Stick With It!A H a n d y H a n d b o o k b y A n d re a N a k aya m a f ro m R e p l e n i s h P DX

Top Three Tips for Maintaining Your Healthy Eating HabitsTop Three Tips for Maintaining Your Healthy Eating HabitsAn Essential Guide by Andrea Nakayama, Founder, FxNAlliance.com

Welcome! I’m Andrea Nakayama, a functional nutritionist based in Portland, Ore-gon and owner of the online nutrition enterprise the Functional Nutrition Alliance (FxNA). I’m thrilled that you found your way to our site and that you’ll have the opportunity to learn my top tips for sticking with the dietary changes that you’ve chosen for yourself, no matter what they might be.

Before I dive in to my Stick With It! survival secrets, I’d like to tell you a bit about me and why and how I too have had to stick with it. Like you, I’m on a constant journey to support a busy life – to eat well, to take the best care of myself, and to learn about the ever-changing needs of my body as I grow older. It amazes and still surprises me that my body’s needs continue to shift!

My journey to even considering the role of nutrition in health began with a family health crisis. This was in April of 2000, when my husband, Isamu, was diagnosed with a very aggressive brain tumor while I was 7 weeks pregnant.

The prognosis for my husband’s cancer was very grave, and he was given about six months to live. I’ve written about this often in my weekly newsletters, which chronicle the myriad ways in which that experience transformed my life then and continues to do so now.

After being met with such a diagnosis we kicked into high gear, looking for every-thing and anything we could do to support Isamu’s health and survival. While he sat in the library at the teaching hospital researching the latest medical trials, I explored the supportive aspects of integrative treatments like acupuncture, mas-sage, exercise and food and nutrition. This last one was somewhat of a no-brainer for me as I was already a real foodie. We were living in San Francisco at the time, buying local and organic produce and meats, savoring the good flavors of life.

I also needed my own medicine during that time of crisis. I needed it to support my body and that of my growing baby. To me, food was obviously the answer. It gave me something I could do everyday, several times a day, to nurture all three of us

who am I?

Stick With It!Top Three Tips for Maintaining Your Healthy Eating Habits

and foster our health. And through the process, food became my greatest ally. It empowered me! It allowed me to make a significant difference in a situation that otherwise felt out of and beyond my control. My passion now is driven by the desire to share with you those empowering aspects of food, and to show you how to harness that power every single day of your life.

My husband outlived his prognosis by two years, long enough to see our son born and to spend almost two years with this new life. It was a couple of years after his death that I re-invented my life, putting myself through many years of school to pursue a career as a nutritionist with the desire to help others find their path to understanding food as medicine, remedy and empowerment. Now, as a nutritionist, I work from the core of each individual, to help you discover how to engage the natural resources of your digestive system as a pathway to heal all your body systems, eradicate deficiencies, and open the channels to invite nourishment and healing.

The results that diet can yield are amazing. I’m delighted to share with you how you can take all that you’re learning and incorporating in your life, along with the many offerings from FxNA, to experience everlasting results for yourself.

Warmly,

P.S. By “diet” I mean your daily intake of food. In fact, the origin of the word “diet” according to the Oxford English Dictionary is “the course of life; the way of living or thinking”.

P.P.S. I’m a firm believer in creating a lifestyle change that is delicious, nutri-tious, and serves you well. As you’ll see in the following pages and in the FxNA courses, there’s no need for your “diet” to feel like restriction or deprivation. We can rename the word or reclaim the word. I say its time to take back the word, to obliterate the verb and embrace the noun. Your diet is your way of liv-ing or thinking. I hope you’ll join me for a life well lived.

During our journey with cancer, Isamu and I learned a lot. That period of time was like my nutrition boot camp. We knew well that diet was not going to provide a quick fix and was not likely to eradicate the brain tumor. Yet we also determined through extensive research that food could make a difference. Our food choices could create the foundation for deeper healing or they could provide an environ-ment for the cancer to grow more quickly. They could shut down cancer-promot-ing growth factors or flip those switches clearly ‘on’, signaling the cancer cells to multiply more prolifically.

We were on a mission and the stakes were high.

And that’s when I first learned some great lessons – the lessons that have lead me to help hundreds of people, to Stick With It myself, and to teach others to stick with it too!

before talking about sticking with it, just what are we sticking with?

Dietary change is different for each individual. I don’t follow one particular diet or dietary theory. Instead I find the solutions that are right for each person, for their health concerns and for the reality of their lifestyle. But how many of us have either been told by a healthcare practitioner or found evidence ourselves that a shift in our nutritional approach would help us to feel better? And how many of us are able to Stick With It! to see the results?

In my practice there are the obvious circumstances where diet and nutrition will allow for healing and regeneration. Those situations include digestive distur-bances from reflux to Small Intestinal Bacterial Overgrowth (SIBO) to Colitis and Crohn’s Disease. Extreme allergies, food sensitivities and excessive yeast are also evident symptoms for embracing a nutritional lifestyle change. Yet the autoim-mune diseases such as Multiple Sclerosis, Lupus and Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis; the immune conditions like cancer, Lyme Disease, eczema and asthma; and the en-docrine disturbances more and more of us are experiencing like estrogen domi-nance, imbalanced thyroid hormones, adrenal fatigue and especially diabetes are all candidates for nutritional therapy and a committed lifestyle change.

how did I learn to stick with it?

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I’ve worked with people with depression, anxiety, autism, sleep problems, Tourette Syndrome, migraines and, yes, food does make a difference! And your ability to Stick With It! is what will make it really matter.

For some of you, “sticking with it” may simply be a pursuit to avoid all of these health troubles. Instead of coming to nutrition and wellness from a place of sick-ness, you may have a commitment to health, longevity and manifesting the best you that you can be. These pages are also for you, because temptation is lurking around every corner. In fact it may be living in your refrigerator!

When my clients and those who take my online courses feel the difference them-selves, I know I’ve hit a home-run. This comprehension, this “Aha!”, is what will make you want to Stick With It. And it’s this self-awareness of how food affects your body, energy, vitality and overall success that I’ve found to be the biggest motivating factor for the FxNA community members. It’s this motivating factor, this ability to keep your eye on the prize, that is the golden nugget we’re aiming to find within you. This is where you move from “Why should I stick with it?” to “How do I stick with it? Tell me, please!”

so what is “it”?

In some ways, “it” is whatever dietary approach you have found to be a path that works for you. It may be:

Figuring that part of the “it” out is something I hope to help you discover in one of my programs.

• Sugar-free• Gluten-free• Dairy-free• Grain-free• High-fat• Low-carb• Peanut-free• Soy-free• Stone-fruit free• Traditional• Anti-Inflammatory• Paleo• Raw• Mediterranean• Local• Or any combination of the above or some specific that I have not mentioned. There are many!

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After the discovery, sticking with “it” is the challenge that makes all the difference. It’s the sidebar to my entire practice because the results we feel from dietary change may not occur overnight. I work with families, professionals and motivated teens all the time to help them figure out how to navigate the most enticing and imposing situations. There are children’s birthday parties, family camping trips, vis-its to grandma’s house, business travels, restaurant excursions, social events and more. And you know what? You can Stick With It through any and all situations, even without being an outcast.

