Tag Archives: magic looking glass for eating

How Magnesium Will Ignite your Motivation to Eat Better this Summer

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“Summertime, and the living is easy…”

Who wants to be thinking about all the improvements you should be making to your eating habits, when all you want to do is lie on the hammock with a good book and a glass of wine?

You want life to be easy at this time of year. To relax at the cottage. You’re determined to finish up that project so you can pack for your road trip out West. Maybe you’re working from home, but it’s hard to focus with the kids needing study snacks every 20 minutes.

In my quest to help you nourish and nurture the woman you are, I’ve worked to make it easy for you. I’ve been doling out one little step at a time on Instagram. These are the seeds to help you create the garden of health you want to grow.

Today, I’m elaborating about one particular topic, because this might just be THE one that will unlock the motivation to find your happily ever after in all the others. It’s a simple shift that can support you on so many levels. (Yes, that’s right, we’re gonna get into the soul of the thing along with the practical bits.)

The conversations that spurred this idea

A while back, I sat down with a selection of women to find out where they most needed help taking better care of themselves.

After dozens of conversations around the various and usual challenges we face, a clear thread emerged through each and every one: we all have a hard time getting motivated.  It’s hard to change habits.

Even if you know what to do, it’s so hard to go ahead and do it.

Even when you have a very specific goal in mind –

  • losing weight, better sleep, more energy
  • nourishing your thyroid, detoxifying your liver, stronger bones, better menstrual health
  • preventing diseases that run in the family

– all the things that women struggle with are not enough to get you making those all-important changes.

These are the very issues that inspired me to run the Eat More Veggies! Challenge over several Junes: looking for the simplest way to replace the junk and improve all of it.

The fact remains that you do too much in a day, so trying to make all the changes you know you need to make is just daunting. You need something even simpler still, but something that would be vastly helpful.

Here it is: Eat more greens.

Here’s why:

Like all vegetables, greens are delicious packages of fibre and vitamins and minerals. Yes, you need a variety of colours, but greens have their very own superpower.

They contain magnesium.

Magnesium is the mineral at the heart of a plant’s chlorophyll, in the same way that iron is the core of hemoglobin. These minerals capture the elements that allow metabolism (life!) to happen.

Magnesium is an integral part of a plant’s seeds – grains, legumes, nuts – but gets lost in refining. Women (well, everybody) are low in it these days, as North Americans generally eat a fair amount of refined foods.

It’s depleted further still with too much salt, sugar, alcohol and caffeine; basically, anything that makes you pee more, means you’re losing magnesium more.

As one of the key minerals inside your cells, magnesium works with over 300 enzymes to keep you functioning smoothly. Here’s a short list of what it can do.

You need magnesium for:

Energy Production: Your liver uses magnesium to perform many of its own vast array of functions. First and foremost, the release and use of energy from the macronutrients you eat.

Think of it this way: pure magnesium, in the presence of oxygen, will ignite instantly. Ever see a magician use flash paper to make a fancy green spark as part of his trick? That’s magnesium. Magnesium helps create that spark inside your cells to give you energy!

Hormone Production: The liver also needs magnesium to convert the various hormones and precursors from one form to the other. Magnesium is key to steady periods, better fertility, and to help ease the transition through menopause as levels decline.

Stinky armpits? That’s a sign that the liver isn’t keeping up its end of the detox work which, you got it, requires magnesium.

Magnesium allows your liver to be a vessel of life force in action! 🌱

Relaxation 2 Ways:

Muscle relaxation: your muscles work through a continual series of contract/relax actions that are activated by calcium and magnesium respectively. Any kind of cramps or spasms – leg, menstrual, some forms of constipation –  is an indication that you’re low on the Mg necessary for the relaxation part.

The nervous system needs the same 2 minerals for the excitatory and relaxation impulses in the nerves. Adequate magnesium means calmer nerves, better sleep.

As you can imagine, in this sense, magnesium is essential getting you through times of stress. That said, times of stress is another factor that depletes this mineral, which can become a vicious cycle.

