And the Forecast is Green!

So many people these days have coaches– coaches for fitness, weight loss, finances, etc. Here’s a great addition: a Green Coach!

I have a Living Food Coach, Dr. RitaMarie Loscalzo who specializes in teaching people how to eat and drink more greens for their health. She’s super creative and fun to learn with. I dropped 20 pounds in a few months when I started doing green smoothies with a special glyconutrient powder added–we call it a MannaSmoothie. Actually, we’re able to enhance that with our clients now with a new peptide technology that really gets those inches coming off fast! It’s fun to see people buy smaller sizes and get more active and feeling better and stronger!

Here’s some of RitaMarie’s latest tips:

“You should be eating like the chimps. 50% or more of your diet should be tender green leaves. There are many ways to prepare greens that are tasty and nutritious as well as easy to make. My favorite way to eat my greens is to drink them.

I love my green smoothies. My favorite ones are simple and quick –greens with cherries, pineapple, spinach and vanilla. Yummy.

I find green smoothies to be a great way to give my body a break from the daily rituals and work of digesting complex food combinations. Every couple of months, I take a break from my normal hectic life and just drink green smoothies for a full 7 days. It’s like hitting the pause button on your DVD. You can always come back to the hectic lifestyle, if you choose, but for a short while, you can enjoy the magic of a green smoothie break.

I’ve seen all sorts of magic happen during the 7 day process. (I forgot to mention that I don’t do the green smoothie cleanse by myself. I lead a group through it. We all take a short break from the day to day to chill out and drink green smoothies instead of all or most of our meals. It’s a blast.)

One woman let go of 12 pounds during the cleanse week. A diabetic cut his insulin does in 1/2 by the end of the week. A woman who’d been struggling with fibromyalgia was pain free for the first time in many years. Another felt more clear and energetic than she’d ever done before in her entire life.”

If you want to participate in a Green Smoothie Cleanse, visit
www.GreenSmoothieCleanse.com

Also, if you want recipe ideas, contact me!

Feed Off Your Chia Pet and Lose Inches

If you’re 30+  you probably remember the intense marketing around “chia pets” where you put chia seeds on a pottery pup and watched it grow for entertainment! If you haven’t tried eating the seeds, making gel, or using chia in drinks and food, you’re missing a great health booster and it’s been called a dieter’s dream!

What’s cool about chia? 

• It’s a great source of protein with all the essential amino acids
• You can eat a typical serving of food and consume about half the calories
• The seeds are a great fiber source when soaked in water for about 15 minutes and slow the conversion of carbs to sugar down by creating a barrier between the carbs and the digestive enzymes
• They’re gluten free!

So, to make a simple gel, simply put about 1/3 cup into 2 cups of water. (or fix whatever amount and ration you want.)

If you let it set up to 2-3 hours, you’ll get maximum gel and any lumps will have broken down. You can store in the fridge up to 2 weeks. If you’re in a hurry, just eat some seeds or soak some for about 15 minutes.

If you’re using a fat loss program such as a concentrated whey supplement (not like the meal replacement whey powders), this is a great thing to add to your mix! Low glycemic eating including green smoothies, the powder, and some chia seed gel! In case you haven’t heard of this new technology for fat loss (it’s just been released in the U.K.) but available for some months in the U.S., Japan, and Australia, it’s been clinically tested to help target fat loss and spare lean muscle when combined with low glycemic eating and proper exercise. Write to me for more scoop on this if you’re really keen on dropping inches and not just losing weight.

Chocolate Silk Pudding Cake

I tasted this on a recent trip to Florida. This was an adaptation from a pudding recipe that Marty “cooked up.” It’s amazing. Ingredient amounts depend on the size of avocados being used. So taste while you mix to get it right for your palate. 

Chocolate Silk Pudding Cake

CakeCrust:

Mix about equal amounts of walnuts and dates in food processor until small chunks. I used about 3 handfuls of nuts and about 12 dates.  

Pudding Mix:

 

• 5  large or 6 small/medium avocados (need only 2-3 if you are in Florida and can get those giant size avocados)
• 1 1/2 c. – 2 c. agave1/2 – 3/4 c. raw cocoa powder
• 1/4 – 1/2 coconut oil (liquid, not solid)
• 4 Tablespoons Vanilla
• Cinammon and/or salt to taste if desired

 Blend liquids and oils first.  Then add cocoa and then the avocados. 

Mash crust mixture into bottom of  a spring form round pan.

Add pudding mix and store in freezer. Enjoy!!! It is scrumptious. You can serve directly from freezer and keep leftovers in freezer as well.  

Moving Up the Food Chain

I’ve been on a personal mission to improve the quality of food I take in each day and thought I’d blog about my insights, adventures, and benefits. Also I want to give resources I’ve found helpful in the process. So here goes!

