Physical Health – Page 5 – NutriFoody Wholly Holism

World of Flavors

Celebrate a world of flavors

The month of March is National Nutrition Month, and the month is almost over! But the good thing is that you can continuously follow these guidelines and routines time and time again and make these tips a part of your daily life and lifestyle. This year the academy’s theme is to celebrate a world of flavors and embrace different cultures which is something we most likely already and for some people may be not but why not start now!

Sometimes we get used to eating the same thing that food becomes boring, and we become disinterested in cooking so why not introduce some new meals and new flavors from different cultures? I always say have a flavorful and colorful palate so that food never gets boring! There are so many cultures that you can try out to have a good nutritious healthful meal. Every week you can explore a new culture or part of the world, for example, one week you can go to the Caribbean which is where my family is from the country of Haiti. You can pick five to seven different dishes that you would like to try from the country of Haiti, one dish that is my favorite that can be a vegetarian/vegan dish is “legume” and it is optional to add meat. The name of the dish is all in the name itself legume! This dish can be made with a tomato paste-based sauce then you can add spinach, coyote, carrots, eggplant, white cabbage, or red cabbage. You can even throw in bok choy which is from the Chinese/Asian culture. After you gather all your vegetables you can season to your liking for me, I like to add all-purpose Goya which some salt and pepper a little Cajun seasoning and vegetables seasoning but really you can season it any way you’d like to and let it slow cook for about 2 hours and you’re done. This dish is usually served with white rice, but you can go for a healthier choice of brown rice or quinoa.

It’s as simple as that then the next week you can plan to have maybe Indian dishes on the menu, then the next week Chinese dishes on the menu and so on. There is so much to choose from that you can really have fun with this and maybe you may like some of the dishes so much that they become a part of your lifestyle. So, this month remember it’s all about exploring and embracing the different cultures and dishes in our world!

Written By: Vanessa J

Heart Disease and Women

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For Women’s History Month I want to talk about diseases and disorders that affect women, especially from a nutritional aspect and heart disease tops the list. Did you know that heart disease is America’s number one top killer? Heart disease kills more American than all the wars combined that this country has had (referenced from the book “How Not To Die by Dr.Gregor).

The thing about this about heart disease is that it is totally 100 percent preventable. That is if we aim to eat a healthy diet of course. The typical standard American diet is far from healthy, unfortunately. The American diet is made up of mostly what is considered fast foods such as hamburgers, hot dogs, French fries, pizza, onion rings, chicken nuggets, and milkshakes. Now that is not a diet we can survive off of for a long time because it’s so detrimental to our health and is doing so much damage to our bodies on the inside.

Heart disease is the leading cause of death in women killing about 1 in every 5 female deaths (CDC). Now that is a high very high number and very frightening. Many things can fall under the bracket of heart diseases such as coronary artery disease, arteriosclerosis, atherosclerosis, high cholesterol, hypertension, heart failure, and heart attack.

I will explain what each is that falls under this category.

Coronary Artery Disease (CAD): Coronary arteries supply blood to the heart muscle and are the large arteries found on the surface of the heart. When someone had CAD the arteries become diseased or damaged. This is caused by the buildup of cholesterol plaque in the arteries blocking the blood flow to the heart.

Arteriosclerosis: This happens when blood vessels that carry oxygen and nutrients away from the heart to the rest of the body become thick and stiffen up. Healthy arteries should be flexible and elastic.

Atherosclerosis: This is a type of arteriosclerosis where the buildup of fat and cholesterol forms something called plaque in the arteries. This can eventually lead to arteries being blocked.

High Cholesterol: The level of cholesterol in your blood is high which can be a predisposition to heart disease.

Hypertension: High blood pressure which can affect the heart leading to a heart attack or stroke

Heart Failure: In this condition, the heart doesn’t pump blood as well as it should.

Heart Attack: Total blockage of an artery leading to the heart

Despite knowing all this the rate of heart disease continues to rise. Some things you can do to improve your heart health are

Limiting your intake of fast foods. Fast foods are meant to enjoy once in a while not eat everyday
Limit your intake of processed foods. Sometimes it can be hard to avoid processed foods because these days it can seem like everything is processed but try swapping out processed foods for whole foods. Whole foods like eating fruits and vegetables are more filling and don’t raise your blood sugar so high and keep you fuller throughout the day.
Drink WATER! Drinking water is essential to life. Drinking water helps keep our circulatory system moving along and helps rid of the toxins in our bodies. Stay away from juices and sugary drinks that provide nothing but empty calories.
Limit your intake of certain types of meat such as red meat. Yes, it can be hard do that but consuming too much meat can clog up our arteries
Lastly, keep those sweets in check! Avoid eating too many candies, cookies, pastries, and cakes. It may be good in the moment be eating this regularly does not do any good for our bodies.

References: Centers of Disease Control: Lookup Heart Disease

How Not To Die By: Dr. Gregor

The Ultimate Act of Self-love

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Photo of me taken by me on Valentine’s Day

An ode to Women’s History Month, I want to talk about the ultimate act of self-love. So many things fall under this one term like self-care, self-awareness, loving yourself, mental health, and physical health which is why I labeled ultimate because you have to love yourself as a whole and not in parts. You can’t just love one part of yourself and not the other you have to love it all.

