Gateway to Health: Spring Cleaning Your Diet

1 Tim. 3:5 “(For if a man know not how to rule his own house, how shall he take care of the church of God?)”

Spring Cleaning Your Diet

I know it’s a little early being January and all, but it is never too early to clean up your health. I know with January first everybody made resolutions to lose weight but do they realize you don’t just stop eating and wait for the pounds to melt off? You need to clean your system out if you want a healthy weight loss that will actually work and last.

By cleaning up, I mean detoxification! You need to meticulously clean out the toxins in your body that have your liver, bladder and other essential organs not responding because of your unhealthy eating.

Tamara St John, who NATURALLY successfully healed her cancer has a great website for the Big C patients and the non-C patients. Allow me to say that not all cancers are the same and thus are not holistically healed the same. We all have to do what works for us!

But if you want to lose weight, it is advisable to do a detox. first. This will help you clean out the mechanisms that keep you going day in and day out. A probiotic will assist you in cleaning out and keep the house kept up. Because once you clean out your system, you don’t want to clog it right back up with toxins and junk.

If you don’t want to go the diet route then it is possible to just clean up your ingested food. You see, you might think that buying ground beef in bulk saves money, or buying really pink ground beef is safe to eat but know your grocer. A lot of times they spray freshness additives (toxic to your cleaned out system) to make the meat stay fresher on the shelf longer.

Some people feel they NEED meat but I can guarantee, it isn’t a NEED it’s a want, I totally get carnivorous amongst us. All I’m saying is buy the least toxic food available to you to keep your system clean and functioning properly. I found some really good recipe sites for you to try out. No, I haven’t made any myself YET, but I am surely going to try. If you absolutely NEED meat, add some. This is a lifelong journey of health for me, not a do and fail option.

Food Revolution 

Wisebread 

Also, find alternatives for your sugar cravings. I use 100% organic maple syrup in my oatmeal and it is delicious instead of stevia or processed sugar. There are so many other ways to a healthy diet. I buy a big organic sweet potato, chop it up put it in a lidded casserole dish. I ‘paint’ the sides and bottom with organic coconut oil first so nothing sticks. I sprinkle, nutmeg, ginger, cloves and a hefty dash of cinnamon, drizzle the maple syrup on top, toss in some FRESH pineapple chunks, cut up an apple also and throw that on top, toss it in the oven (350 degrees) for forty-five minutes! It is better (to me) and just as filling as any meat dish you can throw in your face!

There is a healthy alternative cheese also. It’s not as good as cheddar or processed cheese but I love the creamy grilled cheese sandwich my coconut cheese makes! A diet does not need to be restrictive; it just needs to be tweaked with better for you ingredients.

I know how people are addicted to chocolate too. For some reason, they don’t want to try the healthier raw cacao powder to make their brownies or cookies, but this way they could eat without the guilt of the chocolate being bad for them! I don’t like chocolate but I am tempted to try the raw cacao in a smoothie! 

There are healthy eggs out there, healthy chicken, healthy sausage, and even, yes Benning, a better for you healthy BACON! It isn’t a matter of going on a diet, it is a matter of changing your unhealthy eating to HEALTHY alternatives. I know, I know, no one likes change; not many like healthy either.

If we all became aware of what unhealthy food goes down the tube, we’d surely not be an overweight nation. Fast food restaurants would lose business, restaurants would change the way they cook and offer healthier foods to the patrons.  Papa Johns is testing an organic and gluten-free menu and we’re definitely going to see a rise in awareness of what we’re doing to our bodies. I don’t know how long Papa John’s will stand to the pressure of going organic if the founder was made to quit after comments about the money grubbing NFL and their protest ‘people’.

The crazy world we live in is really weird in not wanting people healthy and opposing anything the people do to better their health! Take the FDA, for example, wanting to ban herbs that they call DRUGS because these freakish people don’t know what they’re doing. I think they all WANT us to die, not thriving and healthy, they want us sick and on drugs! REAL drugs like opioids and oxycontin.

Sadly, you say you don’t want to change. I guess you like going to the doctor and handing them your money month after month? You like the pills they offer yet won’t call yourself a drug addict because they’re legal drugs prescribed by a doctor who has had eight hours of training in nutrition? There are a few doctors out there willing to hear you and listen to your plan of healing and will work WITH you to see you to good health. They are out there but if you come from a small state, don’t count on it, they are out for themselves. Do some research and make your health a priority! How can a manicure/pedicure, getting your hair done, buying ‘stuff’ set precedence over your health? It makes no sense to me. How will you enjoy all the stuff if you’re hospitalized or worse, dead?

Do some spring-cleaning for your health! Not just as a passing fad, not as something you’re thinking about, not just a do and fail trip; make your HEALTH your lifelong journey to survival! Illness shouldn’t be about sickness and the endgame; the surfacing of a disease is about HEALTH and a new way to LIVE!

