February 27, 2010 - Posted by Maren - 4 Comments
There are many women who avoid avocados like the plague because they think that they are high in fat and will add to their waistline. Ironically, they will often skip the guacamole and decide to indulge in a dairy based or protein option instead; thinking that they made the better choice because dairy and meat have lower fat contents. This could not be more wrong, now let me explain why! Not only is the avocado packed with 20 different types of minerals, vitamins and phytonutrients such as potassium and lutein, they are creamy and delicious.
The point that I am getting at here is that when women embark on a more natural diet whether it be one of the great Natalia Rose plans, a vegan diet, raw diet, or some variation of those mentioned, they come with a “fear” of avocados. Many women generally still see avocados as a fattening food that should be avoided at all costs. I will admit that I was one of these women! When I first met nutritionist Natalia Rose, who initiated me into the health world; she told me that I should begin my journey with the inclusion of one avocado-per-day. I found the idea to be quite unsettling because I thought that they were fattening, and the idea of gaining weight was not one that I was a big fan of. Although at the same time, Natalia continued to reassure me that the avocados would not add to my weight. Sitting there I continued to think to myself, “If avocados are not fattening, then why is she insisting that I eat one per day?” The answer to that question took me a long time to come to in a way that I could understand. It was only after a year of eating avocados while watching my body grow tighter as time progressed that I realized: That avocados are not fattening, they are sustaining. By this I mean that while avocados will not add weight to the body when eaten in reasonably ample quantities, but that they will keep your body satisfied and give it the energy it needs.
Avocados provide the body with a more sustainable energy source than just vegetables alone without adding stress to the digestive system for a number of reasons. These reasons include the following: since avocados have a simple and uniform genetic makeup, they are easily broken down and eliminated by the body in their entirety. In other words, avocados are a clean food that does not leave any residue in the body, adding to excess weight and the build-up of blockages in the colon. Although avocados are fully expendable and easily digested they do take longer to move through the system than other foods that are just as clean, which include other vegetables and fruits in clean bodies. Since it takes the body longer to process avocados and they are more nutrient/fat dense than vegetables, they sustain the body for a longer period of time. This means that a salad with an avocado will keep you satisfied longer than a simple garden salad will. I will not deny that there is a substantial amount of fat in avocados; since 80% of the avocado is derived from fat! But I will say that the mono-saturated, plant based fat that makes up an avocado is fully recognizable by the body and can be broken down and expelled. This is much different from other unnatural fat sources such as animal fats and dairy which are unfamiliar to the body and therefore leave a residue causing weight gain and intestinal blockage.
So in conclusion, do not shy away from avocados. They are a rich source of nutrition that will keep your body satisfied, making it easier for you to eat a healthier diet with less dissatisfaction. Without adding to your weight, of course!
February 24, 2010 - Posted by Maren - 1 Comment
When people initially find out that I generally adhere to a raw vegan diet their first reaction is one of surprise and perhaps admiration. Although the first question that most traditional foodie’s ask me is, “Doesn’t that get boring?” The beauty of it all is that I can truthfully tell them, “No! I love it!” This being true, there is still one thing I miss to this day: coffee! It is not only the coffee that I miss it is the ritualistic experience of coffee; going into the coffee shop and simply sitting, sipping and enjoying a good book among other caffeine worshipers. I miss the satisfaction of holding a coffee mug in my hand that is filled with warm frothy coffee that is capped off by the perfect dollop of foam and cinnamon. The urge to enjoy “a cup of joe,” comes on especially strong during the chilly months of winter. As we all know, a New York winter is not an ideal climate for a raw foodist.
A combination of my desire for my ritualistic cup of coffee and the warm satisfaction of drinking something hot and creamy on a cold winter’s night has driven me to invent my own raw/healthy version of the “latte experience.” The trick here is very simple here is the recipie… if you can even call it that because it is so simple!
- Brew a cup of hot tea, at whichever temperature you desire (for raw tea do not exceed 118 degrees) I personally don’t adhere th this because I like my tea HOT HOT HOT!
- Next combine your hot tea with ¼ to ½ cup of your favorite nut milk.
- The nut milk can be store bought or home made. I prefer homemade because it is sweeter and creamier.
- Next: place your mixture of tea and nut milk in the blender and put the blender on high until the top of the liquid has a substantial amount of “foam” on the top.
