Delicious Life Health Coaching

It seems like everyone these days is talking about gardening and growing their own produce. After living in Brooklyn for a few years, we’ve finally started up an edible terrace garden that will give us patio tomatoes, arugula, peppers, leeks, and herbs.

If you’re not quite ready to start your own garden but want some inspiration, check out the New York Botanical Garden. This summer they’re having a summer-long festival that celebrates growing great food.

The Edible Garden presents programs to inspire you to grow, prepare and eat home-grown goodies. The celebration will have events that include celebrity chefs such as Lidia Bastianich and Emeril Lagasse, various exhibitions for the whole family, growing tips and recipes.

For more information, visit the Edible Garden site.

My dad with Billy Mays

One of my clients told me that her biggest fear is death. I think this is many people’s biggest fear, though it’s not top of mind most of the time. We don’t think about how short life is until someone near to us falls ill or leaves us – or when celebrities leave this mortal coil.

Ed McMahon, suffering from multiple illnesses, including bone cancer, departed at age 86 on June 23, 2009. Farrah Fawcett, battling cancer for a few years, exited at age 62 on June 25. Michael Jackson, about to go on his last tour, also died on Thursday, June 25 at age 50. And famous “yell and sell” Pitchman Billy Mays died Sunday, June 28, possibly of heart failure.

With all of these high-profile passings, it’s hard not to think of life as fragile and fleeting. As my dad says, you don’t know when your number will be called.

The question is, then, what do you do about it? Are you living your life as fully as you want to? Or have you been holding back and delaying your dreams?

And if now is not the time, then when will it be right to do what you know you’re here to do?

Everyone wants to lose weight fast. What’s the best way to do it?

A reader asked me this question the other day:

How can I lose weight quickly? I was thinking about going on a fast or an oatmeal diet. Would either one of those help?

Yes, you’ll most likely lose weight. But if you go back to your old eating habits (very likely), your weight loss definitely won’t last. And you may end up gaining back more than you lost in the first place. So it works in the short term, but it’s more like a weight gaining strategy for the long term.

Here are my top three worst ways to lose weight

Fasting - If you fast for a short time, you’ll definitely lose weight. And you may even feel better. But the deprivation frequently triggers over eating afterward - mentally, you think it’s ok to reward yourself for your good work and since you’ve been on a calorie deficit, you figure it won’t hurt anyway. But all it does is put you on a path of yo-yo dieting - going from starving to overeating and back again - which can mess with your metabolism and your overall health.

Mono-diet - This is eating one food only for a certain amount of time. The oatmeal diet would fall in the mono-diet category. There are endless versions of mono diets - the cabbage soup diet, the grapefruit diet, etc. The problem with mono-dieting is that your body gets only certain nutrients and is missing a lot of other essential vitamins, minerals, amino acids, and fats. You will lose weight, but you’ll probably fall off the wagon due to sheer boredom of eating the same thing day in and day out. I will sometimes recommend a mono-diet for a cleanse, but that is part of a bigger plan to change your overall eating habits. If you’re just randomly cutting out all but one food without any sort of strategy, you will eventually go back to your old habits.

Food poisoning - This is one of the worst things you can do to yourself. Yes, I know some people who have knowingly and willingly given themselves food poisoning by eating food that’s a little off or moldy just so that they will lose their appetite and stop eating for a few days. This is a dangerous and foolish method that should never be considered. According to WebMD, Food poisoning symptoms can range from mild indigestion to severe dehydration and bloody diarrhea. Depending on the type of infection, you can even die as a result of food poisoning. Any diet that can result in death is a bad idea, so don’t do it.

The best way to lose weight is to change your habits and allow your body to naturally drop pounds over time. If you want to learn how to do this in a more sane, sustainable way, contact me.

Sometimes you need a little guidance from elsewhere. Even when you’re a health coach. Or, maybe I should say, especially when you’re a health coach.

I have my own coaches, teachers and advisors that I work with - I think it’s important to have some guidance in life. The outside perspective helps you see more clearly.

Guidance doesn’t always have to come directly from a person. I have this pack of Well Being cards from Abraham Hicks that I sometimes use for guidance. The card I choose is usually the message I need to hear. Here’s what I picked today:

Every emotion I feel is guidance from my adoring inner being.

Because my Inner Being offers a strong and steady vibrational signal, I can always feel my allowance or resistance to that signal.

The better I feel, the more aligned I am.

The worse I feel, the more out of alignment I am.

As I reach for good-feeling emotions, I am in alignment with the signal of my Source.

I read this and thought about how I’m feeling. I have a headache that has moved into my hands and feet. I’m pretty sure I know why I am stressed. I’ve been in the feeling place of lack instead of abundance. I know what I need to do. But not taking action is making my head hurt.

