Women’s Health

How to Overcome a Bad Food Day

We’ve all done it! Gone to a wedding or the movies or just out to eat with friends and had a few too many chips or the entire slice of cheesecake. Today let’s talk about what to do to overcome a bad food day.

Mindset

First let’s let go of the idea that health is a destination. Trust me…you will never “get there”. And just when you think you do…whammo there’s a vacation, or a pandemic, or something to knock you right back off your clean eating plan. No one eats perfectly all the time. So just let that one go!

My rule for my clients is to work to hit the 90/10 rule. 90% of the time your food choices are on target. When you do this, your body can handle that 10% that you might fall off. Now this is not a daily total….this is more a monthly total of 90% of the month you’re on target and 10% not.

Lifestyle Change

To take control of your health, you must make a lifestyle change. You must remove those temptations from your house and stop going out with the friends who encourage you to make unhealthy choices. Will power is a muscle and it can fatigue….and when it fatigues, you’re in trouble! But if you make lifestyle changes such as no chips or soda in the house, then you don’t need willpower because those unhealthy options just aren’t there.

Baby Steps

Baby steps count. The Annals of Behavioral Medicine published a research study that found that participants who made one small but permanent change in their dietary routine or physical activity lost double the amount of belly fat, four times the weight, and two and a half inches off their waistline compared to those who followed outdated guidelines of calorie control and increased physical activity during a four-month period.

Focus on Clean Eating

You want to maintain a balanced diet that includes leafy greens – and loads of them. If you start your day with 2 cups of vegetables, then you don’t have to worry about getting them in later! Aim for a diet of more fish, fewer animal products, loads of greens and colorful fruits and vegetables.

Remember portion sizes, too. What you eat and how much you eat of it can make all the difference. Update your shopping list to include healthy foods such as nuts, seeds, legumes, oily fish like salmon, and of course, plenty of fresh fruits and veggies.

Portion according to your plate. Start by dividing it in half and filling it up with fruits and vegetables. Fill the other half with one-quarter healthy protein and the other quarter with complex carbohydrates such as brown rice and quinoa or root vegetables such as sweet potatoes, beets, turnips, and parsnips. Make sure the quarters form the size of your fist.

Also try to include some intermittent fasting each day. Start with a 12:12 fasting/feeding window and try to work up to a 16:8 fasting/feeding window.

Don’t Throw the Baby Out with the Bath Water

We all give in to temptation once in a while. If you’ve been doing all the things I’ve mentioned above most of the time…you’re good…just as long as you get back on the wagon. Don’t throw away an entire day because you had a cheeseburger and fries at lunch. Take each meal on it’s own and get right back up on the clean eating horse.

Need Help?

Making changes to your diet can be very daunting. That’s why I’m here to hold your hand and coach you during this time of transition. Join my next 6 week FASTer Way to Fat Loss round where I’ll walk you through a proven nutrition and fitness program that will help you to establish your healthy habits for life. Click here to find out more and when my next group program will be starting.

What are some of your tips for overcoming a bad food day?

Your Health Coach,

What is Clean Eating?

Gut Health, Nutrition, Women's Health

Clean eating seems to be somewhat of a buzz word, but what the heck do I mean when I say clean eating?

Clean eating is not just about trying to lose weight. It’s about making better food choices that make you healthier.Most of today’s food is processed to some degree. When you consume one food product, you are often unknowingly introducing your body to so many other toxins and chemicals as well. These may be foods of convenience or flavor, but they are leaving your body and mind weaker and unhappier, and you don’t even know it.

What is Clean Eating?

Clean eating is a journey to making sure that you only allow natural things to enter your body. This ensures that you keep out as many harmful chemicals and preservatives as possible that can cause your energy levels fluctuate and impede the freshness of the food. It is a lifestyle shift that leaves you feeling better than ever. There are a few basic principles to keep in mind to get—and keep—you on the right path.

Shop Consciously

It is time to you pay extra attention to the kinds of things you are buying. This means knowing what fruits and vegetables are in season, what produce is sourced locally, and what produce is grown organically. It is important so you do not end up consuming pesticide residue or produce that is treated by hormones; that can be counter-productive, even if you are eating what you think you should be eating.

