Archive for the ‘Nutrition’ Category

Our New Wild Card Approach to Self Care

By Monica Cravotta | Published: Monday, February 1, 2010

Three years of ridiculously bad sleep, a laughable exercise routine, a high dose of economic stress and a solid propensity for weekly binges on either chocolate chip cookies or Annie’s mac and cheese or a basket of tater tots at Dog Almighty……um yeah, I’m not exactly the poster child for Self Care that I strive to be. Yes, I balance my occasional mac and cheese binge with frequent visits to Casa de Luz thanks to a trade my husband worked out with the owner, and I prepare plenty of healthy meals for my family — but all together I haven’t felt great about the big picture of our lifestyle.

Reading my Self Care posts, you may have gotten the impression that I’m the queen at manifesting all things good and healthy for myself and my family. (Ha!) Health and well-being is certainly my number one priority right now. I’ve been striving for it and certainly writing about it a lot — but quite honestly — our diet and exercise routine (or lack thereof) hasn’t come close to what I believe is necessary for disease prevention and longevity. Living through the last month of my entire family so unhappily sick helped me get clear on our need to change something about the way we live.

Our one fabulous bit of progress has been on the sleep front. Our new approach to the family bed? Divide and conquer. Our littlest, now 16 months, has turned a corner and can happily sleep seven or eight hours with her Daddy. YES! (this “yes” really deserves eighteen exclamation points to give you the full idea of my feelings on the subject). She may wake once or twice, but she immediately falls back to sleep. And I feel OK about it, because she’s still being responded to with sensitivity and love. This is a life changer. Had I continued to sleep with her, she would still be nursing every two to three hours and I would officially be The Crazy Cravotta Lady. So, it’s Daddy and sweet baby in one bed; me and sweet toddler in another. What about the husband-wife thing, you ask? We’re working on some creative solutions in that department.

Now. To the truly healthy lifestyle and self-care question. My husband and I have been saying we’ve got to figure out how to work exercise back into our schedule for months and it just hasn’t been happening. And I’ve been worried that when I’m back to work 8-5 and anxious to get home and see my girls, the probability of fitting in exercise could be even more challenging.

And then I got this wild card idea while setting intentions for the New Year. What if we rented out our guest room to someone as a trade? Maybe someone studying to be chef that would love free rent in exchange for grocery shopping, preparing meals for us five days/week and cleaning up the kitchen afterward? That would free up as much as 2 hours/day for me on those days! Time that I could take the girls out in the jogging stroller and knock out a run, get some special time with them at the neighborhood park, and come home to a healthy, home-cooked meal.

So we went for it. Posted an ad on Craig’s List earlier this month. And Voilà! Would you believe the dream we put out there was a dream come true for someone else? A young, delightful woman who wants to change careers and become a chef moved to Austin last week to pursue her passion for cooking. She told a friend that she really hoped to find a family here that she could live with and cook for to get practice toward her dream profession. And she’s starting cooking school with the Natural Epicurean in May.

She moves in tomorrow.

February 1st, 2010 marks the beginning of a new chapter in our life and our mission to take better care of ourselves while caring for our sweet angels. We hope and give thanks for this little experiment being a positive experience for all of us. Power of Intention rocks!

Posted in AP & Self Care, Nutrition | 8 Comments

Recharging & Fortifying Depleted Mama

By Monica Cravotta | Published: Wednesday, January 20, 2010

“Every human being is the author of his own health or disease.” Buddha

I fear this is going to come out sounding ridiculously trite and cliche, and I’m saying it anyway. Health is everything! And like anything in life that we love, it’s so damn easy to take for granted until you don’t have it. This last round of sick for everyone in the family has me bound and determined to make health our #1 priority.

We’ve been committed to eating mostly vegan (we still eat eggs, fish and butter), and to minimizing our consumption of fried and processed food and refined sugar. Fans and friends of Rip Esselstyn who convinced us to change our diet six years ago, we believe diet is the #1 foundation for both short-term and long-term health. Check out his Engine 2 Diet web site. The name comes from his fire station in Austin — all vegan firefighters, thanks to Rip’s influence.

Sleep and regular exercise come next of course — the first of which must remain in its current “lack” state in order for me to stay committed to attachment parenting in the way I’d like. The second, I have the ability to get on top of and will when we’re all past feeling so crummy.

What I can do is follow what I’m calling the Recharge & Fortify Mama Plan. It’s a combination of prescriptions from my naturopath and a diet recommendation from my friend, Patrice Sullivan, the most amazing healer and acupuncturist I know. These women, among others, became concerned when seeing me last fall following my year of mothering a newborn, toddler and teen, and told me I was extremely depleted and needed to get on top of my health immediately.

