Come to My New Classes at the Robinson Nature Center!

START THE YEAR OFF RIGHT!

Sign up for my 3 class series at the Robinson Nature Center in Columbia, MD. On January 12, 16, and February 9, from 3-4:30 pm, I will be teaching Nutrition Gifts From the Land - Natural Eating for Happier, Healthier Families.

Join Nancy Parlette, author of "The Busy Mom & Dad's 10 Minute Guide to a Healthy, Happy Family," for this 3-class series in which Nancy inspires you to create a personalized plan to help your family eat healthier without having to count calories or stick to a regimented diet. Learn simple nutritional truths and practical action steps that motivate you and your family to eat more unprocessed foods that come from the land rather than from a factory. Topics covered over the course of the three classes include (1) how to select, prepare and preserve fresh produce; (2) how to recognize healthy proteins and fats; (3) healthy substitutions for stimulants and junk food, and (4) ideas on how to motivate your family and transform eating in your household. Each participant leaves with a personalized plan to move forward with a healthier lifestyle, a copy of Nancy's book, and a set of recipes. Registration/Info: 410-313-0400.

PLEASE SIGN UP AND BRING A FRIEND!!!

Natural Healing that can Revitalize Your Health!

    Our body is an amazing creation!  If you put into it all it needs and place it in a safe environment, it will keep you healthy and youthful.  If you neglect to feed the body all it needs, if you put into it toxic substances, and/or stick it in an stressful environment, your health will quickly become compromised.

    Most diseases are preventable, but our nation has made a huge mistake by focusing on relieving symptoms without addressing the root cause of disease.  What this is doing is creating a sicker and weaker society in which fewer and fewer people are doing the work and more and more people unable to work and instead requiring others to care for them.  I believe this is one of the reasons we are going deeper and deeper into debt.  Our government, in desiring to help relieve suffering, is actually creating more and more needy people because they never actually help the people get better. Plus, they help create illness by continuing to allow harmful ingredients to be added into our food. This ought not to be so!!

     Let’s change that picture and start putting into our bodies what they need to heal!  Here are five steps you can take to assist your body in rebuilding and rejuvenating itself. Eating like this for 30-60 days can be a great way to start the new year!

1. Drink water, green smoothies, or freshly juiced vegetables instead of caffeinated beverages, soda, alcohol, or sugar filled juices.
2. Delete junk food from your diet.  If you want to make huge leaps in your health then you must go 30-60 days without added sugar, salt, preservatives, artificial colors, sweeteners, or flavors.  This covers most snacks and desserts! Remember, during this time fruit is your friend!  It will give you the sweetness you miss in a natural form that includes lots of antioxidants, vitamins, minerals, and fiber! Miss your salt and crunch? Chew on a celery stalk!
3. Cut out fried foods and rich sauces and soups.  Dairy is known to add lots of congestion to the lungs and sinuses so it is good to leave that out for the 30-60 days as well. Add in healthy fats like unsalted nuts, seeds,  avocado, olives, and coconut.
4. Replace animal protein with plant protein.  Two great books to read are, The China Study and Eat to Live. These both explain how the typical American diet of daily animal protein is the very diet that is behind many cancers and heart diseases.  Going vegetarian for a few months will be powerful in letting your body heal.  You certainly want to get protein every day, but organic Edamame, Tofu, Peas, Beans, and Lentils are a great replacement during this time.  You can also add plant based protein powders into your green smoothies.  
5. Eat a larger amount of raw, uncooked food than cooked food.  Juicing, Smoothies, Salads, fruit, and raw veggies should be about 60-75 % of your daily intake.  Add in vegan Soups, Stews, and casseroles to satisfy the desire for something warm and cooked.                                                    

Do you want some inspiration? Watch films like Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead , Forks over Knives, along with this presentation from the Mom of a child with Autism- Daughter Transformed with Change in Diet. These are three amazing examples of what healthy eating can do for you!!

Halloween.... the Holiday I Hate!

Go ahead, call me a party pooper!  But with all the research that shows the harmful impact sugar, fat, and artificial colors/flavors/sweeteners have on our kids, you would think we could revamp Halloween to something that would not cause illness, obesity and hyperactivity!

