Foods for Healing | Program Introduction, Giveaway & Coupon Code

I'm a firm believer that food affects our well being; its just common sense, what goes into our bodies must affect how they function. Perhaps its the biologist in me, but as of yet, I have found no argument that can convince me otherwise. My recent experience with Meghan Telpner's Fab Detox only proved my point, in addition to feeling better both emotionally and physically, my experience also brought some insight into my eczema.

Up until recently I was certain that my eczema flare ups were due to the food I ate as well as the hormone fluctuations and changes my body underwent as a result of my pregnancies. I honestly expected that within a few weeks of starting the Fab Detox, I would see a dramatic improvement in my skin. The truth is, I didn't see any change over the course of the cleanse, which led me to realize that food cannot possibly be the primary contributor to my condition.

One month, tonnes of smoothies and oodles of superfoods later, my skin is clearer than its been in months, years even. I'm fairly certain its due to my new daily regimen of superfood smoothies, which always contain omega 3 rich hemp hearts and delicious antioxidant rich raw cacao powder.

I've spent so much time taking 'bad foods' out of my diet, that I forgot how many benefits there are to adding 'good foods' back into my diet. This is precisely why I'm so excited to share Meghan Telpner's brand new online course FOODS FOR HEALING with you.

'Foods for Healing' program registration
opens on November 9th 
enter code mommastuff at checkout to receive 10% off or
ENTER TO WIN 
registration in the 'Food for Healing' Program 

by using the Rafflecopter form at the bottom of this post!

Whether you suffer from pain, digestive trouble, headaches, fatigue or just about any other ailment, food can help you and Meghan will help you understand how.  Meghan's Food for Healing Course includes:

• Over two hours of lecture style teaching with images, diagrams, and incredibly easy to follow explanations.
• Accompanying handouts of the slides to follow along and take notes.
• Additional documentation offering detailed information on specific healing protocols.
• 8 cooking demonstration videos showing how you can put what I share in the lecture, into practice in your kitchen and in everyday eating.
• A full 7 day meal plan + over 30 recipes.
• A full transition plan to help ease your way into a foods for healing mind set.
• Options to upgrade and get consultations and amazing kitchen equipment.
• Completely secure access to all your course materials.
• Flexibility to watch the videos and download the print materials at your convenience.
• Lifetime access to the course materials.

The 'Foods for Healing' program is broken down into 9 modules:

• Module 1: My story and how I healed.
• Module 2: Understanding the root of inflammation, food as medicine.
• Module 3: The role of the digestive system in total health, managing stress and it’s impact
• Module 4: Making the connection with food, conscious eating, assessing common dietary recommendations.
• Module 5: General guidelines for eating for health and healing, the universal approach to health.
• Module 6: Specific therapeutic foods for healing, dietary recommendations for the three stages of healing, specific nutrients for healing.
• Module 7: Lifestyle habits and natural solutions.
• Module 8: Healing beverages, therapeutics foods in practice, cooking demos
• Module 9: Healing meals, therapeutic foods in practice, cooking demos
• Tools: Meal plan, recipes, transition guideline.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

10 Things I Learned Healing an Incurable Disease | Guest Post by Meghan Telpner

Five years ago I was diagnosed with Crohn’s disease, a condition that is commonly believed to have no cure. I was given the options of surgery and medication for the rest of my life, still without the potential of a cure. My doctor told me that diet would have no effect and that I would have to learn to live with it.

Not one to play by the rules, I decided to create my own. I chose a natural route that included meditation, yoga, acupuncture, rest, and a diet comprised of whole, unprocessed foods. Within one month I was symptom free and remain so five years on. I have since become certified as a nutritionist and run a cooking school in downtown Toronto. I am firm on the fact that getting sick was the greatest thing that ever happened to me, and getting well was the greatest adventure ever. This is what I learned healing from an incurable disease.

