What can you do to keep from catching this year’s bug?

1) Maintain your immune system all year long.

By eating a healthy diet full of fruits, vegetables, and whole, real foods, you are setting your body up for success.  Not only will you be maintaining your weight, but you’ll be building a healthy body that is more able to fight off nasties come cold season!

2) Load up on garlic.

Colds are like vampires.  Neither one likes garlic.  Garlic is naturally antifungal, antibacterial, and antiviral.  Your sweetie might not like kissing you with garlic breath, but garlic breath is better than cold germs!

You can eat garlic in your foods, or you can use garlic oil.  I put a couple of drops of slightly warmed garlic oil in my ears in the morning and at night, especially if I feel my ears starting to itch (my first indicator that I’m getting a sore throat).

3) Wash your hands.

Duh.  Seriously, though, wash your hands.  Make a natural disinfectant spray, and spray it on your door knobs, counter tops, and other surfaces that get touched often (think: computers, light switches, phones).

To further avoid sharing germs, don’t share toothpaste.  Germs can transfer from the toothbrush to the toothpaste dispenser.

4) Try some natural remedies.

Honey and Apple Cider Vinegar:  Combine 1/3 cup of apple cider vinegar (I like Bragg’s) with a couple teaspoons of raw honey (make sure it’s raw!), and about 3/4 c. lukewarm water, and drink up!

The honey, like garlic, has natural antibacterial properties.

Oil of Oregano: Drop one to four drops of oil of oregano into a glass of water, and drink it.  You might want to have a chaser on hand.

5) Get some rest.

As tempting as it is to stay out late at holiday parties, sleep is a better idea.  Get your sleep, and your body will be better able to fight off cold and flu germs.

What are your strategies to avoid getting sick?  What has worked, and what’s an old wives’ tale?

I want to know how to do everything, but I don’t want to learn how to do it.

There’s a disconnect in my mind between my desire to learn a skill and the willingness to take the time to learn it.  I want life to be more like The Matrix.  Want to learn Kung Fu?  Just plug in and install the program!

When I realize my desires and my actions aren’t matching up, it’s easy for me to call myself names (lazy, failure) and tear myself down.  Deep down, I know those names aren’t true.  I don’t have character deficiencies.  I am not incompetent or lazy.  Rather, my mindset is stuck in fixed mode.

According to Carol S. Dweck, Ph.D., Stanford psychology professor, reaching your potential is a matter of mindset.  Someone with a fixed mindset believes that they were born with certain gifts and capabilities, while a person with a growth mindset believes that with work and training, they can achieve anything.  A challenge is a tool for a fixed mindset to fail, but it is a tool for a growth mindset to learn.  When a person with a fixed mindset reaches the point at which an activity starts getting hard (for example, a student who easily understood and enjoyed arithmetic, but has a tougher time with word problems), their instinct is to quit while they are ahead.  Reaching further puts them at risk to fail.  When a person with a growth mindset reaches that same point, they are inspired by the challenge.  The person with the growth mindset understands that the best way to improve is to try harder problems and learn from her mistakes.

The great part about understanding this difference in mindset is that I am now aware when I am reacting in a fixed mindset way.  I lean toward a growth mindset in some areas of my life, and I lean toward a fixed mindset in other areas.  I can choose, however, to approach life in all areas with a growth mindset (and I’ll need a growth mindset to believe I can change my mindset, too!).

These quotations about failure and trying illustrate the difference between the mindsets:

“There is no failure.  Only feedback.”  ~Robert Allen

“The men who try to do something and fail are infinitely better than those who try to do nothing and succeed.” ~ Lloyd Jones

“Failure is an event, never a person.” ~William D. Brown

“There is no failure except in no longer trying.” ~Elbert Hubbard

Personally, I’d much rather leave this planet knowing I had tried my best to be my best than wondering what my best could have been.

What do you think? Do you have a fixed or growth mindset?

My dog is scared of the floor.  

Apparently this isn’t uncommon.  A lot of dogs don’t like hardwood or other shiny floors.  They can easily lose their footing, slip, and hurt themselves.  Last week, Princess took a pretty good spill after having a bath, and she has been scared of the floor ever since.

This is unfortunate.

Princess’ food, water, and kennel (her favorite place in the house) are all in the kitchen and dining room which both have hardwood floors.  We do this because she has incontinence issues, and we don’t want her to pee on the carpet if we can help it.