- Then remove the mixture and place it into your favorite mug!
Now you are ready to enjoy your beautiful, authentic, healthy, and satisfying latte! Just don’t forget to pair your latte with an equally beautiful piece of literature: a classic novel or, my blog perhaps?
February 20, 2010 - Posted by Maren - 2 Comments
How many women do you know who have been claiming to be on a diet for the past ten years or so and have either only gained more weight, maintained the same weight, or have been frustratingly fluctuating between a certain range of pounds? Chances are you know a few, and that you yourself may be one of them. Usually these woman fail in their efforts to lose weight and keep it off because they are either inconsistent in their efforts or try to limit their intake so strictly that they cannot maintain their specified eating plan for long.
In reality these women are setting themselves up for failure instead of success. These women unfairly force their bodies into a program for which it was not designed or is in shape to maintain, so eventually their bodies rebel against their owner’s desires by demanding sustenance. Problematically, when the body rebels against the stringent nature of a traditional diet it does not opt for the most nourishing foods; quite the opposite actually! Think of how many times you have tried to give up a certain food or stimulant only to numbly binge on it later. It is much like a smoker who tries to quit cold turkey and ends up getting so nervous that they have to run to the drug store in the middle of the night to get their long awaited fix! This is because when the body is put under stress it will desire the most fattening, rich foods in hope that they will add to its fat reserves and sustain the body longer.
In order to finally lose the weight that you want and to maintain your desired weight easily and over a long period of time you must learn to accept your body and to compromise with it. By compromise I mean that you must respect your body’s limitations and weaknesses and design a dietetic program/nutritional program that you can see yourself sticking to on a daily basis. Weekends Included! For instance if you want to cut out sweets but just cannot see yourself surviving a day without a piece of dark chocolate, don’t! You can compromise with your body by cutting out the cakes and pastries that you would normally eat for breakfast but allow yourself the sweet indulgence of a piece of dark chocolate at night for desert. Or if you are trying to become vegan but are still in a love affair with cheese than don’t pressure yourself to get rid of it entirely! You can start by limiting your intake to a few times per week or to one time per day. Taking gradual steps to improving your diet is key here. Before you know it you will find it easier and easier to stick to a healthier diet.
You will find it easier to keep a healthy diet over time because as you change your habits slowly over time you will see that you will no longer crave the same foods as you used to. Hard to believe I know! This is because the body craves what it is used to and the foods that dieters usually find themselves cheating with are laden with stimulants and addictive substances such as the caffeine and sugar in your average starbucks latte. So all in all what I am saying to you is that you have to crawl before you can walk. Changing your lifestyle is hard to do and it takes a lot of patience. I promise you that if you acknowledge your body’s specific needs/wants as you approach a healthier lifestyle that the process will be much less painful. Loving yourself along your journey towards health and weightless will make the end result ever greater and even more rewarding.
February 11, 2010 - Posted by Maren - 1 Comment
While one is trying to recover from an eating disorder/disordered eating; the one recovering tends to hate the disease/problem. What an internal source of evil! What a plague of tormenting thoughts which circle in an endlessly cyclical fashion within one’s head that cannot be broken.
While one may hate their disorders/issues and want to get rid of them, to free themselves, they must remember one very important detail that is usually forgotten. One forgets what their eating disorders do/did for them. One did not just dream them up, they developed them for a purpose. As smart female individuals, they developed this complex system for some reason: whatever that reason may be. In one’s very essence, they developed their eating issues as coping mechanisms, distractions, vacations, drugs, breaks from their daily lives and the feelings that they come into contact with in their conscious realities. What was going on in one’s life at the time was apparently so painful that they needed to find something less painful to take the pain away, but now here they are, and their good heroin has started to affect them negatively. Causing more pain than the problem than one subconsciously hoped it would solve.
In order to recover these people must come to terms with the purpose their eating disorders have served in their lives. It was their friend; it helped them to not feel emotions. That magic in the mind of an eating disordered individual acted as a translator of their emotions into tangible things like food, weight, and calories.
While it is truly hard to come to terms with what one’s disordered eating did/does for them, it is important. Once one realized how they used their eating disorders to cope they can begin to develop the tools they need to deal with their emotions in a healthier way that is unrelated to food and fat.