Quotation Saturday: Health in the New Year

Prov. 16:24 “Pleasant words are as an honeycomb, sweet to the soul, and health to the bones.”

My year will be defined by this one word, HEALTH! 

HEALTH

“Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food.” 
― Hippocrates

“Healthy citizens are the greatest asset any country can have.” 
― Winston S. Churchill

“The doctor of the future will be oneself.” 
― Albert Schweitzer 

“Health is the greatest possession. Contentment is the greatest treasure. Confidence is the greatest friend.” 
― Lao Tzu

NUTRITION

“While it is true that many people simply can't afford to pay more for food, either in money or time or both, many more of us can. After all, just in the last decade or two we've somehow found the time in the day to spend several hours on the internet and the money in the budget not only to pay for broadband service, but to cover a second phone bill and a new monthly bill for television, formerly free. For the majority of Americans, spending more for better food is less a matter of ability than priority. 
~ Michael Pollan, In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto

“About eighty percent of the food on shelves of supermarkets today didn't exist 100 years ago.” 
― Larry McCleary, Feed Your Brain, Lose Your Belly: Experience Dynamic Weight Loss with the Brain-Belly Connection

“The healthy man is the thin man. But you don’t need to go hungry for it: Remove the flours, starches and sugars; that’s all.” 
― Samael Aun Weor

“Eating healthy nutritious food is the simple and right solution to get rid of excess body weight effortlessly and become slim and healthy forever.” 
― Subodh Gupta

PRIORITY

“Life is short. Focus on what really matters most; you should change your priorities over time.” 
― Roy T. Bennett

“Despite how utterly massive they might be, it is never the size of the arsenal nor the strength of the warrior. Rather, it is a heart bent on sacrifice that is the most potent weapon of all.” 
― Craig D. Lounsbrough

“The needs of the people around you should be your utmost priority” 
― Sunday Adelaja

“Make eating healthy a priority and you will find living life more enjoyable!”
- Joni Zipp

RESOLUTION

“I will be generous with my love today. I will sprinkle compliments and uplifting words everywhere I go. I will do this knowing that my words are like seeds and when they fall on fertile soil, a reflection of those seeds will grow into something greater.” 
― Steve Maraboli

“Don't destroy yourself by allowing negative people to add gibberish and debris to your character, reputation, and aspirations. Keep all dreams alive but discreet, so that those with unhealthy tongues won't have any other option than to infest themselves with their own diseases.” 
― Michael Bassey Johnson

“Resolve, and thou art free.” 
― Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

“Victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory however long and hard the road may be; for without victory there is no survival.” 
― Winston S. Churchill

PAST

“It's being here now that's important. There's no past and there's no future. Time is a very misleading thing. All there is ever, is the now. We can gain experience from the past, but we can't relive it; and we can hope for the future, but we don't know if there is one.” 
― George Harrison

“No one saves us but ourselves. No one can and no one may. We ourselves must walk the path.” 
― Gautama Buddha

“We are products of our past, but we don't have to be prisoners of it.” 
― Rick Warren

"The present is clay, shape it. The past is excess waste, toss it away. The future holds tomorrow, make it your own victory!"
~ Joni Zipp

NEW YEAR

“Hope
Smiles from the threshold of the year to come, 
Whispering 'it will be happier'...” 
― Alfred Tennyson

“For last year's words belong to last year's language 
And next year's words await another voice.” 
― T.S. Eliot

“May Light always surround you;
Hope kindle and rebound you.
May your Hurts turn to Healing;
Your Heart embrace Feeling.
May Wounds become Wisdom;
Every Kindness a Prism.
May Laughter infect you;
Your Passion resurrect you.
May Goodness inspire 
your Deepest Desires.
Through all that you Reach For, 
May your arms Never Tire.” 
― D. Simone

"January 1st is the flipping of the calendar year to me, a new month to mark the triumphs in little boxes for the next twelve months. Happy New Year? Of course, I’d never wish anyone an unhappy New Year!" 
~ Joni Zipp

google image

My New Toy

For a couple of days now I’ve tried to upload pics to my blog, to no avail. I’ve sought help but nothing came that was of any value and no help was found. I’m not tech savvy and anyone who knows me knows, I HATE computers, the net, hypocrites and negativity.

Adam told me it was in the server (he’s becoming tech savvy! That’s his plans for his future, Graphic Design.)

Anyway, I wrote to google and as many have said, they never get any kind of response, but I took a shot at submitting my problem to them. (LOL! I submitted, Ben!)

Well I woke this morning and went to see if my ‘scheduled’ blog was posted. Sure enough it was, no pic mind you, but it made it. This is the new toy I speak of. Scheduling post and pic arrangement!

