Tag Archives: healthy mama

Creating Ease with the BlendTec Blender

With deep gratitude, I received a BlendTec WideJar and Twister blender to review. I am always looking for new ways to make healthy eating simple and I have loved all that I’ve created with my BlendTec.

It can feel overwhelming sometimes to walk into the kitchen and feel like you can come up with a healthy meal in a short and stress free time. My BlendTec has helped make that easier than ever, and I’m happy to share some of my favorite food creations with you!

I make smoothies almost every morning, and with the juice button, they have never been smoother before now. I’ve used other high power blenders before but they sometimes left chunks of fruit that would appear in my glass and that hasn’t happened with the BlendTec.

The buttons are so easy to navigate and my 4 year old often helps out with making smoothies. It’s great to get her involved and experimenting. I let her add what she wants to her smoothies because it gives her the chance to learn a lesson I certainly have – sometimes fewer ingredients work better than adding in everything you can think of!

The BlendTec Twister has been our favorite for making ice cream. I’ll put a couple of frozen bananas in there (cut into smaller pieces) along with chia seeds, almond butter, and some raw cacao powder and in under a minute we’ve got a creamy and delicious healthy ice cream. I grew up making banana ice cream in my mom’s Champion Juicer, so it’s wonderful to share this tradition with my daughter now.

I also use the Twister for dips.

I’ve been making a cashew yogurt (inspired by Persephone Brown), which is the perfect accompaniment to fresh fruit and granola. I take a cup of cashews, juice of a lemon, cinnamon and water to reach the right consistency and blend them together. This has been perfect to take along for camping trips as an easy breakfast.

Most recently I made an amazing avocado dip, it was so creamy and smooth and I ended up making tortilla chips to have with it but I honestly could have eaten it right off the spoon! I blended an avocado, lemon juice, paprika and sea salt. It didn’t need it, but a little bit of flax oil would be a great addition for some healthy omega-3s.

A BlendTec can feel like a big investment, and there’s no doubt that it is, but it’s one that you can see in action everyday.

If you want to learn more and start bringing ease to your kitchen follow one of the links in this blog to see what great options BlendTec has to offer!

If you have any questions about the BlendTec or the recipes I shared above, please leave a comment below!

Peace, Love, and Wellness,

Note: I received a BlendTec WideJar and Twister blender in exchange for writing a review and a few blog posts for their site and the links in this blog are affiliate links (that means if you’re as excited to try the BlendTec as I was, you’ll be helping support my business while getting to enjoy a BlendTec). All ideas and opinions in this blog are mine.

Toxins, Preparing for Conception, and Simplicity

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Do you know what's in your products

It’s really all about simplicity. When I interviewed Dr. Laurel Standley for the Creating Fertile Ground Conference, she shared that even as a scientist, she doesn’t know what all of the ingredients in our products are. After all, there are over 6000!

So what are we supposed to do?

Memorize lists of ever-changing chemicals to be concerned with? I tried that; it’s not so easy.

Ignore the issue and hope for the best? The stakes seem too high for that, as we’re talking about not just our health, but also the health of generations to come.

As I’ve learned more and more over the years, especially when it comes to toxins and the childbearing years, I’ve come to discover a way to do the best you can without getting yourself overwhelmed by tons of information – keep it simple.

I recently had an in person session with a client. She and her husband are planning to start trying to conceive soon, and she is thinking about what’s in her products in an entirely new way now that she’s thinking about her future baby. It was a deep dive into this topic, and after our time together she said, “Thanks again! It was all really helpful and encouraging.” Encouraging. That’s key. You can gather all the information you want online, and you’ll likely find some of it to be helpful and much of it to be scary. That’s not really my idea of helpful, simple, or empowering at all.

Here’s what I taught her about simplicity when it comes to the products we’re using on a daily basis:

Use fewer products. On average, women use a dozen products daily. How many do you use? Often, many of them are ancillary to our needs, and they come at a huge price. One thing that my client realized was that she was seeing the same ingredients again and again as she checked her labels. Not only are we exposing ourselves to these chemicals, but we’re getting exposed multiple times by our products. How can you use fewer products in your routine?

Keep the ingredients list short and readable. One exercise that I have my clients do is you write out all of the ingredients that are in their products. For each one, they make two columns – the ingredients that they recognize and know what purpose they serve and the ingredients that they don’t recognize. The same reaction comes up again and again – so many of the ingredients are difficult to spell, let alone understand. Looking for products that have simple ingredients (ideally 10 or fewer ingredients and that you can recognize) is a great way to release the fear and overwhelm about your products. Check your labels. Do you know what you’re putting in and on your body?