Integrity of Bones & Teeth: We always think of calcium for these two storehouses of minerals. And yet, magnesium and calcium are needed in relative proportion. Too much emphasis on one, and you become relatively deficient in the other.

Bone spurs, arthritic joints, cysts in breasts, kidney stones can be an indication that you’ve gone too far in the one direction. As my teacher used to say, magnesium in blood helps to keep calcium in solution, so it can find its way to the proper place to deposit.

☀️ Speaking of bones, magnesium is the magic ingredient that allows the dance between sunlight, vitamin D and calcium to happen. It’s what gives a plant the impetus to grow up, reaching for the sun. It allows you to stand on your own feet, shining that same light from the inside, as you move towards that which you desire.

Looking at the big picture of all these functions, magnesium is the flow that moves you in the right direction. ✨

Heart Health: This has to do with the muscle picture, in that your heart is a muscle that dances to that beautiful rhythm created by Ca and Mg. (High blood pressure can be another indicator of not enough Mg.)

In Chinese medicine, your heart is an organ of the fire element, which you express in the form of enthusiasm. There’s that spark image again! ✨

✨ It then stands to reason that apathy, or your lack of motivation to make healthy changes, is yet one more sign that you are, in fact, lacking magnesium. ✨

So, do you see why this step may be the one to get you feeling more present to all the other needs of your body? These reason are why I make essential to the spell in the Magic Looking Glass for Eating Right!

Here’s how to get more magnesium into your day:

Now that you know how magnesium could ignite your enthusiasm for even more shifts, are you ready to give this step a try? Summer, with all the fresh produce at every market stall and grocery store, is the perfect time to go for it.

🌸 Throughout the rest of June (or maybe the rest of this week, if that’s too much to consider today), I invite you,… strongly suggest, …no, I challenge you to eat something green with every meal and snack.

Does that sound easy? Impossible? Too much like your mother?

Some ideas to get you started:

🌱 Pumpkin seeds in your oatmeal, in your yogourt or on your toast & jam

🌱 Kale, arugula or fresh herbs in your smoothie, or go for a scoop of super greens (spirulina, chlorella, wheat grass, etc)

🌱 Steamed greens with your eggs tastes better than it sounds.

🌱 Avocado goes with everything: in a smoothie, on wrap instead of mayo, as a boat for hummus or shrimp (egg, chicken, tuna) salad

🌱 Blend some avocado and/or green peas into your hummus

🌱 BBQ: roast asparagus, broccoli, Brussels’ sprouts; grill zucchini steaks or Romaine wedges

🌱 Throw fresh herbs in/on anything and everything! Parsley, cilantro, mint, basil, dill, tarragon, thyme, watercress,…

🌱 Drink nettle tea, or eat nettle soup

🌱 Need a crunchy snack? Go for celery, cucumber, pepper, fennel along with chips… or instead of the chips when you’re watching Netflix

Enjoy going green!

🌸 Add your own ideas in the comments. When you share your thoughts, you open the possibility for others.
Let me know how what improved in your body, moods, sleep, digestion,..

This blog post first came to life as one of my first Live Facebook videos about 2 years ago. Rather watch the original (9 minutes of the practical info, with a view of my backyard)? It’s right here.

The Real Reason you Need Fibre

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As with many nutrients, people have a general, preconceived idea about their need for dietary fibre. As with many nutrients, those notions come from ad campaigns: orange juice for vitamin C, bananas for potassium and fibre to keep you regular.

True, but only part of the picture (for all those nutrients). Fibre is a key ingredient in the Magic Looking Glass for Eating Right for more reasons than pooping well.

In exploring the beautiful reflection you see in your meals through the Magic Looking Glass for Eating Right, you are also learning to reflect a deeper care of yourself. This is self-love in action. Eating a balance of nourishing food you enjoy is one of the concrete ways you express self-love – it’s a form of radical self-care. Each of the nutrients in the looking glass framework offer you an important angle for eating right AND show you how you can nourish your best self.

