Raw Foods For Health and Vitality: Eating for Energy Talk and Potluck

One of the issues I hear a lot is that it’s hard to make diet changes while living in the world of glittery processed foods and social pressures. Temptations abound and sometimes you may feel all alone.

Having a support system in place is an important part of adopting a diet and life style program that goes against the grain. My monthly raw foods potlucks were started to provide such support. If you live in or near Austin Texas, please join us this Saturday evening, January 31 for our next event.  It’s a great way to make new friends, learn new recipes and connect with people who are supportive of your diet and lifestyle choices.

After dinner, I’ll be sharing some ideas about eating to combat fatigue and exhaustion, or to simply increase your energy level so that you can enjoy your life more fully.

If there is time and interest after the talk, I’d like to share a health empowering DVD.

For more details about the potluck, go to http://www.drritamarie.com/meetup and sign up.

There are details about what to bring at http://www.drritamarie.com/potluck.htm

I hope to see you soon.

Love, Health and Joy

Dr. Ritamarie

Health, Travel and Cancer Resources

I’ve been traveling and so busy that I couldn’t fit the time in to write a blog post until now.  I have a long list of topics to cover  and will be getting into a regular groove very soon.

I attended a very impactful business retreat this past week and the breakthroughs I had will be reflected in my writing, image and work over the months to come.  It’s very exciting.

My retreat was followed by delightful time with family.  One of my sisters and one of my brothers live here in Tucson and I have had a busy time visiting with them.  My 1 year old grand nephew Jason had a very healthful eating day as Aunt Ritamarie fed him a tropical green smoothie, almond milk and a sunflower seed veggie pate, kind of like a mock tuna salad.  He loved it.

My 10 year old nephew Anthony ate 2 helpings of salad, tried the tropical smoothie and got excited when I told him he could make spaghetti out of zucchini using the spiralizer I gave them as a Christmas gift.

Spiral Slicer Saladacco – Make Pasta out of Vegetables

I made a yummy sesame ginger kelp noodle dish for dinner.  It is a gluten free, raw food antidote for fatigue, with all of its minerals and phytochemicals.   I promise the recipe and others will be posted soon.

On a sad note, I’d like to pay tribute to our dear friend Noah, age 15, who left his worldly form behind yesterday after a  3 month battle with cancer.  Our hearts reach out to his grieving family as they feel the pain of  such a loss.

Cancer unfortunately effects 42 percent of the population.  I’ve read a couple of good books lately on cancer prevention and management.  These are listed below:
Read more »

How Would You Like to Use Your Passion For Healthy Living to Empower Others to Overcome Their Health Challenges?

It’s happened to me, and many of my friends and colleagues as well. I hear stories all the time. It may even be happening to you. You or someone you love has had an amazing turn around in health as a result of applying healthy living principles…diet, exercise, herbs or a particular healing modality. You’re so excited by it, that you’re ready to share it with the world. You’d like nothing better than to be able to positively impact the lives of others, the way yours has been changed.

So how do you get started?

You could decide on a career path and go to a university based program.  A degree in Nutrition, along with certification by a national or international organization like the IAACN is one avenue.  A medical, naturopathic, osteopathic or chiropractic degree is another avenue.    Perhaps you’re more interested in boy work or energy healing.  There are a variety of classes to choose from.

If you’d like to get started sooner, there are a number of  courses that can get you started.  Here are just a few resources that I recommend:

Association of Online Nutrition Practitioners (AOLNP)

How to get started in the Natural Health Movement

Holistic Health Counselor Program with Dr. Tel Oren

Karen Knowler’s Raw Foods  Professionals Online Group Coaching Program

Karen Knowler’s Raw Food Classes – To Go! Home Study Program

Living Light Culinary Institute

Alissa Cohen’s Living on Live Food Certification

Join the Association of Online Nutrition Practitioners to keep up to date on resources and tools for creating multiple streams of income  teaching healthy eating principles.

Love, health and Joy,

Dr. Ritamarie

http://www.FreshnFunLiving.com

http://www.EatYourWayOutofPain.com

Green Smoothie Cleansing Programs for Combatting Post-Holiday Exhaustion

I am leading a group of 78 people through a Green Smoothie Cleanse. Cleansing is a great way to start off the new year. The stress and excessive eating of the holidays is a leading cause of post holiday weight gain, Adrenal fatigue and exhaustion and digestive problems. Cleansing can maximize your energy and clear your system of accumulated toxins.

The way I do the cleanse, without any fats, helps rest and rejuvenate the liver.  One of my past cleanse participants told me last week that during the last cleanse she did with me, her autoimmune symptoms disappeared and she had so much energy she was bouncing through her day.  That’s big.  I only had space to post a few of the many success stories on the Green Smoothie Cleanse web page. There are so many exciting stories, that I may just create a separate page so I can share all of them.

To get started with green smoothies, you need a blender, some greens and some fruit.  You can follow recipes or make up your own.  The Green Cleanse Recipe Guide and Menu Planner has over 50 recipes, plus instructions on making up your own.  I have a new book I’ll be releasing this year that has over 150 green smoothie variations.

Here’s a delicious one I has yesterday.  This makes almost a whole Vitamix full (64 ounces), so if you have a smaller blender, cut it in half.

Tropical Cherry Paradise

• 1/2 a pineapple, skin removed
• 1 mango
• 1 cup frozen cherries
• 1 cup frozen peaches
• 4 handfuls pre-washed baby spinach (about 1/2 of a 1 pound tub)
  
• a few dandelion leaves

Blend and serve.  I didn’t add any water to keep it thick.  Thin with water to your preferred consistency.

