Kimberley Snyder - beauty detox - green goddess

                                  

If I want to eat something deliciously healthy, have a little extra time on my hand to try making something new, following proper food combining. 

then I tend to look though Kimberley Snyders recipes in my e-book book ,the beauty detox solution' or google her name with the type of recipe I'd like to do.

I recommend anyone to get this book and read it. It helped massively in curing my cystic acne when I followed the program very closely for a few weeks and restored my gut health with it. I also lost way too much weight so I took on a more open approach to it after. But it was such a valuable experience, I still eat so much more greens since then, make more smoothies and know a lot of important information for real healthy eating, such as that I try to avoid gluten and dairy.

 Kimberley also has a blog where she sometimes posts recipes. I also like some of her Videos. Check her out, it's worth it! I like her approach to beauty and health a lot and her emphasis that food is season and person dependent and thus it's important you listen to your body how much to use of her teachings. I just find it's fantastic to know more, so that in case you need it, you feel ill or overloaded/toxic or have any other issues, you will know what to do for good health/weight/happiness.

 I also like the fact that this way of living is no diet and you can eat as much as you want and don't have to over excerceise to loose weight or anything excessive. It's all about balance and it's a way of loving, not a dump short diet plan you will not be able to stick with! It's really easy as you ddfintiely will automatically see some things in this book you like and will change in your lifestyle. Those changes will be amazing for your health and stick with you! This gives you time and confidence to just chill out a little more, let your body nourish and heal itself, look tons times better, start really enjoying your beautiful foods and your body. It's just a great great way of eating and living.

                              

I often make an abbreviation of her infamous Dharmas Kale Salad and lots of green smoothies. 

                                    

I also love her recipes for perfectly beauty detox healthy desserts that are good for you such as for example the sweet potato custard. 

          

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21 Things you schuld know about Essential oils

This is a post of the crunchy Betty blog.

This is such a good informative post that I've copied and past it here for you. Thanks crunchy Betty for the content!

      

Lord help me, people. I’ve spent the last two days trying to write a concise, easy guide to essential oils and their safety, and it ended up being just an enormous dump of information that no would want to ingest in a single blog post.

Therefore, you’re getting the quickest, easiest 21 facts you need to keep in mind. These things include safety measures, essential oil facts, therapeutic uses, and more. You’ll like this better. I promise.

However, at the end of this post, I am going to give extensive references to those of you who would like to learn more about the fascinating world of essential oils, as well as a list of my top 7 recommended essential oils for any household to have.

21 Things You Should Know About Essential Oils

• Essential oils are not really oils. They do not contain the fatty acids that constitute what we would consider an actual oil. Valerie Gennari Cooksley, author of Aromatherapy: Soothing Remedies to Restore, Rejuvenate and Heal defines essential oils as “highly concentrated plant constituents possessing potent medicinal and cosmetic qualities.” However, I think Stephanie Tourles nailed it in Organic Body Care recipes when she said, “I consider essential oils the life force or the soul of the plant.”
• Most essential oils are high in antibacterial, antifungal, and antiviral properties: This makes them an excellent addition to your homemade cleaning preparations. Oils that are best for cleaning are: Lemon, grapefruit, eucalyptus, peppermint, tea tree, lavender, and rosemary.
• Essential oils are miniscule in molecular size, which means they are absorbed well by the skin – making them perfect ingredients in personal care items intended to heal, soften, and nourish. However, they do not accumulate in the body over time – they simply offer up their healing properties and then pass on through.
• Scientific studies have shown that rosemary essential oil helps your brain perform.Specifically, smelling rosemary essential oil helps memory recall and performance on tests. Interestingly, this study also showed that groups that inhaled either rosemary or lavender essential oil felt much more relaxed than those who inhaled no odor at all.
• Fragrance oils and essential oils are NOT the same thing. As a rule of thumb, if you see the word “fragrance” or “fragrance oil” or even “perfume” on anything, you can assume this is synthetic and NOT natural. (Even if it says natural fragrance.)
• Essential oils are wholly natural and cannot be patented; which means that you’ll never see an essential oil in a pharmaceutical drug. As such, you can expect that the vast majority of mainstream healthcare practitioners will never recommend essential oils as therapeutic alternatives to drugs. More importantly, because essential oils cannot be patented, drug companies will not waste money studying them. This limits our scientific knowledge of essential oils GREATLY, and the majority of what we know about them are things that have been passed down through thousands of years of personal use and experimentation.
• Enormous amounts of plants are needed to produce essential oil. In fact, on the extreme end, it takes 4000 pounds of Bulgarian roses to produce 1 pound of essential oil. Other plants like lavender only take 100 pounds of plant material to produce a pound of essential oil. Still, can you imagine how concentrated essential oils must be, in light of how many plants are used to produce them?