Shana and her husband were inspired to make significant dietary changes to sup-port their oldest son, Guthrie. He was exhibiting excessively hyper, emotional and erratic behaviors. At a young age his meltdowns seemed extreme and he was ag-gressive in his interactions with other children at preschool.

Initial testing revealed some major food sensitivities to the primary food allergens; gluten, dairy, soy, eggs, peanuts and even almonds. We also removed refined sug-ar to help Guthrie manage his blood sugar levels to balance his moods. As you can imagine, this is a lot for a family with young children to navigate.

With lots of support, resources and recipes, Shana and her family have not only learned to navigate but to cruise! Shana comes from a Jewish family while her husband’s family is Italian, so there are plenty of holidays that require extra care and attention. But this family has risen to the occasion.

The Italian side of the family hosts a big pizza night for everyone’s winter birth-days. They gather together and everyone creates their own pizza. Shana and her husband make gluten-free pizza dough to bring for their kids. They top it with Grandma’s homemade pizza sauce. Both of her boys participate in the whole process and love it. They have veggie toppings and meat toppings and skip the cheese. It’s delicious and fun for everyone.

They’ve even bravely made gluten-free matzoh for Passover. Everyone at their family seder loved it and wanted to eat it instead of the regular matzoh.

And Shana shared a story that this past summer they made walnut, date and ca-cao bars with ice cream in the middle for Ice Cream Sandwiches. Some of the other kids at the family event, who typically eat a more standard diet, devoured the dessert and didn’t even question what they were eating!

What Shana’s family is doing is taking the best care of themselves possible. They are truly supporting their kid every day and in every way they’ve learned how. And this brings us to the most important part of the “it” that I want to highlight. This is an essence within you that deserves your utmost care and attention. To Stick With It is to stick with yourself (or your family). It’s honoring your commitment. It’s living in your integrity. It’s loving yourself fully. It’s living your life fully.

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What’s more important… the jelly donut or the energy and endurance that you can have to enjoy a hike or Sunday afternoon bike ride with your family or friends; the stamina to get through a day of work with a sense of accomplishment, success and pride, and with enough spirit to go to that after-work yoga class that you love; and the sparkle and verve to welcome and attract the opportunities in your life that are going to resonate significance?

In my opinion, the support that making a dietary change and sticking with it allows enables all of that to happen, and more.

I remember one Christmas Eve not too many years ago when I suffered the con-sequences of not sticking with it. We always spend the Christmas holiday with my mother-in-law, Mary, in southern California. At the time I was eating a high-raw diet and had been for about a year. Mary had gotten a new cookbook with recipes that she thought would meet mine and Gilbert’s needs and standards. (Our ever-changing standards are not easy to meet!)

Had it been one year earlier, she would have been right on the mark. But that year, I was in the position to make what felt like a difficult decision. It wasn’t about any-thing as excessively divergent as cheesecake or jelly donuts or even bagels. It was about beans! Yet the lesson was momentous.

Mary had chosen to make a savory rosemary white bean stew for our Christmas Evening dinner. She wrote to me about it in a gracious email that I received shortly before our Portland departure. She was excited about her recipe and her ability to whip something up to satisfy all those around the table. And boy did I want to honor her efforts with praise and a hearty bowlful of beans.

Yet I knew that my belly would not tolerate the beans well. It had been many months since I’d digested a legume and the fire and enzymes to do so were ill exercised.

I called my holistic nutrition oriented friends. I consulted my healthy-minded kid. I searched my consciousness for the “right” thing to do. All sources led me to the same conclusion: Just Eat It. In fact several of those advisors sang those words to me to the tune of Michael Jackson’s ‘Just Beat It’. It’s only in retrospect that I wish someone had offered the advice that I am about to give you here.

When it came time for the bean soup I did what I was told. I just ate it. And that Christmas Eve I was up several times in the middle of the night, with a roiling stom-ach ache, making repeated trips to the bathroom.

As much as I would have liked to please my mother-in-law, to do the “right” thing by honoring her efforts and being a good daughter-in-law, the person I didn’t honor that evening was myself. The one that I didn’t take care of was me.

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There are two lessons I learned that night:

1) It’s nobody’s job to take care of me except my own (and it is my job to do so!)

2) It’s not my job to take care of anybody else to the extent that I sacrifice my own self-care, with the exception of my son, and even that becomes questionable in some ways as he grows older.

What I’ve learned since then is to handle these situations with the care and con-sideration that I hope can meet everyone’s needs. I can call my mother-in-law in advance and tell her that I am now eating beans but that I’m not eating grains. I can inform her that Gilbert has tested sensitive to wheat and peanuts and me to eggs and cranberries. I will admit and confess upfront that it must be nearly impos-sible to cook for us! And I can brainstorm with her about what to make for specific meals, how I will shop and help after I arrive and suggest some recipes for Christ-mas cookies, healthy dinners that everyone will enjoy and pantry staples that will enable her to feel empowered to feed us well without worry.

That was a more recent lesson I learned in sticking with it. But the teachings start-ed much earlier, when Isamu and I were first learning how to maneuver the dietary changes we were adopting as we read and researched more about the correlation between food and optimal health.

First we eliminated refined sugar and learned to read labels and look for hidden ingredients. These details are documented in my signature course Sweet Tooth, Bitter Truth. (http://sweettoothtruth.com) Then we deserted dairy and found the healthy substitutions that would enable us to make the foods we craved. (Did I tell you that Isamu loved food? He could get lost in a good steak and a fine glass of port. The way to this man’s heart was truly through his stomach and I was commit-ted to reaching that heart both before and after his diagnosis.)

Next we relinquished meat, keeping fish in the picture to feed the brain with its good essential fatty acids, but giving his chemo-infested body a rest from the more difficult-to-digest proteins. The list of omissions went on and on. And we were not occasional or sporadic forsakers. We were in it for the long haul and wore each new resolution with determination and fortitude.

(Remember that when I mention our dietary parameters I am not advocating that you take the same route. What I mention here is the direction we chose given the particular circumstances we were facing and the information we had access to at the time.)

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By now you may be ready for me to just tell you how to Stick With It. But we’re still not there yet! Sticking with it is dependent on knowing what you’re sticking with and why you’re doing so. We’ve established that we’re talking about dietary change and a deep investment in yourself, whatever that might look like for you. You may have a child with allergies that demands some immediate family changes. You may have been diagnosed with Hashimoto’s and learned that you need to avoid gluten. It’s possible that you’re predisposed to diabetes and you want to learn how to better avoid sugar and processed foods so that you can curb your odds of that predisposition developing into disease. The whats and whys will be different for each of us.

No matter what the reasons, these three insights will serve to whet your appetite for entering the realm of sticking with it. They’re like your Stick With It! appetizer. They will increase your discernment for the journey ahead. Let’s dive right in!

1. consequences

My story about Christmas Eve beans and my digestive disturbances could be in-terpreted as me being super-sensitive. And it’s true! I am sensitive. And proud of it. My hope is that you’ll be sensitive too.

Why would I hope such a thing? Here’s why. . .

My favorite story involving the body’s response to external stimuli involves ciga-rette smoking. Yes, you read that right. Let me paint a picture for you.