Now I know that that is easier said than done loving all of yourself. For me, for the past year, I’ve struggled with a lot of insecurities about my weight. I’ve watched my body change over the past three years gaining more and more weight. My stomach is bigger, my arms are bigger, and my face is bigger. I can definitely say that I was not loving myself at all more like letting myself go. I have struggled with weight loss even when I would exercise and eat clean the weight would not shift or go down. But then I started to look at other women who are my size and they are owning it. They are in love with their bodies and making it work for them. For me, it was more of an acceptance being this new weight and new weight but I realized I too have to own it and make it work for me. I started to no longer think about trying to fit into my pre-pregnancy clothing and started to focus on what would work for my current body weight. I am starting to get into a mindset of loving myself no matter the size because I am still me. My weight doesn’t define me or change the person that I am. Now being on a holistic journey with nutrition and lifestyle I am learning a lot about taking care of myself from the inside out. I am learning to love myself and accept myself as a whole and this applies to any aspect of life. It’s not just about weight, it is about giving the love you know you need and not allowing anyone to take that away from you or affect that. When we love ourselves and put ourselves first we don’t have to rely on others to make us feel like we are loved because guess what we already love ourselves first.

Now I am going to share with you all a mantra from the book: Deeply Holistic By Pip Walter

This is called Loving Yourself:

Sit or stand in a relaxed way in front of a mirror. Begin with your eyes closed, and take several slow relaxed breaths breathing in fresh energy and out old energy. When you feel ready and relaxed open up your eyes and look in the mirror.

Say this to yourself while looking into your own eyes out loud: (Your name) I like you and I always will. I love you and I always will. You are beautiful just as you are. Repeat this at least three times.

How did that make you feel? Try doing this daily at least for a month. Come back and leave any comments on how did this make you feel.

Smoothies Anyone?

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Photo by Sebastian Coman Photography on Pexels.com

To start, I would like to say to all of you a Happy New Year! I know we are well into February but I haven’t written a blog post since last October and it feels good to write again. As you can see this site has gone through some major changes one being that I am now shifting my nutrition teaching and education to a holistic approach. This was something that I thought about for a very long time living a more holistic lifestyle using cleaner and more natural products and of course eating healthy.

If you have been a long-time follower of my blog you know that I had a baby towards the end of 2019 and that was a lot on my body and shifting into the postpartum phase and being a new mom everything changed. Most days with a new baby I didn’t eat or cook, I was just too tired or drained to do so, so I mostly relied on ordering and eating out. Then when the pandemic occurred everyone was stuck in the house. Being stuck in the house there was not much to do but eat. For about four months we were stuck in quartine. For these past three years, it became hard to break those habits but now I am ready to embark on a journey to become a new healthier me and meet my weight loss goals.

I know that many of you may be like me and are ready to make a change this year and weight loss may be on your list of goals so my question is what are you doing to achieve your weight loss goals. Are you focusing on nutrition or are you focusing on fitness? The answer really is that you should focus on both, but without proper nutrition, fitness can not eliminate much. So the priority to that we change our diets and develop better eating habits but this takes time.

There are a number of things I am doing right now when it comes to my nutrition goals but I will discuss that in another blog post, but for this post, we will focus on smoothies. Smoothies have been around for many many years and so many people love them. I love smoothies as well! Smoothies are a great source of fiber, they allow you to get an intake of fruits and vegetables, and they can keep you full for a very long time. That is where the smoothie diet comes in. The Smoothie Diet is a 21-day diet that focuses all on drinking smoothies. So the smoothies will replace the meals that you would normally have. So two meals will be replaced with smoothies and your third meal will be the meal of your choice.

The Smoothie Diet consists of different recipes that are specifically targeted to help you lose weight and burn fat. These smoothies can be made in no time, compared to making a full meal. This program provides you with a full guide and grocery/shopping list. It is all done for you all you have to do is gather your ingredients and make your smoothie. The good thing is that once you get through your 21 days you can repeat this over again if you do feel like you want to increase your goals or see more results. This program also comes with two bonuses you get the quick start guide and your detox guide all for $37 dollars. I made my purchase and you should too. I can’t wait to share the results with you all. If you do decide to make this purchase as well please share your results with me. Download the free smoothies fact sheet I created especially for you.

https://yourbodyyourhealth.systeme.io/e239eb28-306fbb4e

Click Link Above to Watch Video

Download your free smoothie fact sheet made by me

free-smoothie-sheet-1 Download

Good luck with your weight loss journey and goals. We can do this!

To purchase make your purchase please click on the link below!

https://yourbodyyourhealth.systeme.io/purchase

Food Guilt During The Holidays

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Can you believe that today is the last of October? That means that Thanksgiving is only three weeks away and right around the corner from Thanksgiving are all the wonderful holidays celebrated around the world such as Hanukkah, Christmas, and Kwanza. By the way in Canada Thanksgiving is celebrated in October!

During this of the year, many of us may experience something I would call food guilt. Meaning you feel guilty for eating badly during the holidays. But bad is something you should not feel during these special days especially when these holidays are meant to be a time of coming together and a time of joy. With that joy comes delicious foods and a variety of foods! Some of us may cook traditional foods during Thanksgiving such as turkey, stuffing, ham, sweet potato casserole, and some people put their own spins on Thanksgiving cooking creating dishes that they like and enjoy. For me, I love doing a mix of traditional and non-traditional foods during Thanksgiving.

Now when it comes to food let me tell you I used to be scared to consume so many calories during these holidays and be overly full to the point that I couldn’t buckle my pants. I used the think that during Thanksgiving you have to eat a lot of food but actually, you don’t. There is no rule that says you have to eat 3 plates of food during the holidays. The best way to approach eating during the holidays without feeling any guilt about it is to start with one plate of food and go in with the mindset of portion controlling how much food you take, then after that, if you feel like you still have some room for more then take another plate but do not overeat and most importantly allow your body some time to digest your first plate.

You should be able to enjoy what you eat during the holidays without feeling restricted. Eating is all about balance, find your balance and enjoy food!

Written By: Vanessa J.