Yes, let's dress up and play games but can we choose Healthier snacks, or donating the money spent on useless candy to the poor instead!  Can kids go around and collect donations for the Maryland Food Bank or any worthwhile cause? Not only are we hurting our health, we are wasting our money and supporting the industry that is bringing us down as a nation!

The more candy and junk we buy the more we are telling the companies to keep making us sick; keep making us fat; keep making us hyperactive, depressed and dumb!  Please WAKE UP and stand against this!
I am not saying never to enjoy desserts or candy, but can we at least buy what is All Natural (if that's even possible!)? The better choice is to make it from scratch with your kids.  They will appreciate it that much more when they see the work that goes into it.

Here are some alternatives to all the garbage we give out on Halloween.  And YES, I do give out some of these for Halloween:
Dried Fruit Leather or gummies
Dried fruit
Oranges or clementines with Jack-o-Lantern faces on them
Z-bars or other fruity bars
Trail mix packets
Gum with xylitol sweetener
Bags of Natural organic chips or crackers
Applesauce
Carrot stick packets or other veggie packets
Air popped popcorn

OR nonfood items
crayons
chalk
temporary tattoos
stickers
glow sticks or wrist bands
pens, highlighters
toothbrushes
whistles
fake money
spider rings
book marks
glow in the dark anything
coupons for smoothie or frozen yogurt shops
Any of your Dollar Store favorites

Just think of how much candy ends up getting thrown away every year anyway.  What a crazy waste of money when we have people in the rest of the world starving for food.  Take the kids to a soup kitchen or go to World Vision website and sponsor a child.  Do something positive this year for Halloween that will make the world and your family and neighborhood HEALTHIER, Not Sicker!!

I CAN'T BELIEVE I ATE THE WHOLE THING!

     Some of you may remember this funny 1972 advertisement for Alka-Seltzer. I can't believe I ate the WHOLE thing!  

     Today's discussion, however, is not about consuming a huge amount of food like the man in the commercial.  Rather, I'm talking about eating foods that are whole, as in unrefined.  Whole foods found in nature are complete and nutritious just as they are out of the ground or off the branch.  When we refine a food we are taking away much of what makes it healthy in the first place.  Yet those foods tend to be the most popular. Think white bread, white rice, potato chips, and all forms of sweet drinks, candy and desserts.

     For example, when we take a whole grain and refine it into a white flour we remove the germ, the bran and the vast majority of nutrients and fiber.  Manufacturers then add in some synthetic "man made" vitamins and call it "Enriched".  HA! Joke's on us!! I'd say it is really DEPLETED! Over time this leaves our body empty of all it needs and we become malnourished, lowering our immune function, thereby more susceptible to mental, emotional and physical diseases.

     Then, to make matters worse, companies often stick in a wide variety of chemical additives and preservatives.  Now the food has gone from something that leaves us malnourished to something that is downright toxic!  Think Caffeine, Monosodium glutamate (MSG), artificial colors, sweeteners, and preservatives. To stay healthy we must neutralize the toxins and get them out of our bodies.  Doing that takes lots of energy and many of our own vitamins and minerals, leaving us all the more depleted and open to injury and illness.

     To maintain vibrant health we want to eat a well rounded diet that includes 7+ servings of fresh fruits and vegetables a day, 3 or 4 servings of plant proteins like beans and legumes (or optional fish or lean animal protein), a small amount of healthy fats like raw unsalted nuts & seeds, olives, avocados or coconut, along with some whole grains such as quinoa, brown rice, barley, oats, etc.  Eating real food found in nature will keep us full of energy and vitality.  We will think clearly, feel happy, look great, have less pain and have a dynamic immune system. 

     Can I challenge you to start eating more healthy whole foods? Let's spend our energy and nutrients on healing and growing rather than on flushing out toxins. 

      Let me know one more healthy food you are going to add into your menu this week.

WELCOME TO MY BLOG!

Healthy Living Strategies by Nancy Parlette, MS.