Start asking grocers and farmers where they get what you are buying to ensure that you buy the freshest and most top-quality produce, free of toxins.

If you are buying packaged foodstuff, make it a habit to read the nutrition label. Nutrition labels containing more than five ingredients or difficult to pronounce names should raise red flags and be avoided.

Check out this article: Do I Really Need to Buy Organic?

Cook Consciously

What you eat matters, of course, but so does how you make it. Make sure that you stay away from methods that take away nutrients from food that is inherently nutritious. This includes deep frying or stewing in animal or plant fats, or any methods that involve a high level of unhealthy fat. It is a better – also quicker and easier – method to just steam or bake vegetables.

Try substituting avocado oil for butter wherever you can to avoid the saturated fats. While olive oil, coconut oil and avocado oils are better choices than other oils, they are still a processed food and I would suggest limiting their intake. Try sauteing thing with just a little water. You’ll be surprised that sometimes it works just as well.

Try to avoid using salt in high quantities and try healthier, more interesting alternatives to salt such as spices, herbs, and lemon. Spruce up your meal as well as your health. Also, if you are debating eating out or cooking in, it is always better to be in control of how you make your food.

Choose Consciously

Be smart about what you choose to eat. Choose foods that are in their natural form. Ones that look as close as they can to how they came out of the ground. Get your fill of nutrients with 2 ½ to 3 cups of fresh fruits and vegetables to fight against the risk of developing illnesses such as heart problems, blood pressure irregularities, obesity, and cancer.

Try eating your vegetables raw or steamed to make the most out of the nutrients they carry. The safest methods of clean eating are steaming, baking, and sautéing in order to ensure that the natural nutritional value of the food is maintained. Do not be afraid to try out vegetables in places you have not before, in forms you have not tried before.

Need Help Getting Started?

Are you ready to step into your new clean eating routine?

30 Minute Workout Ideas

Fitness, Women's Health

As a Health Coach, everyone assumes that I love to work out…but I don’t! LOL These 30 min workout ideas are just what I need to keep me on track.

It’s a common belief that you have to kill it in the gym for a minimum of an hour a day to get in shape…but that’s not true! Plus, personally, I lose attention after about 20 minutes so if I can keep my workouts to 30 min, then I’ll actually do them. And done is better than not done!

If you’re like me and have a ton of kids and dogs and things to do…consider these simple workouts you can do in under 30 minutes while still achieving your fitness goals.

30 Min Workout Ideas

Kettlebell

Kettlebell workouts can be focused on specific body areas. This means that a one hour kettlebell workout can be reduced to less than 30 minutes. You can focus on your back one day, arms the next, legs the following day, and so on. This can give you a full body workout option for the week that also uses limited equipment. If you are looking for simple workout option on a limited budget with limited space, then this may the ideal option. Here’s one of my favorite kettlebells.

Tabata

Tabata workouts can be short or long depending on your needs. The key point to keep in mind is that this workout is HITT based. This means that you are working on a specific area of the body, like your arms, then taking a quick rest, and going to the next body area. You can do shorter reps and shorter rests with Tabata workouts. This can shorten the entire workout while still giving you a full body, or partial body, option that works in under 30 minutes. This workout is also one that requires limited to no equipment, which makes it easier to start and finish since you don’t have clean-up time or set-up time to consider.

Sectional Body Challenges

You can take on 30 day challenges that are done in less than 30 minutes. Each challenge is designed to help you focus on a particular issue with your body or a particular goal. For example, you can focus on squats or HITT training. The key idea is that you only do the challenge for 30 days and you keep it under 30 minutes. What is ideal about this type of workout plan is the ability to pick challenges that work with your needs, time constraints, goals, and budget.

Spinning

Spinning classes do require one major piece of equipment, a spinning bike. However, this type of workout is high intensity and can get your cardio in while burning the maximum amount of calories available. The key point with this workout is to remember you can do it at home if you have the equipment or you can do it in a gym. It all depends on which one works best for you.

