Last week, Angelle and I enjoyed 2 full days retreating in a cottage on Lake Michigan. A client generously offered her place to us. What a gift for the soul of our business to step away from our offices and get into the woods, sit by the fire, walk the shoreline, take some deep breaths and connect on a different level.
We did a fair bit of resting, reading, napping, slowing down. We also checked in with how things are going for The Nourish to Flourish Society and for one another.
Did you know that gratitude changes brain chemistry? It's true.
Gratitude turns what we have into enough. It amps up happy brain chemicals. It slows down time. It appreciates. It creates connection.
There are no negative side-effects to practicing gratitude.
"The brave who focus on all things good and all things beautiful and all things true, even in the small, who give thanks for it and discover joy even in the here and now, they are the change agents who bring fullest light to all the world." - Ann Voskamp
Along with practicing gratitude, we love coming back to the basics at this time of the year, practicing simple self-care to nourish and flourish throughout the holidays.
Here are our 5 top tips for returning to the basics this Thanksgiving:
1. Hydrate. Start your day with a mug of warm lemon water 'tea' or herbal tea. Hydration helps regulate hunger and calm your cravings. It's easy to mindlessly start the day and get going with a list of to-do's. Instead, intentionally sit down and sip your warm lemon water while you think about what you're truly grateful for. Set your intention for the holiday. Plan to enjoy your food experience today and make choices that nourish you. Dehydration is one of the main drivers of sugar cravings so be mindful to stay hydrated all day.
2. Eat breakfast. If you are thinking of skipping breakfast on Thanksgiving to save up your calories for all that turkey, mashed potatoes and pumpkin pie, think again. We've been led to believe that weight loss (and "controlling" your eating) is all about calories and if you 'save them up' you'll 'stay on track'. The opposite it true. If you don't eat all morning or only eat a piece of toast with your coffee, you are fueling cravings later in the day. Sitting down for breakfast is key (not while you're running around finishing up details for your guests), and you want to make sure you include Friendly Fat. Need some ideas? Enjoy this Mango Tango Smoothie or Berry Smoothie or an omelette with lots of veggies and avocado.
3. Relax and be present. Ask for help. Delegate. You're not supposed to do everything on your own. Think through your menu for your holiday and enlist people to help you. Set up the table ahead of time so you're not rushing around the day of. Light candles. Put on relaxing music. Grab a cuppa tea and put your feet up while the turkey is cooking or while everyone is socializing. Turn off your phone for the day. Breathe. Laugh. Have fun.
4. Eat Slowly. Mindless eating is pretty common at social and holiday gatherings, so here are some mindful eating tips. Every time you eat this holiday, sit down. Pay attention to the colors on your plate, the smells and textures and tastes. Set your fork down between bites. Eat slowly. Breathe. Relax. Find pleasure in conversation, laughter and presence. If your mind starts going to calories or weight or fat, just say, "Not today, darlin'. Today I'm going to enjoy every bite."
5. Get some fresh air and move your body. Set up a plan ahead of time. Bring your shoes and bundle up. Plan a walk around the neighborhood or a hike in the woods, a basketball game with the kids in the driveway...whatever it is, enjoy some movement and fresh air.
We love to K.I.S.S. the holidays. Keep It Super Simple. Holidays can bring a lot of emotional heaviness - whether it's grief, loneliness, family drama, hardship and so much more. So let's not overcomplicate anything else. Add in simple nourishing things (food, mindset, movement) to begin to crowd out the things that aren't so nourishing.
If you do happen to wake up Friday not feeling your best physically, we've got you covered. Click to last year's blog post: Your 5-Step Day-After Thanksgiving Plan. And if you have leftover turkey, check out our recipe ideas for your leftover turkey!)
Let’s face it. The Sugar Season has officially started and wherever you are, after Halloween last night, you’ve probably got a bowl of candy staring you down.
It likely took a lot of your willpower to not eat your kiddo’s Halloween stash or the Reese’s Cups, Kit Kat and Butterfingers you had left in your bowl after the final Trick-or-Treater stepped off your porch or to be able to walk right past the bowl with the candy one of your co-workers decided to bring to the office this morning to avoid eating it herself!
We get it. As recovering sugar addicts who pretty much had a constant supply of sugar in one form or another, we know it’s tough to break the addiction. And often it really is an addiction. Sugar actually lights up the same part in the brain in scans that cocaine lights up. It really does give you a ‘high’ and keep you reaching for more so don't be too hard on yourself if you find that you struggle with sugar. You are not alone.