Imagine the first time you or someone you know ever took a drag off of a cigarette. (If you’ve never experienced this firsthand, kudos; and if you’ve never seen some-one else do it, perhaps you can just envision what that might be like.) Upon the first inhale the new smoker is assaulted immediately, almost like she’s been punched in the chest. She’ll inevitably start to cough, sputter, bend over from the invasion of the smoke into her lungs. She’ll likely not be able to speak right away and her eyes might tear up. She might actually cry.

three insights to consider before sticking with it

If this fresh smoker is inspired to continue smoking, she will completely lose the natural negative feedback her body was able to give her with that first drag of the cigarette. And if she proceeds to become a more regular smoker, her body will now tell her that the cigarette actually makes her feel good!

The catch here: Nobody is going to refute that the cigarette is toxic to her body. The sad part is that she’s lost the sensitivity, the body’s innate feedback loop, to alert her to the fact that the cigarette does not do her body good.

Instead of renouncing sensitivity as a negative thing, a pain in your butt, a thorn in your side, something to be ashamed of, I invite you to celebrate your sensitivi-ties! They mean you’re in touch with yourself. Sensitivities are a sure sign that your body is communicating with you and that you are listening.

My goal is to bring you more in touch with your body’s subtle messages. In this way, you live your life more consciously and the results in terms of energy, weight man-agement, mental acuity and overall healing will inevitably follow. Once you hear these messages and heed them, you’ll most certainly want to Stick With It.

2. constraints

The second discernment I’d like to share with you involves defining your “it” in a sustainable way. I often describe this in terms of a path.

Have you ever walked on a tightrope? I haven’t, but I’ve watched many people try in a local park. That tight rope is strung between two tree trunks and hovers about three feet off the ground. It’s super short in length and yet, still, not many who I watch can navigate their way across.

Similarly, I often see people set up dietary tightropes for themselves. They try to walk this tightrope all the time and they too fall off. And when they fall, they fall hard. They’re hurt, dejected, ashamed and easily blame the tightrope, even the idea of the tightrope!

I encourage people to ditch the dietary tightrope and define the path. Your path might be narrow or it might be a bit wider. It might have bike lanes that you some-times have to drive into to turn a corner. The difference between a tightrope and a path is that if you’re hiking a trail in the mountains and it’s narrow, and shrouded with poison ivy on either side, you can very likely handle sticking to the path. Simi-larly, what you ultimately want with your diet and food journey is a wide enough path that you can actually walk for extended periods of time without falling off, and a narrow enough path that keeps you feeling your very best.

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It’s important to note, too, that the path will likely change over time. It may become wider as you heal more of your internal organs and your body can readily tolerate more. It may become narrower as you hone in on your sensitivity response mecha-nisms, your needs change as you age, or you realize that the initial parameters aren’t so hard to respect after all.

Realistically defining your own unique path and your own unique poison ivy are also key steps to motivating you to Stick With It. These are criterion that are ex-plored in the Replenish PDX course offerings and teachings.

There are certain food categories that are clearly in the poison ivy patch for me. Gluten, I won’t touch. It doesn’t even enter my mind as viable food. Peanuts are the same; not on the menu. Processed and factory packaged foods are as foreign to my conception of cuisine as monkey brains or dog meat. I’m cognizant that people somewhere eat them, but I also know solidly, without having to think about it, that I’m not one of those people. These foods are clearly off the path.

While I don’t eat dairy, if I’m out at a restaurant whose food quality I trust and something is cooked in some butter, I will eat that. The same goes with sugar. I don’t eat any refined sugar and don’t even consume any high glycemic natural sweeten-ers (like maple syrup or honey). But if I’m at a restaurant that I know and trust, I understand that a little sweetener might be in the victuals – perhaps in a sauce or marinade. (No, I’m not going to eat a dessert out that I wouldn’t eat at home. In fact, I rarely eat dessert out unless I’m at a specialty restaurant that makes something that meets my needs and standards. And then. . . what a treat!). These foods are all in the bike lane.

Most vegetables and fruits, good fats, legumes, nuts, seeds, sustainable fish and more are solidly on the path. And in these ways I define my venue and make sure that I have the bike lane to allow me a little bit of wiggle room without wandering way off track, finding myself standing in poison ivy. And just like recovering from poison ivy, restoring internal balance after wandering off the path does not happen overnight – at least not when you are expertly sensitive.

3. freedom

It’s funny to think of limitation as a route to freedom, but I’d like to illustrate how that can be the case. By looking at sticking with it through this lens, we are again more motivated to stay on our signature path to wellness. We can also appreciate that signature path as the most desirable one without looking into the poison ivy with envy.

Interestingly, I had once heard a story about Moshé Feldenkrais that I later dis-covered was not true. But the story itself is so compelling, and the Feldenkrais Method, developed by Feldenkrais, is such a good example of the principle of

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limitation leading to freedom, that I’m going to tell it anyway.

The Feldenkrais Method is a complementary medical technique of precise physi-cal exercise aimed at expanding movement by refining the use of the body. This is done through cultivated mental awareness and gestures. It’s most commonly and effectively used to reduce pain or restricted movement and to promote general well-being.

The story I was told was that Feldenkrais was a Holocaust survivor who was at some point captured by enemy soldiers and confined in a small space. The tale went on to say that the Method was born of the man’s knowledge and ability to stay alive under such restricted physical circumstances. Because he knew full well that he had to stay physically active to remain mentally acute, he was compelled to find a way to exercise his body, even in such tight confinement.

“What I am after is more flexible minds, not just more flexible bodies.”— Moshe Feldenkrais

Feldenkrais did indeed live through the Holocaust. He was a judo and jujitsu expert at a young age and helped to form the Haganah, the Jewish self-defense force. He was committed to martial arts and began to learn more about anatomy, physiology and kinesiology as he nursed a knee injury developed while playing sports.

The idea that I found so compelling in the biography I was lead to believe was true is that freedom emerged from confines. Matthew Sanford, the paraplegic yoga guru, calls this “Realizing opportunity in the face of change”.

Though the story I originally heard about Feldenkrais was not true, it could be. Many others have found the room to soar within constraints that seem like impris-onment or impossibility to the masses. The Feldenkrais Method, with its subtle movements leading to the deep healing of chronic pain, is example in itself. Mat-thew Sanford and his inspiring story of teaching people to find hope, even physical hope, in the face of emotional and visible restrictions is another. Everyday there are heroes who take their limitations and live beyond them. Freedom exists more in letting go of what we think is supposed to be (but everyone else can eat gluten and drink beer!) than in not having those limitations.

This is why finding your path is not about being on a diet, but instead about defin-ing your lifestyle. Walking that path is not about submitting to somebody’s ideas of what is right or wrong for you, but instead accepting what your body is com-municating to you. Listen with keen ears! Surrendering to your body’s messages becomes a form of freedom from the struggles with pain, discomfort and dis-ease.

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It’s time to get down to Stick With It! business.

Tania is a successful designer at one of the world’s top athletic companies. She came to me with concerns about persistent eczema, lingering issues with immunity, maintaining energy for worldwide travel and the desire to lose some weight. Along the way we developed her signature path which excluded some inflammatory food categories such as gluten, sugar and dairy.