Now, Princess is stuck.  If she goes into her kennel, she doesn’t want to come out, because she will have to cross the scary floor.  If she makes it across the kitchen and into other areas of the house, she doesn’t want to go back, because she is terrified of the floor.

While thinking about this earlier, it occurred to me that I’m just like Princess.

I get stuck in a place I don’t like because I’m afraid.  The fear isn’t real, and I have completely constructed it.

Being afraid will keep me stuck in the status quo until I am able to “feel the fear and do it anyway.”  Being afraid creates self-imposed boundaries on my growth and my success.

When I push past the fear, I might fall down.  I might hurt myself.  I might crawl back, whining, to my safe place.  I might, however, make it out into new, open spaces.

And, if I’m anything like Princess, I’ll get a treat.

Food sensitivities come in all shapes and sizes.  Digestive issues (bloating, gas, constipation, diarrhea, upset stomach) are the most recognizable indicators of a food sensitivity, but other issues could be related, too.  Your chronic headaches, insomnia, acne, fatigue, depression, anxiety, or eczema could be related to the food you’re eating.

The only way to discover what works best (or worst) for your body is to experiment, and the only experiments that yield meaningful results are those that are done consistently over a long enough period to observe changes, if any, in health.  That means meaningful experiments of one (you) require dedication.

Sure, you may notice within the first week (or day) that cutting out dairy eliminates your stomach aches.  Other issues, like anxiety, depression, or headaches, may take longer to go away.  Gluten can stay in your system for weeks, so eliminating it for a week might not reveal the benefits of its elimination.

What are the different experiments you could try?

Elimination Diet:

Cut out all potential allergens for a full month (or longer), then reintroduce them one at a time in their purest form.  {Don’t reintroduce ice cream — reintroduce a glass of milk.)

Alternatively, cut out one allergen at a time to see if your symptoms improve.  This is less effective, because sometimes foods work together to make you feel lousy, so just because cutting out dairy doesn’t make you feel better doesn’t mean you don’t have a dairy sensitivity.

Vegan/Vegetarian:

There are a few different types of vegetarians:

Ovo-lacto: eat no meat, but still consume dairy and eggs.

Pescatarian: only animal products consumed are fish.

Vegan: Eats no meat, eggs, dairy, nor any other foods derived from animals (gelatin for example).  Some vegans don’t eat honey, and many don’t use any products that contain animal products (beauty products, clothing, etc.).

Raw Vegan:

In addition to abstaining from animal products, raw vegans also avoid foods that have been heated above 108-112 degrees F.  They eat anything made from fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, and sprouts.

Paleo/Primal:

Eat like a caveman.  The paleo and primal camps avoid grains of all kinds, beans and sugar.  Depending on who you ask, they also avoid dairy.

Ideally, to eat primally, you will only eat animal products from animals that were raised in a humane way — as close to their natural environment as possible.  Grass-fed, pastured beef, pastured chickens, and eggs from pastured chickens are important to the paleo/primal dieter.

Replace one meal or snack daily with a fresh vegetable juice or smoothie:

Just like it says — see if the increased nutrition intake improves your overall health.

Go sugar free:

There are all sorts of reasons to avoid added sugars.  Cutting out sugar alone is a great way to kick start weight loss.

Eat only real food:

Follow Michael Pollan’s Food Rules (eat food, not too much, mostly plants), and eat only real food.  If you don’t have an intolerance to any particular food, cutting out the processed stuff will still go a long way toward improved health and energy.

Try the Blood Type Diet:

According to Dr. Peter D’Adamo, if you have type A blood, you should eat much differently than type O.  Check out this diet and see if it works for you.

Eat seasonally or according to Ayurveda:

Strawberries aren’t fresh in November, and pumpkins aren’t abundant in April.  Eat according to the seasons.  You may notice that your body craves heavier foods in the colder months and light, juicy foods and leafy greens in the warmer months.  You might decide to be vegetarian or even vegan in the summer, but eat some meat in the winter.

Whatever experiment you try, just remember to give it time and dedication.  When you jump around from diet to diet, you will never be sure which worked best for you.  Stick to one long enough to discover results.

What dietary experiments of one have you done?  What worked and didn’t work for you?

Halloween is known for horror — ghosts, goblins, and children dressed as Twilight characters — but what’s really scary is the amount of candy up for grabs everywhere.

If you have little hooligans, you might be wondering how to manage their candy stash without turning into the wicked witch in your children’s sugar-crazed minds.