Don’t feel like you need to do all the research on your own. We are surrounded by so much information these days, much of it full of unnecessary fear, much of it contradictory, and it can easily be overwhelming and confusing. Getting lost in a sea of information is not my idea of simplicity. Is it yours? If not, choose simplicity by starting where you can and finding support from those who have a passion for digging for the information and sharing just what you need to make this journey an empowering one. How can you reach out to get support so you can find more simplicity?

I’d love to know what was most helpful and how you plan to bring more simplicity to your daily routine. Join the conversation by sharing in the comments below.

Peace, Love, and Wellness,

Releasing Expectations So You Can Flow Instead of Struggle

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Expectations. We all have them, for ourselves and for others. Mostly, they lead to frustration, disappointment, anger and miscommunication.

When you are thinking about starting a family (or you are just dreaming of it for some time in your future), these expectations can be painful.

You have expectations about what needs to be in place, how long it will take you to get pregnant, what pregnancy, childbirth, and motherhood will look like for you.

At each point on this journey, there are numerous opportunities for not meeting these expectations, these high ideals that you have come to believe must be true.

What if you could flip this? What if you could shift your expectations so you are open and receiving instead of closed off and fighting?

Shifting expectations continues to come up in my life, so I know that it is a lesson I have not yet fully learned. As I have been hit on the head with this lesson a lot this week, I realized something – it’s not about my expectations of others but of myself.

As I have worked on shifting my expectations, this has meant accepting that I need support to make my dreams, passions, and desires flourish. I reached out for this support, invested in myself, and I can feel the shift.

It has taken some of the pressure off of me and helped me create space to put my focus to where it needs to be. I am able to focus on what flows naturally, while getting support with the pieces that feel more difficult and tend to cause a lot of frustration and stress. This is invaluable!

Are you ready? Release those expectations so you can flourish and grow.

Peace, Love, and Wellness,

Why Self Care Matters for Conception, Pregnancy and Motherhood

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I’ve said it before, and I’ll keep saying it, because we all need the reminder quite regularly – it all starts with you.

You are the foundation for your family.

So many of us give give give yet we struggle with the idea of being open to receiving.

The energy of creating life calls for a receptive energy. It is a space of surrender, of trust, of pure love. If you have given all you have to give and have nothing left, there is no energy left for creation.

By not taking care of yourself, by refusing to treat yourself as sacred ground in which to plant the seed of life, you send a message that you are not deserving of this care, and that you are not open to receiving more.

The greatest disservice we can do to our family, current and future, is to consider self care to be selfish. It is the opposite. If we do not carve out the time to take care of ourselves, we become overwhelmed, overstressed, resentful, and often we make ourselves physically sick because it is the only way our body can get the message across that we need to slow down.

In The Gift of the Sea, Anne Morrow Lindbergh writes, “For the most part, we, who could choose simplicity, choose complication.”

Let’s choose simplicity with self-care.

Self-care is about carving out space just for you.
Self-care can be as simple as slow, deep breathing.
Self-care can take moments or hours; it is timeless.
Self-care has no right or wrong.
Self-care is an act of self-empowerment.

I encourage you to think about who you want to be as you prepare to step into the role of mama.

Do you want to be the woman who constantly feels like you’re falling apart, like you have to add one more thing to your list constantly but that you’re always at the bottom of it, and you’re growing resentful?

Or do you want to be the woman who has the energy to be fully present and joy-filled with your family, knowing can find gratitude within the small moments, and who can model the importance of caring for yourself for your children?

The choice is yours.

Peace, Love, and Wellness,

Why the Health of Your Relationships Matters before You Start Trying to Conceive

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Anxiety. Waiting. Insecurities. Hormones. Fears. Excitement. Identity. Big Changes.

I could keep this post as simple as that. With any of those, it’s important to have a partner you can lean on, trust, and communicate with as challenges and triumphs arise.

All of us, even when we’re in the best and healthiest relationships of our lives, have things that we can be working on and so do our partners. You are about to embark on a life changing adventure together, and it can be incredibly helpful to work out some of the kinks before diving into this time.

Before you start trying to conceive, a phase of this journey that no one can predict how long it will last.

Before your hormones are all over the place and you struggle to keep your emotions in check.

Before baby comes and you find yourselves overjoyed and sleep deprived all at once.

Before it sets in how much has changed, it’s important to be able to communicate what’s most important to you, individually and as a couple, and it’s important to know that you can always count on each other.

