and yet people continue to eat things that do not occur in nature and therefore have no nutritional purpose in the body; in fact they can be highly toxic.

I was listening to NPR the other day and there was a discussion about saying Grace (Gracias = Thanks).  I was taught to say Grace in catholic school but I was never taught to be thankful to the food.  We were taught to be thankful to God for providing the food but we never actually focused on the food.  Native Americans and other cultures that are connected to the Earth honor their food.  They honor any animal that gave its life for the food and they honor the Earth for providing the weather to grow their food.  They recognize that food is life.  Food provides the body not only with calories as fuel, but with micronutrients and phytonutrients to optimize health.

If you had an ingredient label, what would be on it?  From a health perspective, I think it is important to recognize food as the ingredients that make up you.  Would you want to be made from natural ingredients like sweet potatoes, brown rice, green beans, beets, and garlic?  Or would you want to be made from sodium benzoate, FD&C Red 40, high-fructose corn syrup, and disodium EDTA?  The truth is that your body cannot build or repair itself with those ingredients.  It recognizes them as foreign and mounts and immune response against them.  I refer to these products as anti-nutrients because rather than providing nourishment, these foods make your body fight them.  And while your immune system is distracted by these anti-nutrients, it cannot keep up with normal demands so illnesses like colds, allergies, and cancer go unchecked.

Antioxidants are Nature’s Medicine

Food has tremendous healing properties.  Garlic has been used for centuries for its anti-bacterial and anti-viral properties.  It is recommended that at least one-quarter, preferably one-half, of the plants you eat are uncooked.  This is because heating foods above 118°F causes the destruction of valuable enzymes and other nutrients.  Try to eat a big salad at least once per day and try to have a rainbow of colors in that salad.  Consider using just olive oil and vinegar as dressing because many commercial salad dressings have lots of artificial ingredients.

I wrote an earlier blog about how I unintentionally cured my allergies when I transitioned to a whole-foods diet.  Why did my doctor never tell me that my diet of processed foods from cans, boxes, and plastic trays was likely contributing to my allergies?  Because she had no clue.  They don’t teach that in medical school.  They teach that a person with high cholesterol needs to be on a prescription medication to control it.  They don’t teach that a high-fiber, plant-based diet will help the body to rid itself of excess cholesterol before it is reabsorbed into the bloodstream.  Why?  Because there’s much more profit in drugs than there is in beans.  But guess what?  These drugs are toxic!  The pharmaceutical companies know they’re toxic and so do the doctors.  This is why they require regular blood tests to check to see how your liver is doing; because they know the drugs are damaging your liver.

Hey!  What happened to “First, do no harm”?  I think they should revise the Hippocratic Oath so that it focuses on “Let thy food be thy medicine” instead.  I’ll put my money on the healing power of foods over a handful of pills any day.

Patti Bartsch PhD and her horse Izzy.

Happy 2012!

The start of a new year is always filled with great promise; it is the time we chose to start fresh, to wipe the slate clean and start a whole new drawing! Like the Etch-A-Sketch of our childhood, we have a clean canvas.We make promises to ourselves: “This year, I will keep my resolutions. I will ….(fill in the blank)…every day and be happy forever!”

If age has taught me anything at all, it is that any change requires more than a New Year’s Eve promise to become an ingrained habit.

Change requires commitment, of course, but mostly, change requires taking responsibility and action. It takes follow-up and daily check-ins to stay on the right road; it takes a renewed commitment at every turn, when faced with the possibility of an easier path or a less-than-healthy choice. Change takes time and today’s success builds on yesterday’s success, however small, and together they eventually amount to a real shift.

Most New Year resolutions revolve around weight, or more precisely weight loss. It is a national obsession and, starting on January 1st every year, everyone is on a diet! By February 2nd, most resolutions have faded and are conveniently forgotten… We know that diets do not work. A study published in the Journal of the American Psychology Association states:

“Diets do not lead to sustained weight loss or health benefits for the majority of people.” 

There is something fundamentally flawed with the dieting process, teaching the body that feeling deprived is a normal state, thereby encouraging the storing of fat for the next “famine”.

Learning WHAT to eat and WHY is more important than going on any diet. Food is the fuel of life…would you fill your car with the wrong fuel? It is time to make changes that are sustainable on the long term, bring results and optimize the way your body works. When given the proper nutrition, the body normalizes and weight stabilizes naturally.