February 3, 2010 - Posted by Maren - 3 Comments
Many people approach cooking oils with mixed reviews, some swearing by them as a staple in their diet while others may avoid them entirely like the plague. Cold pressed oils such as coconut oil, almond oil, olive oil and hempseed oil have many beneficial uses in the diet, along with a few negatives.
Briefly on the Negatives of oils: Oils are very dense because they are a concentrated form of their original food source. A.K.A. it takes many olives to make one full bottle of olive oil. Due to their density they are hard to digest and are high in calories. Oils are also high in natural fats, while natural fats are good for the body and are quite digestible many people avoid oil for this reason. In search for optimal digestion and weight loss many people avoid oils all together due to these reasons.
Since oils have many health benefits and are great tools to use for flavorful cooking, many people choose to use them anyway. Or in the very least they miss a drizzle of olive oil on their salads. In order to solve this dilemma it is a good idea to turn to an “oil mister.” An oil mister is much like the olive oil spray cans that they sell in traditional supermarkets such as PAM, although it is much better. The oil mister is a sleek looking reusable home oil sprayer that you can put your own oils into. The mister sprays a small amount of olive oil neatly over the surface of the food you are dressing. The home mister is also fully natural and does not contain any chemicals like the store bought versions.
By spraying oil instead of pouring it over food you will use much less and will coat the food that you are dressing nice and evenly. By using the spray you can also save money by not using up as much of your oil. Using the mister will also significantly reduce the number of calories in your meal; without compromising the flavor. This is because an average spray of olive oil is approximately 7 calories verses the full 120 calories of one table spoon. When you pour olive oil over food instead of spraying it you tend to over indulge in an attempt to coat each bit of food with oil. This is especially true for salads when we pour oil endlessly in hopes to cover every leaf with a touch of flavor and lubrication. Another great benefit of the oil mister is its versatility! You can put any oil in your “oil mister” that you purchase in the store or blend yourself with herbs and spices. A mister can handle the inclusion of spices and garlic in its contents without clogging the system. Oil misters are fairly cheap ($15-$40) and are commonly found in stores such as “William Sonoma” and “Bed Bath and Beyond”.
So all in all, the oil mister is a great investment because it will both save you money and unwanted fats/digestion inhibitors.
February 3, 2010 - Posted by Maren - 0 Comments
Keeping warm in the winter while following a raw/vegan/cleansing life style can be quite difficult. Although it is entirely acceptable to incorporate cooked foods into ones diet during the winter months the following tips would be helpful to those of us who choose to remain as raw as possible during the cold weather. These suggestions are also helpful for those of us who are simply the type of person who is always cold due to low blood pressure, low weight, illness, etc. I have learned these helpful suggestions through my own trial and error as an equestrian who practices year round, a mostly raw/vegan eater, and as someone who is just always cold.
- Hot hands: are packs that stay warm for 8 or more hours upon opening. Although these packets are compact in size they really “pack in the heat!” At about one by two inches they fit perfectly into jacket pockets, winter gloves, uggs, etc!
- One extra tip for women who experience menstral cramping keeping a hot pack in the waist of your pants can fully ease cramping while you are out and about.
- They sell “hot hands” in all pharmacies and in bulk at places like BJ’s and Costco
- Heating pads: Heating pads are a forgotten treasure. When I am particularly cold in the winter I will turn on a heating pad and put it on my lap and it will warm me within minutes. This trick is especially good for those of us who do not have fireplaces or live in apartments where we have no control over the heat! Heating pads are also great for warming up a bed before you go to sleep, just make sure to turn it off before you go to sleep.
- I suggest buying a low quality one that doesn’t over heat in case you forget to turn it off.
- Layers: this is obvious but often forgotten. I generally always wear an extra pair of leggings under my pants during the winter time. If you want a more streamlined look wearing tights under your clothes will give you warmth without adding bulk to your figure. This is perfect for wearing under snug jeans.
- Tea: Although not all raw foodists drink tea. Most vegans do and I myself never deny myself the pleasure of a piping cup of herbal tea with stivia. Tea is very hot and filling, upon drinking warmth seems to radiate through your body.
- Always carry stivia and a few of your favorite teas in your car or purse so that when you are out and about and feeling the nip you can always stop in any store and get a cup of hot water to go.
- Drinking heavy liquids is also very warming such as juicing carrots and romaine lettuce or drinking nut milk.
- Warm your liquids in the blender. Drinking cold juices and milks will make you incredibly cold incredibly fast!