Just a few weeks ago Tania ran “Hood to Coast”, the largest relay race in North America, stretching from the Oregon mountains to the ocean. Tania reported that it was the most physically challenging experience she’s had to date. When she wasn’t running one of the three relay legs she was assigned, she was in the van with her teammates chatting, singing along to music, and eating. Her teammates brought all the typical race day grub – bananas, bagels, power bars, and gatorade. As Tania reported, these things registered to her as, bananas, gluten, weird tex-ture/chemical laden bars, and sugar.

Tania wasn’t about to compromise the performance she had trained so hard for by eating food that her body would likely reject. However she found she was eas-ily able to participate and bond with her teammates, even while not eating their food. She was sure to bring along her own cooler of tasty snacks. She made gluten-free applesauce muffins, raw blueberry chocolate flax bars, banana smoothies, and packed plenty of coconut water to replenish her depleted electrolytes. And she kicked ass on those runs!

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Naomi tells a story of when her in-laws came to town. Naomi is a client focused on optimizing her fertility while facing some significant digestive and auto-immune challenges. She’s made progressive dietary changes along the way to support her healing, energy and fortitude.

Naomi’s in-laws have a tradition of taking the whole family out to dinner. Like many parents, they enjoy dining out, trying new restaurants and treating everyone to an evening excursion. Naomi and her husband chatted about where they could go and which restaurant would meet everyone’s needs. They came up with some viable options, but none really excited Naomi and she knew she’d be in situations where she’d have to articulate and defend her food parameters. She just didn’t feel up for it during this stage of her healing.

stick with it!

In the end, Naomi and her husband chose to host a dinner at their house. They made Korean meatballs, a vegetable curry and sweet potato fries with homemade sugar-free ketchup for dinner. She prepared a chocolate coconut milk ice cream for dessert.

Everyone loved the meal. They said repeatedly how it was more delicious than anything they could get eating out at a restaurant. It felt like a victory for all of them and Naomi was not left in a compromised or vulnerable situation at the din-ner table!

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Tania and Naomi’s stories are both ones of triumph. Here are two women who know what they need and they’re taking care of themselves in the most dynamic way. They’re nourishing themselves and modeling that to their friends and family. That’s powerful! And this bring us to the first Stick With It! tip:

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Crowding out is a concept I learned in one of my nutrition schools. I took the theory and ran with it. The idea of crowding out is that we bring in new foods that are within the chosen path before or during the removal of the old foods. For in-stance, we might come in with a healthy gluten-free brownie or even a nutritious raw brownie before ever saying goodbye to the old form of the dessert.

Crowding out is key to your Stick With It! success because it allows you to see and feel that deprivation is not on the menu. Once your mind is set at ease that you can still eat your treats, that you can have your cake and beat it too, you’re more likely to find the incentive and determination to Stick With It.

In most cases, refined sugar is the first category of food I’m going to recommend crowding out. The reasons are explained and well documented in my Sweet Tooth, Bitter Truth Homestudy program. The in-depth perspective featured in that class takes the topic beyond that niggling feeling that sugar is “bad” and guides you on an expedition into the body and brain on sugar. That course also teaches which sweeteners to keep on the path and which to throw into the ivy, and provides a bounty of recipes and resources for crowding out and setting you on your journey.

Chocolate Nakayummies (http://replenishpdx.com/2011/02/sweet-valentine/) are one my favorite Crowd Out treats to share with people saying goodby to sugar.

Just yesterday I met with Justin, a client whose health challenges suggested to me that we crowd out elsewhere first. We focused on making some clear dietary changes to support his goals without talking about sugar or even the concept of crowding out. As it happens, he ended up ditching the sweet stuff on his own. He was on a camping trip and just a couple of days into the woods realized he had misplaced his bag of sucrose to sweeten his coffee. Being the wise man that he is, knowing that sugar exclusion was on the horizon, he decided to make the leap into elimination on his own.

When he arrived for his appointment yesterday I offered him a piece of chocolate. “Chocolate?”, he questioned dubiously, as if I was uncharacteristically trying to sabotoge his efforts. “But I’m not eating sugar.”

We sat down and proceeded to have a conversation about crowding out. As I ex-plained to Justin, his current course of forbiddance was valiant and admirable, but it might be too narrow of an approach for the long term. Prohibition of all sweets might ultimately feel like a tightrope, instead of a narrow navigable path.

At the moment Justin is appreciating the taboo on all sweets and we decided to honor that, but we also discussed how to approach creating a path which could be successfully steered and would include sweets and treats he could sanction.

crowd out

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By doing this, he is less likely to fall off the wagon, so to speak. He will avoid those feelings of self sabotage and failure by knowing that he can safely satisfy a sweet craving when it arrives.

The Crowd Out theory not only works with sugar, but also with gluten, dairy, eggs or any other food that you find might not be serving you and your health goals. I crowded out peanut butter with my favorite salted sunflower butter. It works equal-ly well in recipes, from cookies to sauces. I’ve crowded out fried potatoes with baked shoestring yams. I’ve taught clients how to crowd out garlic with leeks and onions, soy milk with hemp and nut milk and even grain flours with protein laden nut and bean flours. It all depends on the path, but whatever arises there’s a way to artfully and deliciously crowd out without distress.

Katie is a motivated mom who changed her family’s diet after learning of her daugh-ter’s cancer diagnosis. At the end of the school year her son, the older of her two children, had a 5-day school camping trip. There are several kids at his school on restrictive diets, mostly gluten and/or dairy-free. But one of the menu items for the morning breakfast is a HUGE cinnamon roll. It’s a school-trip tradition everyone looks forward to and nobody is willing to change, despite the fact that several kids can’t participate,

Katie and several of the parents diligently worked on the alternative menu items that would serve all the kids’ needs. And Katie bravely volunteered to make some sort of ooey, gooey substitute for the sweet cinnamon roll. Most of the parents weren’t worried about sugar - just gluten and dairy, but Katie had just started to CROWD OUT cane sugar after learning of its effects on cancer cells from Sweet Tooth, Bit-ter Truth. She’d been experimenting with various alternatives to sugar.

With Katie’s new knowledge, she was also concerned about the kids starting out the day with something so sweet that would only provide short-lived fuel, and hoped to add more fat and fiber while utilizing some of the lower-glycemic sweeteners. She ended up making her oat bars (using gluten-free oats and flours) and decided to make them with a cinnamon-apple filling, using raw honey and arrowroot powder. She incorporated coconut oil, ground flax seed, cinnamon, and a combination of coconut sugar, liquid stevia and maple syrup for sweetening the bars.

One of the parents was very concerned that her daughters would feel deprived if the “substitute” wasn’t sweet and gooey enough, but with a prayer and some luck Katie’s experiment ended up being a huge success. In fact, all the cinnamon roll kids wanted the “healthier” bars, and teachers and kids alike came back to report how amazing they were! It was a wonderful affirmation for Katie, especially at the begin-ning of what she hopes will be a lifelong change for her family. Through the process she found that going without sugar doesn’t mean going without really special, satis-fying treats. Katie’s found the key to crowding out.