So what’s a gal to do?
Last night I was sitting at my kitchen table to write a post for our private 14-Day Facebook Community. I was hoping to share something inspiring and positive but I was feeling anything but.
My 16-year old twin boys had been arguing for the previous 20 minutes. They were in what Jill calls 'flipped lid'. The prefrontal cortex is shut down Their emotional brains were in charge and there was no reasoning with them.
The best I could do was to eventually get one of them to go out in the garage where my husband was working on something while the other one stayed inside.
Are you getting enough water?
It’s the question of the week. Because last week Jill found herself laughing hysterically when she realized her nose was endlessly in the cupboards, the fridge, the pantry. Craving chips, chocolate, fizz, salty, sweet and everything in between.
Call it sleep deprivation and fatigue from the adrenaline let down of the amazing NtF Soiree. Call it the luteal phase of her cycle. Call it emotional stress. Call it whatever you want. After pausing to really think it through she realized at the foundational level it was….dehydration.
When it comes to cravings (and food in general), sometimes we make things more difficult than they need to be. We want to “fix” our cravings or “remedy” the result of our cravings by restricting, depriving, resisting, skipping meals, exercising more and if you’re honest, beating yourself up.
Rinse and Repeat.
And yet, most of the answers to calming cravings are so simple. It surely needs to be more difficult than sleep and water, right? Well, sometimes it is, but often times it is not. We’ve watched women calm cravings in a matter of days simply by re-establishing some very practical foundational nourishing rhythms that we teach in the 14-Day Reset and our upcoming 28 Days to Calm Your Cravings course: Water, Sleep, Movement, Eating in Rhythm, Slowing Down, Meaningful Connection, Relaxation.
Because, collectively, instead of drinking water, we are loading up on coffee, soda, kombucha, juice.
Instead of sleeping, we are pushing our threshold on how many more hours we can squeeze out of the day.
Instead of moving our bodies more regularly throughout the day, we have large pockets of time where we are working at our computer, sitting with our phones or stressfully running around.
Instead of eating in rhythm, we are skipping meals and/or grazing all day (both huge contributors to cravings). In the Reset we teach women how to eat 3 very satisfying nourishing meals each day that carry them from one meal to the next without being hungry or having cravings.
Instead of slowing down, we hustle. It’s a buzz word these days. Hustle. But the women we talk to? They truly desire to slow life down. Not speed it up. When we hustle, when we rush, when we push through, we are not able to fully take in the present moment and we miss out on the “sweetness of life.”
Instead of meaningful connections, we are running from one commitment to the next, hooked on devices, addicted to social media, checking our phones first thing in the morning and last thing before bed. Do you crave meaningful connections with your kids? Your spouse? Other women? Yourself?
Instead of feeling relaxed, we are stressed. Holding on to conversations that didn’t go well. Playing out drama in our heads & to others. Overloading our schedules. Rushing from one commitment to the next without any margin. Stepping on a scale and feeling not enough.
We coach women in-depth through all these things in our upcoming program 28 Days to Calm Your Cravings - strategically scheduled around Halloween and the holidays. If you’re looking for support to understand your cravings (and ultimately to experience more joy, calm, pleasure, relaxation and connection in your every life), we invite you to join us.
Today, we’ll leave you with just one place to begin to help calm those cravings.
Most of us are walking around in a state of dehydration and that messes with every part of our health from feeling lethargic and moody to being achy and on edge. When you drink a glass of warm water with lemon first thing in the morning you are not only rehydrating your body and mind, you’re also waking up your digestive system and getting things moving.
Drinking a glass of warm lemon water in the morning is a way to start your self-love out right from the moment you get up. Your mind might be saying, “check your email, scroll Instagram, check the weather, start packing lunches, get those kids up quick” as well as all kinds of other tasks, but your body would love it if you took 5 minutes to sip a warm glass of water with the juice from 1/2 a lemon squeezed in.
Drinking your water warm in the morning - room temperature - is more supportive to your digestion than drinking cold water. The lemon in the water can boost your immune system and help flush out toxins created and moved around while your body was in repair and clean-up mode as you slept. It also helps to alkalize your body. Too often because of sugar, grains, too much meat and dairy, along with chronic stress, our bodies are very acidic, which is the perfect state for disease.