- Plastic gloves in your gloves: This may seem odd but if you are walking a long distance and have freezing hands by putting a pair of plastic gloves under your cloth/leather ones you create such warmth that you may start to sweat! The plastic under the textile glove acts as an insolater trapping in your body heat.
January 29, 2010 - Posted by Maren - 4 Comments
It never ceases to amaze me. The way it they pull you in with their false promises; their lies. They offer us glimpses of hope and success, tips, tricks, and other individual’s obscured stories of success and of sufferance. Advertisement adds, diet books, magazines, magazine articles, candid pictures of celebrities and glossy airbrushed pictures of perfection alike. They all pull us in by the strands of our heart, by plucking the loosely wound harp strings of our self consciousness and imperfections.
More concretely what I am speaking of is the way images of beauty, thinness and articles about how to obtain these ideals pull all females in to reading them. Women all over the country are constantly searching for that magical answer, what will finally make them skinny and feel good about themselves. For many years of my life my nerves would jump when my eyes met the words in an article or advertisement that mentioned weight loss, or thin, and how to get there. I see other women every day scratching at the multifaceted and saturated media market searching for the promises of weight loss. With every article that we read we think to ourselves, this could finally be it, this could finally be the answer; the key to my success and “shrink-ability”. This notion can go even farther beyond in girls with disordered eating or who are on the path to developing disordered eating patterns. Everywhere they turn they see someone thinner than them. It could be some girl on the street, the latest skinny celebrity, or a girl that they know with an eating disorder. They are constantly wondering, what does she do and how does she do it. If I find out her secret maybe I’ll look like her too. From this search stems a darker seeded stalk; that of competition, girls are always trying to compete with one another to be the best. On the most primitive level, we are striving to be the best looking. In the case of eating disordered individuals that goal is to be the thinnest, the sickest, and the one with the most control: the “strongest.”
The problem that none of us women realize, on all levels from the average house wife who compares herself to other mother’s breast size at a PTA meeting to the sickly girls in eating disorder clinics who compare the size of their thighs to their fellow patients, that this competition is an illusion. The competition is fake it is not real. We do not see ourselves for what we really are. We somehow have managed to allow our eyes to spin a story that does not parallel reality by constantly picking on ourselves and degrading our efforts. We see what we want to see, what we believe is there but really is not. It is sad really the way we torture ourselves. But we cannot help it! That is what women say. That this has been embedded into their brains and they cannot stop even if they wanted to. Stopping is certainly very hard indeed, but it is possible. By realigning with nature and cleansing our bodies by following a more natural diet we can embody the thinness that we desire and see the world with a mental clarity that escaped us as childhood slid into adolescence and adulthood.
While the process I have described above is very slow, in fact it is still a process that I am in the midst of myself, the best advice I can give to anyone who is trying is this; to stop looking. While we cannot rewire our internal programming over night we can sometimes manage to stop triggering it into action. We can do this by not engaging in the behaviors that encourage this competitive comparison. A.K.A. We can stop picking up ever damned magazine we see. Stop looking at ourselves in every reflective surface on the street. And to stop obsessing about what we wear each day. If it fit in the store and it still closes chances are it still fits now you don’t have to examine it. Doing this is an exercise; to avoid competition is a muscle that we must build. At first this muscle may be weak but before you know it you will be able to avoid the triggering elements of society by simply not focusing on your body but on what your body allows you to see in your world. Even if it’s just one mirror that you don’t look in or one pair of tight jeans that you don’t try on for any good reason, you will stop the self degradation just that much, for that five minutes of the day. In good time this will increase and aid you in your natural path to wellness. When we look at others and compare, it can make us doubt ourselves and our efforts, making us deviate from our life generating habits which further lengthens the time it takes for us to reach our emotional and physical goals. So what I am saying is that by keeping your eyes forward, you can keep your mind moving forward too.