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When Naomi chose to host her in-laws at her house, she was doing a great job of knowing her limits and taking care of herself. Sometimes, when we start a new journey or adopt new parameters, it’s a little harder to figure out how to maintain and explain. The maintain is knowing how to manage those fresh guidelines and comfortably take them on the road. The explain is feeling like we are respon-sible for letting everyone know what and why we are adhering to those particular guidelines.

Let’s look first at the part about maintaining dietary restrictions outside of the home. The truth is, we’re going to have situations where we want to step out. We’ll be invited to eat out: we’re expected to attend events like weddings, company gatherings and dinner parties; we’ll need to travel for work or on a family vacation. These activities are an important part of being socially inclusive and we do not want a particular lifestyle of eating to hinder your social life!

The great news is that it doesn’t have to. Having food allergies, sensitivities or health conditions that stipulate dietary changes doesn’t mean that you’re left at home while everyone else goes out and has all the fun. Let’s look at positive ways to step out of the house, from camping to trips to the grocery store and every-thing in between.

Remember Tania our Hood to Coast relay racer? Recently, her design team at work scheduled an offsite meeting. For two days, they’d be brainstorming at a nearby studio.

Their group’s administrator sent out an email to the attendees asking how they’d like their coffee – she’d be making the coffee run in the mornings. Included in that email was a note about lunch. It would be delivered and she wanted to know if any-one had any special dietary needs. Wednesday’s lunch would be deli sandwiches from the local sub shop, and pizza on Thursday.

Tania responded politely informing the administrator of her needs. She volunteered that she would gladly bring her own lunch so as not to be a pain, or “that girl”.

The administrator contacted her later that day with a revised plan: she would or-der Tania a salad on sandwich day, and on Thursday she’d order from a pizzeria that made gluten-free pies. Tania was thrilled with how kind and accommodating her colleague was. It made her realize that if you let people know what you need, they’re happy to make things easier on you. Some of Tania’s team members even asked to try her “special food”!

step out

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Joanna, a client whose family changed their diet to support their child’s sensory sensitivities and previous failure-to-thrive, recounted a story about a trip they took across the country to Portland, Maine. Joanna was reminiscing about a grilled lob-ster she had eaten at least ten years ago at a wonderful local restaurant. Her sister got completely caught up in the memory and excited about returning to the res-taurant. Joanna was hesitant, knowing the extent of her daughter’s dietary restric-tions, but she too got caught up in the excitement, and realized that her daughter could eat a steamed lobster with nothing on it.

They headed into town and swung by the restaurant in the afternoon to see if there was any chance they had a table available for dinner. They did. But they also said they weren’t serving lobster because it was moulting season. They inquired about the family’s dietary restrictions to consider if they could make something work.

Joanna thought this was humorous. The restrictions seemed so many for anyone else to take on! But the restaurant hostess was serious, so Joanna gave her the laundry list. She explained that they almost never eat out because it’s too much to ask of anyone and too risky to consider.

The restaurant was nonplussed. They confidently offered a halibut or salmon dish with a side of steamed snap peas. Joanna asked her daughter, then ten, if this sounded like fun or if it just seemed like a stressful venture. (Joanna’s daughter, prone to stomachaches and digestive discomfort when not eating on plan, pre-ferred to adhere to the rules and tended to be an extremely picky eater.) The child was thrilled with the idea of eating out. “I WANT TO DO IT!” she exclaimed. That evening they all ventured out to dinner. The chefs and waiter had all been prepared and alerted and they treated little L like royalty. They brought her a beautiful piece of halibut that had been poached in a wild mushroom broth with the steamed peas. They even included a sweet dish of local strawberries and rasp-berries for dessert. The whole family had a good time. It was so uplifting and de-lightful to be so well taken care of.

The question becomes just how do we venture out of the house and stay within our eating integrity? Is stepping out the door an opportunity to throw all caution to the wind? Certainly not if you’re honing your ninja sensitivity skills!

But I get it: you don’t want to be feeling extra stress when you’re supposed to be relaxing, either out on the town or out on vacation! So take a moment to review these tips and tricks, inspired by Nourish MD, for eating out and heading out. Once you get used to it, these concepts will become second nature.

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step out trick #1:

If you are traveling, seek out health food stores, farmers’ markets and restaurants in or around your destination. I often do a Google search using phrases like ‘gluten-free Portland’ or ‘health food store San Diego’ or ‘vegan Miami’. You can also try using a resource guide like the Eat Well Guide:

tips:

• Note that not all the places listed on Eat Well or in your search will serve food that’s on your diet. Use this as an initial guide and then check the resources more carefully.

• Starting with co-ops and health food stores is usually your best bet. Those places can usually lead you to others that fit within your guide-lines, and allow you to stock up on some staples.

• Many restaurants have their menus listed online. If possible, check menus beforehand, or definitely before you sit down. Always make sure there’s something for everyone in your family to eat before parking your-selves in seats.

• You can always call a restaurant in advance and ask for their help in meeting your family’s dietary needs. Many are willing to accommodate. This is always good to do if someone else has chosen the restaurant. That way you don’t enter the situation in a panic and make choices that won’t benefit you later. For instance, if you’re gluten-free and going for sushi, you can always call to ask if they have tamari on hand. If not, bring your own! (You can search for Organic Tamari Travel Packs on amazon.)

• Know that you can order very specifically! It’s only uncomfortable the first couple of times. Most wait-staff don’t mind at all, especially if you enlist their help.

• When at restaurants, keep your choices simple. Baked halibut is going to be easier to ask for without butter than shrimp scampi!

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step out trick #2:

Before you leave on your travels, plan a menu. Even if you don’t follow it exactly, you will have the ingredients you need and have a plan to fall back on.

Whenever I travel to conferences or on trips with my son, I make sure to pack breakfast food, if nothing else. My preference is to eat out as few meals as pos-sible. My favorite travel breakfast foods are granolas, seed cereals, and simple packaged products like Chia Goodness.

step out trick #3:

If you’re staying in a hotel, always ask for a refrigerator. If you can get a room with a small kitchenette that’s even better! Whenever I travel I call in advance to make sure there is 1) a refrigerator in the room and 2) that it is empty! When I first asked for refrigerators I found I’d arrive to a fridge packed with Coke and Snickers bars. Not on the menu and no room for the food I packed!

After Laura’s 12-year-old daughter was diagnosed with Crohn’s Disease she was devastated. She was so worried about her child and determined to do whatever it took to treat her condition through diet and naturopathic remedies.

Laura’s daughter responded incredibly well to the diet we defined. It was free of gluten, sugar, soy, and corn, among other things. After a few months the whole family was eating differently and her daughter was getting healthier all the time, gaining weight that she couldn’t previously maintain and no longer complaining of the bellyaches that had debilitated her.

But as summer approached Laura began to feel anxious about their family va-cation – something she usually looked forward to with unadulterated excite-ment! This year they were planning on a nine-day road trip that would take them through national parks and towns they had never been to. It was daunting to think about how they would keep eating well while traveling! As they planned their trip, Laura realized that they would need to stay in places with kitchens whenever possible. These rooms cost more to book, but she figured they’d save that extra cost by not eating out as often, if at all. A little internet research found places with kitchens and pools. Rummaging through a cooler is Laura’s least favorite part of camping, but staying in places with full kitchens and refrigerators made it much easier to deal with perishable foods over a long road trip.