One way you can maximize these workouts is to swap them out or revolve them. Use a different workout each day to keep your body active and to keep yourself from getting into a rut with your exercise. After a few weeks or a few months, change up the intensity or the workout plan to give yourself even more benefit in under 30 minutes.

FASTer Way to Fat Loss

My favorite 30 min exercises are those in the FASTer Way to Fat Loss program. You start with a 6 week program to learn all the basics of nutrition and fitness. Then once you finish that you can choose to continue with the community with the VIP Membership (we also have spin bike videos as I mentioned above).

I LOVE the quick 30 minute workouts daily that are targeted to what I’m eating for the day for maximum fat burning. But most of all, I love that I don’t have to think about what I’m going to do! I just open the app and click play! They’ve already decided the program for the day. It’s like having a trainer in my phone!

Click here to see when my next 6 week program starts!

What’s your favorite workout?

Your Health Coach,

Sarah

3 Tips to Get Your Daily Water Intake In

Nutrition, self care, Women's Health

Every animal on Earth needs water to live, and that is especially true of humans. Depending on your height and weight, you could need more water than the average amount, but every person needs to focus on their daily water intake because dehydration causes cellular breakdown in the body.

The problem isn’t that you don’t understand you need more water, but trying to find time and circumstances to get your daily recommended amount. Here are some different ways to ensure you get plenty of water every day.

Help for Hot Flashes in Menopause

Women's Health

Menopause is a natural transition in a women’s life and signals the end of her reproductive abilities. Let’s discuss symptoms, lifestyle factors and remedies for hot flashes today. This is the first post in a series on women’s health in midlife.

Symptoms

In the United States, the average age of menopause is 50-52 years of age, but the period leading up to menopause, called perimenopause, can last from a few months to many years. During this perimenopausal period, the ovaries stop responding to FSH (follicle stimulating hormone) and begin producing less and less estrogen and progesterone.

This change causes symptoms such as hot flashes, night sweats, insomnia, headaches, vaginal dryness, vision changes, weight gain and irregular menstruation. The complete transition into menopause is said to occur when menstruation has stopped for 1 complete year (Parker, 2013, pgs. 258-259). These symptoms can be very disruptive to a woman’s life and many seek help from their allopathic doctors who prescribe synthetic and bioidentical hormones as well as anti-depressants (Carroll & Kelley, 2009) to help with symptom management, but not everyone wants to, or can, take the antidepressant or hormone replacement route. This website is focused on natural menopause remedies.

Hot Flashes

Hot flashes and night sweats seem to be the most common symptoms of this change.

It is estimated that 65-80% of premenopausal women experience hot flashes (Murray & Pizzorno, 2005, pg 745). Hot flashes, also known as hot flushes, are sudden changes in body temperature causing a woman to feel hot, begin sweating and may even include a flushed face. When these hot flashes occur at night, they are referred to as night sweats and contribute to symptoms of insomnia and fatigue.

It is believed that hot flashes are triggered by minute fluctuations in core temperature due, in part, to the fluctuating estrogen levels in the body during midlife. It is also believed that perimenopausal and menopausal women have a reduced thermoneutral zone. This thermoneutral zone is the range in which the body feels comfortable with no need to sweat or shiver to maintain a balanced body temperature (Freedman, 2014). Therefore when these slight changes occur to core temperature, the body reacts quickly to try and maintain homeostasis causing hot or even cold flashes.

There are certain risk factors that may contribute to the severity and frequency of hot flashes for certain women such as diet, obesity, caffeine consumption, stress, tight clothes, alcohol consumption, smoking and even phthalate exposure from personal care products (Ziv-Gal, Gallicchio, Chiang, ther, Miller, Zacur, Dills, Flaws, 2016).

Get Rid of Hot Flashes

Diet and lifestyle changes need to be addressed first when dealing with hot flashes. It used to be believed that increased abdominal adiposity (belly fat) decreased one’s risk of hot flashes, but studies are now showing that not to be true. One of the first steps in reducing hot flashes should be reaching and maintaining a normal body weight for your body.

