Tips to Boost Progesterone - your CHILL hormone

Progesterone is the wonderful hormone that’s secreted during the second half of your menstrual cycle whose main role is to help prepare the body for pregnancy (and if you don’t get pregnant, progesterone drops, as does your estrogen, and you menstruate). When pregnant, progesterone stays elevated during pregnancy (which is why we are often more “nonchalant” during pregnancy; I know I was!). Progesterone is one of the main reasons why we have a stronger instict to rest and relax in that week before our period when its highest (same applies during pregnancy). It also helps support your mood and optimal thyroid function.

If your progesterone is too low, you’ll likely have irregular cycles and/or heavy periods, you may fail to release an egg during ovulation, and if you’re pregnant, low progesterone can lead to a miscarriage. And overall, when progesterone is low, we are more likely to be stressed and anxious (exactly what we don’t want, especially during pre/post menopause which is stressful enough!)

So even if you no longer care about PMS nor fertility, boosting your progesterone during pre and post menopause is absolutely KEY, and while yes taking replacement hormones can help, so can your daily diet and lifestyle! In today’s blog, I share many tips on how to boost progesterone with your food and daily habits…

Read More

5 STEPS TO IMPROVE DIGESTION, BANISH BLOAT & GET A FLAT BELLY

Do you tend to get gassy and/or bloated easily, especially after meals?

Or are you struggling to get rid of that little bulge at the waistline of your jeans, that stubborn extra fat that seems to become a bigger problem as the years go on?

Too many people (especially women) think cutting calories and boosting their workouts is the answer to eliminating their bloat and muffin-top, but usually, that strategy fails.

After much research and even personal struggle, I realized that the key lies in first understanding what's causing you to get bloated and gassy, and eventually contributing to your belly fat. I always believe in first finding the ROOT CAUSE behind your health issues, and in the case of excess belly fat and bloat, it’s usually centered around inflammation as well as sub-optimal digestion.

HERE ARE 5 STEPS TO IMPROVING YOUR DIGESTION, ELIMINATING YOUR BLOAT AFTER MEALS, AND GETTING RID OF THAT EXCESS BELLY FAT.

Read More

6 Tips to Stay Younger and Live Longer

Almost everyone wants to know what do to “boost longevity” and delay the signs of aging.

The good news is there is A LOT we can do in our day-to-day to help delay our aging (and feel younger and healthier for longer).

Even though we often associate genetics with aging, it is now well-known that only 20-30% of longevity is related to genetics, which means that environmental factors such as diet and lifestyle play a much larger role in how long we live (and more importantly, how we FEEL and LOOK while aging).

READ MORE for 6 (well researched) holistic practices that can help support longevity.

Read More

February: Heart Month - 6 tips for optimizing heart health

February is the month of the HEART, and an important time to review your heart health and how you can support it better.

Unfortunately, cardiovascular disease (CVD) remains the LEADING CAUSE of death worldwide, shortening our lifespan. I strongly believe (together with many leading doctors and health experts) that this will change once we start to prioritize nutrition and lifestyle choices as our first line of defense.

Today I’m sharing 6 things you can start implementing ASAP (apart from the obvious of NO smoking, staying active and avoiding fried foods, trans fats and packaged foods!).

Read More

Want to Balance Your Hormones and Optimize your Weight? Take these 4 steps!

Hormonal balance requires a holistic approach, including:

  • DIET: nourishing your body with a nutrient-rich diet

  • EXERCISE: engaging in regular physical activity

  • REST & STRESS MANAGEMENT: prioritizing sleep + managing stress, and

  • MINIMIZING TOXIC LOAD: reducing exposure to environmental toxins (as well as internal toxins!); start by switching to cleaner household products, clean beauty, etc.

I delve quickly into each of these points, giving you actionable steps in each category so you can start to improve your hormonal balance and overall health ASAP!

Read More

HOW ADDING COLOR TO YOUR PLATE CAN BOOST YOUR HEALTH & BEAUTY

Including different COLORS in your plate – coming primarily from nutritious vegetables and fruits - is an easy and fun way to maximize the nutritional benefits of your meals (and make them more tasty and pretty!). Eating a wide variety of colorful fruits and veggies will help to increase your immunity, strengthen your muscles and bones, slow down your aging, improve your skin, and can even contribute to weight loss!