Your relationship will shift.

Your communication skills will need to be clearer than ever.

Your money stories will come up and possibly collide.

Your sex life will change but it can be in positive ways.

That’s why I am bringing 4 experts to share with you next week during the Creating Fertile Ground Virtual Conference. They will cover these key pieces and share with you what you can be doing now so you have a strong foundation, built together, from the very beginning of this journey.

While you wait to soak up their knowledge, I encourage you to start thinking about one thing in your partnership that you would like to strengthen. If you feel comfortable, please share it in the comments below and get the conversation started!

Peace, Love, and Wellness,

Food, Flavor, and Your Future Baby

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As I sat down to write this post for you, I was really excited because I was going to write about something that fascinates me. It fascinates me so much that I wrote about it 2 years ago here!

Instead of rehashing what I already wrote, I hope you’ll read that old post to discover the incredible connection between your food choices and the food preferences of your future baby. Feel free to comment on that post and let me know what you think!

That also frees me up to write to you about another really interesting and important fact about the importance of food before you start trying to conceive. You can actually reduce a lot of potential stress and anxiety by making conscious and healthy choices, and I’m not even talking about fertility boosting foods specifically.

I’m talking about what nutrient rich foods can do for you when it comes to a topic that leads to so much stress in pregnant women – morning sickness. Next week, during the Creating Fertile Ground Virtual Conference, you’re going to learn about the connection between food and your hormones, gut health, and fertility, as well as how herbs can help you get the nutrients you need. Today, let’s talk about how right now is the perfect time to start caring for that future baby of yours.

Once your baby is growing inside you, you are relegated to the #2 spot when it comes to who gets nutrients first. Your baby is doing some intense growing, especially in those early weeks, but all throughout pregnancy, and baby needs those nutrients to grow and develop in a healthy way.

When faced with morning sickness, many women worry about whether their baby is getting enough nutrients. Unless you are told by your trusted health care provider that there is cause for concern (hyperemesis gravidarum for example), you can release that anxiety if you’ve been taking good care of yourself and getting the nutrients that you need to be healthy.

Why is this?

Well, your baby will actually pull from your nutrient stores, so even if you’re not taking in as many nutrients when you are experiencing morning sickness, if you’ve built a healthy foundation, baby can borrow from that for a while.

Next week you are going to learn some really important information that connects to this (including what you need to know to make sure you are absorbing the nutrients from the food you are eating and a great way to get powerful doses of nutrients without the need for a search through shelves and shelves of supplements).

You can register here and I hope that you join us!

Peace, Love, and Wellness,

Why Toxins are Key to Healthy Conception and Pregnancy

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Peace lilies are great for cleaning toxins out of the air. Note: Toxic to cats.

There is a balance of energy in our bodies – that which creates life and that which impedes it. At the beginning of my journey to prepare myself for my future baby, I recognized the importance of focusing on the energy that creates life but I saw that I needed to clear out the negative energy, the clutter, and the toxins before I could create a sacred and luscious space where my child could grow.

Toxins can be a scary and overwhelming topic, but the risks that we open ourselves to unnecessarily on a daily basis are far scarier and more overwhelming. In fact, when we can be in service of our best health, and therefore our baby’s best health, the topic of toxins becomes one of empowerment. You learn what you can begin to control and in doing so you let go of so much fear.

So many of our fears – infertility, miscarriage, pregnancy and birth complications, birth defects and health related issues as our child grows up – are often deeply connected to the toxicity that has found its way into our bodies. By taking the steps towards learning about the connections between toxins and your health, you see what steps are in your control to reducing the risks of so many of your fears.

And it’s easy. That’s right, I’m starting off the week of the Creating Fertile Ground Virtual Conference with the easy first step. That’s not to say that it’s easy to eliminate all toxins from your life – that’s impossible. It’s easy to begin to take the steps that fit into your lifestyle and that fit into the vision of the world that you want to see flourish for your family.

In many cases, a few simple changes to the products you use can significantly reduce your toxic burden. In some cases, the changes are not practical right now, but there are actions you can take to mitigate the impact. In all cases, you step into a place of empowerment.

This is something that you can do right away, to treat yourself as sacred ground as you begin to prepare for baby. You want to reduce your exposure now so the environment you grow your baby in, from the very moment of conception, is comprised of as much energy that creates and nourishes life as possible. You can do this by reducing the negative toxic energy, both physically and mentally.

