If you have ever struggled with your weight, with digestion, depression, anxiety, cancer, ADD, diabetes, sleep disturbances, PMS, chronic fatigue, you may be well aware of the impact that your diet has on your condition. Awareness might fuel the decisions you make, but our culture is not designed to support a healing process, as our body requires for regeneration and detoxification.
Here are some basic guidelines that you can use to help you to heal, let go, and restore optimal balance from the inside out.
1. Chew Well
Avoid drinking your food whole. Make sure to chew your liquid and drink your food, to optimize digestive juices and help you to slow down in your life.
2. Healthy Fats
Replace margarine, vegetable oil, butter with Olive Oil, Ghee, Flax and Borage Oils and Avocado.
3. Cactus Sugar
Relieve your liver of the sugar invasion and allow your lymph system to let go on a deeper level. I recommend Agave Nectar which has a low glycemic index and is gentle, yet detoxifying for the colon.
4. Snack
Rather than reaching for coffee, which is taxing to the adrenals and exacerbates the colon, calm your mind and soothe your intestines with some protein or a green drink mid-morning or afternoon. Your system will experience a lift, and your mood will be increasingly positive as you keep your blood sugar balanced.
5. Breathe.
Before and after you eat, take time to center yourself, let go of toxic emotions and come into the body. Relaxing around food and mealtime will open your digestive system up to receiving the food.
Keep coming back to read more ways to relax your way to radiant health.
Namaste,
Waller
Showing posts with label diabetes. Show all posts
Showing posts with label diabetes. Show all posts
Friday, January 22, 2010
Saturday, October 17, 2009
Calm Your Sweet Side
Fall is the time of year when the sweet taste is in season. You may notice yourself craving more sweets, and also be aware of the foods that are starting to be in season are round, sweet foods (ie apples, onions, squashes)
It is important to keep yourself fed with the sweet taste, so that you are satisfied and not at risk to eat the gallon of ice cream or box of cookies. The tips below are certain to heal your body and calm your mind to continue living a sweet life.
5 Steps for Beating Sugar Cravings:
1. Eat Whole Grains and sweet vegetables.
2. Chew Well
3. Give up restricting yourself and pick up enjoying life.
4. Try natural sweeteners (see below)
5. Be patient with yourself. Love yourself. Spend time with sweet people.
Natural Sweeteners
Maple syrup is an excellent substitute for sugar. It is high in trace minerals like zinc and manganese, which can assist in heart health and in balancing cholesterol levels. The light “Grade A” or “Number 1 can contain formaldehyde runoff from the first extraction of the syrup under certain processing conditions. All the other grades are safe, but Grade C (the darkest amber syrup) is the best.
Honey is another item that’s often presented as a healthy alternative to refined sugar, but it is sometimes controversial. People who react to sugar as a “brain allergy” (especially common in children, for whom it can trigger ADD/ADHD symptoms) may react to honey the same way. It is high glycemic, and hits the body as a hard sweet. Raw, unpasteurized honey is rich in elements which can help with wound healing, kill bacteria, soothe sore throats and digestive upset, and decrease local allergy symptoms. Honey is also sweeter than sugar by volume, so you need less in baking or cooking.
Agave is a sweetener extracted from a South American cactus, and traditionally used to make tequila. Often called “honey water,” the agave nectar or agave syrup is light, both in taste and colour. It is runnier than honey and tastes much milder, but is in fact sweeter so even less is required in cooking. Agave is extraordinarily low glycemic – it has almost no impact on blood sugar, making it an ideal sweetener for diabetics and those who are sensitive to sugars.
Blackstrap molasses is a sweetener that is actually good for you. Unlike refined white sugar and corn syrup, which are stripped of virtually all nutrients except simple carbohydrates, or artificial sweeteners like saccharine or aspartame, which not only provide no useful nutrients but have been shown to cause health problems in sensitive individuals, blackstrap molasses is a healthful sweetener that contains significant amounts of a variety of minerals that promote your health.
Brown rice syrup is a liquid sweetener with the consistency of honey. It can be substituted for honey in baking. It has a unique caramel-like flavor that can be used to enhance a recipe, but it will disappear if used sparingly in a recipe. Brown rice syrup metabolizes slowly but does have calories and carbohydrates. Diabetics and low-carb dieters should use it with caution. Brown rice syrup is considered to be one of the healthiest sweeteners in the natural food industry, since it is produced from a whole food source and is made up of the simple sugars.
Foods to emphasize:
• Whole Grains
• Beans
• Miso
• Sweet Vegetables: Carrots, onions, winter squash, cabbage
• Brown rice mochi
Snack Ideas
• Dates stuffed with almond or walnut
• Apple with nut butter
• Rice cake with agave, jam or brown rice syrup
• Tea with molasses
• Carrots with hummus
• Handful of almonds, walnuts, pumpkin seeds
Recipes for Radiance
Azuki-Squash-Kombu
Makes 4 servings
Soaking time: 8 hours or over night
Preparation time: 15 minutes
Cooking time: 2 + hours
Ingredients:
1 cup azuki beans, washed, and soaked in 2 cups water
1 cup hard winter squash (such as butternut, buttercup or kabocha), cut in large cubes
1-inch square piece of kombu
1/4 teaspoon sea salt
water
parsley, chopped, for garnish
•Place the kombu on the bottom of a heavy pot.