There are 6 main colors, and I suggest to have at least 3 colors present in each meal (ideally some green plus 2 other colors). And aim to have a bit of each color every day.

This goes hand in hand with a recommendation that I always give my clients, which is to include at least 2 different veggies (or fruits) in each meal. And every day, I suggest (generally speaking) having 5+ servings of veggies, 1-2 servings of fruit and 1-2 (or more!) servings of nuts/seeds and/or legumes, always switching it up.

Read the blog for the benefits of each color, and some healthy foods in each category to start incorporating into your daily diet.

Read More

10 Tips for an Excellent Postpartum Recovery

As I’m coming close to the end of my “4th trimester” after birthing my second baby, I want to share some tips to help with HEALING after giving birth (natural or c-section) - also applicable to help heal from any surgery or trauma. These are things that I myself applied and helped me immensely to have a great recovery.

Read More

5 Foods to Combat Stress & Anxiety

When people think of stress, they think mostly of work and deadlines. But there are so many other forms of stress that are impacting your health. And one of the biggest ones comes from the FOOD that you’re putting into your body.

The foods you eat can affect your hormonal balance and create inflammation in your gut, all of which can stress out your body.

Generally, when your body experiences any type of stress, its primary focus becomes controlling that stress. Your body will secrete more cortisol and adrenaline, which tells your system to “restock on the energy supply” even if it’s not really depleted. As a result, it makes you hungry and encourages fat storage. Yikes! (This is why I say, “stress can make you fat!”) Note: everyone is different and people respond differently to stress, but this is what most commonly happens.

And what’s interesting is that certain foods contribute to stress on your body, while others help alleviate it.

What are the key foods that creates stress?  

Coffee, alcohol, sugar, and generally, all heavily processed foods. They increase your stress hormone levels, and will feed the bad bacteria in your gut, causing stress in both your hormones and your gut.

What are the foods that actually help your body stay healthy and combat stress? 

Read my blog for 5 categories of foods that help your body cope with stress and anxiety, from the inside out!

Read More

10 Ways to Support Your LIVER and help you detoxify

Our liver removes all toxins, clears medications from your body, breaks down our food so we can properly process it, and even helps us with hormone regulation - so it is absolutely crucial that we take proper care of this essential organ!

In this blog, I share my 10 most important steps to take to better care for your liver (via simple lifestyle and diet habits).

Read More

Five Reasons For Your Bloating & How to Cure It

I used to constantly struggle with a bloated belly, where I often felt like I was 3 months pregnant.  It was terrible, but nothing I did seemed to make it go away,  so it became normal for me.  I tried many diets, and maybe a 2 or 3 day juice cleanse would help temporarily, but of course, a few days back to my normal eating and the bloating would come back.  

It took me a long time - essentially one year of nutrition courses and lots of additional personal research and experimentation - to finally realize that the bloating was not normal, and was totally curable.  

So if you’re in the same camp as I was, struggling with constant bloating and maybe occasional gasiness, it’s important for you to know that there is a cure to get rid of this for good.  Like most things, it all starts with identifying the root cause behind your bloating.  So let’s take a look at what I have found to be the key triggers of bloating, gas and constipation:

  • Imbalance in your gut bacteria

  • Gut infections and/or Food sensitivities

  • Lack of digestive enzymes / low stomach acid

  • Lifestyle: Stress, Eating rushed, and Not chewing your food properly

  • Diet: Eating inflammatory foods, Improper food combinations and Not prepping/cooking your foods properly

Read more at my blog to discover the 5 steps to cure your gas and bloating both short and long term!

Read More

Seed & Tea Cycling for Hormonal Balance

Both Seed cycling and Tea cycling are 2 of the easiest ways we can help support our hormones in a gentle way (especially when combined with other diet/lifestyle habits to support hormonal balance). The idea is to use different seeds and teas to help support our hormones in the different stages of our cycle to help regulate our cycles and minimize PMS. It can also be beneficial for women with PCOS and women trying to get pregnant naturally.

Read More

Cycle Syncing – How to Eat & Move During Each Phase of Your Cycle

As women, in order to feel our best and support our health, it’s important to understand our menstrual cycle and connect with the different stages and the hormonal fluctuations that accompany each stage.

This is the basis for what we call “Cycle Syncing” - which teaches us to connect with how our body shifts throughout our cycle, and use these changes to our benefit. It involves aligning lifestyle factors like diet, exercise, social commitments and more, in accordance with the different phases of your cycle to improve hormone balance, alleviate common PMS symptoms, improve fertility, and more.

