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Posts tagged with “healthy”

Free Yourself from Sugar Addiction This Holiday Season

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“Part of the ingenuity of any addictive drug is to fool you into believing that life without it won’t be as enjoyable” ~Alan Carr

“I’m okay, thanks.”

See that? I just turned down a Tony’s Chocolonely from our family advent calendar.

I don’t care that it’s a white raspberry popping candy flavor I have never, ever tried before.

I don’t care that I remember being a kid, opening chocolate coins from my stocking.

I don’t care!

Because this year, I’m going into the holiday month already sugar-free. And I am tentatively walking on air about it!!

I’m forty-five, …

8 Compelling Reasons to Adopt a Whole Food Diet

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“The food you eat can be either the safest and most powerful form of medicine or the slowest form of poison.” ~Ann Wigmore

Why aren’t we taught optimal nutrition in school as adolescents?

I remember briefly learning about the food pyramid, which doesn’t even include water, by the way.

Do you want to know what I vividly remember? Growing up during the peak of diet culture, when models and actresses who were unrealistically skinny were the only ones who were considered pretty or good enough.

My dad died from a heart attack at age forty, and my single mother …

The Subtle (Yet Huge) Perspective Shift That Changed My Life

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“Dear self: Don’t get so worked up over things you can’t change or people you can’t change. It’s not worth the anger buildup or the heartache. Control only what you can. Let go. Love me.” ~Unknown

When I was furloughed from work back in the early months of 2020, I suddenly found myself with more time on my hands than I knew what to do with. I realized it was the freest time I’d had since I was a child on my summer holidays.

But that Covid-related break was much longer than six weeks; it was three long months. The …

3 Healthy Love Lessons for Survivors of Trauma and Abuse

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“Maybe it’s time for the fighter to be fought for, the holder to be held, and the lover to be loved.” ~Unknown

Growing up, I had no reference whatsoever for what a healthy relationship looked like. My parents had me as a result of an affair. I was estranged from my father for a decade or so, and I spent my childhood with my mother and my stepfather. And both were far from healthy.

I remember vividly this one day they got into a verbal fight. Things got so heated that he angrily threw her a glass of wine at …

How My Wellness Passion Was Actually Destroying My Health

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“Your body holds deep wisdom. Trust in it. Learn from it. Nourish it. Watch your life transform and be healthy.” ~Bella Bleue

It didn’t fit. I zipped, tugged, and shimmied, but the zipper wouldn’t budge. I was twenty-three, it was my college graduation, and the dress I had bought a month ago would not zip.

As I stood there crying in the mirror, riddled with exhaustion, anxiety, vulnerability, and sheer overwhelm, I wondered what was happening to my body. In just one month I had gained thirty pounds. I was having one to three panic attacks a day. Everything …

The Epiphany That Freed Me from My Body Obsession

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“Your body is precious. It is your vehicle for awakening. Treat it with care.” ~Buddha

What is the first thing that comes to mind when you hear or see the word fitness? Do you think of an Olympic power lifting athlete, gymnast, or swimmer? The way we interpret and respond to the word fitness is a driver of physical health, but also our mental health.

From a young age I associated health with fitness, which, to me, meant fitter is better. Society fed me the image of perfection. And so the chase of fitness became a moving target that …

Forever Healing: 4 Things I Now Prioritize After Cancer

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“I have come to believe that caring for myself is not self indulgent. Caring for myself is an act of survival.” ~Audre Lorde

I’m a year out after completing chemo treatment for non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma and on my healing journey. Cancer is a nasty little thing and can rear its ugly head at any time again. So, to minimize those recurrent chances and to feel like I’m doing all that’s in my control, I’ve accepted that this healing path will be for the rest of my life.

I originally thought I’d be spending this first year rebuilding myself. And I have. …

Three Things in Life

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How Toast Changed My Life and Helped Me Stop Bingeing

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One day, toast changed my life.

It was many years ago, when I was working as a personal trainer and nutrition and wellness coach.

I spent my days helping people “get fit” and “eat healthy,” so of course I was always preaching about lifestyle changes, “healthy” eating, and “whole, clean, nutritious” food, while demonizing “processed” foods, as most others in those worlds do.

Toast, at the time, was a big no-no. Especially toast made with white bread.

That’s basically blasphemy in the “healthy eating” world, with two strikes against it. First, bread has carbs, which I learned, from Atkins in …

Thinner is Not Better – Healthy, Connected, and Happy Is

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“Standards of beauty are arbitrary. Body shame exists only to the extent that our physiques don’t match our own beliefs about how we should look.” ~Martha Beck

I have so many women around me right now—friends, mothers, clients that are on a diet—constantly talking about their weight and how their bodies look, struggling with body image.

I am profoundly sad about the frequency and theme of those discussions.

At the same time, I deeply get it; it is hard to detach from our conditioning.

I too struggled with body image at one point in my life, and for a very …

How I Got Healthy & Overcame My Food/Body Issues by Ignoring Conventional Advice

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I was an award-winning personal trainer and nutrition and wellness coach for over eight years.

I also spent close to three decades struggling with my own weight and food issues—trying to “stick to” diets and/or healthy eating and lifestyle goals. And many years struggling with binge eating, bulimia, and (what I thought at the time was) an uncontrollable sugar addiction.