January 5, 2010 - Posted by Maren - 7 Comments
The billion dollar industry that nearly everyone has been turning to in order to keep them healthy is the supplement industry. Just think about it; all most everywhere you can go in America you are likely to find a GNC, a Vitamin World or at least one aisle in pharmacies and grocery shops that is dedicated to displaying these “magical tablets.” It’s amazing; there are thousands of supplements that are used for an uncountable amount of reasons. The most common reasons that I find are weight loss pills, daily vitamins, and muscle building supplements for men who want to “bulk up.” The problem with these vitamins is that they are not USDA regulated and are often not tested, and if they are tested who is publishing the results and conducting the studies? Usually the company who made the product of course. Therefore, it only makes sense that they would publish positive results. So how do you know if they are really working? When you begin to take a daily vitamin supplement do you notice a difference in your overall health? Most likely that answer is no and more no, but people keep on taking them anyway because they assume that they are working when in reality chances are; they aren’t . Hmmm… So now you see our problem.
Let’s first take a look at how supplements are made. The vitamins and nutrients are extracted from their original sources and are then processed and packaged into, tablets, powders, and gels, etc. During this procession the nutrients are modified and killed. When the vitamins are in their original food sources, they are a living part of a living organism that actively help that organism thrive. Once you separate the vitamin from the organism, both the vitamin and the organism die because neither is sustainable without the other. An organism is a perfectly balanced ecosystem that requires regularity and must be complete in order to live. This is similar to the way in which a person becomes weak when they lose a lot of blood. So basically what I am hinting at here is that despite the fact that you are ingesting vitamins, they are usually not all that useful and will be expelled from the body as opposed to being absorbed without much harm or help. This is evident in the trend of middle aged women taking calcium supplements, studies show that women who take the supplements are no better off than those who do not according to doctor Neal Barnard, founder of the nonprofit organization called the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine based in Washington D.C. which concentrates on how diet affects the body.
Another factor that most people don’t consider is the safety of taking supplements. Since their production is not strictly regulated they are likely to contain ingredients that are actually harmful for our bodies. These include metabolic steroids, mercury (in fish oil), metals, and other indigestible metals. Also studies of individual supplements reported in the New York Times article titled, “Personal Health, Potential Harm in Dietary Supplements,” by Jane E. Brody on April 8th, 2008 show the harmful effects/ineffectiveness of supplements by stating: “observational studies of people who eat foods rich in antioxidants like vitamins A and E and beta-carotene have suggested these substances improve health. But well-designed clinical trials found increased death rates among people who take them as supplements. And while low vitamin C doses can suppress harmful free radicals, very high doses promote their formation. The initial promise that vitamin E could protect against heart attacks and cancer failed to stand up to scientific scrutiny, which instead found that it increased the risk of heart failure.” Also, people do not consider supplements with the same respect that they do for medications and commonly forget to mention them to their doctors upon being asked what medications they are taking. It is often possible for the supplements to react with new medications or surgeries being preformed which can be harmful to the body. Although usually these interactions are not deadly, in some cases they can be. Another harmful ingredient that was being legally included in weight loss supplements was ephedra, which was recently found to be deadly. Other weight loss supplements contain large amounts of caffeine which increases the heart rate and blood pressure dangerously and can lead to increased levels of anxiety in those who are prone to being anxious. These examples are just a few of many, a simple web search will bring up endless credible accounts of the ineffectiveness and risks that are associated with supplements.
Since taking supplements is not very effective in most cases, we must turn to our only other option, and frankly the more valuable option: FOOD! The truth is simply that we should be receiving our daily dose of vitamins from the foods we eat each and every day. The problem is that many people are deficient in vitamins is because their diets are not full of nutrient dense foods. Pretty much all vitamins besides vitamin D can be received by eating fruits and vegetables. It should be noted that despite the fact that fruits and veggies are low in calories they are rich in vitamins and minerals. Therefore it would be wise for people to start adding more raw fruit and vegetables to their diets.
Still it may be hard for people to get a large amount of vitamins because the average person simply cannot down a ton of vegetables because they are so full of fiber. This is why I highly recommend drinking vegetable juice. And no I don’t mean V8, freshly pressed vegetable juice from a juice bar or your own personal juicer will give you many more vitamins then a pill ever will. Think about it, in any given 20oz of juice pounds of vegetables are required to make it. Therefore, by juicing vegetables we can substantially increase our intake of vitamins without stuffing our faces with lettuce until we feel like horses. This is because a juicer extracts the pulp/fiber from the vegetables and leaves only the water which contains all of the vital nutrients from the vegetables. Also since the vegetable juice is drunken fresh, the vitamins are still alive and are therefore 99% fully processable by the body within 10-15 minutes upon intake. And unlike supplements, the effects of drinking vegetable juice each day are almost instantaneously noticeable (30oz per day or more is recommended). I’m sure many of you are asking, “Why Vegetables, what about fruits?” Well the answer to that question is that there is much less sugar in vegetables and more vitamins, specifically; green vegetables have the most nutrients. I’m sure many of you who are reading this are thinking, “Ew vegetable juice is gross I can’t possibly drink that,” or, “I’m too busy to make juice,” my answer to you is: suck it up! Literally! The benefits here clearly outweigh the costs by a long shot. Treating yourself to a heaping glass of vegetable juice each day and nixing the supplements is perhaps one of the best health insurance policies any American can give themselves.
