Gratitude Weekend: Celebrate Your Health with Raw Food Recipes and Health Enhancing Resources
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So this year, I decided to offer a “Gratitude Weekend” sale, filled with very special offers of products and services to empower you to be healthy and vibrant throughout the holiday season. The average person gains extra pounds of fat during this season, because food surrounds us at every turn. Yesterday, as I watched my relatives consume processed, nutrient depleted, and dangerous to their health foods without thought about how it affects their “bottom line”, I started thinking about ways to reach the masses with the message that their food choices are hurting them. Read on for details of my “Gratitude Weekend” sale. You’ll see 5 special sales! Enjoy these special offers through the end of the weekend. Order Today and Win!
Gratitude Weekend Specials:
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Tags: adrenal exhaustion, black friday, cleansing, dessert, Dr. Ritamarie, Dr. Ritamarie Loscalzo, Exhaustion, Green Cleanse, Healthy Holiday, healthy meals, holiday feasts, living food, raw food breakfast, raw food recipe, recipe collections, vegan, Vibrant Health
Posted in Appreciation for Health, Cleansing Programs, Events
Raw Food Recipe: Hot Mama Green Drink
The more recipes you know for green smoothies, the more your tastebuds will learn to crave variation and variety. Eating a variety of greens means you benefit from the unique mineral combinations in each type of green. This particular green smoothie recipe contains a mix of greens you’ll find readily available in most large supermarkets in pre-packaged containers, making it easy for anyone with little time for shopping or seeking out a farmer’s market.
The recipe here is an adaptation of one in my Green Smoothie Cleanse.
| Raw Food Recipe: Hot Mama Green Drink |
- 1/2 pound baby arugula
- 1/2 pound spinach and spring mix blend
- 3 – 4 cups water
- 1 large piece fresh ginger
- 1/8 teaspoon cayenne
- 1/4 teaspoon kelp powder
- Place all ingredients in blender.
- Blend until smooth. Thin with water if desired and blend again.
Adapted from a recipe in my Green Cleanse Recipe Guide available at http://www.GreenSmoothieCleanse.com
Tags: arugula, Green Cleanse, green drink, green smoothie recipe, Green Smoothies, greens, raw food recipe
Posted in Cleansing Programs, Green Smoothies, Raw Food Recipes, Raw Foods
Making Friends with Hunger: How to Nourish (Not Just Fill) Your Body
- by Dr. Ritamarie Loscalzo
I am really hungry as I write this. I’m participating in The Raw Divas juice cleanse for the next 10 days and I am on day 2 now. While I love the feeling of lightness and the flatter belly that has resulted from just one day on all juice, I do need to get used to the hunger.
I’m participating in the program as both a juice cleanser and a juice mentor. I contributed 9 recipes to the menu planner, shared lots of expert advice on how the cleanse should be put together, and I have been interviewed and available for questions and answers about juicing on two calls so far.
On Monday evening’s call, Tera Warner and I discussed how important it is to make friends with hunger. Being on a juice cleanse really brings hunger to the foreground and knowing how to handle hunger in this context provides excellent preparation for making good choices in the face of hunger during your everyday life.
What is Real Hunger?
Hunger is, after all, just a sensation - a biological urge that needs to get satisfied in the proper time and place. We don’t always get to satisfy our biological urge to eliminate or have sex just as soon as they make themselves known, do we?
Instead, we live with the sensation until the proper time and place is available to us. It’s quite a laughing matter to imagine what the world would be like if we didn’t exercise restraint in the face of the urge to eliminate or procreate, isn’t it?
Learning to feel hunger and defer acting on it until the time and place are ideal, meaning that health promoting food is available, is a very valuable skill to learn. All too often I hear from people I’m coaching that they were doing great on their healthier diet until…
- They were travelling and got hungry on the road and stopped for fast food (really the ultimate fast food on the road is buying produce at the supermarket!!)
- They were visiting someone who served a meal and when they found that “just plain salad” was not filling enough, they indulged in the French fries and potato salad to “fill themselves up”.
- They were out running errands and got hungry so they grabbed whatever they could find… usually some sort of health depleting snacks.
These are just a few of the excuses you may have when you find it hard to make choices that promote your health rather than deplete it. I’m sure you can think of many more!!!
Why is it Important to Address Hunger?
Despite how you may feel at first, hunger is not an obstacle on your path to wellness. If you want to reduce your midline, clarify and focus your thoughts, and keep your blood sugar humming along at the optimal level, you just need the right strategies for overcoming the barriers. Your solutions depend on a number of factors including:
- learning to live with hunger and to appreciate it for what it is: your body’s desire to be fueled with nourishment (not filler).