Here are some tips:

1) Before Trick or Treating, establish the ground rules.  Are your children allowed to eat their candy as they go, or do they need to wait to get home?  How many pieces of candy can they have?

2) After Trick or Treating, encourage your kids to sort their candy (without trying it) into categories including favorites and candies they have never tried before.  Besides sorting out any candies to which your children are allergic, this gives your children a chance to see what they have so that they can choose their favorites.  (This is great practice for learning to navigate a buffet)

3) Once your kids have sorted their candy, encourage them to try the ones they haven’t tried before.  This doesn’t mean they get to eat every piece of every candy, but they do get to take a small bite of each, and then you can toss the rest.  You can create a game for them to review each type of candy.  This forces them to slow down and taste each one.

4) Encourage them to trade in the candy they don’t want or don’t like for another treat — their favorite kind of ice cream, for example.  Some parents allow their children to trade in their candy for a toy or game, while other parents argue that that will plant the idea in the kids’ minds that candy is power.

5) Do Candy Experiments with your kids.  Yay science!

6) One option is to let your kids go crazy, self-regulate, and possibly get sick from eating too much sugar.  By doing this, they will learn the negative consequences of overindulging, and the candy will be gone faster.

While we don’t want our kids to overindulge, to eat crappy foods, or to develop poor health, we do want them to develop good eating habits.  The more able they are to self-regulate and recognize when treats are appropriate, the more they will be able to negotiate the weird food landscape we live in.  The fact is, we are always bombarded with cookies, candies, chips, and sodas, not to mention sweetened yogurts, granola bars, cupcakes disguised as muffins, and sugary drinks disguised as coffee and smoothies, so the sooner we can teach our children how to make smart eating decisions, the better off they will be.

If you, like me, don’t want to contribute to the cavities and poor health of our children, hand out temporary tattoos or some other non-candy treat.  Just don’t be surprised if you have toilet paper in your trees and egg on your house come morning.

One more tip: don’t fall for the post-Halloween candy sales.  You are sweet enough already!  Speaking of which…have you made the No Sugar November pledge yet?

“Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back.

Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth,
the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans:

that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too.

All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred.
A whole stream of events issues from the decision,
raising in one’s favor all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance,
which no man could have dreamed would have come his way.

Whatever you can do, or dream you can do, begin it.
Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it. Begin it now.”

~W.H. Murray

At some point in every person’s life, she decides she’s had enough.  She’s tired of the status quo; she’s tired of mediocrity.  She longs for more.  She used to dream in vivid colors, but now she dreams in muted tones, and she wants that vibrancy back.  She feels an itch in her feet to move.  She feels a pull on her soul to do something meaningful.  And at that moment, she commits to doing it.

Her friends might think (or say), “yeah sure.  You’ve said time and time again that you’re going to… (do something more with your life, take better care of your body and health, spend  more time with God, etc.).  What makes this time any different?”

But she knows better.  She complained before, but did not commit.  She longed before, but didn’t leap.  She dithered, but didn’t decide.

Now.  Now is different.  This time will stick.  There’s a visceral difference between wanting and committing.  There’s an urgency to commitment that doesn’t exist merely in the longing.  Sticking your toe in the water feels different than taking the plunge.

This time, she’s doing a cannonball.

Be bold.  Be genius.  Be powerful.  Be magical.  Whatever you want to do — do it now!

No matter who you are, you are a role model.

Whether or not we realize it, we are modeling our behavior for girls younger than us, for our peers, and even for women we may look up to ourselves.  My mom is a role model for me.  I’m a role model for my teen-aged sister-in-law.  Even my four year old niece is a role model for the three year old girls in her preschool.

What do you want to model to your community?  

• When you look in the mirror, suck in your tummy, and make a disparaging remark about your body, you are modeling low body esteem.
• When you say “I’m so (insert negative adjective here),” you are modeling self-loathing.
• When you tell a little girl how pretty she is, and tell a little boy how strong he is, you are modeling gender stereotypes.
• When you yell at the slow driver in front of you in traffic, you are modeling an attitude of anger.
• When you gossip about how another woman looks, is dressed, or has styled her hair, you are modeling judgement and comparison.

It’s like this classic PSA from the 1980′s.  When we wonder why poor body image, gender stereotypes, judgmental and angry behavior are perpetuated from generation to generation, we only need to look at our own behavior.

What positive behaviors do you want to model?  How can you do that today?