For me, sometimes it’s fear that keeps me from doing what I know I should do to get the results that I want. Fear is a big one for a lot of people. It’s that feeling of lack that brings up fear. And lack is the opposite of abundance.

Do you ever feel like this? Do you get yourself in a state where your body is yelling at you to do what you know you should be doing? And if so, what do you do about it?

Getting centered and balanced - that’s difficult for many people to achieve. We’re never actually totally balanced or centered. When we stand still, or what we experience in yoga class when trying a balance posture, our body is always correcting and moving slightly. We sway forward, and then back, trying to keep ourselves in balance and centered. These micro movements are normal and part of life.

But for someone practicing meditation, this idea of balance can be frustrating. And intimidating if you think you need to sit for hours to achieve it.

But according to Thom Knoles, Vedic Meditation expert, practicing only takes 15-20 minutes and involves sitting in a comfy chair with your eyes closed at the start and end of the day.

If you’d like to learn, take an intro to meditation class - there are courses currently scheduled for New York, Los Angeles, Santa Barbara and Austin. Or contact them to learn how you can get classes set up for other areas.

Found on Vital Juice Daily

I don’t normally talk about pharmaceutical issues on this blog, but this is particularly disturbing to me.

Yesterday, Merck received preliminary qualification from the World Health Organization for its HPV vaccine, Gardasil. This will make it possible for agencies like the United Nations Children’s Fund to use Gardasil in national immunization programs.

The problem is that it is uncertain if the vaccine works or if it’s even necessary. The New England Journal of Medicine reports that many questions about Gardasil’s efficacy remain unanswered. The New York Times notes that cervical cancer is almost always preventable when routine Pap smears are given.

In a recent newsletter from Dr. Douglass, I read about the dangers of Gardasil - which include a link to epilepsy, ongoing illnesses, and death.

There are many stories popping up on YouTube about how Gardasil is injuring and killing girls. Here are just a few:

Emily Tarsell’s talks about her daughter on CBS News

Gardasil warning on CNN

Becca, age 11, shares her Gardasil story

Holly had seizures after Gardasil injections

Gabi had seizures and mini strokes after Gardasil

Merck’s goal is to make Gardasil mandatory for all schoolgirls in every state.  You can change this - get the U.S. government to investigate the Gardasil vaccine risks by signing the petition.

The May spring cleanse ended yesterday, and I’m so excited about the great results that my clients had:

• One person’s breathing is so much better - allergies are hardly bothering him at all
• Another person no longer craves sugar and sweets
• Someone else feels more energized than she has in a long time
• Most people found the cooking easy and enjoyable
• Almost everyone liked the recipes, too

And lest you think you’re too healthy to do a cleanse, let me tell you what this health coach experienced (as I did this cleanse along with my class):

• I am more energized and alert
• My skin looks great
• I’ve lost a few pounds and my clothes are fitting better
• My moods are more steady
• I have no more cravings for sweets

If you have any questions about how it works, don’t hesitate to contact me - I’ll be happy to give you all the details.

My next class is in June - you can sign up on my events page.

Sign up for the June Cleanse

The recession may be shrinking wallets, but for some it’s expanding waistlines.

A couple of months ago, the NY Times reported that candy sales were up - not fancy candies, but corner store and nostalgic varieties.  And a recent survey by Career builder showed that people were snacking more due to worries about the recession.

This is alarming in many ways.

First, eating candy is only a temporary relief of stress. Once people get on the blood sugar roller coaster that inevitably happens when they indulge in large amounts of sugar, they will alternate between euphorically happy and weepily depressed.

Second, sugar encourages many diseases to flourish in the body. It contributes to imbalances and helps create a highly acidic environment, perfect for viruses and pathogens to thrive. It weakens the immune system so that your body will have a harder time repairing damage being done to every area.

I could list about 100 different harmful things that sugar does to you, but what’s more important is finding better ways to deal with stress if it is causing you to eat massive amounts of sugar. So…

Go on a media diet - turn off the news, stay away from the gloom and doom. You will not miss anything, I promise. If something really big happens, someone will tell you about it.

Take care of yourself - make time to do things that you love to do. The things that give us the most joy don’t cost much as all to do. For example, I love to read novels, walk around my neighborhood, and listen to music. None of those things cost a lot of money but I get a lot of joy from them.

Be grateful - if you’re feeling poor and thinking poor, then you are poor. But if you start appreciating all that you have in life, you’ll never feel poor again. Keep a journal of all of the things that you are grateful for - write down a short list of 3-5 things per day.

Do this every day for a month,and I can guarantee that you will have forgotten about your fear and lost the need to snack it away.