- preparing in advance for meals on the run and knowing how to make quick and healthy recipes.
Did you know that blood sugar irregularity is one of the top causes of excess belly fat? Even slender people sometimes have excess fat around the middle! Contrary to popular belief, eating LESS frequently is better for your waistline than eating every couple of hours.
I’ll share some of the latest research on blood sugar, belly fat and brain fog in an free webinar on August 18, 2011. Details will be available and registration will open at the end of the week, so stay tuned. On the webinar, I’ll share a few of my top strategies for making friends with hunger and keeping your blood sugar nice and steady so you can decrease your risk for developing diabetes and heart disease, the most serious side effects of blood sugar imbalances.
I just made myself another juice and my tummy feels satisfied and my brain feels recharged. While it’s not so easy to do, juice cleansing is worth the effort. I’ve already dropped 3 pounds and it’s only the second day. The only thing that will deter me from completion is feeling like I’ve dropped too much weight or feeling that I am too weak to continue my daily tasks. Neither are likely to happen, as long as I continue to drink enough.
How to Become Friends with Hunger and Start Nourishing Your Body:
I can deal with the hunger. It’s just another sensation. While juicing, I KNOW my body is getting all the nutrition it needs, so I can learn to deter the desire to eat and chew until the cleanse is over in 8 days.
If you’re afraid of hunger, here’s a 3-step strategy you can do to help you make friends with hunger:
Tomorrow morning, instead of immediately making yourself breakfast when you get out of bed, do something else. Start by drinking a tall glass of water. - Add a few drops of essential oil to it so it seems luxurious. My favorites are peppermint, lemon, ginger, cinnamon and basil. I have fun with my water throughout the day by making it taste good.
- Often the experience you perceive as hunger is actually thirst. Drink first, wait a half hour and if still hungry, eat then.
You’ll notice the best results if, rather than being afraid of hunger, you shift your attitude and thank your hunger for its reminder to replenish your nutrient stores.
This exercise will help you to make friends with your hunger so it doesn’t control you.
You’ll be surprised at how much happier you feel when hunger is your friend.
Tags: belly fat, blood sugar, brain fog, Diabetes, heart disease, hunger, juice cleanse
Posted in Brain Fog, Cleansing Programs, Health Coach, Holistic Nutrition, Raw Foods, Reduce Belly Fat, Vibrant Health
Juicing for Energy: How a Juice Cleanse Feeds Every Cell in Your Body
- by Dr. Ritamarie Loscalzo
If you’ve ever done a juice cleanse where you consume primarily or exclusively fresh pressed juice for a specified length of time, you may have already experienced the state of “juice euphoria” that comes from having a clean digestive tract and a clear mind.
There is something very freeing about not eating for several days to several weeks and allowing your body to rid itself of toxins.
Each cup of vegetable juice is jam packed with all the nutrients you need to give your mitochondria the raw materials to make energy for you. When you juice rather than eat, the nutrients make a bee-line right into your blood stream, allowing every cell in your body to feel alive and energized.
Most people think that if they do a juice cleanse – meaning consuming nothing but juice for several days or longer – that they’ll feel weak and tired. Quite the contrary in most cases. Think nutrients for starving cells. When you eat in the usual fashion – meaning low nutrient food consumed on the run and under stressful circumstances – there’s very little nutrition, and your digestive system does not digest it well.
If you typically feel less energetic after eating, or crave food even when your stomach is telling you to stop, you just may benefit from a juice cleanse. Your approach can be as simple as replacing a meal or two with fresh squeezed vegetable juice. Of course, if you’d like to really benefit, try a juice cleanse for 3-5 or even 10 days.
Three days is easy to do on your own; ten days is another story. There are a lot of emotions and habits that rear their less than pretty heads when you do an extended cleanse, and it’s best to do it with support, like the 10-Day Juice Cleanse program the Raw Divas are doing in August. I am one of their team of juice and cleansing experts and I must say, I am impressed with what they put together.
Tune in to my recent blog talk radio show called “Juicing as an Antidote to Fatigue” for all the “juicy” details.
Tags: digestion, energy, fatigue, juice, juice cleanse, nutrition
Posted in Cleansing Programs, Detox Program, Exhaustion, Fatigue Treatment, Vibrant Health
Fruit as Friend, Fruit as Foe: Simple Strategies to Find Out if You Should Fill or Forget the Fruit Bowl
Have you noticed that A LOT of health writers place fruit on their “hit list” of foods to avoid? Some even put it right up there as just a notch above high fructose corn syrup!