The national park they stayed in did not have cabins with kitchens, but they went online to the lodge restaurant, checked out the menu, and called to make sure

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they could meet the family’s needs. They made a list of foods they knew they en-joyed and could eat safely and did a major shopping trip the day before they left.

Knowing in advance that they were eating in was fine for the kids. It allowed them all to relax more where they stayed. Planning meals in advance, while retaining some flexibility, meant they knew they were going to eat good food that they could look forward to having. An important part of not feeling like they were missing anything was to bake some treats in advance to always have on hand. And packing lunches and snacks for hikes was easy because they had a full larder. The trip was wonderful and Laura’s family didn’t yearn to eat out at all. The one time they did, in the lodge restaurant they’d called in advance, it was a special treat.

Along the way Laura’s family needed to restock. They had searched online before leaving home and found a natural foods store in a town where they were staying. Seven months after her diagnosis, Laura’s daughter is healthy and finally grow-ing taller. She is energetic and vibrant. Laura and her husband know they can do the things they love to do together, like taking vacations, with just a little planning ahead of time.

step out trick #4:

Pack your utensils and eating supplies. We have some bamboo eating utensils that have a handy little carrier case. Packing two sets, even for trips on the plane or in my purse, is a cinch. There are light and packable cutting boards and strainers for washing fruits and vegetables on the road. These days, there are even eco-friendly collapsible cups and bowls.

You can also include your favorite condiments and staples in your travel gear or even in your everyday purse! These can include things like sea salt, stevia, cinna-mon, protein powder, coconut sugar, etc.

Sometimes we even like to pack a small blender like a Magic Bullet so I can make smoothies and nut butter milks in the hotel room with ease. This is also something I recommend to any of my clients who are traveling for marathons or races.

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Each year my son’s class heads out to the mountains for a three-day camping trip before school starts. The 30+ families that attend the trip gather around the fire each night, talking, singing and, of course, roasting marshmallows. One year I was sure to pack plenty of coconut sugar and cinnamon. I also brought lots of peaches. Since my son doesn’t eat marshmallows, I wanted him to have a treat on a stick too!

A few of us sliced up the peaches and carried two big bowls out to the fire – one with

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cut fruit and one with a coconut sugar/cinnamon mix. The kids who didn’t eat sugar started the process: They speared a slice of fruit with a stick, we sprinkled it with the sweet mixture and they held their fruit over the fire for some carmelizing. Af-terward they came back for a final sprinkle and then gobbled up their treat. Soon all the kids were lined up to get in on the action, leaving their parents sitting with bags full of uneaten marshmallows.

step out trick #5:

One week before your travels, start preparing foods that can be frozen or stored. These include energy bars, cookies, trail mix, pancake mix, granola, even cooked quinoa or brown rice.

step out trick #6:

A day or two before your trip, consider which foods will keep in a portable con-tainer for your travels – either on the plane or in the car. Start to stock up! These foods can include chopped veggies, salsa, hummus, lunch meat roll-ups, hard-boiled eggs, grain salads, homemade chicken nuggets, veggie sushi, muffins, etc.

We have particular bars that we choose for travel food and always have a good stock of those to make sure we are not left out in the cold without a snack!

If you’re road-tripping, be sure to pack some alternate milks as well, either home-made nut or seed milks or unsweetened nut, hemp seed or coconut milk. Some Sun Warrior Protein Powder (vanilla flavor) also works for a quick non-dairy milk alternative.

step out trick #7:

Snacks. . . don’t leave home without them!This is true for the moment you step out the door before travels as well as every single moment you step out the door. Truly, don’t leave home without them.

If you’re a parent, do you remember when your kids were little and you would always pack a baggie or two of something or another? Return to or embrace that same idea. Pack a snack.

Why? If you get too hungry without a snack on hand, you’re likely to make choices that aren’t sound. Bars, protein-dense cookies and even bags of nuts are great for thwarting a snack attack. Try a mix of raw nuts, seeds, coconut flakes and goji berries for lots of good protein, fat and fiber to carry you from one destination to another.Annie and Ian are a young couple motivated to change their diet to support their two-year old daughter. When they came to see me little Ellie was not pooping on

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her own, she didn’t sleep through the night and she was often plagued with stom-achaches. She was hyper-sensitive to not only foods but environmental triggers. Through some processes of elimination we were able to determine that she was unable to digest certain fats and while aiming to heal her body we had to adopt an extremely restricted diet with only specific fats in place.

Ian had a business trip planned to San Diego and they decided they were going to make a family trip of it, despite the many challenges their diet presented. On the last day of their five-day trip they decided they were going to venture out to the San Diego Zoo.

As they’d experienced success in making careful choices in eating out thus far, they didn’t anticipate the zoo would be any problem, especially since it’s a tourist des-tination that serves many children daily. They arrived at the zoo after packing up their hotel room and had only seen a couple exhibits before Ellie got hungry.

Ian went in search of food and explained that they needed a gluten-free option. He was advised to order two grilled chicken sandwiches without the bun. The chicken came out and it was obviously breaded and they were so very hungry! But they returned the food and moved on. The same thing happened at a second zoo restau-rant. Luckily Annie had a package of cashews on hand, one of the nuts that Ellie could eat, and they were able to have a little snack while in search of an option.

They left the zoo and went hunting for a restaurant. They parked in a nearby com-mercial district and hadn’t walked half a block when they spotted a place called The Range. It boasted that it had organic food and pastured meats. Score!

Annie ordered a spinach salad with berries and grilled chicken and walnuts. It was amazing. Ellie had a salad with mixed greens, apple slices, walnuts and grilled chicken. They both got olive oil and vinegar on the side. Ian got a pulled pork sand-wich with sweet potato fries and coleslaw. Ian and Annie shared a moment where they looked at each other with pride and happiness as their toddler chomped down on such a tasty and healthy salad.

The staff took their dietary restrictions super-seriously and were very respectful, making them feel totally at ease. It ended up being one of the best meals of the trip and certainly much better than anything they would have been able to eat at the zoo. It was a great lesson in the importance of making good food a priority when traveling, and a nice reminder that even without perfect planning it is possible to stumble upon amazing food on a restricted diet as long as you know what you’re looking for. It’s a good thing that Annie and Ian held out for their goal and that they had a little snack to hold them over!

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It’s impossible to consider the concept of Stepping Out without addressing dinner invitations and potlucks. These are situations where we’re inevitably faced with a plethora of dishes that defy the borders. In these circumstances I typically bring (or offer to bring) two dishes – a savory choice to be shared with all for dinner and a dessert that will wow everyone at the table (and convert them to the enlightened side!). Here’s my favorite pie for seducing fellow diners.

As you can see, there are many ways to support maintaining your new eating pat-terns. How about that explaining part?

While it’s not your responsibility to justify your dietary patterns to anyone, at some point or another you’ll most likely be in a situation where you have to explain your-self. The truth is that when you eat different, you are different. You’re no longer part of the mainstream or critical masses. You’re tiptoeing through certain environ-ments like the county fair or Disney Land. Oddly, family gatherings may pose just as many discomforts.