For a FREE collection of  green smoothie recipes visit www.GreenSmoothieCleanse.com and put your name and email address into the box to the right.

How to Make a Non-Sweet Green Smoothie

I’m often asked by people who have blood sugar problems and candida overgrowth how to make a green smoothie without fruit.  I usually call them green soups, and I make them very often.  Take a look at this you-tube video of me demonstrating how to make one of my favorites, Italian Green Soup.  A have a book of Soup Recipes that’s packed with highly nutritious, hearty recipes that are great for winter nights.

If you’re not already a Green Smoothie addict, go ahead and try one.  They are delicious, energizing and an amazing way to provide your body with a powerhouse of nutrients.

What’s your experience with green smoothies?  Do you have a favorite green smoothie recipe?  Go ahead and share in the comments field.

Love, Health and Joy,

Dr. Ritamarie

http://www.FreshnFunLiving.com

From Fatigued to Energized: Detoxification and Cleansing Programs to Restore Vibrant Health

You have a right to feel good. You can and will experience vibrant health as soon as you identify and remove the obstacles that have been in your way –  the ones that leave you with feelings of fatigue, discouragement and chronic exhaustion.

You live in a toxic world.  You’re surrounded by a sea of  pollutants, synthetic hormones, and cancer-causing chemicals.  These toxins stress your organs and leave your immune system weakened.  It’s no wonder you’re not feeling as good as you’d like to feel.

The good news is that you can take steps to enhance your body’s ability to detoxify, allowing you to lead a healthier life with a lower risk of developing cancer, autoimmune conditions and other debilitating diseases.

Periodic deep cleaning is a desirable thing.  You do it to your home, your car, even your pets, if you have them. Yet you may never have even thought about doing a periodic cleansing of your internal organs.

Throughout the ages, various forms of cleansing have been used.  Water and juice fasting are among the most rigorous methods.  A variety of potions and powders have been developed to cleanse the colon and the liver. The Master Cleanse is one of the more popular cleansing programs of our modern time.

Many of these cleansing methods work well. All have advantages and disadvantages.  None works perfectly for everyone. Genetic makeup, body type, activity level, work and family demands, and stress level are amongst the factors that play into how successful any given cleansing method will be for an individual at any given time.

All types of cleanses have similar goals.  Each program serves to give your digestive system a rest while enhancing your ability to release toxins.   Exercising to the point of perspiration, as in brisk walking, jogging or cycling,  is a very important part of any cleansing program.   Sweating, dry skin brushing, loofa scrubbing, and saunas are excellent ways to enhance detoxification and  stimulate the elimination of toxins through the skin,  your largest organ of elimination.  Giving the liver a rest by reducing or eliminating fat from your diet frees it up to more efficiently remove toxins from your blood.

A large percentage of your body’s daily work is digesting food. When you’re digesting complex foods, other vital functions, like growth and repair, slow down. The result of continually eating hard to digest, low nutrient density foods is a slow breakdown of your body’s organs and a decline in function.

I’ve done lots of cleansing programs, ranging from straight water fasting for 28 days to various herbal regimes with lots of potions and pills and a complicated schedule of supplementation and procedures.  By far my favorite is a Green Smoothie Cleanse, during which the only nourishment I take in is in the form of delicious blended green drinks, loaded with phytonutrients, vitamins, minerals and easily digested amino acids.

After I did the green smoothie cleansing program myself a few times, I had such good results that I decided to share it.  Since the hardest part of the program is staying committed to doing it, I decided to provide support in the form of an online forum, daily email and audio movitvation, teleseminars, books and recipe guides and digital recordings.

This program started out as a one week regime of drinking green smoothies in place of your regular meals with the intent of providing high nutrient density with minimal digestive expenditure. Because the smoothies contain little or no fat, your liver and gallbladder get a break.  Because you’re   drinking your foods, rather than eating them, your digestive track has very little work to do.  As a result, you have a lot of free cycles left over to focus on the highly lucrative job of growth and repair.  All the extra energy you save by freeing up your digestive system allows your body to focus on cleansing and repair.

There are now three variations of the program, to address the needs of beginner and advance cleansers alike.  The beginner version of the program calls for replacing 1 or 2 meals with green smoothies and making healthy choices at the other meals.

Because there are no fancy or expensive potions and pills, and there is plenty of nourishment, this kind of cleanse can be fit into your busy schedule.  Teachers, athletes, doctors, lawyers, massage therapists, writers, busy moms and executives have all joined me on this program with great success.  I even had a couple of triathletes join the program and continue to exercise intently.

While it is easy in theory to do this on your own, there is something about the accountability that keeps people coming back to do it again and again.  Personally, I like to do green smoothie cleanses once every 2 months and a green juice cleanse once a year.  I feel like that really helps to give me the energy to lead the busy life that I do.

I’m trying an experiment this time around.  I designed a pre and post cleanse menu plan to help make the transition to the cleanse a bit easier.  This around, I’ll be offering a continuation of the coaching and support through one week of post cleanse eating.

Each time I conduct a cleanse, I’m joined by 50 to 60 health seekers.  My vision is to one day branch out and have thousands of people around the globe giving themselves the gift of internal cleansing together during a one week green smoothie cleanse.

My next Green Smoothie Cleanse starts MondayJanuary 12.  I have some special teleseminar guests lined up, and one will be sharing techniques to help overcome emotional eating.

I prepared a quick video to show you the materials I include in the program.

http://screencast.com/t/n9jfUvin5v

You can sign up at http://www.GreenSmoothieCleanse.com

Love, Health and Joy,

Dr. Ritamarie