I’ve always posted pics at the top of my blog, but never on the side or within the posting. With a little help from another tech savvy person, I figured it out and got it done! As you can see in a few previous posts, the pic is within the words to the left? Woohoo! Yay me!

I can move them around to the left, to the right, to the top! This is a great accomplishment for me as you can imagine. Not being technologically adept, you can see how something this small can excite me. It’s my new toy to ‘play’ with as I prioritize my time on FB and other social networks.

It has come to my attention that I WOULD be missed if I ‘cut off’ the social scene, sorry for the poor choice of words. (I’m a writer, I should know better!) What I meant to say was, I need to prioritize my time, so that I’m spending more time with my writing dream than I am playing in the playground with my friends. You know what I mean? When your child is spending too much time in his room gaming, don’t you just want to say, get out there and play in the real world?

Well living out here in the middle of nowhere and his school friends being at least 17 miles away, it’s just not an option for him. As for me, my only time to get out IS on FB to meet up with my friends. (Thanks Stena for the reminder!) They are such an inspiration to my writing life, cutting them off would be like severing a finger or something! A gruesome thought!

My other new toy is scheduling posts. I always schedule my poetry Sunday because on Sunday mornings my time is better spent getting ready for church, not worrying about the shenanigans going on at FB. But recently, since the writing bug has bitten me again, I’ve been writing post after post, for two weeks straight now. This is a good sign to me!

I’ve been scheduling them in advance! That is so cool! If the weather knocks out my net, my posts will still arrive. If I lose things because I didn’t back up my files, the post will have a home.

And today as I checked to see if I could post a pic yet, voila! I can! Adam was right (he loved hearing that) maybe it WAS within the server. Well wouldn’t ya know, google has served me well, thank you GOOGLE AND friends!!!

Prioritizing

“The quieter you become the more you are able to hear.” Rumi

Yup, this here is another blog post from none other than, ME. Aren’t you all so lucky!

I have been taking measures to change my online presence and that means prioritizing my time on the web. As you’ve read since the beginning of this month, I’ve been writing blog posts and enjoying writing again in general. So what does that have to do with cutting out certain things on the web?

Well allow me to tell you. First of all, I’m in no popularity contest. The fevered race to be all for everyone while selling myself short. I am me, being a writer, first and foremost. As a child I was never popular or had many friends and maybe that is why I began writing because all my friends were in my head just waiting to be ‘fleshed out’ in the written word.

I joined facebook because it touted, ‘Get connected with your friends from school’. “Wow!” I thought, “I wonder how everyone is doing?” This is to show you how popular I am, not one friend from school has EVER looked me up! So, I decided to ‘friend request’ people from my writing classes. Heck, even most of them don’t want to be seen knowing me.

Most accepted my friend request, only to delete me further down the line. After my attack a few years ago, I HAD to delete a few, to keep my sanity! I know I know, I’m not that sane anyway, but what little I had/have, I want to keep! So the second goal on my agenda is prioritizing whom and who isn’t a true friend, and well look around, their all lining up, don’t ya see?

What was the first goal on my agenda, you might ask? My first goal was getting back to writing. I felt it was sleeping for quite awhile and recently has been awakened with a new passion. But with the passion, along comes obstacles that were around before the break and by prioritizing, I’m hoping to keep the block out of my way so I can accomplish all my goals I’ve set for myself.

Goal #1 – Get back to writing.

Goal #2 – KNOW who your TRUE friends are.

Goal # 3 – Cut the social network time OFF!

Goal # 4 – Prioritize the web usage. Not for fun and popularity contests, for WORK! Writing!

Goal # 5 – This is the biggy!!! Write and submit! Yes, I said submit!!!

It looks to me like I’m on a roll. I’m accomplishing my goals by setting priorities. You do know that by prioritizing that goals are easier to achieve, right? Take me for example, I’m accomplishing four of the goals already, in motion, and I’m improving because of it. Now to tackle number five, and I’m good to go!!!

Godspeed!

NOTE: No PIC? Because blogger is not allowing me to post pics at this time.  No one else is having a problem, but on TWO computers here at home? Nothing. So we’ll see if we can find the bug causing this. Not a tech savvy woman…so wish me luck!

Putting it in Perspective

The value of identity of course is that so often with it comes purpose. ~Richard Grant
***

The week in review....

We’ve had Procrastination, Prioritizing, Networking and Focus and a culmination of the four days leads to this post.

Monday - As a writer, the Procrastination post was about where we discussed putting things off. We allow things to jumble and cloud our day so much so we miss our quiet writing time. Playing around and goofing off also keeps you distracted enough so you get no writing done and I had to make sure you saw if you were on that path. Some are on it, some like it, some could care less. Me? I’m in the mood for change.