This is only 1/3rd of the article, please read the rest here.

http://www.crunchybetty.com/21-things-you-should-know-about-essential-oils

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What is the Healthiest Store Bought Milk Alternative

I've stopped drinking Cow's Milk about a year ago when I started having problems with my skin and I recommend it to anyone who gets the flu/a cold a lot, has digestive discomfort, skin problems or any other health issues. Try cutting the milk out and see if it improves your symptoms! Milk isn't easy on our bodies even for people who are not lactose-intolerant and therefore produce the enzyme lactase which is required to break down the milk.

As I am not completely intolerant I'd still eat some cheese once in a while and especially don't bother if it's mixed with a dish, bread or cake at a restaurant or a friends house. I just don't drink any of those lattes anymore, skinny or not I drink my coffee black or with some non-dairy milk which here in the uk forget about it, as I don't know a single cafe in my area who offers that type of thing. Please don't go down the Soy milk route. Soy milk is MUCH worse for you, so please don't.

Strangely since my change, I don't even feel like eating yoghurt or cottage cheese anymore! Something I used to eat every day! I just don't like the way it makes me feel anymore. I get somehow thirsty and my skin sometimes starts to feel dehydrated. Cream and Butter are fine but I often prefer to substitute butter with extra virgin coconut oil anyways. I once tried goats milk as it should be easier on our bodies but I started to be bloated too. Some argue that if you are drinking milk fresh and raw from a farm without it being pasteurised then its fine for the body as the important digestive helper enzymes get damaged with pasteurisation, leaving us with an unnatural food that our bodies have to do so much work on to get through. More about raw milk here.

For anyone who loves their milk and doesn't want to be without it, have it then! But please buy organic. Organic cows eat more closer to their natures food and therefore produce a healthier milk with more vitamins and Omega3's. They also are less exposed to chemicals around them and in them, chemicals which end up in your breakfast milk.

If I couldn't convince you and you need some more infos, best ask Dr Mercola he always has a good answer to any sort of health questions (he also does excellent videos on you tube )  ;-)

Dr. Mercola Interviews Mark McAfee about Raw Milk:

http://www.mercola.com/article/milk/no-milk.htm

'Milk' Winners

Oat Milk

For store bought Milk Substitutes I recommend Oat Milk. I buy the organic one from Oatly at Holland&Barrets or WholeFoods. 

Oat Milk has more carbs than Almond Milk but hey, also more Protein! Plus these carbs are healthy so they will only be beneficial for you no matter what diet you are following or not! 

Just one 250ml glass of Oatly oat drink provides a third (1g) of the daily requirement of beta-glucan (soluble fibre) to help lower cholesterol.

Typical values				per 100g
Energy				150kj
Energy				35kcal
Protein				1g
Carbohydrate				6.5g
of which sugars				4g
Fat				0.7g
of which saturates				0.1g
of which cholesterol				0mg
Fibre				0.8g
Sodium				0.04g

Ocado has currently and offer running: Offer price £1, was £1.39  - Offer price £1 when you order by 12/1/2014. Offer subject to availability. Maximum 20 promotional items per customer

Nut and Seed Milks

My choice of most healthy homemade milk substitute would be Nut and Seed Milks, I love Almond or Hemp. It's so easy to make if you have a blender just blend the nuts or seeds with filtered water on high speed, sieve the left-over nut bits out for example with a nut bag - Voila, delicious. Nut Milks are high in protein and lots of important nutrients.

Home made nut and seed milk is nice, especially if you add some banana and vanilla or cinnamon, but sometimes there is no time, or you feel like something a little more fuller tasting and easier to heat and then go to the shop. 

Click here to get a step by step guide

Make Nut Milks at home

Don't get me wrong, I like store bought Almond milk as well, 

BUT unfortunately that is not the best as it has so many unhealthy ingredients!! 

Synthetic Vitamins in Store-Bought “Almond Milk”

Here are just some of the harmful ingredients you will find listed on your store-bought “almond milk” carton:

Vitamin A Palmitate – This is a synthetic version of vitamin A that is associated with birth defects and bone fractures while providing zero health benefits. Other side effects of this isolated chemical form of vitamin A include tumor enhancement, joint disorders, osteoporosis, extreme dryness of eyes, mouth and skin, enlargement of liver and spleen, and immune suppression. As an added note, vitamin A toxicity, known as hyper-vitaminosis, always results from consuming too much synthetic “purified” vitamin A and never from naturally occurring vitamin A found from natural food sources.  Still haven’t thrown out your store-bought “almond milk?”