1. Take other opinions with a grain of salt. It is just an opinion and only our own opinions of ourselves and our current situation really matter. I received the opinion that I had an incurable disease and nothing I ate or did regarding my lifestyle would have an effect. I chose to trust my own opinion that this was not true. That has made all the difference.

2. Learn how to cook… really well. Prior to this experience I owned one cookbook called Help! My Apartment Has A Kitchen.Four years later, I own and operate a cooking school. I believed strongly, despite my doctor’s contradictory opinion, that a disease of the digestive tract would obviously be affected by what passed through it. It therefore became my mission to know exactly what I was eating and so I learned to cook from 100 percent whole ingredients. With all the processing happening in my own kitchen.

3. Yoga is more than twisting yourself into a pretzel. I used to be one of those before-work workout nut heads who rolled into the gym at 6:00 a.m., kicked my own bottom for an hour, and then raced off to work. When high-impact workouts were no longer an option, I turned to yoga. Yoga is a gazillion times harder than climbing a stair master or doing crunches until you want to puke—because it makes you actually look at yourself from the inside and realize some change has to happen.

4. Life may not always bring you sunshine and rainbows, but if you wait out the storm long enough, they always appear if you look for them. That’s all I have to say about that.

5. A cute outfit doesn’t mean much when you feel like total crappola. Great health makes you look (and feel) great—way more than high heels or manicured nails can.

6. Always, always, always trust your intuition. If you can’t hear it, that means your life is too noisy. Be still a little bit everyday and you will start to hear the voice, and over time you will learn to listen. And over even more time, you will learn that it is always right.

7. When you do something in your life that other people deem impossible in their life, you suddenly become  labelled “an inspiration.” I like that I inspire people but I don’t wake up every morning with the thought, I am going to inspire today! I just do what I do, because it feels right for me. Likewise, the people I find inspiring are just doing what seems right to them. I think this means that we all inspire others in our own way, just by being true to ourselves.

8. When something goes wrong in our body or in our mind – whether it be a disease, an injury, or a broken heart – “fighting” it doesn’t help us heal. It creates more resistance. When we can learn to feed and nourish and give ourselves what is needed to work with the challenge rather than against it, that is how we heal.

9. Vegetables are delicious. They used to make me gag. Then I learned I just didn’t like hard chunks of carrot in my salads. There are loads of other ways to enjoy carrots and loads of other vegetables I love to eat. I just had to get creative and explore the unknown.

10. I am better off happily creating than creating to be happy. We think that if we work now, even if we hate it, that the benefits or payoff will bring happiness to the future version of ourselves. When I think back five years to who I was dating, where I was working, and the life I thought I was working towards, it is definitely not what would make me happy today. Wouldn’t it be a waste of precious time to take on misery now and try to achieve something that is only serving to satisfy and bring joy to a future version of myself? I would end up disappointed for a good portion of my life.

Things can change in an instant, with a diagnosis, a disaster …  anything! The greatest gift we can offer ourselves is to wake up happy, excited about the day ahead, and go to bed pleased with the job that we did, accepting that the process itself is the outcome, and that we did our very best at every given moment.

Meghan Telpner

BIO: Meghan Telpner is a Toronto based nutritionista and sought after media personality thanks to her refreshingly humorous, engaging and real approach to healthy living. Her online cooking courses and health programs are improving the health of people around the world. Meghan’s book UnDiet, Eat Your Way to Vibrant Health will be released North America wide in April, 2013. Join Meghan’s community on twitter @MeghanTelpner, or on Facebook at Meghan Telpner Nutritionista. For more visit MeghanTelpner.com

25 First Foods for Baby | Starting Solids

As we all know there is a plethora of information available on what foods to introduce to your baby and I've discussed my thoughts with regard to introducing solids as well.  Sometimes rather than wading through a bunch of information, a simple list is easier to follow, so here are the first 25 foods (and a brief explanation for each) that I fed to my little baby boy.

