Be Your Own Health Expert

The following was given to Kitchen Greenie by the kind permission of Suzanne Laurie, Director of Studies at the Institute of Complementary & Integrated Medicine - www.icim-ireland.net.

Be Your Own Health Expert Quick diet health check

To find out just how your diet measures up try our quick quiz below.

Score one point for every statement that applies to you:

* I do not add sugar to food/drink most of the time.
* I avoid processed foods most of the time.
* I rarely add salt in my food.
* I do not drink more than one cup of coffee most days.
* I do not drink more than two cups of tea most days.
* I do not drink more than 2 units of alcohol a day.
* I do not eat fried food more than twice a week.
* I do not eat "fast food" more than twice a week.
* I do not eat red meat more than twice a week.
* I do not eat chocolate or sweets more than twice a week.
* On most days more than a third of my diet consists of fruit & vegetables
* I drink more than 1 litre of plain water each day.
* I usually choose whole grain products (bread, rice, pasta) over 'white' alternatives.

Scores:
1-5. Your diet needs some major improvements if you are to avoid poor health. Use the quiz above to establish where your problem areas are, then work at changing one or two at a time over the next few months.

6-10. You are on the right track. However there is still room for improvement if you wish to be in the best shape possible.

11-14. You obviously work hard at looking after your health. Because of this any 'treats' are unlikely to affect your health. Keep up the good work.

You Are What You Eat
It ain't what you do it's the way that you do it.
We are all constantly being told what we should and shouldn't eat so most of us know the components of a healthy diet. However could the way we eat actually be just as important as what we eat in terms of health. Here are some top tips to ensure that you get the most out of what you eat......and that you can have the fun stuff too!!!

How to eat
It is all too easy for eating to become a habit rather than a pleasure in this busy world in which we live. However, forgetting to appreciate food, and mealtimes can lead to overeating, poor digestion and ultimately poor health and weight gain.

Heres how to do it properly:
* Eat slowly. The stomach and digestive organs need time to prepare themselves for digesting the food we eat. Ideally they should receive a signal that food is on its way - perhaps from cooking smells or chewing action in the mouth. At this point small particles of food should start reaching the stomach. However this should be a slow controlled process. If you are eating a sandwich on the go or rushing dinner to get to an appointment the digestive organs will not have time to organise themselves and food may be poorly digested. You are also unlikely to know when you are full, as it can take 20 minutes for this message to reach the brain.

* Chew well. Chewing is the first part of digestion. If food is not broken down in the mouth properly then it may be too big for the digestive system to handle. This can lead to malabsorption of nutrients and weight gain. It can also lead to overeating as mentioned above.

* Allow yourself to be hungry. In this day and age it is ok to be hungry. It does not mean that you will not get fed and should be embraced because it means that you will enjoy your food more once you do get it. It is also important to stop eating once you feel satisfied. Our taste buds become less sensitive the fuller we are so as soon as you stop tasting the food and are just shovelling it in - stop!!

Portion control
One of the major obstacles to a healthy diet is over eating due to poor portion control. We just don't seem to know how much is enough anymore! Watching your portion sizes is a great way of ensuring that you can eat ALL your favourite foods without piling on the pounds or damaging your health. Here are a few easy to follow tips:

* Don't fill your plate. The trend for super size dinner plates means that a plate of food is now about 1/3 bigger than 20 years ago, yet we do not need to eat that much more food. So don't fill it. Stick to the following simple guidelines for how big each part of your meal should be:

- Meat / fish / beans / lentils - the size of a pack of cards
- Cheese - the size of a box of matches
- Potatoes / rice / pasta - the size of a tennis ball
- Vegetables - half your plate of food

* Half and half. Try decreasing the portion size of your favourite foods by half and substituting the rest for fresh salad, vegetables or fruit. For example, if you are used to eating a whole deli or sub sandwich at lunch, just eat half and have it with raw veggies or some fresh fruit. Then wait to see if you're still hungry.

* Know your serving sizes. Just how much of your favourite snack is considered one serving? Do you even know? Check the box and see -- you may be surprised at how many servings you are actually consuming at one time. Measure them out following the recommendations next time you eat them.