The women who will be sharing with you are going to teach you what you can be doing now and why it’s important, but you also might hear suggestions that feel like too much to implement right now, and that’s okay. You’ve empowered yourself with knowledge and you can put it into practice whenever you feel ready.

Clearing out the toxins is a beautiful foundation on which to grow everything that comes next. In order for plants to grow and thrive, they much have fertile and nontoxic soil. That is where it all begins.

If you’re ready to learn more about what you need to know and what you can do about toxins and your fertile health, join us for the Creating Fertile Ground Virtual Conference by registering here.

Peace, Love, and Wellness,

Healthy Homemade Granola

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I got a craving for granola and yogurt. I had just gotten some organic, whole fat Greek style yogurt at MOM’S Market so I was halfway there already. I had made a huge batch of trail mix for a recent road trip, so I didn’t even need to gather the nuts and seeds. Within 20 minutes, my post-yoga snack for the next day was ready and waiting. And a bonus, I’ve got granola for a week! This is a great example how a little bit of prep can make healthy eating for the week happen with ease.

Yes, I’m Still Talking about Toxins and Fertility!

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I’m reading a book right now, in fact I’m plowing through it because the topic is one I’m so passionate about, and it’s making me think of one of the final points in the recent opinion paper put out by ACOG on reproductive health and fertility. The authors of the paper wrote, “When an activity raises threats of harm to human health or the environment, precautionary measures should be taken even if some cause and effect relationships are not fully established scientifically.”

In the book I’m reading, Generations at Risk, they talk about how the scientific method works (stuff I hadn’t read about since high school), and why it can be flawed when we’re making public health policy choices based on scientific studies.

Here’s the bottom line. If you can make some simple changes that have the potential to greatly improve the health of you and your family there’s no reason not to! Tweet This!

I’ve been working with women to create these types of changes for a long time, and as you know if you’ve followed me for a while and ready my story, this is where I started on my own journey because it was the easiest place to begin.

You know all of those exciting ideas I mentioned? Well a couple of them involve helping you tackle the toxins with fun and ease. One of them is a big project that you’ll hear more about in the coming months, but there’s something else that I’m going to share with you next week, so stayed tuned!

In the meantime, I’d love to know where you feel most stuck or confused when it comes to toxins in your life. Just leave a comment below!

Peace, Love, and Wellness,

What I Learned at the Green Mom’s Meet Summit

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I spent yesterday at the Green Mom’s Meet Summit in Philadelphia (I love when awesome conferences happen so close to home!). It was nice to spend the day doing something that was work-oriented but connection-based instead of deadline-driven. That felt like expansion to me (you can read more about the Expansion Experiment here).

While hanging out with some new mom friends, I had the opportunity to hear from some wonderful speakers, try new products, and participate in workshops. My favorite part of the day happened when I was walking back from lunch with a mom I had just met. As we were walking and sharing our stories, the sky opened up and we got soaked! Running through the streets of Philadelphia getting completely drenched felt incredibly refreshing. Going back into the air-conditioned building, not so much, but it was worth it.

These moments when we find ourselves in unexpected situations can be great reminders of how we want to be living our lives. That run through the rain taught me that I can worry less about the weather and focus more on having fun. I could have grumbled about it, wished that I’d brought an umbrella, and spent the afternoon uncomfortable in my wet clothes. Instead, it filled me with such joy! I swapped my long sleeve shirt for my sweater (which stayed dry in my bag), and I enjoyed some hot tea to help warm me up while my skirt dried.

Yesterday was a great opportunity to learn from unexpected experiences and to learn from others. Today I want to share with you a key point that Dr. Lawrence Rosen brought up at the summit. He said that, “prevention and wellness creation always trumps treatment.” He bases his pediatric practice on this philosophy, and as you know, this is very much in line with the philosophy of Womb to World Wellness, especially when it comes to preparing for pregnancy.

When you look at wellness creation in the context of preconception and pregnancy planning you begin to see that you can feel empowered and confident about your child’s health before he or she is even conceived. That is truly amazing.

This idea of doing what you can naturally and preventatively before turning to treatment and medication is not new – it’s what we’ve done for centuries. In society today, we are often looking for a quick fix and to many people that means turning to a bottle of pills as a first resort.

When it comes to fertility and pregnancy, you can rack up some big bills pretty quickly, but you might be overlooking some simple and effective things that could significantly help you.

If you haven’t already, I encourage you to check out my free e-book, 30 Tips to Boosting Fertility, to get you started (link is to your right).

I’d also love to know what you think about what Dr. Rosen said, so please share in the comments below!

Peace, Love, and Wellness,