Although in this article I pretty much show that taking supplements is ineffective, in some cases they can be at least somewhat beneficial. Two of these cases include candex and certain probiotics. Candex is a special supplement that breaks down the cell walls of Candida (yeast) in the digestive tract which causes it to die. Probiotics consist of concentrated bacteria that help the body break down food for better digestion. Taking probiotics can be beneficial if they are packaged in a way that maintains their life. As long as they are kept cold to make sure that they stay alive. It also helps if they are packaged in a double shelled capsule to keep them from being killed by the stomach acid before they can reach the colon. A brand I recommend is Udo’s brand.
Many of the visitors of this blog are fully versed in Juicing and its benefits. But for those of you who are new to the subject and would like more information I recommend reading, “Raw Food Detox Diet,” by Natalia Rose, and “Fresh Vegetable and Fruit Juices: What’s Missing in Your Body?” by N. W. Walker and Dr. Norman W. Walker just to name a few.
I would like to dedicate this article to my aunt Robin Jaslow who requested that I write an article on this topic and whose interest in health and mental awareness is quite inspiring. I also would like to apologize for neglecting to update the website in the past few weeks. I am currently enjoying an extended vacation in Southern Florida and therefore have limited time and access to a computer. Until I have updated my about page feel free to reach me by email at mepstein@drew.edu and put pure food life in the subject box. Thank you everyone, I wish you all luck and vibrant health in the New Year.
December 21, 2009 - Posted by Maren - 0 Comments
It is astonishing how the dynamics of civilized society have made people lose touch with the very essence of their being, their bodies. Although most members of civilization would prefer not to admit it, they spend so much time trying to ignore their physicality that they eventually succeed. This is a very obtuse statement to make, but allow me to explain. Our lifestyles are full of the consumption and utilization of stimulants. These stimulants make up the very fabric of the world that we live in, they hide secretly from most unaware people in the most secretive places; medications, beauty products, clothing, and especially “food.” Our modern diets have become increasingly more processed and genetically modified which has slowly changed them from natural life sustaining fuels that are recognized by the human body into to foreign poisons that are not recognizable and therefore not able to be processed by the body. Most of these foods are full of chemicals and ingredients that overtake the body and mask its natural responses or alter them immensely. In essence what I am describing are drugs. The foods we eat today are like drugs, they changed the way we feel and they addict us to their seductive stimulation. A perfect example of this is the typical cup of morning coffee. Most Americans need at least one or two cups of coffee in order to function in the morning, without it they get headaches and feel sick. This is only one stimulation, imagine what would happen if Americans went without caffeine, refined sugar, medication, cigarettes, meat, dairy, and bread, it is very probable that they would not be able to function very well.
The natural world has been leaving the human race very alarming cues in order to try and tell us that our way of life is “life degenerating” and not life generating. Degenerative diseases run rampantly through our bodies, psychological disorders are so common that we consider them normal; our world is full of violence and unhappiness. But despite all of these tell tale warnings we keep slipping down the same morbid path. Recently I have been made aware of perhaps the most startling symptom of the way we ignore our bodies.
There is a new phenomenon sweeping the nation that has most Americans wrapped in confusion; it is becoming increasingly common for women to not realize that they are pregnant up until the day they birth their children. Unaware pregnancies are becoming so common that they created an entire TV show about it on TLC. No, I’m not kidding you. Most of these women don’t realize they are pregnant until they are in labor. Doctors are currently scrambling to come up with reasons to explain why these women are unaware of their pregnancies until their delivery date. The most typical reasons that doctors have come up with are that women are in denial that they are pregnant, they do not pay attention to irregularities in their menstrual cycle since their cycles were irregular to begin with, and that sometimes pregnancy’s don’t show because the placenta is under developed or because the baby is lodged behind the ribcage. But the most common of all explanations is that the women who don’t know that they are pregnant are obese and, therefore; do not notice weight gain or a change in their physique.
