When it comes to weight loss there are so many products to choose from. There seems to be a food to fill any kind of need that we have. These franken foods come as…

Low Carb Tortilla’s, Low Carb Bread, Low Carb Chocolate, Low Carb Desserts, Low Carb Syrups, Low Carb Sweeteners and Low Carb Countdown Milk.

These foods all have artificial or modified ingredients in them. When I was vegetarian I ate plenty of fake meats, cheeses and sauces with horrible ingredients thinking they were healthy. I did not see any bad health problems until I was eating them for over a decade!

I now prefer to eat REAL food that my grandparents would recognize. So even if I am feeling emotional and want to sink my teeth into an apple or banana to get my sugar fix – I will. I will eat REAL honey. I will eat sprouted whole grain bread. It will cause my cravings to skyrocket and it will cause me to overeat. It may also cause a Candida Yeast outbreak.

But real food has real nutrition. Fake processed foods cause the real damage to your body (How else did I get insulin resistant!). Think about what happens every time man tries to interfere with food…

• Turning away from butter to margarine… we have created trans fats and a heart disease catastrophe!
• Turning away from raw milk/eggs to pasteurization… this has allowed for the industrialization and factory farming of animals and getting away from the traditional family farm.
• Turning away from whole grains to bleached and processed grains… These grains are so nutrient deficient that they need to ADD vitamins back into them.
• Turning away from nutrient dense spices to artificial flavours… These flavours are so dangerous that they kill brain cells.
• Turning to Genetically Modified Foods to mass produce food.
• Turning to fast food junk rather than slowly cooked nutrient dense traditional food.
• Turning to mass pesticide/fertilizer use and poisoning of our food, soil, water and air and abandoning traditional biodynamic organic ways.

There are still probably many ways that we alter food and in turn poison ourselves that I have not thought off.

Is it any wonder why we are sick?

Am I supposed to trust these people that put this junk on the market? I don’t think so.

All of this is done for one reason – For profit!

Don’t feel bad about cheating on your low carb diet with real food. Do it occasionally if it does not cause to much health and weight issues.

To your health and wellness,

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I have created a new blog that logs all my daily food, drink and exercise. My goal is to update this blog daily with pictures of any new food that I try. Please note that I am not a food photographer and the photos will not depict the taste!

I will not be calculating my daily carb intake on this blog. It just takes to long.

This is not a recipe site, but I will link to any recipes that I find from different websites.

You will find that I do have occassional cheat days (about once a month). These days don’t seem to affect my weight but they do affect my Candida. These days are not planned but are a result of feeling crummy. The cheat meals normally happen in the evening as well. But the next day is back to normal low carb eating.

Here is my new Low Carb and Anti-Candida Menus Blog…

http://healthyfitmomlowcarbmenus.blogspot.com/

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I go to great effort to get high quality foods for my family. I eat Low Carb but my family does not. So that means I have to prepare our food differently. My children only get organic sprouted grain bread. I don’t throw out the end pieces even though I could (the kids would not eat them). I let the end pieces sit on my counter and dry up and then I put them through the food processor to make healthy bread crumbs for pork schnitzel recipe.

This sprouted grain bread is expensive – $5.79 a loaf (I have to learn how to make my own bread!). So when they come home with their lunch sandwich half eaten I feel bad for having to compost it. If I put it back in the fridge they will not have any desire to eat it later and then it just sits there and spoils.

Yesterday my youngest daughter came home and brought back a half a sandwich. When I was cleaning up the kitchen after supper I looked at it and thinking to myself “should I eat it or not?”.

Eat it Argument:

• The sprouted organic grain and the organic cheese have some good quality vitamins and minerals in it. I would not go and open up a bottle of vitamins and just dump them in the garbage. So I should not throw out quality food.
• This organic food is expensive.

Do Not Eat it Argument:

• The sprouted grain bread has carbohydrates that will feed my Candida Yeast.
• The bread will give me cravings even though I am full after eating dinner.
• Psychologically I have given myself permission to eat other foods that are high carb and high sugar.