1.     Rice cereal - an easy and common first food that can be mixed with nearly all other introductions.

2.     Avocado - a smooth creamy texture and loaded with good fat, avocados are easy to transport and are an ideal early food.

3.     Sweet potato - another common first food, sweet potatoes are full of nutrients and have a sweet silkiness that babies love.

4.     Pears - have a light sweet flavour that can be mixed with anything to make new foods palatable.

5.     Chicken - Health Canada recommends meats as a first food to refill depleting iron reserves; I always mix chicken with other foods. For my boys 'chicken & sweet potato' and 'chicken & pears' were hits on the first feed. 

6.     Quinoa - nutritious and delicious, this super grain is loaded with protein and fibre.  Quinoa baby food is easy to make and the baby gobbles it up, again mixed with pears or chicken.

7.     Zucchini - a summer squash that's abundant in Vancouver, this moist and mild vegetable is great for blending, but resist the urge to add extra water when pureeing, it thins out a lot.

8.     Prunes - at this point I noticed the regularity of the baby's poop's decreasing and the crankiness increasing so I introduced a daily dose of prunes.  I simmer the prunes with a little bit of pear to tame down the richness.

9.     Banana - I dislike bananas, but they are great food for travel and I was about to head off to Blissdom Canada so I mashed some up and gave them to the boy.  In truth, he's not super fond of them either.

10. Carrots - easy to make, easy to eat, easy to blend.  It's a common first food for a reason.

11. Peaches - my aunt brought me some peaches from her friends farm so of course I cooked them up for the baby.  After that, I just used canned peaches; its far more convenient and the baby only likes them mixed with other fruits anyway.

12. Broccoli - we eat a lot of broccoli in our house, so its natural that we'd introduce it early.  At our house it was a hit mixed with zucchini and some rice cereal.

13. Tofu - a great protein source that once again can be blended with just about anything.  The dietician told me to make sure you boil it before feeding it to your little one.

14. Blueberries - this sweet purple treat is abundant in the summer here in Vancouver and its another common food in our house.  Although the bright purple colour can be intimidating, this antioxidant rich treat is worth it.

15. Potato - Not my favourite, nor my boys, but it’s a welcome addition when you start making dishes that are more ‘meals’ than simply vegetables.

16. Pumpkin - After a visit to the pumpkin patch I had some delicious sugar pumpkins to roast and the baby was happy to partake in their sweet, mellow flavour.

17. Oatmeal - I made my own oats for the boy by grinding up some gluten-free oats and boiling them on the stove before mixing them with fruit for a new breakfast option.

18. Spinach – a nutrient rich veggie I was excited to introduce this to the baby using Annabel Karmel’s superfood puree recipe. Blended with chicken thighs and sweet potatoes, my little man can’t get enough.

19. Parsnips – a readily available root vegetable with a creamy texture, I hoped to use this to blend with foods the baby wasn’t so keen on.  Unfortunately, he doesn't seem to care much for parsnips.

20. Green beans – another plentiful, local vegetable, I introduced these so that I could prepare one of the boy’s favourite recipes for the baby with my next introduction.

21. Tomatoes – personally I only like cooked tomatoes and skinning fresh tomatoes is just too much work, so I always use canned tomatoes for my baby food.  The boy loved ratatouille made with a hearty mix of tomato, broccoli, zucchini and green beans.

22. Pork – after slow roasting a pork should for pulled pork, I blended up some of the unseasoned meat with some pears for the baby boy.  Just like pork chops and applesauce, only with pears.

23. Apple – I waited to introduce apples to both my boys simply because some varieties give me an oral allergy; that is they make my throat and inside of my ears uncomfortably itchy.  Granted I don’t get that reaction when the fruit is cooked and removing the peel on fresh fruit generally prevents the reaction, but given that my boys loved pears, there never seemed to be a reason to rush to introduce apples.