Be prepared to speak up for yourself without oversharing. It’s not your job to con-vert anyone, even if you feel one thousand times better having altered your diet. You can opt to be simple and straightforward, offering something as basic as “I’ve found that certain foods do not agree with me.” If you have a particular health condition, you can be more pointed yet still succinct: “Eating dairy exacerbates my irritable bowel syndrome.” Either way, find a statement that claims ownership. This thwarts the opportunity for debate.

While it’s critical to learn to speak up for and take care of yourself, it’s also impor-tant to avoid being bossy or belligerent. Preaching about your dietary directions can put people off.

It’s true that your way of eating may be healthier. People might be curious. They might also feel threatened. Try to answer questions politely and share your knowl-edge and personal experiences only when you feel the recipient is open to your insights. The most important thing we can do to explain what we do is to lead by example. Every time I share food with others I demonstrate that restrictions do not need to feel restricted.

By taking care of yourself in these moments, and not concerning yourself with what you perceive anyone to think or believe, you’re more likely to hold true to your own intentions to Stick With It. Convincing and debating can serve to dimin-ish your drive. Remember, sticking with it is sticking with yourself (not anyone else).

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Teresa is the life of the party. She has a vibrant personality and her friends love her. She’s struggled with weight loss over the years, no matter how much effort she puts into it, yet she commands a room with her stunning beauty and her strong self-confidence. And she’s finally learned to support feeling great in her body. On Teresa’s birthday this past year her friends were determined to take her out to din-ner. They wanted to celebrate Teresa’s magnificence!

Teresa didn’t like the idea so much. There would be food and cake laden with in-gredients that she no longer ate – particularly gluten and sugar. Sensing her ap-prehension about going out, and wanting to please her, Teresa’s best friend asked if she could make dinner for her.

The night of her birthday, the doorbell rang and in walked Teresa’s best friend along with two other close girlfriends. They carried in bags of groceries and got to work. After a fun spell of chopping, blending and baking, dinner was served.

Teresa’s best friend had actually called me. I provided recipes for a gluten-free and dairy-free lasagna, a special non-alcoholic drink, and a dreamy raw gluten-free chocolate pie. Teresa said it was “worthy of casting a birthday wish upon”. She had two slices, for two birthday wishes, well deserved!

Teresa was touched that her friend had reached out to me to do right by her and meet her needs. Not only did it make her day extra memorable, but it enabled her to really indulge on her special day. After all, birthdays are a perfect time to Pig Out as long as you’re not going to start your new year sick in bed due to your al-lowances!

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Susie is a busy mom and the producer of a public radio show. She initially changed her diet during one of the FxNA Seasonal Cleanses: Truly Food Ways to Nurture Your Health. She found she had more energy, lost weight that hadn’t before budged and conquered the insomnia that had plagued her for her entire adult life. Susie is now an avid seasonal cleanser and sticks with a more liberal set of eating standards during non-cleansing times.

Susie still struggles with craving sweets when she’s premenstrual. She’s figured out her favorite go-to pig outs. She loves to make the coconut milk yogurt she learned to make on a cleanse, let it get good and cold, then eat a generous portion with blueberries, blackberries and strawberries. She may even drizzle it with raw honey and then chows down. Another favorite is to make a recipe for gluten-free, sug-ar-free pancakes. She’ll eat a huge stack with maple syrup, and fresh peaches if they’re in season. All cravings are met, well within her path of acceptance.

pig out

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Pigging out? . . .Why is a nutritionist talking about pigging out? Let’s be real! I’m human and I know you are too. There are times when we’re super hungry; ready to indulge and celebrate, throwing all caution to the wind; are experiencing hormonal fluctuations; or just plain want to comfort ourselves with some feel-good goodies. The truth: every so often one of those things is going to crop up. You’re going to want to be prepared!

The best way to Pig Out is to know how to Crowd Out. Spend some time devel-oping your favorites, like Susie did. Find the go-to treats that work for you and touch that ancient and emotional chord within you that says Yum and Ahhhh. If it’s chocolate you prefer, go for that. If its ice cream, know what you can make or have on hand. Establishing your mental Pig Out toolbox is going to be what saves you from returning to your old standbys – the Milano Cookies or the Chunky Monkey ice cream. Instead have your favorite treat recipes flagged, make them easy to find and know where you can get your hands on some delicacies that fall within your path or bike lane.

The beauty about pigging out on healthy sweets is that you’re not simultaneously robbing your body of nutrients as you chow down. When you raid the body of vital minerals and vitamins so that you can process your grub, you’re likely to over-indulge. Borrowing key nutrients from your cells to digest a sugar-laden, fried or processed morsel, numbs your body’s ability to tell you that it’s full. The satiety feed-back loop is confused. In fact, instead of your body alerting you to the fact that its craving has been gratified, your brain tells you otherwise. It continues to inform you that you’re hungry! And so you keep eating and eating and, well, eating.

What we’re aiming to do is reclaim the Pig Out. Own the reality, the necessity, the chance to truly indulge. With a healthy but delicious treat, like a Chocolate Naka-yummy, your body is going to have a honed and reactive mechanism for fullness. Craving satisfied! This is where you find your own internal counterbalance to the Pig Out.

I co-created Sweet Victory: The Ultimate Sugar Detox (offered twice/year) with the chef Ricki Heller from Diet, Dessert & Dogs for a reason. Ricki likes to explain that she comes from a family that practiced “The Clean Plate Club”. “In our house” she says, “it was more like the “Clean Pan Club.” My sister and I could bake up brown-ies in the morning, and by evening, the pan was clean.”

Ricki has a sweet tooth. Several years ago she discovered that she had Candida (yeast overgrowth) and decided to pursue an anti-candida diet, low in all sugars including fruit!

One of the first desserts Ricki created while on the new plan was her Carob-Coco-nut Sweeties (recipe below), little truffle-like orbs that can be mixed up in a flash.

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Made primarily from almond butter, tahini, carob powder and coconut, these little confections were entirely acceptable on her candida-busting regimen. She figured she’d mix up a batch big enough to last two or three days so that she could nibble any time she felt the urge for a sweet. The batch yielded about 6 bite-sized balls, and she was eager to taste-test.

Imagine Ricki’s delight when she discovered that her Sweeties tasted really good! So good, in fact, that she soon found herself eating another. . . and another. . . and another. Before she knew it, she’d polished off the entire batch, in under 10 minutes.

At that point, it would have been very easy for Ricki to freefall into true binge mode (“Well, I’ve already overdone it, so I may as well really blow the entire anti-Candida diet now, and eat some of this ice cream or these M&Ms.”) Instead, she resisted the urge to stress about it—as she normally would—and calmly reviewed what she’d just consumed: every ingredient in her sweet treat, she reminded herself, was actually good for her; and not one of those ingredients would feed the yeast that she was trying to eliminate from her body. True, she’d eaten a few more treats than she would have liked to eat, but so what? Compared to the junk foods that had landed her in this dietary predicament in the first place, her six “sweeties” were no more than an extra boost of health food!