The result is an increased sense of health, balance and connection to our femininity in our day to day.

Today I share my overall basic guide to cycle syncing to get you on your path to feeling better at every stage in your cycle, as well as improving your femininity and the connection to your body.

Read More

A Key Element for a Healthy, Happy Brain (and 5 steps to take now)

The gut-brain connection is extremely powerful, which means that a huge part of having a healthy mind is having a healthy “gut”.

If you’ve ever felt butterflies in your stomach when nervous, or nauseous when scared, you KNOW your gut is sensitive to your emotions and stress. And the reverse is also true. The health of our gut has a direct effect on our brain and mood. Poor digestion from too much processed foods, bad food combinations, or poor elimination (ex. not pooping properly) can have a huge negative impact on your mood, energy levels, mental clarity (and more!).

SO if you want to have a healthy, happy brain, you need to start by having a healthy GUT! Here are 5 steps to get you started…

Read More

Constipation Relief Smoothie

For those days when you feel a little “backed up” and need some help going to the bathroom, this delicious green smoothie is a great way to support your digestion and get you some good bowel movements!

Read More

8 foods to protect your skin from sun damage

You can spend all you want on improving your skin from the outside, but to get the best results, you also need to focus on improving your skin health from the INSIDE.

If you want beautiful skin, you need to start ADDING BEAUTY-PROMOTING FOODS into your daily diet (as well as reduce the foods that lead to oxidative stress and contribute to aging and inflammation).

This also applies to SUN-CARE. You can literally use food as sunscreen (in combination with your physical/mineral sunscreen of course). Apart from applying a good nontoxic sunscreen daily, it helps to consume certain foods that can help to protect your skin from the damaging effects of the sun's UV rays. 

READ MORE for eight foods rich in phytonutrients that may help protect your skin from sun damage, and promote healthy, beautiful skin.

Read More

8 Holistic Tips to Help Reduce Risk of Breast Cancer

October is breast cancer awareness month; a month to raise awareness about our need for Cancer prevention education, something I’m passionate about ESPECIALLY since we’ve discovered how much we can do with food and lifestyle to lower our risk

Today I’m sharing 6 important doctor recommendations to lower your risk of breast cancer, plus 8 more holistic tips to help reduce your risk of disease in general.

Read More

Need a boost of energy? Try these tips and recipes

Check out my blog for 8 TIPS TO BOOST YOUR ENERGY and 2 DELICIOUS METABOLISM-BOOSTING, ENERGIZING RECIPES to start off your day right and give you energy all day long.

Read More

Anti-Inflammatory Diet: 3 steps to lower inflammation naturally

I wanted to write about the anti-inflammatory diet because, even though I’m against “dieting”, this isn’t really a diet; this is about creating a lifestyle of limiting inflammatory foods and regularly incorporating anti-inflammatory foods and lifestyle choices to support better health. It’s something that has helped me immensely, and I can testify that it supports gut health, hormonal health, and maintaining a healthy weight WITHOUT dieting. Following these tips that i’m sharing below will help a lot towards achieving your health goals, I promise!

The food we eat — and don’t eat — can help lower and even prevent this chronic inflammation, to help us feel better, lose weight and reduce our chances of illness.

Today I share 4 ways to enhance your diet and lifestyle to help you reduce inflammation and feel better overall.

Read More

4 Foods for a Healthy Brain

There are so many things we can do in our day to day to support our brain health, even through our diet. Remember to first use FOOD AS MEDICINE. Incredibly there are many foods that have proven to boost our brain health and help prevent early “ageing” of our brain (preventing memory loss, etc).

Here are 4 “foods” that you want to consume regularly to support a sharp mind and overall brain health (plus helpful, easy tips on how to implement them in your day to day).

Read More

Pregnancy Diet: 12 foods for a healthy mom and healthy baby

To increase your chances of an amazing, healthy pregnancy, birth and baby, you want to focus on eating a real whole-foods diet as much as possible, avoiding processed junk foods, eating a variety of colors, and including these 12 pregnancy “superfoods” as much as possible (in addition to your prenatal vitamin and any other supplements/medicines that your doctor or midwife prescribed).

Check out my blog for 12 super foods you should be eating regularly as part of your Pregnancy Diet, for a healthy mom and baby.

Read More