So what’s wrong with fruit? Actually, there is a book by that name, and, not surprisingly, I own it. I bought it back in the dinosaur days when you actually had to physically own a book in order to read it!
It was at a time when I was exploring macrobiotics, and raw fruit was only supposed to be about 5% of calories on any given day. If you are small and relatively inactive like most people and sustain yourself on a 1500 calorie a day regime, that amounts to less than one piece of fruit.
Fruit: To Fear or to Cheer?
In general, when online authors suggest you should limit or eliminate fruit they tell you that fruit:
- triggers outbreaks of candida yeast (Donna Gates)
- triggers blood sugar swings and cravings (South Beach Diet)
- increases risk of diabetes (Joseph Mercola)
- promotes an acid residue that can feed cancer (Robert O. Young)
- promotes “composting” that can result in overgrowth of unfriendly microorganisms (Gabriel Cousins)
Personally, what I’ve observed is all over the map.
I’ve seen diabetics on my green cleanse program normalize their blood sugars within 3 days while drinking nothing but green smoothies that contain between 40 and 50% fruit by volume. That adds up to a lot of fruit over the course of the day.
On the other hand, I’ve seen other diabetics spike their sugars by adding a few strawberries to a green drink.
I’ve read accounts of women who’ve healed from chronic yeast overgrowth while eating a diet consisting of primarily fresh fruit. I’ve also personally coached patients who are so sugar sensitive they have yeast flare-ups after a few bites of apple.
So What’s the Truth? Is Fruit a Friend or Foe?
Over two decades of guiding people through life changing diet and lifestyle changes has taught me one thing for certain… and that is that there is no single set of eating rules that work for all of the people all of the time.
We are each biochemically and energetically unique. We are shaped by our genes, early exposures, the way we were nurtured, how safe we felt in our early years, our diets, movement and sleep patterns, and even our thoughts. Your response to the world is slightly different from mine. This is true of how we behave in response to outside stimuli as well as how we respond to food. It is said that one man’s food is another man’s poison.
I’ve found over the years that, for many people, one of the best ways to determine which foods are helpful and which are hurtful is to test. And one of the best ways to test is to remove all the potentially problematic foods and add them back in one at a time.
This is called elimination/provocation.
For many people, the best way to do the elimination phase is by fasting on either water or vegetable juice for a prescribed length of time and then reintroduce foods such as fruits.
Solutions for Finding Out if You Are Fruit Sensitive
If you’ve been wondering if you’re sensitive to fruit sugar, here are some questions to ask yourself to determine if fruit is a friend, foe, or in between:
- Do find yourself feeling spacey or light headed after eating fruit by itself?
- Do you crave sugar after eating fruit?
- Does eating lots of fruit cause intestinal upset?
- Do you break out in a rash when you eat lots of fruit?
Carefully observe how you respond to eating fruit and experiment with using low-sugar fruits versus high-sugar fruits. Also try combining fruit with greens and eliminating fruit for a few weeks.
If this is a course of action you’re willing to try, here’s what I suggest:
- Follow 10 days of eating no fruit at all, except for lemons. The ideal way to do this is by fasting or juicing.
- After your 10 days of elimination, eat a meal containing 3-5 pieces of fresh ripe fruit all by itself. Monitor how you feel over the next few hours.
- Next, eat a meal containing the same amount of fruit but this time eat it on a bed of greens or blended with greens into a smoothies.
Try this with a few different types of fruit, in particular with berries. Add cinnamon to your fruit and see if that changes things. You may have blood sugar imbalances that can be corrected by a 30-day insulin receptor reset.
Over the years, I’ve developed my own special relationship with fruit. I rarely eat a lot of it by itself. Personally, I feel best when I eat fruit along with greens.
The first step is to start on the elimination path. If you need support, take part in a group juice cleanse with other people. You can join me with Tera Warner of The Raw Divas for a 10-Day Juice Cleanse starting on August 1st. You’ll also find extra educational support here in our radio show on “How Juicing Affects Your Blood Sugar”.
Fruit does not have to be your foe forever. If you know you have fruit issues and you want to heal your sensitivies, address problems with abdominal fat, and improve your overall energy, you’ll find your best strategies for health and support using the Insulin Sensitivity Restoration System which you’ll find here.
Tags: blood sugar, fruit, fruit sensitivity, green juice, insulin, insulin resistance, reversing insulin resistance
Posted in Cleansing Programs, Reduce Belly Fat, Vibrant Health