In fact, for the first few months Ricki followed only one rule: “Eat as much as you want, as long as every ingredient is on the path.” In other words, she was more worried about quality (whether the individual ingredients in a food were whole, natural, organic, and low glycemic) than quantity. It was that rule, in fact, that got Ricki through the early detox period and all of the initial sugar cravings. After that, she was able to take her Pig Outs down a notch!

single-serve carob-coconut sweetiesMakes 4-5 balls.

ingredients:

1 heaping Tbsp (20 ml) smooth natural almond butter1 heaping Tbsp (20 ml) tahini (sesame paste)2 level tsp (10 ml) carob powder (sift if lumpy)pinch salt2 tsp (10 ml) finely ground chia seeds 8-10 drops plain or vanilla stevia liquid1 tsp (5 ml) pure vanilla extract (optional)heaping 1/4 cup (65-70 ml) unsweetened, dried shredded coconut1 Tbsp (15 ml) hemp seeds (or hemp nuts), optional

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carob-coconut sweeties preparation:

In a small food processor or mini processor, blend the almond butter, tahini, carob powder, salt and chia until you have a smooth paste. Add the stevia and vanilla, if using, and whir again to blend. Add the coconut and hemp seeds and pulse until evenly distributed. Scoop the mixture by teaspoonfuls and roll into balls. Refriger-ate (or freeze) 20 minutes or more to allow the mixture to firm up a bit. (If you can’t wait to dig in, they’re still delicious right away, but they will be fairly soft). recipe contributed by Ricki Heller from Diet, Dessert & Dogs

Another important recommendation I’d like to make regarding those inevitable Pig Outs is to honor them. Of course I invite you to honor yourself, what you’re feel-ing in that moment and to explore why it is that you’re experiencing the desire to Pig Out. In your journey to optimal health it’s valuable to take the time to cultivate awareness and consciousness of your patterns and behaviors.

I also suggest that you glorify the object of your Pig Out. Here are three simple steps for acknowledging your hungry appetite allowance:

1. give it a stage:

Pull out your grandmother’s favorite China dessert dish or find a perfect sweet little bowl. I have small square colored dishes that always make me happy with their bold and modern simplicity. They’re my delightful and self-regulating (they’re petite!) platform for permissiveness. Even if I go back for seconds or stack the plate high with my favorite grain-free sugar-free mini muffins slathered with ghee and apple butter, I know I’m serving myself in style.

2. have a seat:

Go ahead and step away from the kitchen counter. Pull out a chair and place your decadent deliverance in front of you. Have a seat and behold what you are about to devour.

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3. take a breath:Just like a prayer, the delectable dish in front of you holds the promise of taking you “there”, whatever the there is that you’re looking for in that Pig Out moment. So take a moment. Breathe in the consent of satisfaction that the food will bring. Heck, you can even let it know that you agree to accept its pleasure fully!

Acknowledging outright that our food is here to serve us in nourishment, in healing and in comfort is an important part of keeping dietary change palatable at every level. If you’re macrobiotic, make some kanten. If you’re raw, whip up some cashew cheezecake. If you prefer salty to sweet, oven roast some garbanzo beans with garlic sea salt. And then, when the hankering demands, allow yourself to go for it!

don’t forget that you can go for it and stick with it!

Sticking with it certainly requires some practical application techniques as I’ve outlined here. But sticking with it may also require that you address a deeper emo-tional component. I like to call this the motivating factor. It’s what turns you on. It’s the nugget that galvanizes and arouses action.

In speaking about the things within us that motivate us to make a change and Stick With It!, I’d like to reference my husband and our journey as an example. While April 15th has deadline significance for most taxpaying adults, for me that date took on different meaning eleven years ago. It was the day I took my husband to the hospital and the ER doctor told us that there were three masses appearing on the CT scan of his brain.

I have to confess that there are several days that still loom large in my memory of the trials we faced together. I allow myself those three days like I allow myself homemade chocolates and sprouted corn tortillas. There used to be more. (More days and more dietary indulgences.)

Yet the worst health news can potentially breed the most significant metamor-phosis for an individual and an entire family. It’s a predicament that illuminates purpose and priority.

In the past few weeks I’ve been working with a number of clients with some very important decisions to make regarding diet and health. Their health, or in some instances the health of their child, is in jeopardy. Yet the idea of dietary change, the prospect of eliminating certain culturally-enjoyed fulfillments from the plate, can seem as daunting as the diagnosis itself. I get it. This is real pain. It’s the pain of dispensing of much of what we know to be true and relegating ourselves to the realm of being one of “those people”. One of those people who, so the stereotype says, has to choose their restaurants carefully, drive the waiter crazy with endless questions, and for whom it is very difficult to cook. Entering into that realm de-serves a process of grief and mourning. It also deserves a measure of applause for embracing the power that we have over our own health and recovery.

When I first presented the research to my husband that sugar consumption can feed cancer growth, he was done with sugar. He never ate another bite. (But he was given less than six months to live, possibly missing the birth of his son.) When I explain to my clients who have chronic Lyme Disease that gluten is causing them further digestive distress and inflammation, they leave their appointment no lon-ger feeling the lure of the bread at the bakery just next door. (But they’re riddled with more pain than most of us can even imagine.) When I initially delivered the news about dietary change to my then eight-year old client Stella, who was about

what turns you on

30 | Stick With It!

to have a bone marrow transplant to help her combat Leukemia, she threw away the Starburst and the Mac & Cheese and does her very best to adhere to all the rules and regulations I stipulate for her ever-changing needs. (But she knew, even at that age, that this was a matter of life and death. She knows which one she wants.)

My intent with these stories isn’t to chastise those of us who struggle with the dietary changes we determine to make or are advised to make. This is a struggle we all share. It’s incredibly hard work to digest change, let alone make it, and then Stick With It!

My intent is to invite you to lower the height of the stakes that would allow you to climb through the perceived obstacles of a food-based approach to better health, to digest the change possible for you, to make that change, and Stick With It! We don’t have to wait for cancer to strike to start sticking with better choices for health. What we need is to find what turns us on enough to get fired up to follow-through for ourselves.

My promise to you is that I’m here to help you discover and implement the dietary refinements that are appropriate for you, in ways that will work for you.

Welcome to the life that includes the breakthrough tools you need to Stick With It! Sticking with it is the #1 solution for making the intentions of your diet truly work for you. You’re now on your way to success!

P.S.One of the best ways I’ve found for helping people hone in on how their food is affecting them is to have them keep a Food / Mood / Poop Journal. As I always say, I don’t care about quantities for this tracking, just what’s coming in, what’s coming up, and what’s coming out. I’ve included the FxNA Food / Mood / Poop journal here for you.

I invite you to take a few days to track your input without judgement. After three or four days, sit down and look it over. Are there any patterns, behaviorally or symp-tomatically? Can you draw any conclusions for yourself from the process?

Enter into this exercise as a detective and be your best advocate in taking the next step forward in listening and respecting yourself.

Happy tracking and trekking!

31 | Functional Nutrition Alliance

what turns you on

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food/mood/poop journal

Name .......................................................................................................................................... date ............................................................

8 oz of water:

food mood poop

bedtime previous night: .............................. wake time: .............................. # times I woke up through the night: ......................................

Handout © Functional Nutrition Alliance