an update on my big boy

Having a child will turn you into a liar; its not something people tell you about parenthood, but its true.

Regardless whether you tell someone your child never cries, barely eats or always sleeps, you can be certain that he will do the exact opposite when you least expect it.

Case and point, just a week and a half after soul searching and admitting on MSB that my son has aggressive tendencies we started to see a shift in the boys behaviour. I suspect a defining moment was when he met my friends' 4 week old baby and we explained that his 18 month old brother wasn't a baby anymore.

These days he cries less, hits less, occasionally gives his brother hugs and engages in conversations with a newfound level of understanding that's absolutely adorable.

I'm just enjoying him so much; I love him to pieces.

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

Wise Bites Cookies | Allergy-friendly deliciousness

All you baked-goods loving, allergy-suffering folks, there's a new cookie on the block and you're going to adore them. Wise Bites are free of the top eight allergens (peanuts, tree nuts, gluten, eggs, soy, dairy, fish and shellfish), which means nearly anyone with a food allergy can enjoy them and given the delicious flavour profile and great texture, enjoy them you will.

Wise Bites are unassuming looking cookies that are reminiscent of a power bar, they are a dense cookie with an almost fudgy texture that is neither gooey or crumbly. The flavour on the other hand is all cookie, despite the change in texture from traditional (wheat-based) cookies, the quinoa chocolate chip cookies tasted remarkably familiar.  If you love candied ginger, you MUST try the quinoa triple ginger cookie;  the ginger is evident in every bite but never overpowering nor overwhelming. The third and final wise bite cookie is the quinoa triple fudge and its every bit as tasty as it sounds.

Wise Bites also come in small bars in the same three flavours; with two small bars per package they were perfect snack to feed to my boys and given the healthy ingredients I didn't even feel guilty about letting them eat pre-packaged cookies.

If all that wasn't good enough, these amazing little morsels are are locally made in Richmond, BC (right next to my Dad's warehouse in fact) and their primary ingredient happens to be one of my all time favourite grains, quinoa. Don't be put off if quinoa isn't your thing, these cookies taste amazing and not a bit like quinoa.

Wise Bites also make hearty quinoa muffins (that I would absolutely buy if they were available at my local coffee shop) and sell bulk items such as quinoa flour, chocolate chips and organic crystallized ginger.

Wise Bites are available at a number of local stores, or they can be purchased online. I hope you try them and love them as much as I do.

Share the love folks, you can find Wise Bites online, on Facebook and on Twitter!

I recieved product in exchange for this review, however all opinions are my own.

Angry Bird Costume and a Peanut-Free Halloween

This is the first year the boy understands what Halloween and trick or treating really means. In fact, at three and a half, its probably the first year that he's even understood the word 'candy'. That means that this year is going to be way more fun, involve way more sugar and probably involve just as many, if not more, catastrophic meltdowns.

Without asking for his opinion, inspired by Pinterest (of course), I decided to make the boy an Angry Birds costume, based on a sweatshirt that I've made it him before. The idea being that it would have a similar feel and fit in the hopes that he would be eager to wear it. I just finished it today and now that its stuffed, its doesn't exactly resemble his other sweatshirt, but I did get him to put it on, for at least a moment.

Getting him to wear his costume however, is the least of my worries.  Much higher on my priority list is watching out for peanuts and potential peanut contamination. I have this fear that the boy is going to grab a candy out of his bag, somehow get it open and eat something delicious and equally deadly like a peanut butter cup before an adult can stop him.

Fortunately, the good folks at Nestle sent me one of their Red Peanut Free boxes of Halloween sized candy that I can allow my boy to eat without worrying. I've already purchased a second box that I'll be using for 'tradsies' with the boy when we sort through his candy; although not dairy free, the red box includes Aero bars, which are a safe treat for those of us living the gluten-free life.

Thanks to Yummy Mummy Club Founder Erica Ehm, Vancouver mom's everywhere will be making Halloween safe for allergic kids. If you're purchasing peanut-free treats, place the box in your window and let Mom's like me know that your treats are safe for their special little person!