I’m doing my best and find it challenging to keep up with everything they’ve suggested while taking care of two small children. I’m on top of the supplements for the most part and am eating this way 80% of the time — just not juicing yet. Here is everything suggested to me:

DIET

Morning: tea, red clover in tincture for hour or two. When hungry, fresh juice: veggies plus apple and lemon with 2 tsp spirulina, 1 tsp maca. Next, miso soup with 1/2 tsp bee pollen, more tea or diluted jar juice. Smoothies fine on a warm day. Chew juice/smoothies to activate better digestion.

Lunch: vegan meal: combination of beans/legumes, rice, kale, and veggies is ideal; salad with sprouts and seaweeds. You can make a “pressed” salad while you juice in the am. Mix 1 tbsp goat yogurt and 1 tsp fresh lemon into salad and put a heavy bowl on top to press. Pressing has the effect of “cooking” the vegetables in the sense of making them more digestible, but preserves the active living enzymes.

Dinner: 80% veggies. Some almonds, egg or legumes if you feel like it. Sprouts and seaweed are good too.

* Note: use soaked beans versus canned, and soaked, raw almonds.

Bed Time: goat yogurt with minerals.

SUPPLEMENTS & HOMEOPATHIC REMEDIES (Am I keeping up with this? Not entirely…..but I do my best)

Posted in AP & Self Care, Nutrition | No Comments

Healthier Chocolate Chip Cookies

By Monica Cravotta | Published: Thursday, January 14, 2010

Notice that I wasn’t so bold to flat out call my recommended cookie recipe “healthy”. Though sweetened with maple syrup, which is much healthier than refined sugar, these cookies would probably merit the healthy stamp using pureed fruit substitutes (banana or apple), which I haven’t opted to do yet because I love this recipe so much exactly the way it is. One step at a time for me. Dumping refined sugar feels like a great start.

According to a Food Facts article on Suite101, maple syrup is about 60 percent as sweet as sugar. Maple syrup has a medium-low glycemic index (GI) of 54, which is certainly a step in the right direction — but it’s still high enough to cause a blood sugar jump, so diabetics are advised to use sparingly.

Another refined-sugar alternative to consider with a considerably lower GI than maple syrup is agave syrup, which has a GI of 15. Though I love maple syrup, its price tag provides another motivator for me to switch to agave as our sweetener of choice since Agave is generally half the cost.

Either should work in this AMAZING recipe from one of my favorite cookbooks, Feeding the Whole Family, by Cynthia Lair. I can’t recommend this cookbook highly enough. It is great. Her chocolate cookie recipe, which I think is the best on the planet, falls within a complete chapter of wholesome desserts — all using various alternative sweeteners. She defines them all and explains how to use each of the granulated and liquid natural sweeteners listed. Feeding the Whole Family offers much more than desserts; Lair has fantastic, healthy recipes for every meal with a focus on whole grains, vegetables, legumes, sea vegetables, fruit, and all things truly healthy.

I love the way she offers suggestions for how to use part of a recipe for babies so you maximize your food prep time, her advice for best foods for breastfeeding mamas, and her suggestions for well-balanced meal menus and healthy lunch-boxes.

These cookies are super easy to make — I can generally throw together the dough and finish baking 2 batches of a dozen each (I double this recipe) in 1 hour.

Cynthia Lair’s Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Walnut Cookies

1 1/2 cups rolled oats

1 cup whole wheat pastry flour

1/2 tsp sea salt

1/2 cup maple syrup

1/2 cup cold-pressed vegetable oil or melted, unsalted butter

1 tsp vanilla extract

1/3 cup chopped walnuts

1/3 cup malt-sweetened chocolate chips (Note the alternative to standard choco’s here. Haven’t found them myself. Whole Foods?)

Preheat oven to 350° F. Combine oats, flour, and salt together in a bowl; set aside. In a separate bowl mix together sweetener, oil, and vanilla. Add wet ingredients to dry mixture and mix well. Stir in nuts and chips. With moist hands form dough into cookies and place on a lightly oiled sheet. Bake 15 minutes, or until lightly golden on edges.

Makes 1 dozen cookies.

Feel like learning more about sugar alternatives and their glycemic index? I found a nice resource on the organic lifestyle magazine blog. Also, check out these recommendations from my friend Lis Riley (Thanks Lis!):

Which alternative (natural) sweetener to use where

Recipes using alternative (natural) sweeteners