In the end I ate the leftover sandwich. It was after dinner so I was not hungry. I just ate it to not waste good quality food. I also did end up eating other foods that are not so good for me.

When you are trying to lose weight and feed a family it is very difficult to make decisions like this.

What would you do?

(maybe I need a puppy dog??)

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Watch this video before your next take out meal!

Ok, so yesterday I stumbled upon a video that is very disgusting. I really wanted to share it but I was not sure if it fit the blog. I have decided to share because there is an important underlying message.

(video no longer available)

So disturbing, isn’t it?

On YouTube where this video got posted three days ago there is a great outrage and the people commenting are just revolted. This video has also had about 750,000 views in such a short time, making it one of the most viral videos I have seen.

Really, this is just gross and the person receiving that food is probably not at deaths door because of it.

There are people though that allow of the poisoning of our food everyday. We feed the poisons to our babies expecting them to thrive and be healthy. The poisons are even put in baby formula. I am talking about the FDA. The FDA approves genetically modified foods, chemical additives such as splenda, aspartame, msg, high fructose corn syrup and synthetic flavour enhancers to be added to our everyday food.

Yet there is not so much of an outrage over this.

So what is more harmful, a booger on your cheese or MSG (a known neurotoxin) in the daily foods you eat for breakfast, lunch and supper?

Know your food! Know what is in your food, how it is handled, how it is grown and better yet, know the farmer.

To your health and wellness,

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“He who fails to plan, plans to fail” This quote is so true to me!

I try to plan and set up routines and try to be as efficient as can be. I have found that I need to schedule my routines so I don’t just brush them off and not think that they are important.

A good example of this is my laundry. I need to do laundry very regularly, but it is not necessary critical that I do it every day. Yet I do know that when my kids are looking for clean socks and clothing that it is getting to that critical point and I need to reset my priorities.

The same thing can be said for scheduling in my exercise. I have to admit that I have not weight trained for about a month. I have also started  taking walks instead of running. I have to admit that I have lost my drive to be fit. It is not critical of me to workout everyday but after a while of not doing it I do miss the positive things that weight training does for me. It is crucial that I resume my fitness goals.

So with this kind of funk that I am in, I am more and more convinced that the key to reaching your fitness goals is through the mind. I did have routines set up, but they got derailed. To set them up again I have to be in the correct mind frame to do it.

To do so I need to take baby steps. I used to be a flybaby at Flylady.net. It is a free website that helps you make routines on how to organize your house, create home cooked meals and other helpful tips to become more efficient. I stopped being part of their yahoo group due to the number of emails that they sent out. But I learned the value of routines and starting with baby steps.

I have to remind myself that my day starts with the evening before. I need to go to bed early. I have so much more energy when I am well rested. My first baby step needs to be with getting to bed early. I have a lot of trouble with this. Having more energy plays a significant role in my mindsets. I am more positive, I smile and laugh more. I am much more cheery and fun.

I struggle going to bed early. There are many issues to it, but mostly because I don’t have a routine set up for it.

To set up routine and carry it through with self discipline is to do it in babysteps. Tonight I will be in bed by 10:30. Tomorrow will be another day and another babystep. I need to plan this and write it down.
My routines need to be written down and scheduled in. Without my routines I fail.

Initially I was going to do a 30 day period were I would set up my routines and then adjust them to suit my schedule better. However 30 days is still a big chunk of time and I get a bit frightened of massive undertakings so to do this I will have to break it down day by day.

A great tool that I have discovered is Google Calendar. It allows me to organize my time. I can write down my routines and my daily agenda. I then can take my daily routine and adjust it to a weekly schedule. With that weekly schedule I then take it one week at a time and do my routines for a full thirty days.

With this kind of organization I take any kind of thinking and feeling and get rid of it. Instead I take one day at a time and just do it. I don’t think about tomorrow or the next thirty days. I just concentrate on today and adhering to my google calendar for today.

