–>
Today I went on a really cool hike with my soon-to-be mother in law, Tazmin. We started at the Los Liones Canyon and took the East Topanga Fire Road Trail and saw some amazing views. You can see the ocean, the buildings downtown, and the Pacific Palisades Mountains. I highly recommend it for an inexpensive healthy way to spend the morning.

Hiking is really great, not just for your legs, but also as a way to catch up with family and friends. For me, having the support of your loved ones in pursuing a healthier lifestyle is extremely important. Yes, it is possible to do it on your own, but it will be really difficult if you live in an environment that isn’t supportive of this change. When I first started eating healthier, my fiancé started dieting too. He didn’t do exactly what I was doing, but the fact that he was on his own journey towards health, made mine feel less lonely. I feel like this support is such a beautiful way of showing someone how much you love them.

I’m slightly embarrassed to say that I do enjoy watching The Biggest Loser. I’m a sucker for any motivational story and throw in a makeover towards the end and I’m sold. On this show, the really successful people have their family exercising and dieting at home. I think when your loved ones make your priorities theirs as well, then that relationship is really solid. After all, people change all the time, but in order to keep the relationship healthy I believe changing together is key.

I found this article in the research section of Nutra-Ingredients.com: Good bacteria may wipe out antibiotic-resistant pathogens: Study that I feel deserves significant attention. Unless you have been living under a rock, you are aware of the problem with antibiotic resistance, and it’s potential effects on our ability to perform even the simplest procedures successfully. Dr. Oz recently aired an episode about this problem and The New York Times addressed this problem in an article about Antibiotics and the meat we eat. I won’t go into all the details of how dangerous the overuse of antibiotics is for our health, as you are most likely already aware of it. Instead, I want to talk about how good bacteria, particularly from food, will likely be part of the solution to our problem.

As I’ve recently started growing good bacteria in my kitchen for kefir, I’ve had first hand experience how strong these cultures can be. I’ve spent the past couple days with the worst case of detox symptoms I’ve had yet, so much so, that I was wondering if I had the flu. That’s right. I had a sore throat, running nose, cough, acne, chills and hot flashes, which might have been a fever if I had bothered to check. Since I was starting to worry … and I had gotten some Easter treats in the mail and my sugar addicted brain can’t resist it when it’s in the apartment, I decided to try an experiment and see if my symptoms would disappear. I started eating sugar again and stopped my glass of kefir a day. It worked! I felt immediate relief from my fake flu, and a couple days later it’s almost completely gone. Right now I’m taking a break from my kefir until I feel back to normal, and then I’ll build up a tolerance to the stuff until I can drink a full glass a day again without feeling horrible. I had heard about how pathogens will die during the fermentation process, and I had read about how important probiotics are for the immune system. However, until I experienced this detox, I had never truly understood how incredibly powerful they could be.

What can we do to protect ourselves?

1. Buy locally, especially animal products. A lot of these antibiotic resistant bacteria is coming out of the industrial food complex. The animals are pumped full of antibiotics because their living conditions are so disgusting that the animals would get sick and die before they could sell them. Water and soil from nearby farms may be affected as well so even vegetables can get contaminated.

2. Check Food Saftey News for recalls. They have an app for the iPhone, which makes checking easy even from the grocery store.

3. Avoid hospitals by leading a healthy lifestyle. Hospitals have tons of sick people and lots of antibacterial soaps and sanitizers, which do not necessarily kill all the the bacteria, especially the antibiotic resistant strains. If you wish to clean or sanitize make your own natural products.

4. Grow and eat your own fermented food. This food has a rich and long history of bringing health to many cultures. I bought my bacteria at GEM cultures, but if you know someone they may be happy to share. They tend to grow quickly. Plus, you don’t have to repurchase if you continue to feed it … like a pet.

Do you need some saturated fat while your on a diet and trying to lose weight?

 YES!!!! Sorry for the enthusiasm.

Saturated fat from a good source is good for metabolism. You technically don’t need it to lose weight, but it can help you lose weight and is essential for your health. I like cold-pressed raw coconut oil and eggs from my farmer’s market that are fed sunflower sprouts. The egg yolks are a gorgeous bright orange and I usually prepare them sunny side up or over easy. I don’t want to damage the nutrient content of the yolks so I keep them really raw. I threw them in a shake a couple times but it seemed like a waste of something so delicious. I always cook them them in coconut oil since it’s a very stable cooking oil.

Avoid trans fats, even if the label says 0g trans fats look for hydrogenated vegetable oils and vegetable shortening in the ingredients list and avoid that product. It still can contain up to a gram of trans fat.

Sugar and carbs are the real problem and cause you to gain fat (not fat), which is why people lost weight on Atkins. Not that I’m advocating that . You’re not just what you eat, but what your food eats. So saturated fat from an industrialized meat source, which is fed subsidized crap and given hormones and antibiotics will likely cause you to gain weight.

Check out the books Know Your Fats and Wheat Belly for good sources of information on fats in your diet.

Check out this post over at Kristen’s Raw. I think it takes a lot of guts to be open about her health issues, especially since she has cookbooks, a youTube channel, and a blog focused around vegan and raw food. I think it’s important to continually research your diet and keep updated on the latest news and books, even if they are about foods you no longer eat. Raw SOS, which was mentioned in the bestseller Wheat Belly, also has a page for vegans that describes the difficulties she had with her own diet, and what precautions to take if you wish to continue being vegan.

Since I’ve personally done raw vegan for about two months, then vegan, and have recently been experimenting with some animal-based foods, I can understand how difficult it is to change up your diet. When you start to make exceptions, it’s harder to maintain willpower. It’s also difficult to explain to your family and friends what diet you follow, and can bring on cravings that can be difficult to control. With all the conflicting recommendations it can be confusing. My advice is to take everything with a grain of salt and a little bit of faith, and remember to keep doing your homework.

I’ve added another video to the lectures playlist I have on our youTube channel. I saw Tyrone Hayes speak when I attended Carnegie Mellon, and his lecture called Silent Springs to Silent Night was extremely memorable. You can watch that lecture as well on youTube, although this video touches on his main points from that lecture, and has some additional information from Penelope Jagessar. Although this video focuses on the toxins that get passed to the baby from the mother, it is still relevant to anyone interested in being more aware of their environment and their health.