*Listen on the podcast: How to relieve chronic stress so you feel fantastic
I've shared my story, here on the blog in numerous posts, about how unrelenting chronic stress in my life nearly took me down. It got so bad, I ended up in total burnout and experienced PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder). PTSD is a psychological and emotional stress disorder that causes someone to believe that they are unable to cope with the demands placed on their inner world. It is a negative perception of highly stressful or traumatic situations that manifests itself through emotional and physical symptoms.
I'm hear to share more about how chronic stress can be overcome before it's too late. Truth be told, this applies to everyone, whether your circumstances were as intense as mine or not.
That said, I am seeing more and more women, especially single moms struggle with the severity of stress induced to PTSD. In fact, 7 million people in the United States suffer from PTSD.
Unmanaged stress is at...
"Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves... Live the questions now. Perhaps you will gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer." ~ Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet
I love to get up when the house is quiet in the morning, long before anyone else awakes. I brew my coffee in my stainless steel french press and cozy up to my ceramic owl mug, savoring the comfort of every sip. It's a gift I give myself every chance I get.
This sacred ritual allows me to just BE. To journal my thoughts, to reflect on things, to use the extra intuition found in my tarot spreads and then to write, hike, meditate - whatever I feel compelled to. I may jot down some to-do's for later, but the first matter of affairs is attending to my soul, my inner self. This is what I choose to nourish with because I truly want to love and care for myself.
It wasn't always this way for me... mind you, I've always been a deep...
Over the years of my work as a Nutritional Therapist, I’ve had many clients come to their sessions telling me that they kind of ‘fell off the wagon’ with their healthy eating. Or I've had people tell me before doing my detox, that they were fearful they wouldn't be able to stay the course without 'falling off the wagon'.
It might be the #1 shame and fear most people have when it comes to establishing good habits around eating well for their health.
First off, I want to expel the myth of the wagon. It doesn’t exist.
There is no wagon, there is only choice and a path. Your path is your journey and it's up to you to choose the trajectory of that path. How bad to you want where that path is leading you to is the real question. If you falter, will you choose to get back up and keep going?
What people are usually referring to is that that feel they won’t perfectly sustain whatever dietary framework they’ve been recommended OR they chose for themselves....
Hey girl, are you overwhelmed and exhausted from constantly “powering through” and pushing yourself?
Then listen up… I’m here to give you a little pep talk and some ‘tough love’. And by all means, if there is a better way to say 'tough love' -please let me know, 'cause I’ve shied away from it in the past myself feeling it as criticism and judgement. That’s not what I want to relay… I want to relay LOVE about something you need to hear, but maybe aren’t willing to see it fully or say it to yourself yet.
I speak to and work with women weekly/daily who feel so frustrated and burned out… this is an epidemic that women collectively face and a pattern women choose to continue and perpetuate and it has to stop.
I talk a lot about self-care… I write about it, I share my own story, I post memes about it.
Today, I want to dig into it a bit further because self-care is more than just doing some nice things for yourself,...
Alright ladies... listen up, detoxification is a critical part of YOU being able to stay healthy, have good moods and energy. Unfortunately we live in a world bombarded by toxins at every turn, this is why we all could use some daily detoxification strategies. That's what I'm here to share with you today. You really can't heal your body and increase your energy if you are not detoxing well. In order to succeed with overall health your lymph and liver need our daily attention.
Let's get educated, shall we?
The amounts of chemicals we are exposed to are unprecedented in history. The average American consumes 10 pounds of chemical food additives each year. Add to that the chemical burden caused by food sprayed with pesticides and from air and water pollution, you can see that our chemical burden is considerable.
Your body has systems designed to eliminate waste and to detoxify poisons. Your liver chemically converts toxins to be easily eliminated by your kidneys. Detoxification is...
Every season I do a focused time of 'detox' because of my past experience with overcoming decades of chronic fatigue, allergies, sinus infections, extreme bloating and gas pain, eczema and asthma.
For years I treated each symptom separately with pills, supplements, naps, heating pads -- anything that worked at the time. Then I went through a traumatic divorce. The verdict from my first HTMA: I was in total burnout. My doctor couldn’t help me recover all she ever offered me were more medications. This was when I realized there had to be a better way.
So the journey began. I detoxed my life. It wasn’t overnight and it took a lot of trial and error. The real change began when I started to understand that food did more than impact my weight; it was also a trigger for many of my aliments, cravings, moods and emotional eating.
By doing my spring detox, which is based on what I learned from many experts in the fields of health and nutrition, I have been able to use food to help...
As you may already know I'm a big fan of self-care. Taking the best care of yourself in all ways, mentally emotionally, physically, spiritually is the best gift you can give yourself.
Self-care means no more putting yourself as an afterthought ladies. Self-care requires a true deep commitment to yourself and your growth.
Spring is a beautiful season and time of year to bring forth new growth. It's a higher energy time of year, a time of renewal.
Every year in the spring I notice a desire to 'detox'. I start to clear out things in my life that are no longer serving me. One big way is through taking much better care of my physical body so I can feel lighter and freer. I tend to want to choose more fresh foods, in season veggies and drink more herbal teas.
It's a great time of year to re-calibrate.
To let go of all the things that are in the way of allowing you to burst forth fully with the energy of spring. This is why I love devoting some time to detox every spring and let go of...
Over the years I've worked with a lot of women to help unravel their health concerns. One of the biggest things I've noticed is that it's really hard for women to put themselves and their health first. And I'm on a mission to shift that paradigm.
Your health is your greatest asset and gift. It's no one else's job to take care of your physical health. Only you can do that. Sure other people can encourage you, but no one can do it for you.
I learned the hard way and didn't put my health first for a long time as an adult. I wasn't really modeled how. I grew up on processed food just like you probably did. Once I finally learned better, I to make the choice to do better. So when my health finally did come crashing down, I finally took heed and started putting my health first.
I hope I can help others not wait that long. You can do so much NOW to prevent your health from crashing, but only if you put your health first. Stop making it a backburner priority and put it on the front burner....
Self-Love is an imperative topic to explore and delve into for anyone who wants to heal deeply and enjoy life as fully as possible.
Self love is a regard for your own well being and happiness. It's a personal responsibility to give this kind of love to yourself, instead of hope others will give it to you. It's you learning to love yourself without condition, to value yourself and accept you are already worthy of that kind of love.
This means you accept and love yourself no matter what, when you do things you think are good and when you do things you think are bad. Because at the end of the day you are a human BEING, already worthy already whole that deserves love. You are not a human doing, who is only worthy when you do good and unworthy when you do what you or others perceive as bad.
That is an old paradigm of thinking, black and white, conditional -based on merit, based on knowledge of good and evil. It's not real love. Real love is unconditional.
To love yourself means you get to...
Have you ever been at war with your own body? Missing out on life because you didn’t like some aspect of yourself or how you felt inside your own skin? Ugh, me too.
I used to have such anxiety about my belly, my gut also know as the dreaded ‘muffin top’. My belly was flabby and stood out on my otherwise long, leanish body. It made me feel frumpy and unattractive, but also it was uncomfortable being so bloated people mistook me for being pregnant. Nope… I was just bloated and couldn't lose the belly weight or flab. So embarassing.
This happened at least a dozen times over many years. People would literally congratulate me and say, when are you due? Eye roll... I'm pretty sure we all know the take-away lesson there.
To be honest, over those years my life was overwhelmingly unfulfilling. I did not love my life. There were many reasons for that, however I can recall a such deep disgust for my mid-section. I was a slave to my own misery. Often all I could think...
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