FIBRE PLAYS A VITAL ROLE IN THE OVERALL NOURISHMENT OF YOUR BODY AND SPEAKS VOLUMES TO HOW YOU NOURISH YOUR LIFE.

(Be sure to read right to the end to get to this essential point!)

fibre nourishes your life

Let’s start with the fibre basics:

What is dietary fibre?

Fibre is a complex carbohydrate, that is, it’s part of our plant-based nutrition.

It holds the plant upright by holding water within the plant (think flower stem or celery stalk).

It protects and preserves the seed or fruit by preventing water from getting in (a grain’s bran, the coat of a legume, rind).

It holds the water necessary for the fruit/vegetable to grow, flower and reproduce.

Fibre is either soluble – it can dissolve in water, bulking it up and making it gelatinous or even slimy (tapioca, oats, seaweed, pectin) – or it’s insoluble, like the coats & stalks mentioned above.

Because of its structure, the human digestive tract cannot break fibre apart the way it can starch, sugars, protein or fat. Some fibre is so tough we can’t eat it at all (corn husks, shells, avocado or pineapple rind). That indigestibility and its propensity to hold water are exactly how fibre provides its essential functions to the body.

 

Why you need fibre

Each type of fibre plays a specific role in your body, though fibre in general has many advantages.

In your mouth, fibre-rich food require more chewing to break it down. Cooking will also break it down to a certain extent, depending on the method (think steamed, boiled, roasted or raw carrots). The chewing and/or cooking allow you to access the other nutrients bound within the fibre’s strands. As chewing is the first stage of both digestion and immunity in your gut, I’m all for anything that encourages you do it more!

While in your stomach & small intestine, fibre contributes to satiety – that satisfied feeling of having had enough. With fibre in your meal, you feel satisfied sooner and stay that way longer, because it takes a little more work for your digestive juices to access the goods. That is, it allows for a slow, sustainable release of glucose into your blood, as opposed to the burst and peaks & valleys from more refined choices. (Read more about good carb sources here.)

Soluble fibre swells with water. This could be as part of your meal, as in chia pudding or oatmeal, or after you eat, when it soaks up moisture from your digestive juices. Note: this capacity of all fibre to hold water is why it’s always important to hydrate adequately when taking fibre supplements and why Health Canada/ FDA put limits on recommended intake (more about that shortly).

The resulting swollen jelly acts as a sponge as it moves through your intestines. Specifically, soluble fibre mops up bile containing excess cholesterol, hormone bi-products and other fat-soluble toxins released by your liver while cleaning house, and sends them out for disposal. For anyone dealing with estrogen dominance, soluble fibre is an essential part of the nutritional protocols. This is also how soluble fibre (psyllium husks) effectively improves cholesterol and blood sugar levels. (1,2)

Both types will feed your gut flora as they move through. Well-fed beneficial bacteria add to your intestinal immune system and provide you with some vitamins B & K.

Insoluble fibre adds bulk to the bolus (the mass of food moving through your GI tract). Your colon is a large muscle that serves to reabsorb water and move the garbage out. The bulk acts as resistance training for that muscle, giving it something to work against so it can function more effectively. Yes, that’s how fibre helps you poop efficiently.

When working well that efficiency contributes to detoxification and weight management.

 

fibre in foodHow much fibre do you need?

Health Canada/FDA say women need 25 g, men 38 g. As with your caloric intake, that number can vary depending on your size, lifestyle and state of health.

One good way to tell if you’re getting enough? Read your poop.

Of course, this is something to consider in the context of your entire diet, your habits and any health conditions you have, but generally, if your stool is loose or unformed, you may need more fibre; hard & dry, you may need more OR you be getting too much/need more water.

Not enough fibre intake can set you up for diseases such as diverticulitis or colon cancer.

Too much fibre

  • causes constipation and/or dehydration (also caused by lack of water);
  • prevents the absorption of other nutrients, especially if things are moving through too quickly (ideally a meal should take 24-36 hours from plate to toilet – beets help determine that transit time)
  • can interfere with medication
  • can irritate the intestinal tract.