Focusing on a primarily plant based diet that includes phytoestrogens such as soybeans, soy foods, (be careful with soy though) flaxseeds, nuts, whole grains, apples, fennel, celery, parsley, cabbage and alfalfa (Murray & Pizzorno, 2005, pg. 745) as well as reducing caffeine intake may be helpful (Faubion, Sood, Thielen, & Shuster, 2015).

I personally advocate a low carbohydrate (lots of above ground vegetables), low to moderate animal protein (70-85g) and healthy high fat (avocado, nuts and seeds, coconut and olive oil) diet. Check out my Keto Kickstart course to help you get started on the right foot.

Smoking has also been shown to increase one’s risk of hot flashes, so stopping smoking is extremely important for many health reasons including reducing hot flashes (Whiteman, Staropoli, Langenberg, McCarter, Kjerulff, & Flaws, 2003).

While exercise may increase the occurrence of hot flashes in some women, as little as 20 minutes of mild to moderate exercise 3 days per week (Longe, 2015) has been found to be helpful in reducing hot flash incidence.

Stress reduction and relaxation techniques have been found to be equally as beneficial as some drug therapies in reduction of hot flashes (Freedman, 2007). This means that working to incorporate yoga, meditation, breathing techniques and mindfulness in daily self care practices can have a significant benefit to your hot flash reduction and quality of life.

Herbs for Hot Flashes

There are a few herbs that may help to reduce hot flashes. One of the most popular is black cohosh. Black cohosh has been found to reduce both the severity and frequency of hot flashes in postmenopausal women (Shahnazi, Nahaee, Mohammad-Alizadeh-Charandabi, & Bayatipayan, 2013).

Another important herb that helps reduce symptoms is fennel. In a triple-blind study, women in midlife were given 100mg of fennel twice a day. This dosage showed significant improvement in symptoms as compared to the placebo group (Rahimikian, Rahimi, Golzareh, Bekhradi, & Mehran 2017). I like the product Femtrol which includes fennel and black cohosh as well as other herbs.

Red clover has been found to also possibly reduce hot flashes, but more studies will need to be done on this (Ghazanfarpour, Sadeghi, Roudsari, Khorsand, Khadivzadeh, & Muoio, 2016).

Essential Oils for Hot Flashes

Certain essential oils have also been shown to be helpful for menopausal symptoms.

Peppermint oil can be mixed with a carrier oil and placed on the back of the neck during a hot flash. It has a very cooling effect (7 Essential Oils for Menopause Relief).

Clary sage has been shown to have antidepressant effects and reduces cortisol (Lee, KCho, & Kang, 2014). You can easily put this in a diffuser or inhaler or use a product like Clary Calm that can easily be kept in your purse and used as needed.

You do NOT have to suffer during menopause…it should be the prime of your life! Schedule an appointment today so we can get you feeling amazing!

What Blood Tests Should I Get?

Women's Health

One of the more common questions I get in my Health Coaching practice is: what blood tests should I get? We can tell what’s going on in your highly sensitive body with just a few additional tests. In this post I’ll tell you the ones I like to see for optimal women’s health.

Know Your Numbers

Ok let me start off on a bit of a soap box first. My main mission in my career is to empower women to take control of their health. You cannot take control of your health if you give your power away to someone that wears scrubs and/or a white coat. You can respect their opinion and knowledge and experience, but ultimately it is YOUR body and you get to make the final decision.

You MUST know your numbers….or at least know how to access them at a moments notice. Don’t accept the email or conversation that says “Your numbers were all normal.” NO…you need to know the exact numbers and you need to be able to track them over time. Make a spreadsheet if you need to, but know your numbers.

When your health care provider looks at your tests, the average one is going to look for things the lab has flagged as high or low. They are not going to look at optimal ranges. For example, I had a client where the provider told her her blood glucose numbers were “normal”. But when I looked, I noticed the number was 99. Just 1 more point and the lab would have flagged it as high and so would the provider as being pre-Diabetic. If she had not come to me, this client would not have made any changes to her diet (or stress levels) if she’d just taken the “normal” and not looked at the actual number.