Vegan Indian Cooking with Anupy Singla | Cooking Demo in Vancouver October 13, 2012

I love the flavours of Indian food, however I must admit I'm not always up for the heat and combined with dietary restrictions, eating out can be a bit of a challenge. Enter Anupy Singla's books 'The Indian Slow Cooker' and her more recent 'Vegan Indian Cooking' and suddenly eating Indian food for dinner is not only possible, its easy.

Anupy's books use healthy, whole foods and authentic blends of spices to create delicious meals. Best of all, given that her entire second book is vegan, my family's dairy-free diet is a non-issue.  In fact I was able to create one of my favourite dishes, 'peas and cheese' by substituting baked tofu for the traditional paneer. It was so tasty my vegetarian friend and I gobbled it up in no time flat, we even forgot to take a picture to share with you all.

Each dish in the book begins with a thorough introduction to Indian cooking, ingredients and spices and each recipe includes a personalized note from Anupy sharing anything from the history of the dish, her personal  memories and a experiences or a brief description of the flavours that the dish imparts.

After reading through most of the recipes in her books, I already kind of feel like I know Anupy and if you want to know her too, she's going to be in Vancouver doing a FREE cooking demonstration and book signing this Saturday, here are the details:

Anupy Singla
FREE Cooking Demonstration and Book Signing

Saturday October 13, 2012

1:00pm - 2:30pm
at

Barbara Jo's Books to Cooks 

1740 West 2nd Ave

Vancouver

604-688-6755

If you're in the market for a new cookbook and need something to do, on what's anticipated to be a very wet Vancouver Saturday, stop by Barbara Jo's Books to Cooks and meet Anupy Singla.

Lessons Learned Thus Far on the Fab Uplift Detox

If you include the precleanse days, I'm almost 10 days into the Fab Uplift Detox. I won't say its been easy, but it certainly hasn't been as difficult as I anticipated.  I also can't say I feel like a million bucks quite yet, but I do feel good; like I've been nourishing my body and truly giving it a chance to find a balance that may never have existed, but if it did, it was long before I had children.

Although there's still six more days left in the Fab Uplift Detox, I already feel like I've learned some important lessons that I hope to carry into my everyday life.

I don't NEED coffee; I've been drinking it on a daily basis for close to fifteen years but its been at least a week since I found myself needing to resist the urge for a coffee. It still smells delicious and I'm sure it tastes as delectable as I remember, but if I can take my previous daily habit and turn it into a treat, that's a remarkable success.

I don't NEED meat to feel satisfied; I have a big appetite, a hearty metabolism and high protein needs. My regular diet includes an egg for breakfast, protein with my lunch (usually dinner leftovers) and meat with my dinner, so I was more than a little apprehensive about embarking on a plant-based diet, even if it was only for 16 days. Without legumes and grains, the last few days have left me feeling a little bit unsatisfied but on the whole, the food on this cleanse has been fabulous, filling and easy (though time consuming) to prepare.

Smoothies don't NEED milk or juice; for some reason I was under the impression that a smoothie made with water would be disgusting and that's just not true. When armed with fresh fruits and vegetables, superfoods like hemp seeds, goji berries and my new favourite raw cacao powder, water and a little ice is all that's required to bring that healthy deliciousness together.

I can't wait to see what other tidbits of insight the Fab Uplift Detox is going to bring me. Today was our juice and smoothie day, which means that we've made it through the toughest part of the cleanse and tomorrow we start slowly reintroducing nuts/seeds, gluten-free whole grains and finally legumes back into our diet. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't looking forward to eventually re-introducing meat, but I love knowing that my body can function, with remarkable alertness and clarity, on an entirely plant based diet.

As a sidebar, my apologies for my absence and lack of posts, my computer has been having some issues and is currently on its way to the manufacturer for some diagnostic tests. Plus I've been spending oodles of time in the kitchen preparing yummy, healthy food to feed my detoxing body!