Tuesday - This was a day where I pinpointed Prioritizing. You know, where you put the playing around on hold and make something other than ‘games and fun’ a priority, like writing?
This was also the day that an Earthquake rattled the east coast. While the local news here in Nebraska didn’t even give the story a second of its time, World news found it vital to report. All of my family is back east, in Maryland, and yes, they felt it. My 73 year old parents were quite shaken, literally. Since my mothers stroke and my dads survival of cancer, they moved to a retirement condo and they live on the eighth floor.
So while everyone made jokes about  the quake, being far from home during a panicky situation made me miss them all the more.
Perfect day for a Prioritizing post, made me SEE where my priorities lie, and what *I* need to do.

Wednesday - This was the day my Networking post went up. I went to place it on Twitter, and it is already part of a newsfeed! Yay! My Networking with fellow writers is working. I’m not just an airplane cruising through facebook happily prancing and playing and woohooing and weeHeeing, I’m actually putting into ACTION, all of this weeks posts! Wow! I think it is called follow-thru? I’m not just preaching words and going on my merry way, doing my own thing and not acting on them. I’m actually taking my own advice! Now, there’s a change I like!

Thursday - This FOCUS/Discouraged post was a way of helping me to see the err of my ways. I recently touched base with a friend I had lost. It wasn’t via facebook and doubt that we’ll EVER be friends on facebook again. You see, facebook may be a social wall, it may be a place to Network, but sometimes you see things in people, that you wish you had never seen. You see them in a whole different perspective, and maybe if you wouldn’t hang out with that kind of person in real life, maybe you shouldn’t be faking your LIKE to them on facebook. I am not one who is false and that is why my friends list is at a minimum. I actually LIKE you all if you’re on my list.


Friday - The culmination of an enlightening week. This week has been full of insights that I’ve shared with you, that I’ve learned along the path in the writing world. I give off some negatives but hopefully run over all that with the positives.

As Irene heads to the coast, as natural disasters head to the earth in a meteor shower raining down on us, as the tenth anniversary of the Sept. 11 tragedy approaches, maybe what we all need to be doing is reflecting and not joking about it. Humor is good in the right place, but false humor appears as fear. Don’t fear impending doom, if it is your time, embrace it. You ARE ready, right?

Prioritizing!

If you don't think every day is a good day, just try missing one. ~Cavett Robert
***

Yesterday’s procrastination post went over real well. I think I hit the nail on the head with what writer’s fear more than writer’s block, more than rejection, MORE than their mother saying, “I told you so!” and that is the Procrastination Bug.

It creeps up on you too, in an unsuspecting manner, like the tick I found on my leg this morning. It clung to my leg like I was a Thanksgiving feast. That’s what the procrastination bug does, finds unsuspecting victims and climbs aboard but once it bites you and has you under its control, you need the next step there is in fighting it and possibly finding a cure for the disease or at least a solution to help you muster through.

Okay, I’ll tell you since you twisted my arm. It is called PRIORITIZING! This is the bug that you WANT to bite you. I’ll call it a ‘friendly leech’ that’ll suck the procrastination venom right out of you and leak the prioritizing bug right into your veins directly!

Let’s see if I can nail this one in five steps:

1. The number one thing that you are going to put into action to deter Procrastination Bug, is SILENCE!
You are going to silence the outside world and stir your inner world into action. I live on a farm in the middle of basically nowhere so silence comes pretty easy. But I’m not just referring to noises that the OUTSIDE world brings in, I’m referring to the inside noises that have gripped you. Inside noises you say? Yes, the internet is inside noise!!! Silence it, just for an hour a day while you PRIORITIZE!

2.  SACRIFICE - Yes, you’re going to need to sacrifice a little time on facebook with your friends. Maybe sacrifice mowing the lawn or weeding the garden or running errands, but somewhere along the day towards PRIORITIZING you need to give up something in order to sit down and write!

3. IGNORE - Yup, that too. It may feel like you are ignoring your friends and they might wonder what happened to you while you’re not ‘active’ in their online events, but you show them this post and let them know, “I’m not ignoring you, I’m just prioritizing my time.” They’ll toss the old guilt trip at you and say, “What? I’m not a priority?” And you’ll answer, “Not when it comes to becoming a published writer and playing Farmville on facebook, no, sorry, you’re NOT.” 

4. FOCUS -  This is the hard part. This is where you are going to write until your fingers bleed, even if you have nothing to write. Sit and make something appear. The more you put into practice the art of prioritizing, words will flow and you’ll be banishing procrastination.

5. ACT -   This one is the hardest of the five! This is where you’re going to need to connect to the internet, and find a market for your work! No, LIKING everything on facebook is not searching markets, it’s not a priority to even glance at facebook. We need MARKETS!!! Now get to it!