Most of my life I’ve been thin–not necessarily low in body fat, but thin. After an accident a few years back, my weight started gently, but steadily climbing. I hadn’t changed my diet. Hmm..I kept reading about how much nutrients we lose in preparing our foods and started looking at information about eating live foods.

I’m not a fanatic type–all or nothing, so my intent was to learn what I could prepare in live, raw foods that tasted good. I wasn’t concerned with going 100% raw, just experimenting to see if I would feel better and improve my body composition by making some changes.

I made this shift a few months back and have lost 10 pounds and 10% bodyfat and 2 pant sizes! (from a 12 to an 8). My body feels much more like itself again. I’m going to include a few tips each day and resources as needed.

The tip for today is GREENS! See if you can add more greens — preferably raw to your diet. I went to a raw foods class and learned lots which I’ll be sharing through this blog. Green vegetables are so rich in vitamins, minerals, enzymes and have the amino acids to give your body the protein it needs. So a great morning meal is fruit blended with greens in a blender. Very easy, very fast, and it tastes great. Here’s the easy foundation for a recipe which you can embellish to your body’s content!

Greens & Fruit Smoothie

Make drink with about 1/2 greens (salad lettuces, spinach, a little kale perhaps) and 1/2 fruit (pineapple and papaya are great–or berries, kiwi, peach, mango, banana.) I use about a handful of spinach and mixed greens and the amount of fruit to equal about 1 large peach. You can add a pinch of Celtic or Himalayan (or other high quality mineralized salt) and juice of 1/4 to 1/2 lemon. This drink makes me feel great! It gives me plenty of energy for 3-4 hours. You can garnish with hempseed nuts, sesame seeds, or sprouts. For extra staying power, you might add some of your favorite protein meal replacement. One of my all time favorites is the GlycoSlim Vanilla from Mannatech. Also, some like to add a supplement of concentrated green foods in a powdered form.

I also use supplements in the morning which you can find out about by contacting me. Basically a food-based vitamin/mineral and support for digestion and hormonal and immune system.

Try the green drink and let me know how you like it! Also, would love to have your comments on benefits you receive. We have many giving us feedback now that have incorporated this into their diet and noticing weight loss and more sustained energy!

Best of health and vitality,
Noni
www.ChooseVitality.com
HealthTutor@gmail.com

Have health-building lifestyle patterns?

Years ago when my daughter was a toddler, I remember a pre-school teacher’s tip on teaching your children about healthy food choices. She helped a group of us see that if we talked to our children about ‘grow foods’ we could make it easy for them to understand which foods we thought healthful to eat. So, when we talk about drinking good clean water, vegetables, good sources of protein, etc. translated into terms they could understand, they start the learning process and can develop a model for a health-building pattern.

I have always felt committed as a parent is to teach my child how to make healthy choices, whether it’s about choosing friends, a career, exercise, foods, leisure time, etc.

One of my favorite books for helping adults understand the idea of patterns, is Dr. Diana Shwarzbein’s book, “The Shwarzbein Principle.” She has some wonderful chronicles of peoples’ eating and exercise choices that became patterns that led to their health seriously declining. Of course, with healthy eating patterns introduced and followed, these same people start feeling and functioning much better!

If you don’t currently have a health-building pattern or want to build on to the ones you have, you can begin today to make better choices. Your body will thank you!
To help you assess where you’re at and what your health goals might be, drop me an e-mail and request our Wellness Check. Begin your new pattern by choosing one area–for example: water, exercise, slow glycemic foods for meals (eliminating heavy starches, table sugar, and many of the standard sweeteners like Splenda and Nutrasweet.)

Make a commitment to yourself that you will begin this pattern and be consistent for 21 days. (If it helps, pretend you’re teaching this pattern to your child and it’s critical that they follow the plan.) At the end, you’ll have completed a ‘21 day miracle’, establishing a new healthy habit and a health-building pattern! Watch to see who it rubs off on in your family!

Could it be worth it to you to discipline yourself in this way? Consider the costs of being sick–both out of pocket as well as being unable to really live a happy, vibrant life. So many health conditions today are lifestyle related. I’m always amazed at the toll on families when someone has a dire illness and the family life is disrupted to care for that person.

So… don’t put a lot of focus on what runs in your family because truly your biography does become your biology! Did you know that food can modulate your genes? Consider “The Cost of Being Sick” author and inventor Nicholas Webb’s story about how he chose healthy patterns while his twin in pursuit of his muscial career with late night gigs, pizzas, and beer and went down the opposite road. Finally, Charlie–weighing in at 75 pounds heavier than his brother, decided to turn things around. He wrote letters to “Future Charlie” to tranform his eating patterns, added supplements and exercise returned to a ‘feel good’ state.

One tool to help people think about what they eat is to use a glycemic index. To learn more about low glycemic eating, and want help with what is high and low from your food choices, go to http://www. glycemicindex.com