Best to let your holistic nutrition consultant help you find the happy balance.

That’s the physical part. What about…

 

THE SOUL OF FIBRE

Let’s take a moment to look at the qualities you gain from having enough fibre in your diet… in your life. They are the qualities we glean from plants as a whole.

Think about this as you look through the food sources, which ones you eat, and where you lack in your life.

Fibre can be found in its various forms, densities and solubilities in all parts of a plant. Each part nourishes our bodies in its own way; each part teaches us a life lesson in its own way.

Do you remember grade 9 biology, when you learned about photosynthesis? That’s when the leaves make sugar by binding water and carbon dioxide with the sun’s energy. Sugar is literally cosmic energy and the building block for all other parts of the plant. Those sugar molecules link together to make starch, and that most complex polysaccharide: fibre.

lacework of fibre

Lignin molecule

Fibre is a lacework of that energy. The densest expression of heat and light. It gives strength to the plant; sometimes likened to fibreglass in its durability. Yet it can also be flexible. (Remember, too much and you will become hard and dry in your being.

As part of the leaves, it allows that primal reaction to happen by reaching up towards that sunlight. Leaves and their concentration of magnesium nourish your heart, the part of you that reaches for that which you desire, that which lights you up.

The stalk reflects your human need for social order. Have you ever looked at the patterns in the way leaves emerge on a stem? The specific shapes of leaves are part of that order in that the shape denotes its purpose. Think of the large leaves of a rhubarb that shade its heat-sensitive stalks or the spines on a thistle that protect the land from invaders.

The stalk also speaks to your moral fibre. What do you stand for? Are you capable of standing up for yourself?

Fibre holds water, the vital basis of all life. Do your ideas, words and values hold water as well? Are you living in integrity?

Fibre is the stuff of life that requires you to decide what you must absorb and keep, and what you need to release.

Fibre digs deep with the roots that ground you to reality. The formative forces of the earth draw up to nourish that plant and feed your brain.

Much subtler – no fibre, but it completes the picture as the last expressions of a plan – is the vibrational energy you receive from plants. The colours, essences and oils that nourish your subtle bodies – your chakras, your emotions and your aura.

 

YOU WANT TO HAVE MORE INTEGRITY, TO BECOME A BETTER, STRONGER, MORE ENERGIZED, MORE LOVING, CONFIDENT AND FOCUSED VERSION OF YOURSELF WITH EVERY FIBRE OF YOUR BEING.

Could it be that eating plant food more consciously and conscientiously will help enhance those qualities you seek?

 

Now that you know that fibre is so much more than the All-Bran you sprinkle on your morning yogourt, which ways will you incorporate it into your life? Which qualities do you hope to gain from that addition? When you share your thoughts in the comments, you open the possibilities for others.

Share your insights and get your friends in on the conversation by clicking any (or all!) of the pretty green buttons.

 

1 Anderson, J.W. et al. “Long-term cholesterol-lowering effects of psyllium as an adjunct to diet therapy in the treatment of hypercholesterolemia” The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. June 2000
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10837282, June 21, 2018

2 Gibb, Roger D. et al. “Psyllium fiber improves glycemic control proportional to loss of glycemic control: a meta-analysis of data in euglycemic subjects, patients at risk of type 2 diabetes mellitus, and patients being treated for type 2 diabetes mellitus” The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. November 2015
https://academic.oup.com/ajcn/article/102/6/1604/4555168, June 21, 2018

Our Obsession with Protein, Part I: A Soul Perspective

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Why do we have a protein obsession these days? Ask anyone trying to lose weight or gain muscle or recover from illness, or really anyone striving to eat right, and the question of protein amounts & sources inevitably comes up. In a time when our focus on food choices has reached a religious fervour, protein leads the current caravan of nutrition to the promised land.