This phenomenon ties directly into the fact that Americans are unaware of what is going on inside of them, that they do not pay attention to their symptoms because they mask them with all of the stimulating foods/substances in our culture today. The fact that most of these women are obese is indicative that ignorant pregnancies are due to overstimulation since obese people are the ones who are the most stimulated of all. Obese people who over indulge are constantly taking in the drugs that they call food and are therefore being over stimulated so often that they do not give their bodies a chance to feel its natural self. Also, let’s face it these women are not getting obese off of whole grains, fruits and vegetables, they are most likely eating heavily processed dead foods such as chocolate, cheese, animal protein and many other foods without fiber. Since these foods lack any nutritional value, fiber, or life (due to their heavily processed nature) they do not move within the digestive system towards the exit. These foods take on the consistency of cement once they enter the body and they become stagnant in the GI. Once someone consumes a large amount of stagnant dead food they can shut down their digestion almost entirely because their organs become impacted with dead waste. This turns the body into more of a solid/dense structure than a malleable less dense structure that breathes. The more solid and clogged the body is the less adaptable it will be to change and the less likely it will be able to detect changes in its chemistry… since nothing is moving. Once the system becomes so incredibly solid a person gets used to this feeling of stagnation and doesn’t pay attention to it further which numbs them to change. Pregnancy is a very versatile miracle that goes through many multifaceted stages that cause many different types of movement in the body that manifest as the symptoms of pregnancy such as, morning sickness, edema, and the motion of the baby. In a solid body where the fetus has little room to move due to the pressure being excreted on a woman’s uterus from her over full colon the baby will not move very much and the woman will be less likely to notice a moving child inside of her. Also since these woman have an everlasting feeling of fullness and a swelling sensation in their stomachs they may not pay attention to the particularly intense fullness and swelling that comes with pregnancy. Back to the stimulation idea, women are taking so many chemical substances that they don’t feel their systems because of the way the drugs mask them. This is just like the way an Advil will cover the pain associated with a sprained ankle; even though the ankle is still sprained the person won’t feel its intensity while under the influence of the Advil’s stimulation. These women consume stimulation so much that they just don’t give their bodies enough time to detox one chemical out of their system before adding another so they are constantly, “high.”
If nothing else tells us that what we are eating in this world is not natural and robs us of our senses than I don’t know what else will. I believe that it is safe to say that anyone who does not realize that they have a human being inside of them, is simply not paying attention to their bodies and is masking all of its natural responses with the drugs of modern civilization. For anyone who wants to see this for themselves here is a short youtube.com clip advertizing the show on TLC:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fvyqdClNHwA
December 20, 2009 - Posted by Maren - 4 Comments
Coconuts, like avocados belong to a select group of vegan raw foods that are fully expendable by the body despite their creamy/starchy texture, so it remains sad to me that young Thai coconuts just don’t get as much love and attention as our avocados. Those of us who live a cleansing lifestyle at all levels rely heavily on avocados as a delicate source of flavor and as a clean source of fats so that we can sustain our clean diets without having to revert to unclean options as often. I have found that coconuts are a wonderful choice for the same reasons but that they are not utilized as frequently due to a number of reasons. These reasons include the fact that they are rather bulky, hard to find in stores, intimidating to open, as well as the level of uncertainty that comes with what we are purchasing. When you pick out a coconut, unless you have a trained eye, it can be very hard to tell what the water to meat ratio of the coconut is. Most people on a cleansing lifestyle are smart individuals who recognize the financial challenges of living on an organic fruit and vegetable based diet and simply are just not willing to shell out $2.50 on a piece of fruit that may be turning rotten, have very little water in it, or have very little meat inside of its core. Because of this uncertainty most people buy double the amount that they will need in order to ensure that they don’t have to run back to the market once they realize that they’re coconut didn’t deliver the goods. . All of these reasons can make the young Thai coconuts quite intimidating; I have even met raw food coaches who do not use coconuts because they are afraid to open them.