I can schedule in my workout. I can schedule in my sleep. It may sound ridiculous to do so. But when I let feelings like “I don’t feel like it” control my thoughts, then nothing gets done.

“He who fails to plan, plans to fail”

Become Unstoppable with your Fat Loss Goals.

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My daughter was only 1.5 years old when she started to get cavities in her two front teeth. We were vegetarian/vegan at the time. The cavities resulted from a high carb diet rich in soy and refined
grain products. I was pretty devastated at time because all my effort was going towards raising her in a healthy way. However she was definitely not thriving. Her weight was low, she was pale, her teeth had big gaps in them and now her teeth were starting to rot. She was high needs as well and cried all the time. I was wondering how a child could be so miserable when there was nothing to be miserable about.

Childhood Dental Caries Can Be Healed!

I started looking into the dental caries and discovered traditional foods. Traditional foods are a foods prepared the way our ancestors have prepared foods in just recent history before the commercialization and industrialization that we know so well today. Traditional foods are prepared in such a manner as to get the most nutrition out of a particular food.

For example:

• Grains, nuts and seeds are sprouted or soaked to make them more digestible and to release and neutralize phytates that inhibits mineral absorption.
• Foods are preserved by fermenting which aids in the healing of the digestive system (sauerkraut, pickles, fermented salsa).
• Organ meats are a prized food and cherished for the nutritional value.
• Animals are fed food that they thrive on and allowed to pasture and eat insects which allow for their meat to have more nutritional value.
• Eating of raw animal products (meat, milk, egg etc.) Pasteurization and cooking of our food has killed many beneficial enzymes and denaturing proteins.
• Also the removal of fats has drastically decreased our absorption of fat soluble vitamins such as Vitamins A, D, E and K which are essential for immune, brain, bone and eye health. Low fat diets are dangerous because of this very fact.

Traditional fats are saturated fats. They are heat stable and don’t go rancid very easily and therefore they are the preferred fats to use for cooking. They also make food taste delicious and more nutritious!

So we took the soy and refined grains out of our diet and replaced them with traditional foods. This is what
healed the cavities!

We did not even use toothpaste on our daughters teeth for the first 3 years of her life. No fluoride either! Just pure nutrition.

To your health and wellness,

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Anyone who is trying to lose a few pounds knows that getting the munchies can ruin the best dieting efforts. I have been able to narrow certain foods that are able to stop cravings instantly. Being on a Low Carb Diet is a great benefit to curbing appetite, but there are times when I still would love to snack on some unhealthy foods. So instead of reaching for junk food, I go for these 5 healthy alternatives.

My Top 5 Craving Killer Foods are:

1. Avocado
2. Cheese made from cream
3. Home made bone broth soup
4. Cashew Butter
5. Coconut Oil.

The higher the fat content of the food the better it will be at satiating the hunger pangs.

Here is a great recipe on how to supplement with coconut oil so it tastes good.

Fiber does bulk up in the tummy but it does not satisfy the taste buds as well as fat does. After a fiber rich meal I can still want more food even though I am not hungry. Fats have the awesome ability to satisfy the palate and the hunger pangs.

To your health and wellness,

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Today was my very first attempt at cooking duck. I had tried it a few years ago and thought it was delicious. However it was not a low carb recipe as duck is usually made with a sweet sauce. Making a sweet sauce was out of the question so I had to think of another way of preparing this duck.

I looked around for a good recipe, asked for advice and came up with my own little yummy delight. The duck tasted awesome. However it was a very tough bird and my kids would not eat it. I had just roasted it like a chicken, but a bit longer and I had basted it a few times during its two hour of roasting in my oven.

Then I checked with the Nourishing Traditions cookbook and they recommend cutting the duck up in pieces and trimming the fat and skin off. The duck pieces are then marinated in the juice of 4 lemons.

So I cooked my duck wrong! Next time I will marinade it first.

Nevertheless, I will share my yummy spice combination.