A great way to start is to go on a gentle, cleansing and detoxing period of a few weeks to give your body and your digestive system a real vacation!

   Cleansing is an ancient ritual, a tradition thousands of years old that spans all cultures. In our modern life, we are exposed to many environmental      toxins every day: pollution, chemicals, pesticides and dyes in our food, our water and the air we breathe. Cleansing will help rid the body of these unwanted elements in a safe and gentle manner and restore good digestion. In Ayurveda, all health is traced back to the digestive system. If the digestion does not work optimally, disease appears. A food-based cleanse is a great way to reset the digestion while eating beautiful, live foods and   not feel deprived. During a cleanse, you celebrate food and eat…this is not a fast!

Do you feel sluggish, have difficulty concentrating, suffer from unexplained headaches, carry too much weight and have a general feeling of being unwell? Then this program is for you!

In the program “4 Weeks to a New You”, you will be taken through 4 weeks of clean eating, progressively eliminating common allergenic foods to allow your digestive system to rest for a little while. The easy-to-follow program contains 4 CD’s, one for each week, explaining in detail the procedure to follow, giving tips and practical advice as well as recipes to make the journey easier to complete and more enjoyable.

You can track your progress as the weeks go on, charting your exercise routine and maintaining a weekly journal to keep you motivated. The course also contains a weekly health tip that will help you feel your best, during the process and beyond.

What can you expect after 4 weeks?

Some of the most common results are:  (and the list is not exhaustive)

♥    Increased energy
♥    Weight loss
♥    Less aches and pains
♥    Better sleep
♥    Glowing skin
♥    Improved mental focus and less foggy feeling
♥    Less allergies
♥    No more headaches
♥    Better digestion
♥    General awareness around food and its benefits on the body

Increased energy, weight loss, less aches and pains, better sleep, glowing skin, better focus and less foggy feeling, less allergies, no more headaches, better digestion, general awareness around food and its benefits on the body.

Some have noticed after a few weeks that they felt much better when eating less or no gluten or eliminating most added sugar. Every body is different and results vary from individual to individual.

So go ahead, take action today to make changes in your wellness routine…

“Take the first step in faith. You don’t have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.” Martin Luther King Jr.

The program is available to PURCHASE HERE  or by contacting christine@satyawellness.com or calling 978 430 6122

You can also contact me for personalized nutrition programs and holistic life and wellness coaching.  Remember: It’s your life…be ALIVE in it!

Have you ever wondered where your food comes from?

Maybe I am different or just plain curious, but it is a thought I always have as I walk the aisles of my supermarket. Where does all of this come from?

How many miles away were some of these items produced and shipped from?

Nothing makes me happier than knowing where and who grew my food. This year, we grew pumkins, green beans and lots of tomatoes in the garden. We had some fennel, lots of herbs like basil and cilantro and we even experimented with melons…let’s just say that we have quite a lot to learn about melons! I enjoy gardening and picking fresh food right outside my door.

One thing I definitely do not have in my garden is chickens…We love eating farm eggs and if you have never eaten one, do yourself a favor and go buy some! The taste is completely different than the eggs you buy at the supermarket. The yolk is a brilliant yellow that is rich and nutritious.

I eat eggs that are produced by happy, stress-free, well-fed hens. They roam freely, picking at the ground. Some are even bold enough to jump into your car if you leave the doors open for a few minutes!

It is organic life at its best.

Farm season is slowing down and soon coming to an end. The pumpkins are ready for Halloween and Thanksgiving pies, we are picking the last flowers before the field is turned under and a cover crop is planted.

Even Otis, the farm dog, is enjoying a snooze in the fall sun!

Dogs always seem to have their priorities in the right order: eat, play, sleep…

I might just do the same today!