Vitamin D2 – This synthetic chemical needs to be avoided at all costs as toxicity occurs easily with ingested synthetic D2. This occurs especially in children. In fact, a single dose of synthetic vitamin D of 50mg or greater is toxic for adults. The immediate effect of toxicity is abdominal cramps, nausea, and vomiting. In time, as toxicity builds, the result is a buildup of irreversible deposits of calcium crystals in the soft tissues of the body that damage the heart, lung and kidneys.*

Calcium Carbonate – This is a non organic, non-living mineral source of calcium and, most of the time, it is just plain chalk! That’s right- you are consuming chalk – the same stuff you use to write on a blackboard. Good luck with that!

Tocopherol Acetate – This is a synthetic man-made version of vitamin E. Studies have repeatedly shown that the human body prefers natural Vitamin E because it retains it at healthful levels while working to quickly excrete synthetic vitamin E.

Synthetic Vitamins Are Not Nutrients!

• Our digestive system does not recognize synthetic man-made vitamins as food.

• When you ingest a synthetic supplement, such as the ones found in “almond milk”, your body reacts as if you have swallowed some foreign toxic chemical. This means that your immune system must combat the enemy invasion. If you keep stressing your immune system in this way it will eventually become too weak to protect you from illness or disease.

• Lastly, since the very beginning of the boom in the supplement industry which included “fortified” and “enriched foods”, the scientific community has known, researched, and shown with every study that synthetic supplements weaken our health. In fact, these chemicals found in your “almond milk,” bread, and cereal boxes are not absorbed nor utilized by your body – instead they act as a burden to your health, even causing withdrawal symptoms when you eliminate them from your diet. Nothing replaces whole food, naturally occurring nutrients that your body naturally recognizes, absorbs, and utilizes as nourishment.

The One and only Store Bought Almond Milk  

The one and only Store bought Almond milk I found here in the UK (I couldn't find any good one in the US) is the EcoMil. But it's pricey. For the cost of 3-4£ per liter it's not really worth it. Make sure you buy unsweetened. 

Ingredients

Water, Almond* (7%), Tapioca Starch*, Natural Almond Flavouring*. (*Organically grown)

Be aware to buy unsweetened Milk Subsitutes and check the labels about the additives mentioned above and other sweeteners such as brown rice sirup, evaporated canu juice, agave ... you don't want any of those high GI sugars in your 'milk'

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Want to become Sporty? Start Today!! Get into Sports!! Go to the Gym. Get Healthier.

Do you want to start going to the gym or start going for runs more often or maybe ride your bike to work? Good then, why not start trying today rather than wait for another year! Clearly these are all good lifestyle habits to have as if you follow them they will do good for your health. Read my post about habit forming.

When I wanted to start to get fit it wasn't my favourite thing either.
But today it belongs to my routine and I need it for my wellbeing. In my opinion everyone needs some kind of exercise and its fun to once in a while get your heart rate up a little too!
You'll feel much better physically and mentally too! A work-out makes you release endorphins and is often is meditating, in the sense that you forget about everything else on your mind while you are concentrating on doing the exercise.

Breaking a sweat and getting your heart rate up can help fixing up so many other little health matters too... things like bad skin, insomnia, restlessness, moodiness, digestion, overweight, ...

Especially good is if you give yourself variety hence it's great for your body if you also do some Yoga besides the heavy weight lifting or dance besides the Pilates.
I even switch between Yoga styles frequently. From some more relaxing styles like Hatha which includes a meditating breathing and body alignment to ones and more challenging styles like Ashtanga Vinyasa Power Yoga for strength and endurance.
Most Gyms in London have good Yoga class teachers. Brikram Yoga is also a very good thing to do too and a very different experience to any other yoga. However you'd have to get a membership to a bikram hot yoga studio and they normally get pricey after your 10-day trial period.
You should start with some type of yoga as soon as possible it's so important for your wellbeing!

Giving myself variety is important as I don't want to get bored. Plus I see good improvements generally this way and you can go to whatever is offered at the gym when you have time, or plan your day schedule around it.
Substitute any parts you may have missed out to train in classes with a short self workout in the weight room.
With experience you will get a better sense of how much work you need to improve your body as you'll start to learn how it all works and what input it has on you. Experience will make it easier and better for you, like with everything in life!! But until you gained all that valuably experience, do your research about how to exercise your body correctly, preferably maximum achievement with minimum time investment. Also make sure you study when and what to eat and not to eat before and after your work out. Full stomachs kill any sport activity.