* Can you stomach it? The stomach is about the size of two loosely formed fists. Therefore it only really needs a large handful of food at any one time to be satisfied. It is better to eat a small amount regularly (but only when you feel real hunger) than overface your digestive tract with larger less frequent meals.

Healthy weight loss
Many of us feel that we could do with a few less inches around our waists/bottoms/thighs (... delete as appropriate!). However weight loss should only be undertaken for health reasons and just to emulate the latest waif like superstar. As we age it is even more important to have a bit of padding in appropriate places as it helps to cushion our delicate bones and organs as well as helping to smooth out those pesky wrinkles! Periods of starvation only cause nutrient depletion which can lead to problems later in life such as osteoporosis, dementia and even cancer. So if you do want to lose weight - do it sensibly. Weight loss of about 1-1.5lbs per week is both achievable and sensible. To lose that weight you need to get rid of about 350 calories per day from your diet. This can be achieved by simply removing a portion of ice cream, a bagel, a large bag of crisps or by reducing food intake slightly and exercising the rest away (an hours walk will burn off 150-300 calories.

A note from Kitchen Greenie....While I stay away from animal products myself, I feel this article highlights that most people are overdoing it when it comes to animal protein, particularly when you look at the healthy portion size recommended by Suzanne. For further information on why it is more health enhancing to reduce the amount of animal products you eat, please read The China Study by Colin T. Campbell on http://amzn.to/jvR6zn. I will be posting some other great meat free recipes over the coming weeks so do log back in.

Thanks so much for reading!

Ruth.

Lemon Treats

Makes about 28 treats. Tart lemon, nutty walnuts and sesame seeds, rich coconut and smooth, sweet dates come together to make these incredibly refreshing treats.

1 cup chopped pitted dates
1 cup raw walnuts
1 cup sesame seeds
¼ cup lemon juice
2 teaspoons freshly grated lemon zest (organic)

How to make them…
Place dates, walnuts, sesame seeds, lemon juice and zest in a food processor. Pulse and blend until completely combined and smooth. The mixture will be slightly sticky. With dampened hands, roll tablespoons of the mixture into balls. Roll in coconut and chill until ready to serve.

This recipe is posted especially for those ladies who enjoyed eating them at the Greystones Community Garden this evening.

Super easy and super tasty.

Enjoy ladies!

Unleasing Your Potential

The Oxford English Dictionary defines potential as “having or showing the capacity to develop into something in the future”. This definition certainly speaks to me. Many people believe that some things are totally out of their reach and because of these limiting beliefs, stop striving to achieve their goals. There may be no truth in the statement that anything is possible for anybody. For example, if you are a wheelchair user, it may be a very difficult feat for you to run a marathon, but you could certainly wheel one. This leaves it more realistic to say that anything is possible, for anybody, on their own terms. This now brings in the whole concept of a person’s potential, something that I believe is very overused and much mis-understood.

We all have potential to be something in the future and that future is ever changing. In years gone by, it was thought that the life we were born into was the only life you could live. This, thank goodness, has become a very outdated way of thinking. However, some people are very happy with their lot and would not change it even if they could. This I believe is a very important point to remember when considering your own potential. I ask you now to reread the definition again and again until it has well and truly sunk in and is fully registered with you. You can indeed be anything you would like to be, within your own parameters, but it will take new ways of thinking and behaving from you. You will need to know how to set goals and achieve them before you can achieve that potential. If you keep going down the same road, you will get the same result, so once you’ve identified the potential that you would like to move into, then I believe you will find the following goal setting strategy very helpful in helping you achieve that potential.