Download the list here

Blood Tests

The following blood tests are great to do all every few years. It’s nice to have a baseline and then know where you are in coming years. There are a few things that make these hard to get though…1) getting a doctor that will order them for you 2) getting a doctor to know what they all mean (most specialize and know the numbers for their specialty, but not overall and 3) price.

There are ways around the doctor (I can order some lab tests for my clients) or you can go to a place like Any Lab Test Now, but that still leaves price. If your insurance will pay for it, I’d try getting your doctor to order them for you…or at least most. Then I’d use a walk in place or an online blood work order site to get the rest.

This list is just my opinion and not medical advice. If you have concerns about your blood work, you should speak with your medical provider.

CBC

Complete Blood Count can tell us some things about your basic health and immune function.

CMP

Complete Metabolic Panel typically includes blood glucose levels (ideally this is under 90) as well as electrolyte levels and kidney and liver function.

Fasting Lipids

This would tell total your cholesterol levels as well as triglycerides, HDL and LDL. Most mainstream doctors will tell you that a total cholesterol at or above 200 is a bad sign. I tend to not get worried until total cholesterol goes over 240…and then I think it’s telling us that there’s inflammation in the body and we need to figure out what’s causing it (usually bad diet). Triglycerides need to between 60- 100…if above then you’re eating too many carbs. HDL (aka the “good” cholesterol) should be at or above 50 and LDL should be below 150.

Fasting A1C/Insulin

A1C can tell us an overall picture of your blood sugar levels over the past 3 months. Doctors us this to diagnosis Type 2 Diabetes. I like this number to be between 4.5%-5.5%. A fasting insulin level can tell us a lot about if you’re on the road to Diabetes. You want this number to be as low as possible typically between 1-5. If these numbers aren’t in range, you want to really focus on a Low Carb/Keto way of eating.

Thyroid Panel with Antibodies

This panel tells us about your thyroid function. These numbers work a little backwards…high number means you’re hypothyroid and low numbers mean you’re hyperthyroid. You want the antibody tests as well so we can see if it’s moved into autoimmune.

Vitamin D

Vitamin D is very important to overall health and immune function. Most people are vitamin D deficient. The labs usually give a range of 30-100 which I find way to wide to really be helpful. I tend to recommend keeping them between 50-70 especially for postmenopausal women.

hs-CRP

C Reactive Protein can tell us the level of inflammation in the body.

Ferritin

Ferritin can tell us about your iron stores, but it can also be a marker for inflammation.

Hormones

Depending on your stage in life, you may be thinking about hormone replacement..or not. You really need to work with a knowledgeable provider to help with HRT, but always good to have a baseline. There are many alternative therapies to help with fluctuating hormones and menopause.

EBV Titers

Epstein Barr Virus is the mono virus that is estimated that 95% of the population has been exposed to. The problem with EBV is that in some of us, it gets reactivated and becomes chronic. Getting these titers can tell you if you’re one of those people and really start to explain why you may have thyroid issues, fibromyalgia, CFS and more. For me, knowing this number has helped me make an association between my pain, or what I thought were fibro flares, and virus activation. It also explains why I get tired and sick more easily. I’m still digging into all that EBV can mean, but this can really be eye opening.

Candida Titers

Candida is a yeast that is part of different areas in our body. It can cause problems though when it turns into it’s fungal form. In the mouth, you can see it as thrush. In the vagina, you see it as a yeast infection. But in the gut…it’s hard to see. The main symptom I have noticed is sugar cravings. Making sure that you are eating a Low Carb/Keto way of eating should keep this from flaring. There are also supplements that can help.

CMV Titers

Cytomegalovirus is another virus that many people have been exposed to and have no long term effects of, but there are some that do. CMV can cause damage to the immune system and may be contributing to your highly sensitive body.

Blood work Recommendations for Menopausal Women with Highly Sensitive Bodies — Click the image to download the list

If you’d like help navigating your health, you can always set up an appointment with me. I try to gather lots of information so that I can help point my clients in the right direction with their health. I’d love to help you too!