24. Egg yolk – an quick and easy to prepare finger food, I introduced egg yolk to add a little protein.  He likes it more now that he can feed himself, I separate the egg then fry the yolk firm without breaking it. 

25. Chickpeas – legumes are rich in fibre, protein and nutrients and if we want our kids to eat them it just makes sense to introduce them as babies.

In general I steam the fruits or vegetable until tender and then puree them with a bit of the steaming water.  I use an electric food steamer (which also works great as a bottle sterilizer) which makes it easy to avoid oversteaming the vegetables to ensure they stay flavourful and minimize nutrient loss.

I’m curious which foods you introduced to your little ones; did I introduce anything that you absolutely wouldn’t?  Or perhaps I missed something that you think is essential, I’d love to hear what you think.

Eating Gluten Free: Are you getting all your nutrients? | Guest Post

If you're wondering what nutrient deficiencies arise by following a gluten-free diet, I'll let you in on a big secret.

There isn't a nutrient found in a gluten-filled grain or food product that you can't obtain elsewhere. In other words, you ain't missing out on nothin'.

Like Amber, I avoid gluten and dairy and am often questioned by well-meaning friends and strangers about how I get enough of certain vitamins and minerals. When it comes to allergen-free diets, there's an erroneous perception that you must deprive yourself of vital nourishment (and tasty food, too). 

Let's talk about gluten for a moment. Gluten is a protein found in grains like whole wheat, barley, spelt, kamut and rye. Of all the gluten-containing grains, wheat is the most ubiquitous in our food culture, found in everything from soups and sauces to shampoo and medications.

I won't deny that whole wheat has its benefits. It can promote digestive health, heart health and blood sugar balance. Wheat is also a good source of important nutrients like fibre, amino acids, B vitamins (which are essential for energy and nerve function), vitamin E, magnesium, iron and zinc.

Unfortunately, most of the whole wheat on the market has been so processed, hybridized and refined that many of these nutrients have been stripped away.  Dr. William Davis, author of the new book 'Wheat Belly', says another downside of wheat is it makes you fat.

However, gluten-free grains have fibre, amino acids, B vitamins and the rest of the gang, too.

Let's do a little comparison shopping. A cup of quinoa has more than double the iron, four times the vitamin E, four and a half times the essential fatty acids and significantly higher amounts of zinc, mangnesium, calcium and potassium than a cup of whole wheat.

Brown rice has nearly 20 times the amount of selenium - a potent cancer-fighting antioxidant - than whole wheat. Buckwheat (despite the name, it's gluten-free) has more vitamin K, magnesium and potassium than whole wheat, along with 35 percent less sodium.

But you know what else has plenty of vitamins, minerals, proteins, essential fats and fibre? Fruits and vegetables. Beans and legumes. Nuts and seeds. Lean meat and fish.

A diet rich in these foods (especially the fruits and veggies) is what will keep you in good stead. Wheat has only been cultivated for about 12,000 years – yet us humans have been around far longer than that. It's estimated that 300,000 Canadians and two million Americans have celiac disease, and yet there haven't been reports of these people dropping like flies. So I think it's safe to say that gluten isn't essential to our survival.

I believe that the biggest challenge of shifting to a gluten-free diet is making the commitment to cook at home. Gluten-free diets, or any alternative diets for that matter, propel us to forgo pre-prepared, processed convenience foods in favour of old-fashioned home cooking.

Eating a gluten-free diet of freshly-cooked, whole foods is simple and delicious once you learn the basics, and it definitely provides you with all of the nutrients you need to thrive. So please don't let anyone guilt you into thinking you or your child cannot be healthy because you choose to eliminate gluten. 

Sondi Bruner is a Vancouver-based food blogger, freelance writer and holistic nutrition student who believes that fresh, whole foods contain tremendous power. Explore gluten-free, dairy-free and vegetarian recipes on her blog, The Copycat Cook.