Low Carb Roast Duck Spice Rub

Juice of 1 lemon
1 teaspoon of Garlic Powder
1 teaspoon of Thyme
2 teaspoon of Paprika
2 teaspoon of Salt
1 teaspoon of pepper
Cayenne to taste

1 whole duck

I combined the spices in a bowl and rubbed my duck with the mix. I then drizzled the lemon juice over the whole bird. My duck was almost 8lbs and I roasted it in the oven at 375 degrees for two hours. I basted twice and covered my duck when the skin looked like it was going to burn.

There are some better duck roasting cooking tips and instructions at e-how.

But the spice mix is great for duck and would be very yummy for chicken as well.

Enjoy!

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I was doing my grocery shopping earlier this week and noticed something that bothered me a great bit. Usually I am in a hurry and I just grab my regular foods that my family eats. But this time I was moving a bit more slowly. Once I got my produce I moved toward the dairy aisle to get my butter. I stopped and looked around…. The butter was on the outer edge of the fridge and on 3 very narrow shelves. The margarine was right next to the butter but with 4-5 times more product! I was flabbergasted.

Sure margarine is cheaper and spreads easily on flimsy white bread but with all the bad publicity on how bad Trans Fats are for you, you would think that margarine sales would be down.

That obviously is not the case if the shelves are jam packed with this heart attack, stroke and cancer causing product.

I recently saw this advertisement in the April 2009 Prevention Magazine for margarine.

This ad is comparing different levels of Trans Fats in their competitors products! Trans Fats have now become a marketing tactic.

The truth is that there is no safe level of these kinds of fats!

Margarines are marketed as a healthier alternative than butter. But butter is a real food and margarines are an industrial processed food.

The whole process of hydrogenating oils is actually very disgusting. They use cheap polyunsaturated oils such as cottonseed (which is not a food! And is heavily sprayed with pesticide), soy, corn and canola. These oils are very unstable and go rancid when exposed to heat. The oils then go through a steam cleaning process, then nickel oxide is added to them, after that the oils are put through a reactor and then hydrogen is added. This is the process that turns the oil form liquid to solid. However it does not come out smooth and creamy. Lumps occur and the oil has turned smelly and grey in colour. To get rid of the lumps a soap-like emulsifier and starch are added. To get rid of the smell the oil is steam cleaned again! To get rid of the grey colour the oil has to be bleached and then a natural yellow colour is added. Artificial vitamins and flavours are added to make this product look and taste like butter.

Blah! How gross.

Weston A. Price Foundation has the full story on Trans Fats.

So my question to you…

Why do you think margarine is still so popular?

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Obesity in children is a growing health problem. In the United States the obesity rates for children have tripled since the 1970’s. These kinds of statistics have been found here in Canada as well. This is very alarming and has huge impacts on public health. The Canadian government has stepped in and introduced exercise programs into the classroom. A new study that was published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal is saying that these exercise programs are not working in reducing the BMI (body mass index) of these children. The CBC News reported on this study and you can find it here.

It really is no surprise to me. Children today do not eat real food! Obesity is a symptom of a sick body. Our kids are malnourished with skyrocketing insulin levels and can’t be cured with jumping jacks and dancing.

Sugar, fast food and denatured grain products are the real culprit.

Can a ban on sugar in schools be the answer this obesity epidemic?

The Browns Mill Elementary School in Lithonia, Georgia that did just that, they banned sugar! They did this over ten years ago and have never looked back.

In the first six months of the sugar ban, disciplinary incidents went down 23 percent, counseling referrals decreased 30 percent, and in the first years of standardized test scores, reading scores improved 15 percent, she said. Browns Mill was named a national blue ribbon school and a Georgia school of excellence in 2005.

The body mass indexes were not recorded to see if the sugar ban had a direct effect on obesity but the article did interview a girl who had lost significant weight and went from an overweight child who became a lean college student. This was a huge life lesson for her.

The school started teaching kids about nutrition and real food that hopefully the kids will take home to their families.

I have wondered if I should address this issue with my children’s school.

Sugar not only affects the health but also behaviour and therefore learning. All the kids would benefit from a sugar ban.

Would you like to see schools ban sugar?

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