However, consumers pay for convenience not only in a literal monetary sense (convenience foods are more expensive), but also with their health.  Many convenience foods are high in salt and sugar, artificially flavored or colored, and don’t contribute to a healthy lifestyle.  Their manufactured flavors make the pleasure sensors in our brain fire, and make us want more.

What’s the solution?

Find alternatives to the packaged convenience foods, of course.  The trick is to find snacks that require minimal preparation, can be transported without refrigeration, are filling, but won’t ruin your appetite for your meals, and are delicious.

For my sister, that snack is an apple with peanut butter.

I know I’m not delivering Earth-shattering news here, but sometimes we overlook the simple and easy to try to find complex, and difficult solutions.

An apple, or any fruit for that matter, can be carried with you without needing to be refrigerated.  In the case of an orange or grapefruit, it even has it’s own protective case.  Unless you have braces or are a small child, you should not need to pre-slice your apple to enjoy it.  A small snack sized plastic bag or a small plastic container is an easy vehicle for your peanut butter.  Pack a plastic spoon, and you’re good to go.  And, if you aren’t planning on getting on an airplane, you could even pack a small paring knife to slice your apple if you prefer it that way.

What if you’re allergic to peanut butter?

There are lots of alternatives to peanut butter!  Almond, sunflower seed, soy-nut, cashew, or even chocolate hazelnut spread (for a treat) would pair beautifully with the humble apple.

Tips, Tricks, and Trivia about Peanut Butter and Apples:

Some apples have higher sugar content than others.  Granny Smith and other green apples tend to be the least sweet, and the highest in fiber.  That’s good news if you’re watching your blood sugar!

Honeycrisp apples are growing in popularity, but they are less common than other varieties, so they are also more expensive.  They were developed by the University of Minnesota as a hybrid of the Macoun and Honeygold varieties.

Peanut Butter has a low glycemic index, so it helps prevent your blood sugar from spiking when you eat it on bread, bagels, or even apples.

A medium sized apple and two tablespoons of peanut butter is between 275 and 300 calories.

If you are looking for the most frugal option, the red delicious apple tends to be inexpensive.

Can you afford to pay for a little convenience?  Justin’s nut butters come in individual packets, so you can carry them with you.  Many other nut butter manufacturers are following suit.

George Washington Carver is often credited for inventing peanut butter, but the earliest evidence of peanut butter actually comes from a patent in 1884 held by Marcellus Gilmore Edson of Montreal.

If you are willing to do a little prep work, here’s a two-in-one method for transporting your apples and peanut butter: core your apple, fill the hole in the middle with peanut butter, and wrap the whole thing in a zip-top bag to go!

A few weeks ago, I wrote a post reminding us that there were 13 weeks left in 2012.  The other day, I counted that there were 75 days left.  As of today, we have just over 10 weeks left.  How are your habits coming?

If you’re following my 13 until 2013 habits, you will have started on the following habits:

1)      Challenge yourself to eat at least one meal each day completely free of distractions.  Practice the art of eating: slow down, give thanks, chew your food, and ask yourself if you’re still hungry.

I have been doing this this week, and I am loving it.  It is amazing how simply paying attention to your hunger and full signals and tasting your food affects the quality and quantity of the food you are eating.

2)      This week’s challenge is to stop eating sugar!  If you can go the whole week without any added sweeteners, you are on fire!  If nothing else, you can become more aware of your sugar intake, and cravings.

I have not been doing this, and this is my downfall.  In high school, I made a t-shirt that said “Princess Sweet Tooth.”  I still am.  I know that this is a biggie for me.

3)      Write down your food intake.  Include where and when you eat it, and how you feel before and after you eat it (physically and emotionally).

If you have a smart phone, you can also take photos of what you eat.  That’s an easy way to start keeping track of what you’re eating.

Next week, we’re going to increase our Art of Eating meals to 2/day.  Can you do it?  I’m ready!

One nugget of wisdom that jumped out at me today is the simple truth that you can’t selectively numb your emotions.  If you are hurting, and you turn to something to take the edge off (shopping, drinking, smoking, eating, whatever), you not only take the edge of the pain, but you also take the edge of the joy.  By numbing, you won’t be able to experience what is good in this life to its full potential.  That means, for example, when you set yourself up for possible disappointment, like getting excited for a job prospect, when it happens you feel your excitement fully.

In her book, Brene Brown quotes a Leonard Cohen song.  The quote stuck, so I had to make a pin-able quote out of it.

Embrace your imperfections!  Feel the pain, because only then can you feel the light of your joy!