Keeping It Simple with Yoga

As human beings we tend to complicate everything. Our biggest failure is that we tend to over complicate life and it gets us in trouble.

Yoga promises to help us simplify, to live authentically. We are encouraged to find our bliss and the contentment, which is our birth right. This focus on simplicity and ease, is one of the big draws of yoga.

So how is it that yoga has gotten so complicated? How is it that if you do a Google search on yoga mats you will get umpteen different sizes, shapes, colors, decors and ingredients? Personally, I long for the days when they gave you a royal blue, standard issue yoga mat that was cut off a roll with the edges slightly uneven. No frills, no brand—just a simple slab of rubber. It did the job, and you were grateful.

Could it be that the now established “yoga industry” is conspiring  to make our lives more complicated by getting us to shell out more of our hard earned cash on the purchase of totally unnecessary yoga gear and yoga wear? I mean seriously, do we really need egg shaped yoga blocks?

Is it possible that an organization with the word “yoga” in its name—could actually be anti-yoga?

Is it possible that we are being spoon fed an idea about yoga that has absolutely nothing to do with the ancient practice of yoga with its Hindu roots?

I am on a one woman crusade to simplify yoga and simplify my life in the process. I loathe complication. I loathe unnecessary details, side trips, dead end roads and deep pot holes.

I prefer my journey to be smooth, easy and to take the shortest distance between two points. I have no use for distraction, diversion or restlessness.

Hence, I swear by the idea that yoga is essentially a relationship that you have with your breath.Period. End of sentence. No more, no less.

Yes, you read that correctly . . . . but just to ensure there is no question, I’ll say it again. Yoga is essentially a relationship you have with your breath.

And to drive home my point, I have created a video which elaborates on this simple concept.

And I know here on elephant journal I am preaching to the choir. But still, I think it’s easy to get hung up on having the perfect chaturanga or matching yoga bag. But when we are breathing easy, the obsessions begin to melt away like candle wax.

For Video and website…

Leafy Greens Help Prevent Damage Caused by a Workout, Study Suggests

ScienceDaily (Apr. 25, 2012) — Researchers have found that antioxidant-rich watercress can alleviate the natural stress put on our body by a workout. And they found that participants with no watercress in their system who ate the leafy vegetable just two hours before high level exercise still experienced the same level of protection.

Though regular moderate exercise is known to be good for us, the increased demand on our bodies can cause damage to our DNA.

According to a new study from scientists at Edinburgh Napier University and the University of Ulster, eating watercress can prevent some of the damage caused by high intensity exercise and help maximize the benefits of a tough workout.

The study findings have now been published in the in the British Journal of Nutrition.

FULL ARTICLE…..

What to Eat for Breakfast?

Of all the nutrition questions my clients ask me, these are the ones I hear most often (except for “What about chocolate” and What about wine”?…we’ll get to those later!)

Almost everyone thinks that oatmeal and fruit is the ideal breakfast…especially those who eat steel cut oats…after all, they are going the route of non-instant!

Let’s look a what constitutes a great breakfast;

1) It should meet a third of the days nutrient and calorie needs.

2) It should keep you going to lunch time with high energy and keep the blood sugar regulated.  In other words you should feel natural hunger by lunchtime but be experiencing symptoms of low blood sugar (shaky and want to slap someone or desperate for anything to eat!).

So what is a great breakfast?  Let’s compare 2 breakfast’s;

1 cup cooked oatmeal
1/2 cup milk
1 cup blueberries

This breakfast gives you;

455 calories
18% calories from fat- way too low
15% from protein- way too low, should be 30%
Gives you 20% of Vitamin C
You get 4624 IU of Vitamin A- way too low
66.5% calories from carbs- way too high, a easy way to gain weight!

This breakfast does not meet your need for calories or nutrients, is way too high in carbs, and too low in protein and fat.  My clients are puzzled that they do not eat much, eat oatmeal for breakfast, salads for lunch, yet they gain weight.  Remember CARBS make you gain weight, NOT fat or protein.

Now let’s look at an ideal breakfast;

Photo from CaveManForum

A 2 egg omelet with onions, peppers and mushrooms sautéed with 1 Tablespoon butter
4 slices turkey bacon
3 slices beefsteak tomatoes
1/2 blueberries

Here is a breakfast that gives you 577 calories

68% from fat- breakfast is always, for me, the highest one percentage wise in fat and protein. The other meals tend to have more vegetables so this balances out.

20% from protein- the exact amount you need at each meal.

Carbs are 11%- a tad low but again, the other meals tend to have more veggies.

