brown bag monday: morning motivation
Although I’m usually a morning person, there are some days when it’s hard to get out of bed at the crack of dawn. Or before it, during the winter months. The promise of a few extra winks of sleep or warm blankets on chilly mornings are awfully tempting to ignore. But for morning people, this often is our most productive time of day so lingering in bed can throw off our entire day. If this also is a struggle for you, here’s the tip to take with you this week: When I add things into my morning that I love and look forward to, it’s much more likely that I’ll…
brown bag monday: food focus tip
As I’ve made a major switch in my diet four years ago by choosing to eat a plant-based diet and then tweaking that to reduce my sugar intake a couple years later, I’ve come to appreciate just how closely food is tied to our emotions, memories and sense of community. Suddenly, many of our go-to foods are off the list and we may need to learn new cooking techniques or try new foods that are foreign to us. Depending on the dietary change, it can be a small or steep learning curve. And if you’re making these changes for health reasons, like discovering a gluten-intolerance or cancer or heart disease…
new series: brown bag mondays…tips you can take with you
New series: Brown Bag Mondays:Â I see Mondays as a fresh start, another opportunity to face the week head on and move forward living life. But as the week wears on, I recognize our ideals don’t always play out the way we think. My heart for this series to provide you with something you can use or chew on as you go about your hours and days in the week ahead. This is how my family calendar has looked for the first half of this month. Not that we had nothing to do…quite the opposite. But I hesitated to write down all the things that were filling it up,…
coco’nuts’ about these products
Who else likes to check these boxes? ✅saving money ✅buying food that’s good for you ✅giving a hand up to those who need it by buying fair trade ✅sharing the secret with others Today, I was able to do all four when I bought two of my favorite pantry essentials from Vitacost: Coconut Secret’s Coconut Aminos and Dr. Bronner’s Magic All-One Fair Trade & Organic Coconut Oil. Yes, these are more expensive than similar products, but there are times when I feel it’s important to “vote with my fork” and pay the extra money for a good cause. Here’s the skinny on why I shell out the few extra pesos:…
Celebrating Success…#LowSugarNaturally
Today I’m excited to share a #lowsugarnaturally success story with you since we are just completing the first week of the free Sugar Pretox Challenge. I met Stephanie through a Facebook group when I shared about this article I wrote for our local paper. I asked her to share her story and she graciously agreed… Tell me about yourself… I am a stay-at-home mom to my five-year old daughter McKenna! My husband and I will be married for six years on May 15th! I love crafts and spending time with family and friends. Laughing as much as I can, and making others laugh too- sort of the class clown! I…
food journaling
This week marks the first full week of the Sugar Pretox Challenge. As part of the challenge, I’m asking participants to keep a food journal and record everything they eat and drink (with the exception of pure water) for five days. Why start here? Because I believe we all underestimate the amount of fat, calories, processed foods, and sugar we actually are putting into our bodies. The only way to be sure if our perceptions match with our food reality is if we take the time to record what we eat – every meal, every snack, every little tiny nibble. According to this article in The Huffington Post, it’s also…
sugar pretox challenge…April 1!
Just a little teaser about the Sugar Pretox Challenge that starts Friday… For more details, click this link to a previous post. 🙂
sugar detox challenge
“I need to eat less sugar.” “I’m addicted to sugar.” “I have a hard time stopping myself from eating too many chocolates…cookies…desserts?” “I wish I had more energy.” “I need to lose weight.” Sound familiar? So often, I encounter people who share their struggle with eating too many sugar-laden foods or are frustrated by their lack of energy or their weight. Yet, they struggle with taking the next step to kick the sugar addiction. Our culture doesn’t help. Cupcake wars, cake bosses, and Pinteresting parties with cakes and candies taking front and center encourage us to believe no special occasion or informal gathering is complete without some sort of sweet…
Clean Eating Works!
I’m so excited to share a few results from the 5-day Clean Eating Challenge that took place last week. I’ll admit I was skeptical at first if anyone would really notice a difference in just five days, but they did! Here’s what a few of the Challenger’s said: We both definitely feel better overall. We don’t feel so bloated and we felt more energized so that two of the days we didn’t even have coffee. This is just what I needed. I think my favorite part was the snacks – being intentional and packed with raw foods. Plus, I have had such a hard time pumping enough milk and this…
5-day clean eating challenge (starts February 29)
Although this challenge is now over, you can visit this post where I share the results and positive feedback our participants experienced and learn how you can participate in a Clean Eating Challenge. What is Clean Eating? It’s simply choosing to eat foods in their purest, unadulterated form and saying good-bye to additives, preservatives, processed, artificial and otherwise chemically-altered foods. And with the way the food industry works today, getting clean food is a challenge! Why Eat Clean? Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s, the Super Bowl, Valentine’s Day, just because… It doesn’t take much to derail our best intentions to eat healthy foods, especially when we’re with other people. It was…