In exploring the beautiful reflection you see in your meals through the Magic Looking Glass for Eating Right, you are also learning to reflect a deeper care of yourself. This is self-love in action. Eating a balance of nourishing food you enjoy is one of the concrete ways you express self-love – it’s a form of radical self-care. Each of the nutrients in the looking glass framework offer you an important angle for eating right AND show you how you can nourish your best self.

 

How is it that we’ve come to view lots of protein (to the exclusion of other macronutrients) as synonymous with health?

why are we obsessed with protein?

Two ways: timing and our personal focus at this time.

Historically, it’s been coming to this inevitability for decades:

Nutritional science of the 70s, 80s & 90s drove us to an unrelenting fear of fat. First saturated fat, then fat in general, were (falsely) proven to be the source of heart & weight problems in North America. The extreme version of this food fad found me on a practically fat-free diet after the birth of my 1st son – a situation that had a negative impact on my health for the next 20 years.

Atkins and all the variations of low-carb diets followed that fiasco. (These should more accurately be called low-starch or low-refined-carb diets, but I digress. You can read about this particular pet peeve of mine here.)

Turn 2 out of 3 macronutrients into bad guys, and you’ve got to drive home the benefits of the last man standing. There are many fantastic reasons why we need protein, though we’re now overdoing it to the detriment of our fat & carb intake. (I’ll get to those protein-based details in the next post.)

 

Another circumstance underlines our heightened awareness of this nutrient.

While carbohydrates fuel us with the energy to stand straight and function adequately through the day, and while fats ensure our constant warm temperature and a healthy nervous system, protein provides the actual structure and functionality of the body.

 

We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience.

If you believe this tenet by Teilhard de Chardin, then you can fully understand Meggan Watterson’s guiding principle that “The body is our sacred chance to be here.”

The flesh and sinew that make up this tabernacle, this house for the soul, is all protein.

Think of protein as the stones of the temple honouring your soul. Protein is the building block for muscle, yes. It’s also the structural material for all tissue in the body: skin, mucous membrane, nails & hair; cartilage, ligaments, tendons; even your bones & teeth.


Protein is the molecule that differentiates plant from animal.

Because of the structure, protein gives us (as animals) the freedom to roam the earth independently. And it’s protein that supplies the means by which we have the ability to carry out our life’s purpose, our work in the world.

There are messengers keeping us in constant communication with the Self: hormones, neurotransmitters, antibodies.

There are enzymes, the acolytes who quietly see to every minute chore within the temple.

Freedom and location independence: as a society, these are the values we currently crave the most. No wonder we’re obsessed with protein!

 

The wonders of protein don’t stop there…

In a beautiful model of sustainability, the body recycles and reuses protein constantly, thereby keeping our daily intake needs to a minimum. Brilliant, when you think about it, having evolved from an ancestry of feast or famine, the body learned to make its most precious commodity last.

 

Are You Able to Take It All In?

Even when you eat right amount of protein for your age, gender, activity level (details in the 2nd post), how much of it are you absorbing and actually using?

Before the peptidases (protein-digesting enzymes) can do their job, a protein needs to be denatured (uncoiled) by stomach acid. Not enough acid, and that protein stays pretty much intact through the rest of the digestive ride.

The stomach lies at the heart of the 3rd chakra, the energy centre ruling your sense of self, your ability to stand up for yourself. Your Will. Digestion, in general, and specifically activities of the stomach are an act of will – an indication of how engaged you are with life, how well you digest life.

In other words, you need a strong sense of self, at an emotional-soul level, in order to best access the building blocks for your physical body. The best way to solidify your Solar (3rd) Chakra is to ground more strongly into the lower two, root yourself into your own care & security. Improve your relationship with the earth, and you’ll improve your digestion.

As we move into the new paradigm, an age in which the needs of the individual soul step forward as the guiding principle for how we live, it’s essential that the way we nourish the body supports that growth and movement.

“The body is your sacred chance to be here” and, with the help of protein, follows the directives of your soul.

 

These thought are great food for conversation. Get a good discussion going among your friends by using any (or all!) of the pretty green buttons. Then come to the Eating Better Conversation group to mull it over with me.