Picture by Paul Cary Goldberg, Green Meadows Website

Everyone has an extra special place in their life, somewhere they are likely to be found when nowhere in sight in their house. For some it may be their garage, where they can tinker in peace on an old car or it may be the local coffee shop, where they can read without being disturbed.
For me, when not at the beach with my dog, I might just be at the farm. I guess you can take a girl out of the farm, but you can never take the farm out of the girl!
I own a share at a local organic farm, also called a CSA, community supported agriculture.
What it means is simply that I support local farming by paying in January for a share of their production. In return, I get vegetables and fruit from June to the end of October, every week. In other words, I put my money where my mouth is…investing early in the year and hoping for a good harvest. I have never been disappointed!
Rain was falling very hard last week when I was supposed to harvest my share of strawberries, so I went happily back this morning. The fields were peaceful, the only sound in the distance came from  the bleating sheep and a duck or two calling to each other across the pond.
I went to work, going from row to row, to fill my basket. Otis, the farm dog, even came by to pay me a visit and get a pat on the head.
I gathered my strawberries and realized I had been there for about 30 minutes, although it felt like 5….
There is nothing quite like the feeling of harvesting your own food, whether on a farm or in your own garden.
That connection to the soil is something that cannot be readily explained, it has to be experienced.
As I wandered back towards the farm buildings and my car, farmer Andrew came by and asked about the strawberries. We chatted for a few minutes and I went on my way.
I really love the fact that I can put a face and a name to the person who grows our food. I definitely do not get that feeling when buying tomatoes at Stop and Shop!

So, if you are lucky enough to be within driving distance, take a little road trip to Hamilton and go say hello to Andrew and his crew at Green Meadows farm.  (http://www.gmfarm.com)
Bring your kids to farm school, go feed the pigs or just walk around and enjoy the scenery.  We need to raise future generations of children to be aware of where food comes from, how it grows and that yes…animals are killed in order for us to eat meat. It makes it a little more real than the meat on Styrofoam trays at the supermarket.
Farm school should be a required subject every year.

If you are not living in this area, find a local farm, preferably organic. Go and buy some vegetables or fruit, introduce yourself and meet the person responsible for growing the crops.
Then, for the best part of the day, go home and prepare lunch or dinner.
It will taste better than anything you find in a supermarket.
My lunch today: fresh lettuce with a homemade Cesar dressing, a hard boiled farm egg and a large bowl of ripe strawberries, still warm from the sun…I can’t think of anything more delicious! Bon appetit!

It’s your life….Be ALIVE in it!

Christine

Today, something interesting happened…
A good friend of mine was raving about a smoothie she purchased in town because it tasted good and “has only 230 calories”.

When I asked her what was in the smoothie, she was not sure. So I went to the website of the business she had purchased it from, looked and found…….nothing!
Just smoothie names, but no ingredients. Upon further digging, it turns out they are promoting a specific product which is a component of their shake.  After carefully researching the company’s website, I still cannot find the shake’s ingredients. It must be a well guarded secret!

So, what is my point? I am sure that her smoothie was fine, tasted delicious, and was probably not loaded with any harmful chemicals, but it made me think.
Health is a daily choice. It is a journey, never a destination…It is a meal after meal decision, some better than others, no doubt, but we never arrive at a state of great health, we keep striving for it.

What is the most important element to health? Calories or ingredients? Organic or conventionally grown? Meat or vegetarian? Wheat based or gluten free?

And the answer is: It depends!

Calories are somewhat confusing…aspartame contains no calories, but has been proven to cause or worsen brain tumors, diabetes, fibromyalgia to name just a few.
Avocados are among the healthiest food on earth, containing essential fats for our body, but their caloric content is rather high.

There is no need to buy everything organic, some fruit and vegetables are perfectly safe while conventionally grown, while some others are really not.
Organic meat? Serve me some! Conventional eggs or chicken? Thank you, I’ll pass….

How to sort out the right from the wrong, the best from worst in this mass of conflicting advice?
Knowledge is power!
Once we have learned something, it is difficult to plead ignorance!
Life is made of choices, some good, some maybe not so good. But we have the privilege to be able to make an informed choice. Exercise your right! And be happy with the choice you made, regret and guilt will not make it any healthier. We all have some delicious poisons of choice!
As my teacher, Dr David Simon said, life is made of 2 choices: Yum or Yuck!
I would love to claim that most of my choices are in the Yum category, but I must admit that a few are definitely on the Yuck side… Life is an experiment in progress.

I posted favorite smoothie recipes in my newsletter yesterday. Check them out!

http://us2.campaign-archive1.com/?u=9eb82bb8457133834b9e92add&id=74efb93acf

Be well!