Here are my tipps for Gym-Newbies

- Make sure to pick a gym close to where you live or work, one you like the environment in and offers good classes you are interested in taking that run frequently. Going to the gym shouldn't be a boring drag for you or take up too much your time.

- Anonymity is the key for you to keep on going back to those classes where you goofed all over the place and didn't know what the heck the teacher wanted from you- don't forget, in a dew weeks you'll look at the newbies and will see your own improvement as clear as never!! and this will make you feel fabulous. Of course you'll s... in your first attempts in any classes, all those movements are so alien to you! But you don't want to be doing them in between the office cutie you have a crush on and your subordinate looking at your red face in the big mirror you are all looking in together.

So pick a gym where those people most likely won't turn up and you will find it easier to be with falling all over the place in your first Yoga class or looking like you are dancing gangnam style in the step class.
Starting to do something and hence not being good at it is intimidating enough, so try at least to find a way to hide a little. Remember, this is the only you you'll learn!! Throw yourself in the cold water!!

- make up things that make the gym visit more interesting for you, like a treat after if that works for you, a visit in the Spa or Steam room of your gym, a progress tracker on your phone or a good playlist to listen to while you work out. Use your iPad nano or iPhone for it (you can get iPhone arm straps here).

- Very importantly, especially if you train yourself: do some research before going to the gym, to know what exercises you have to do to achieve the benefit you want. Do you want to loose weight? Try Interval Training. As mentioned above we want minimum impact maximum gain. want to build bulk? Research how to do it, as of how many repetitions you have to do and how heavy the weight has to be! (Tipp: as heavy you can lift 8 times 3Reps 1-2 per week;) If you do it wrong and end up not seeing results you will stop being motivated!

- For those of you who have the opportunity; go with a friend! Best if your friend knows the game, if not put a good workout plan together and follow it. Just don't have TOO much fun and start cutting your sessions shorter and shorter because you have too much to catch up about or it's just not your day, or you deserve a piece of cake instead. That's not the point of all this. Keep it fun, follow the right plan together and you will see improvements with probably more time input as it's two of you but maximum fun! :)

- If you don't have a friend motivating you but prefer to be social or being told what to do go to classes, they are really good. Try Body Pump or Pilates. I personally would get bored of the weight room and only go before or after classes to do a few reps on the muscles I feel like I need work on.

- Imagine how you feel after the workout.. soooo good!!

The following Apps I've all preciously used and they worked pretty well. Most of them are free and if you like them you can also get an update for as little as 1-3 pounds.

Daily Workouts

12 Fitness Calculators

Workout Plan-Schedule&Journal

Fitness Buddy

Fitness Nut

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Forming new GOOD habits

This is the beginning of a new year and maybe some of you have made New Years resolutions.. I never do as my mind set is; If there is anything I feel changing, do it straight away!!
I would feel lazy and would feel like I am trying not hard enough, hey it can't be that difficult!
Think of athletes or other people who have to follow a much crazier discipline every day! Plus as you will read in those following post it only feels disciplinary in the beginning, then when the habit forms, its just a habit.
Another trick is, try not to bore yourself with new things you may find boring first or still will find something you have to push yourself a little even after a while, like going to the gym.

Last Year during my New Years holiday in the sun one of the books I was reading was 'The 7 habits of highly effective People' by Stephen R. Covey. (can buy it here)

Honestly I understand if you are not a person who finds titles like this appealing as it looks like a success hungry author, another silly self help book... but you also may be one of these people, like myself, who put that prejudice behind and opened up to read anything and take it for its contents and not its looks!! This book is a very good example for that as it's very very good! It's also well written so you will like reading it and it will make you feel positive about making certain changes or adjustments in your life!







There are plenty of good posts on the web about building habits in your life which will end up acting positively for your general wellbeing, mood and health.


Here a short post, 3 easy beginners steps for habit forming from JamesClears Blog.

There are LOTS of other articles out about this, and I do also recommend VERY MUCH reading the book suggested above (you can also buy audio tapes or mpd to listen to it while you are driving, it's really good and so positive!! :)

Keep in mind
Don't expect to succeed from the very beginning, don't get frustrated and think you've failed completely once you missed out one healthy meal or a gym class. It's about forming a new lifestyle habit after all! Habits have to come naturally so if you want to follow a new healthy diet but have something else on like a date or a social fun dinner with friends or family then enjoy that and just postpone your healthy eating and get back to it once you have to chose your meal.

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