Goal Setting – Learning How To Set Goal
Focussing on the final outcome of a goal when it seems very far away can be overwhelming. This in turn can lead to a disheartening effect. It will be a lot easier if you break your goal down into mini goals. For example, you could set outcomes that you would like to achieve in certain time periods. Let’s say your plan is to achieve your goal in one year, you could break this into 12 sections representing the twelve months. For me, my health is something that I place great importance upon and therefore is one of my top 3 life goals. This is because without your health, you pretty much will have difficulty achieving any of the other goals in your life without it. So setting a goal like eating more health enhancing living food will move you towards this goal. This will mean being organised and not just grabbing the first thing that is put in front of you because you’ve let yourself get so hungry, your blood sugars will tell you to eat something, anything and quick! You could decide to make a new vegetarian dish every month for your family, which would also move you towards this goal. If you decide to take out all processed foods from your diet over night, you are setting yourself up for failure. This is because we need to get organised when we want to achieve a goal. If you have no idea how to cook a healthy meal, then you will resort back to your old ways of eating pretty quickly. Once you are back in your old and very comfortable way of eating, you will tell yourself that this is actually the way of eating that suits you best….all because you failed to plan! So each month set sub goals for yourself. Continue to keep your final outcome in your mind and subdivide your mini goals within the time framework that suits you.

Some questions to ask before setting your personal goals.
If we don’t know what we truly desire in life, it is difficult to create a situation where it can happen. Tuning into nature, regular physical exercise and quite contemplative time are ways that can help restore the connection to who we truly are.

• What do I really enjoy doing?
I love this one because most people forget that what they enjoy doing will bring them most pleasure….Note to self: must dance more!

• What am I passionate about?
Is there a topic that you feel very drawn towards and one that you find yourself speaking up about in particular? This will also serve as a good guide for you and will help you set clearer goals. No point in becoming the chairperson of the bingo club, if you’re really find nothing of interest in bingo.

• What makes me feel alive?
When I eat good food, I feel amazing and this is a feeling that I like reproducing. What makes you feel alive? Walking, nature, meeting friends, writing, painting. Do take some time to figure this out.

• What do I want out of life?
Ask yourself what do you value? Money, fame, family, community status, peace…..Asking
yourself these simple questions will help you get clear on exactly what your life is about for
you.

• Where do I want to be in five, ten years time?
This question will help you get organised. If deep down you would like to own a house in the country, and you live in an apartment in the city, then maybe you could take some visits to the country at the weekend and keep it alive your heart and mind.

• What are my core values? (what’s important to me?)
This is extremely important for you to figure out. As I’ve mentioned above, health is one of my top 3 goals. This makes many of my decisions around staying healthy much easier. It makes exercising pleasurable rather than a chore. Figuring out what’s important to you will help get really clear on what direction your life will take.

• Who are the people I admire?
Doing this exercise, you will be able to see what qualities these people have that you admire. Once you’ve done that, you can then consider taking on some of their qualities.

• Who are my role models?
This is similar to the above except once you’ve identified these people you can now become more of a copy cat. If they’ve been successful in a particular career, then you can be too. If it has been achieved by one person on the planet, then it can be achieved by you too. I have a sister who really admired a particular actress. The actress was particularly funny, and my sister became very funny too. In fact, it was uncanny how like her she became. You do not have to become the person fully, but you can certainly take on aspects that might work for you and also look at how they achieved their life goals and work with that.

• If I only had a year to live, what would I like to accomplish?
Isn’t this a great question? I still ask myself this to keep myself on track. It is so easy to get caught up with the day to day grind of life that we forget to stop, step back and see if we’ve set our sails in the right direction, living daily by focussing on what’s important to us. What would your year look like?

SMART Goals
If you remember nothing else from this article, do remember the following and put it up on your fridge.

SMART goals are – specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, time-framed.

• Work off of lists and mark the items by their importance.
• Do the toughest things on your list first. This will give you a sense of freedom and you will be surprised at how quickly you will get through the easier tasks.
• Delegate tasks to others when possible
• Surround yourself by experts. You cannot do everything yourself.

While all this is going on, it is important to set time aside just for you; outside of your personal commitments. Treat yourself to a massage, reiki treatment or just a walk in nature. It is in these quite moments that your greatest bursts of inspiration have space to come in.

To your good health and empowerment!

Ruth.

Edible Ireland

We're fighting back!