You get 3607 IU of Vitamin A, 129 mg. of Vitamin C, 483% of needed Iron.

Now THAT is a breakfast that will last you all morning, leave you satisfied until lunch…but not so hungry that you are ready to eat chips or a smoothie just to get your brain functioning!  As you can see it gives you a third of the nutrients you need each day.

Personally I fry, scramble or make an omelet each morning and have turkey bacon or sausage and coconut milk yogurt and a small amount of fruit each morning..  But many people have asked for more breakfast ideas.  So for the next few weeks I am going to give different breakfast recipes so check back often…

Gluten and Dairy Free Pound cake with Lemon

PHOTOGRAPH BY Romulo Yanes

• 3/4 cups rice flour
• 3/4 cup tapioca flour plus more for dusting
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 3/4 teaspoon kosher salt
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 tablespoon finely grated lemon zest
• 3/4 cup coconut milk yogurt – I make my own but SO had a great one
• 1/2 cup butter
• 2 large eggs
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
• Butter to grease a 8 1/2 x 4 1/4-inch loaf pan

Preheat oven to 350°. Coat pan butter. Dust with flour; tap out excess.

• Whisk flours, baking powder, and kosher salt in a medium bowl.
• Using your fingers, rub sugar with lemon zest in a large bowl until sugar is moist. Add yogurt, melted butter, eggs, and vanilla extract; whisk to blend. Fold in dry ingredients just to blend.
• Pour batter into prepared pan; smooth top. Bake until top of cake is golden brown and a tester inserted into center comes out clean, 50–55 minutes.
• Let cake cool in pan on a wire rack for 15 minutes. Invert onto rack; let cool completely.
• DO AHEAD: Can be made 3 days ahead. Store airtight at room temperature

Garlic is Delicious…and Healthy!

[via Eurekalert]

Researchers found another reason to love garlic! A compound found in the humble bulb is one hundred times more effective than pharmaceutical antibiotics at killing the most common kind of food-borne bacteria.

The compound is called diallyl sulfide, and it has a unique ability to kill Campylobacter, the bug that causes the most typical kind of food poisoning. While normal drugs are stymied by the bacteria’s biofilm, a kind of protective sheath that forms around the microbes, the garlic-derived compound busts right through.

The scientists were careful to point out that this research is in its early stages, and that simply rubbing garlic on your food will not kill a lot of bacteria (though it’ll probably taste pretty good). Some day, though, food packaging and prep surfaces treated with diallyl sulfate could kill bacteria passively, making the whole food chain safer.

My advice is too cook liberally with garlic!

OLD cookbooks are the BEST!

4:15 PM / MAY 1, 2012                POSTED BY Rachel Sanders on Bon Appetit

The latest literary endeavor from Elizabeth Gilbert (you may have heard of her; she wrote a little book that spent about four years on the New York Times bestseller list?) is a must-read for anyone remotely interested in adventurous cooking, casual entertaining, pickling, or the creative use of odd bits of meat. (Hello, Brooklyn!)
What is it? At Home on the Range, a cookbook written in 1947 by Gilbert’s great-grandmother, Margaret “Gima” Yardley Potter. But the book isn’t an antique, in any sense of the word. As Gilbert writes in her introduction, “at that unfortunate moment in American culinary history when our country was embarking on a love affair with convenient and processed foods…Gima was having none of it.” Instead, she was cooking up Chicken Livers for Six and coaxing recipes for fricasseed rabbit out of Pennsylvania Dutch farmers. This is a cookbook for modern times and modern cooks, full of sassy jokes and smartly written recipes. It’s also a book that speaks deeply to the power of food and family through generations. Need a Mother’s Day gift? You just found it.

Millie; I have a bookshelf of low-fat cookbooks, vegetarian cookbooks, “healthy” eating cookbooks..  What I reach for over and over is the mannings Family Southern Cookbook, my grandmother’s recipes, old classic cookbooks in order to brush up on traditional cooking and recipes…the healthiest ones that are full fat, with rich stocks, pan gravies, pickles…real food.

Get my Book “The Criterion Diet” for Free

It will be available from Wednesday May 2cd to Thursday May 3rd for FREE!   It will then go back to the normal price.  It is available for Kindle owners who are Prime Members., or have a Kindle App on either your PC, Mac, iPod Touch or Smartphone.

This book is a guide to eating a healthy, Paleo Diet that is gluten and lactose free. It contains menus and recipes for 30 days!   These are the recipes my personal cooking clients have been enjoying for years!

Of course if you want to buy the book and help support the cause, please do so!

Click HERE to get my FREE book!