Due to these reasons (and my unconditional love of fresh coconut water) I would like to cover some things that I have learned about purchasing and dealing with coconuts through months of trial and error. First of all, when picking out your coconut you must become a white supremacist. Always pick the whitest looking coconuts you can find, with the least amount of brown spots on the coconut. At first I thought that this was uncut away bark but it is actually a sign that the coconut is beginning to age. Secondly always look at the bottom of the coconut. The bottom of the coconut is the part of it that provides us with the best reflection of the contents of the coconut’s interior treasures. Ideally the bottom will be marble white just like the rest of the body, free of cracks and hard to the touch. As a coconut ages the bottom of it starts to turn pink and brown, the shades range from light pink to a bright fuchsia color. The more exaggerated the pink, the more rotten the coconut is. Also, an aging coconut will have cracks on its bottom and will be soft to the touch, sometimes so soft that you can push your finger right through the protective bark layer. It would be unfair for you to buy a young coconut with these characteristics.
Regrettably, just like in life, you can’t always have your cake and eat it too when it comes to your young Thai coconuts. In other words, the meat to water ratio of a coconut usually varies: if there is a lot of meat there will be less water, and if there is a lot of water there will be less meat. As a coconut matures it begins to transfer its water content to meat content so as it ages it becomes more fleshy and less watery. Regardless of how white the outside and bottom look, it is very hard to tell the nature of each coconut’s ratio without opening it. All of these reasons can make the young Thai coconuts quite intimidating; I have even met raw food coaches who do not use coconuts because they are afraid to open them, as I mentioned before. This is regrettable to many, depending on what they want to do with their coconut, eat a great starchy meat for a snack or to drink the water while fasting or before the urge for juice comes. As a person who drinks many more coconuts a day than she can eat, and has a boyfriend who loves to eat their interiors, I got sick of opening tons of coconuts just to find that half of the ones I opened or more had no meat in them or had a slimy texture that I did not desire. I also got sick of throwing out coconuts without knowing that they may have had some of the best quality meats inside of them but was too lazy to open them or simply ran out of room in my fridge. Therefore, I found a way to figure out the meat quality of a coconut. First you bang two holes in the pointed top of the coconut with a screw driver and hammer. The duel holes allow air to pass through one end of the coconut so that the water can come out of the other side; since the interior of a coconut is a vacuum, water will not come out otherwise. After draining the water, place a straw into one of the holes and slowly push the straw down into the coconut until you feel the plastic tip slicing through meat, continue slicing through the meat until you hit the hard bark at the bottom. Do this a good few times in different spots of the interior of the coconut so that you can get a feel of the overall consistency of the fruit. If you feel the straw slicing through a thick amount of meat and don’t just hit bark right away, you’ve got yourself a coconut worth opening!
Now the best way to open a coconut that I have found is with a sharp serrated knife or meat cleaver.
1.Turn coconut on its side
2. Use knife to slice away the bark of the coconut on the pointed side from the edge of the circle to the point. Work your way around the entire coconut until a circular patch of bark is exposed.
3. Once the bark is exposed take the back of your meat cleaver and whack it into the outside of the bark circle and pop the top off like a soda can by pulling the knife downwards. If you are not so strong like me, take a hammer and use the back of it to hack into the edge of the bark circle and pry it open as if the hammer was a crowbar prying open a door.
“Health Benefits Brief”
I do not want to spend much time on the health benefits of coconuts since you can find it very easily on the internet or in books, but it has lots of potassium and magnesium in it that makes it very good to drink while exercising, since it replenishes the body of lost minerals. It is also a sweet light drink that can be enjoyed in the morning before juice, because it’s cleaner than juice. It is water that has been filtered through the husk of the tree with the addition of electrolytes, minerals, and sugars. One great trick for my casual drinkers: If you drink a liter of coconut water before or after you drink alcohol you will not get a hangover… I REPEAT YOU WILL NOT GET A HANGOVER!! So yes you can still wake up on time and go to work after a night out. The genetic makeup of a coconut has the same make up as our blood plasma, which is why it is used as an IV drip in third world countries. Since its contents are so similar to our genetic makeup, it is very useable by the body and creates next to no metabolic waste in the body. This indicates the superior ease with which it digests.
I would like to post a video on how to open a coconut, but until I do please go on YouTube and find a video. Once you get good at it, coconuts are no longer so intimidating. Also, you can expect a post tomorrow or later today about the broken mind-body connection, and a frightening new societal indication that it is broken and how it all ties into disordered eating.