Goji Energy Bars

Goji Energy Bars
1 cup pine nuts
1 cup buckwheat
1/4 agave
1 cup almonds
Water
Dried gojis(as many a you would like)

Put pine nuts, soaked buckwheat, pumpkin seeds, almonds and so goji berries into a blender or food processor and blend. In a bowl, mix these ingredients with the agave and add a little water to moisten and add more dried goji berries.

Mold the mixture into energy bars. Use cookie molds or make balls with your hands or make compact energy bars. Let sit for a while before you dig in.

I will be making these over the coming days and will pop up a photo for you.

They're great for the kids too!

Going for Goji

Good things come in small packages and gojis are the perfect example of this.

Goji berries grow on a bush that develops something like a vine. These bombastic little berries range in colour from pale yellow to deep red. It is the deep red that are most available in our European shops and will set your energy on fire when you start eating them regularly.

They are an incredibly hardy little plant that can grown in very harsh dry desserts as they can in the tropics. Energerically, this is a great sign. You wouldn't want to support something that drops over at the first sign of trouble would you?

Benefits of goji
1. They are great for helping you deal with stress. In the Chinese medical system, gojis strengthen the adrenals and kidneys. In our modern world, most peoples' adrenals are very overworked, so adding a handful of goji berries to your diet will help them greatly. Eating more goji berries will lead to better strength and stamina and also a better ability to deal with stress and I know that I, for one, am always happy to have a good dose of stress buster foods daily.

2. A seventy year old person will produce one tenth of the amount of Human Growth Hormone (HGH) that is generated by a twenty year old. This means that the older your get, the more your physical body will deteriorate, meaning lower levels of energy and muscle mass. By boosting the amount of HGH you produce, can help you look younger and feel more alive. You do want to look younger and feel more alive don't you?? Well, going for gojis will help you do just that.

3. Antioxidants protect our DNA from free radical damage. DNA damage opens the door to lots of illness and accelerates aging. David Wolfe reminds us that while our bodies are designed to continually repair themselves, they can become ovewhelmed by too many free radicals as we age. Goji berries are another one of natures richest source of antioxidant carotenoids (lots more than carrots by the way). Could I be so bold as to say, the more antioxidants you eat, the longer you will life?? Absolutely!

4. If your eyesight is not what it used to be, then eating more gojis could be the answer. Gojis contain two antioxidants; zeaxanthin and lutein that are essential for healty eyesight. Free radicals attack the eyes and these two antioxidants help repair the damage. I'm not suggesting you throw away your glasses just yet, but I am suggesting that you could simply have a pack of gojis in the car and simply let your had visit the bag a few times a day. Could this be the secret to why Irish Eyes are always smiling?? That definitely merits another blog entry......

The Best Way to Use Goji Berries
Snacking Bags
I love having the foods that I want to eat, close to hand as I really do not like feeling hungry (unless I am on Day 1 of one of my detoxes...that, I can accept), so I keep a bag of gojis in my car ready to eat. If you don't like them on their own, the add some 70% cacao chocolate drops, plus a few broken cashew pieces into the bargain. Now, you'll definitely like them.

Gogi Water
I know David Wolfe suggests adding them to your drinking water, but I personally am not fond of this method. However, if it works for you, go for it. Incorporate gojis whatever way you can.

Smoothies
I add gojis to my smoothies, particularly if I haven't already used much fruit. If this is a method you like, it's best to soak them before you add them to your blender.

Power Bars
I will be adding a lovely recipe for goji energy bars that should help you get started making these snacks for yourself and your family. They are a super way of making sure you get this superfood into your diet.

Desserts
Feel free to add gojis to your desserts and biscuits too (especially if they're raw). Add them to your cheesecake mixtures and sprinkle them over your strawberries and fruit salads.

I'd like to make one final point about gojis and any superfood in general. Having them twice one week and then not again for another three weeks, will not be enough to gain the benefits that I have outlined above. Like any new lifestyle choice, it must be practiced regularly to fully reap the rewards. Going for Gojis is best taken in a daily dose.

I hope you have found this blog entry helpful and will enjoy including these wonderful berries into your diet.

To your incredible health!

KG.