Alkalize your body with lemon water (and deep breathing too, but we’ll get to that in another post).
If you are a sweets lover and tend to over-indulge in sugar, drinking lemon water in the morning will help curb those cravings. Drinking or eating foods with bitterness, like lemons or raw apple cider vinegar, help retrain your taste buds and bring them back into the ‘normal’ range. After about 21 days of drinking lemon water every morning, you may just notice that the sweets you love right now are much too sweet and not as appealing.
In addition to your morning water, whenever you find a craving coming on, drink a glass of water first and give it a few minutes. You might simply be dehydrated.
Several years ago, Jill worked with a woman with an intense diet coke addiction. Along with some other foundational practices, Jill shared that whenever she was ready to reach for her diet coke, drink a glass of water first. Hour after hour. Day after day. Week after week. 2 months later, her client returned to a session with her bright blue eyes and a big fat smile and said “I haven’t had a diet coke in 2 weeks. This water thing is pretty powerful.”
Back to Jill’s story, do you know what Jill started doing after realizing she was dehydrated last week? She created a game called “Throw-anything-that-looks-good-in-your-water.”
This week was pineapple, mint, orange, lemon, lime, parsley. Bonus points for a clear mason jar and a fun glass straw. (We LOVE www.strawesome.com if you’re on the hunt for some glass straws.)
If you find yourself with a craving, hydrate first. And share with us! Tag us on FB and on IG at @nourishtoflourishsociety.
Everything in my being told me to say no to putting a tiny piece of metal into my breast during a biopsy but I couldn't find my voice to tell the doctor doing the biopsy to stop. When the nurse had reviewed the pre-procedure paperwork with me and mentioned this part of the procedure I had a red-flag about it but didn't ask any questions. She had said it was a way to 'find' the spot again if the biopsy came back positive so I went with that instead of asking more questions.
I was scared and felt totally untrusting of my instinct and my body in that moment. I had three kids under four years old at the time. My holistic MD had suggested I get a Therma-Scan, which is a breast health screening technology that often alerts you to cancer many years before a mammogram is able to. When the results came back they weren't so great. In fact, they showed that I had had metabolic changes that indicated there was a chance that cancer had already developed or that my body was heading in that direction.
Panic set in and I contacted my doctor right away. He said because of my results and my age he wanted me to have further screening and we set-up a mammogram. Those results were inconclusive because of dense breast tissue, I ended up having ultrasounds and ultimately an MRI. Results of all this testing showed that there were some suspicious spots and it was recommended that I have the breast biopsy.
What would it be like to host a swanky fun party where women felt loved and cared for at every turn? And when they left, they sighed one of those relaxed sighs and said “This was so good for my spirit.”
This was a question we asked ourselves 6 months ago when we started planning this event.
Last week it happened. We hosted our first LIVE event - The Nourish to Flourish Society Soiree. We enjoyed the beautiful back drop of Lake Michigan in all her glory. The sunset was stunning that evening. The community of women, 140 in attendance, enjoyed food, drink, dancing, discussion and hanging out. Several friends and even some husbands volunteered their time to help us run this event smoothly.
We’re just finishing up Session One of our Fall Reset and we LOVED this post from a current Resetter!
Friends, five of our biggest goals in the Fall Reset are to make your food:
1) Delicious and satisfying
2) Easy to Prepare
3) Something the whole family will enjoy
4) Achieve lasting results for weight loss, hormone balance, stable mood, increased energy, kicking cravings and a doable roadmap + high level of support to achieve your goals.
5) Creating a nourishing life giving relationship with food, your body and your life.
Is it possible in just 14-days? Check out the loads of testimonials and see for yourself.
Snag these ingredients and enjoy this smoothie.
PEPPERMINT BROWNIE SMOOTHIE
1 cup almond milk (or other non-dairy milk substitute)
1 banana
1/4 cup pecans
2 dates, pitted (or 1/4 cup raisins)
2 TBS raw cacao powder (or cocoa if cacao is not available)
1/8 tspn unrefined sea salt
1 drop Young Living Peppermint Essential Oil or Peppermint Extract to taste.
Optional boosts (1-2 TBS Collagen Powder, chia seeds, hemp seeds, coconut oil)
DIRECTIONS:
Blend all ingredients until smooth, starting with just one drop of peppermint essential oil or extract. Add almond milk if needed to thin. Taste and add peppermint essential oil or extract one drop at a time, to taste.