•Add the soaked beans with soaking water and, if necessary add enough water to just cover the beans.
•Bring to a boil over a medium flame. When it comes to boil, cover the pot, reduce the flame to low, and simmer for 1 hour.
•Add a little water occasionally, as needed, to keep the beans just covered. Do not add too much water, as the less water there is the more rich the flavor of the beans will be.
•After 1 hour, place the squash on top of the azukis, re-cover the pot and continue simmering 1 hour more. The beans and squash should both be very tender at this point.
•Add the salt by sprinkling over the top of the beans and squash. Stir salt in a little, very gently so as not to break up the squash piece, and cook 15 minutes more, uncovered to reduce the liquid. If there is still a lot of water after 15 minutes you can continue simmering uncovered as long as you like, just keep the flame very low and check regularly to make sure it does not scorch.
•Serve hot garnished with parsley.
Leftovers will keep refrigerated up to 3 days.
It is important to keep yourself fed with the sweet taste, so that you are satisfied and not at risk to eat the gallon of ice cream or box of cookies. The tips below are certain to heal your body and calm your mind to continue living a sweet life.
5 Steps for Beating Sugar Cravings:
1. Eat Whole Grains and sweet vegetables.
2. Chew Well
3. Give up restricting yourself and pick up enjoying life.
4. Try natural sweeteners (see below)
5. Be patient with yourself. Love yourself. Spend time with sweet people.
Natural Sweeteners
Maple syrup is an excellent substitute for sugar. It is high in trace minerals like zinc and manganese, which can assist in heart health and in balancing cholesterol levels. The light “Grade A” or “Number 1 can contain formaldehyde runoff from the first extraction of the syrup under certain processing conditions. All the other grades are safe, but Grade C (the darkest amber syrup) is the best.
Honey is another item that’s often presented as a healthy alternative to refined sugar, but it is sometimes controversial. People who react to sugar as a “brain allergy” (especially common in children, for whom it can trigger ADD/ADHD symptoms) may react to honey the same way. It is high glycemic, and hits the body as a hard sweet. Raw, unpasteurized honey is rich in elements which can help with wound healing, kill bacteria, soothe sore throats and digestive upset, and decrease local allergy symptoms. Honey is also sweeter than sugar by volume, so you need less in baking or cooking.
Agave is a sweetener extracted from a South American cactus, and traditionally used to make tequila. Often called “honey water,” the agave nectar or agave syrup is light, both in taste and colour. It is runnier than honey and tastes much milder, but is in fact sweeter so even less is required in cooking. Agave is extraordinarily low glycemic – it has almost no impact on blood sugar, making it an ideal sweetener for diabetics and those who are sensitive to sugars.
Blackstrap molasses is a sweetener that is actually good for you. Unlike refined white sugar and corn syrup, which are stripped of virtually all nutrients except simple carbohydrates, or artificial sweeteners like saccharine or aspartame, which not only provide no useful nutrients but have been shown to cause health problems in sensitive individuals, blackstrap molasses is a healthful sweetener that contains significant amounts of a variety of minerals that promote your health.
Brown rice syrup is a liquid sweetener with the consistency of honey. It can be substituted for honey in baking. It has a unique caramel-like flavor that can be used to enhance a recipe, but it will disappear if used sparingly in a recipe. Brown rice syrup metabolizes slowly but does have calories and carbohydrates. Diabetics and low-carb dieters should use it with caution. Brown rice syrup is considered to be one of the healthiest sweeteners in the natural food industry, since it is produced from a whole food source and is made up of the simple sugars.
Foods to emphasize:
• Whole Grains
• Beans
• Miso
• Sweet Vegetables: Carrots, onions, winter squash, cabbage
• Brown rice mochi
Snack Ideas
• Dates stuffed with almond or walnut
• Apple with nut butter
• Rice cake with agave, jam or brown rice syrup
• Tea with molasses
• Carrots with hummus
• Handful of almonds, walnuts, pumpkin seeds
Recipes for Radiance
Azuki-Squash-Kombu
Makes 4 servings
Soaking time: 8 hours or over night
Preparation time: 15 minutes
Cooking time: 2 + hours
Ingredients:
1 cup azuki beans, washed, and soaked in 2 cups water
1 cup hard winter squash (such as butternut, buttercup or kabocha), cut in large cubes
1-inch square piece of kombu
1/4 teaspoon sea salt
water
parsley, chopped, for garnish
•Place the kombu on the bottom of a heavy pot.
•Add the soaked beans with soaking water and, if necessary add enough water to just cover the beans.
•Bring to a boil over a medium flame. When it comes to boil, cover the pot, reduce the flame to low, and simmer for 1 hour.
•Add a little water occasionally, as needed, to keep the beans just covered. Do not add too much water, as the less water there is the more rich the flavor of the beans will be.
•After 1 hour, place the squash on top of the azukis, re-cover the pot and continue simmering 1 hour more. The beans and squash should both be very tender at this point.
•Add the salt by sprinkling over the top of the beans and squash. Stir salt in a little, very gently so as not to break up the squash piece, and cook 15 minutes more, uncovered to reduce the liquid. If there is still a lot of water after 15 minutes you can continue simmering uncovered as long as you like, just keep the flame very low and check regularly to make sure it does not scorch.
•Serve hot garnished with parsley.
Leftovers will keep refrigerated up to 3 days.
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