During the years I was working in the fitness and nutrition industry, whenever I’d get new clients, I’d find out what their health and fitness goals were, and I’d give them the perfect plan to help them get there.

And …

Children’s Movies are Obsessed with Death, but Don’t Show Healthy Grief

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“Grief is really just love. It’s all the love you want to give, but cannot. All that unspent love gathers up in the corners of your eyes, the lump in your throat, and in that hollow part of your chest. Grief is just love with no place to go.” ~Jamie Anderson

I knew my son was watching me. We were inhaling fistfuls of popcorn while Frozen 2 played on the screen above. (Spoiler alert…)

Anna has just realized her sister, Elsa, is dead, frozen solid at the bottom of a river. Anna must carry on life without her.

My son …

Obsessed with Healthy Eating? 9 Things I’ve Learned Since Recovering from Orthorexia

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“Sending love to everyone who’s doing their best to heal from things they don’t discuss.” ~Unknown

I used to obsess over healthy eating, and I mean OB-SESSSSS. I spent virtually every waking moment thinking about food. What should I eat today? Is there too much sugar in that? What will I eat when we go out next week? Should I claim that I’m allergic to gluten?

Although I didn’t know it at the time, I was suffering from orthorexia (that is, an unhealthy obsession with healthy eating). Yes, I fully agree that eating nutritious food is good for you—there’s few …

45 Simple Self-Care Practices for a Healthy Mind, Body, and Soul

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“There are days I drop words of comfort on myself like falling leaves and remember that it is enough to be taken care of by myself.” ~Brian Andreas

Do you ever forget to take care of yourself?

I know. You’re busy, and finding the time to take proper care of yourself can be hard. But if you don’t, it won’t be long before you’re battered from exhaustion and operating in a mental fog where it’s hard to care about anything or anyone.

I should know.

A few years ago, I had a corporate job in London, working a regular sixty-hour …

My Insatiable Quest for Love and How I Found It When I Stopped Looking

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“I can’t say when you’ll get love or how you’ll find it or even promise that you will. I can only say you are worthy of it and that it’s never too much to ask for it and that it’s not crazy to fear you’ll never have it again, even though your fears are probably wrong. Love is our essential nutrient. Without it, life has little meaning. It’s the best thing we have to give and the most valuable thing we receive. It’s worthy of all the hullabaloo.” ~Cheryl Strayed

Like many young girls, I spent my childhood daydreaming about

…

The Signs of a Strong Friendship (and an Unhealthy One)

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“Lots of people want to ride with you in the limo, but what you want is someone who will take the bus with you when the limo breaks down.” ~Oprah Winfrey

“How on earth am I supposed to survive? I have no friends whatsoever!”

These were the thoughts that ran through my mind then when I first set foot in London five years ago. I felt raw and vulnerable in the beautiful new city that I had to make my new home, alone, with my two kids, while my husband was overseas. I wondered how I was supposed to do …

Freedom from Food – This Time for Good!

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“Nonresistance is the key to the greatest power in the universe.” ~Eckhart Tolle

I cannot say that I didn’t struggle in my life. But there’s one area in which I have overcome the challenges I was facing with hardly an effort: letting go of the eating disorder I was suffering from, getting rid of the extra weight I was carrying, and maintaining the results easily for twenty-eight years.

How Did I Do That?

In a minute I’ll tell you exactly how I did that and how you can do it too. But first let me take a moment to explain …

How I Stopped Obsessing About the Wrong Things to Stay Healthy

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“To change your life, you need to change your priorities.” ~Mark Twain

Every year, come December, I used to obsess about air pollution. This was the time when my husband and I would take our young daughter to Poland, the country of my birth, to spend Christmas with the extended family. There my anxieties would hit the roof.

Once the heating season kicks off, and the coal starts to burn in home furnaces, Polish air becomes unbreathable. The particle pollution may exceed norms by as much as 3000%. Some days you can actually feel the air burning the back of …

Being Skinny Doesn’t Make You Fit or Healthy

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“Your body is precious. It is your vehicle for awakening. Treat it with care.” ~Buddha

As a 5’4″ petite, half-Asian, people have always assumed that I’m fit. However, my slender figure hid the sins of a poor diet and exercise routine for a decade.

The truth is, being skinny doesn’t make you healthy. There are many hidden dangers of being so-called “skinny fat.” (Though this is a commonly used term for unhealthy skinny people, it’s worth noting that bigger doesn’t always mean unhealthy. So perhaps a more accurate term would be “skinny unhealthy.”)

Skinny fat, also known as “normal …

Stressed and Anxious? Here’s How to Stay Emotionally Healthy

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EDITOR’S NOTE: You can find a number of helpful coronavirus resources and all related Tiny Buddha articles here.

“Health is not just about what you’re eating. It’s also about what you’re thinking and saying.”

A virus is spreading across the globe. Schools are shut down. People are out of work. Grocery stores are empty.

Weddings, graduations, vacations, a day in court—canceled.

This is the ultimate test in emotional resilience.

Uncertainty is one of the main reasons we stress, along with a lack of control, and right now we’ve got it in truckloads. I’ve spent the last decade building my …