We interview Sydney Lee, the creator of Relax Spa Shots--a delicious all-natural nutrient dense tonic formulated to promote full body & mind relaxation. Whether taken for the simple purpose of promoting relaxation or prior to a spa or massage treatment to maximize therapeutic benefit.

What does it mean to be truly healthy?

Eating a "clean" diet and exercising regularly isn't the whole picture. What does a truly healthy person do as their everyday habits? We discuss what it means to have whole-person health and a new offering this spring to help you achieve true health. 

Transcription of our podcast is below.

Transcription of What's your Wellness IQ. (Edited for clarity.)

Wendy  

So, we've got this new idea. And we're very excited about the spring. And we're introducing this idea of how to improve your wellness IQ. We've got three workshops coming up. Spring is just the most beautiful time to have a growth mindset, right? Everything is popping up. And you see advertisements: spring cleanses, spring detox, you know, 30 days to do this.

Debbie  

Well, they're all over the place right now. I get them in my email daily. And I see them when I'm out at the supermarket, Whole Foods, health food stores, even regular stores. You just see it all over the place. 

Wendy  

For good reasons. It's a shift in seasons. And so, we kind of want to get rid of our winter stagnation.

Debbie  

Yeah, the winter gunk, yeah, it's a great time to get rid of your winter gunk.

Wendy  

But we want to introduce something different because it's so much out on the market is about seven days, 14 days, 30 days, but then what like what happens to us? We can all do things for 7,14, 30 days. But, how are we showing up all year round? And so, we have this new idea to share with everyone. It's called improve your wellness IQ.

Debbie  

And it’s about a lifestyle. As everything we always talk about, you know, it's how to make your lifestyle, a healthy lifestyle overall. So, you don't have to, every spring, think, “oh, no, I have to cleanse. I have to do this, you know, I need this 30 Day reboot.” Imagine not ever having to do that. Because you're doing it all year round.

Wendy  

Yeah, it's kind of exhaustive to think about the yo-yoing that happens when we go on and off diets and cleanses and programs. And most of our clients actually come to us pretty exhausted, saying, I've done it all. Now what? And so our approach really is about a healthy mindset and positive habits for longevity. Because we all want to live a long life and feeling strong. 

Debbie  

A long comfortable life. You know, and here's the thing about all these programs that are out there is that they make habits for you, you know. They create the habit for you that you follow. It's not your habit, you know. You're not doing the work of making it part of your lifestyle, your everyday lifestyle. You're doing something for seven days, 12 days, whatever, or 30 days. 

Wendy  

It's not yours, and it's totally taking your choice and your agency away from you, right? You're following a leader. You have no agency in that--you're just following direction. And it has caused us to become pretty lost, because we have forgotten, not only what it is like to feel good. But well, here's the other thing, I think, is that we want things to be easy. And you and I show up day after day making choices. Because our identification is of a person who is dedicated to health, right? And our vision of longevity is very clear in our mind. I believe a lot of people are walking around, not feeling good, but don't even know what it's like to feel good. And maybe they feel good for 7,14, 30 days. And then because someone told him what to do, they don't know how to do it on their own anymore.

Debbie  

Yeah. Yeah. Or, they're getting the idea, but they keep getting sabotaged either by the themselves or because of events that happen in life. You know, so, they might be on a good healthy track. And then something gets in the way--you have to work extra for one week, or you go on vacation, or your kid is sick and you your routine is thrown off, or whatever it is, life, whatever life throws at us, and then they they order out, or they, you know, splurge on ice cream for a week because they're on vacation or whatever it is. They go off track over and over again. And it's frustrating because they can't seem to stay on track because it's never really a part of their lifestyle.

Wendy  

Yeah, so to the point, it's work, right? It's work and we aren't used to suffering. Right? There's, a little bit of friction. Now, you know, we have to say “no” to things. We have to climb mountains or go to bed early and not watch that show like we want to. We have to be uncomfortable. Right? And you know, what we're trying to remind people is how uncomfortable is it to not be well.

Debbie  

Yeah, it's more uncomfortable to not be well than it is uncomfortable to do the work. I'll tell you that much.

Wendy  

It really is. And I think it's a different kind of discomfort. My husband calls it, “falling in love with the most mundane,” right? And being comfortable being uncomfortable. Diamonds are made from pressure and seeds explode into flowers, and fruits and vegetables and huge trees. They like to destroy themselves to become these amazing, beautiful things. And so, this idea we're talking about is, kind of, we want to interrupt the patterns. We want to be there as health coaches, as collaborators, as partners with you to be able to shift the effort and make the choice be the habit, right? The healthy choice--be the habit. We're all about 80/20. Please listen to that podcast about 80/20. We're not perfect. We don't expect people to be. We eat ice cream. Yeah, we binge watch, you know. We do this, but we we're not on roller coasters either. And we have a stability and sustainability for longevity that, we would love to pass on to other people. I mean, that's what gets us keep doing what we're doing, right? And putting this work into the world.

Debbie  

Yeah, I mean, most people, and I want to just give this analogy, because we're telling it like it is it, and if you are listening to this, and if you've ever worked out vigorously, which I hope you've have, yeah, it's hard. It stresses your body. But how do you feel when you're done? And how do you feel if you've done it consistently? You feel strong, you feel great. And that's the kind of uncomfortable we're talking about. And we're not just talking about working out, we're talking about all kinds of healthy lifestyle habits. But that's the analogy because you do the work, because the result is the beautiful thing, just like you were saying the seed that you know, explodes and all that stuff. So, I don't want to veer people away from us, because we're saying, yeah, we're going to be uncomfortable. Because the end result is so beautiful, that it's so worth that discomfort. And let me let me say this, that all of those companies and all those products out there that are claiming to cleanse and do all this stuff, a lot of those are also getting the message that you can do it and still be comfortable. And you can still you can do all this and not have to worry about--you can still eat ice cream every day. And you can still--and that's not true. They're lying to you. Yeah, they're telling you, because it's so attractive to say, “Oh, you mean I can be healthy and still eat pizza every day? And I can I don't have to move that much. You're saying I don't have to do all these hard things. And I can still be healthy.” No!

Wendy  

That's it's a big fat fib.

Debbie  

But they draw you in with it. Because of course, that's what we want. We all want to be comfortable. Who doesn't want to be comfortable? But to get comfortable? You have to work hard. And that's the fact.

Wendy  

Yeah. So, one of the ideas, we're both over 50. And one of the things we've learned recently is that around age 45. You know, if you aren't making these decisions to do the extra work for your health, you're actually going backwards. So, the question, if I don't change anything, and I stay the same for a year, nothing changes is false. I don't do anything for a year, I'm actually going backwards--in the 40s and above, so our message is: we need to double down and focus and make health the priority in our life so that everything else in life is better. It's like the root to the big tree. Right? You need deep roots to be able to flourish.

Debbie  

Absolutely. And part of that to get there. How do you get there? And I think one of the first steps is to think of yourself as a healthy person. Yes, and like you were saying before, as  health and wellness coaches, that's our identity. And so, that's how we identify and we do the behaviors because of that. So, if you think of yourself as a healthy person, and you think every day, what would a healthy person do? What would a healthy person eat for breakfast? What would a healthy person do to move her body today? You know, what does a healthy person do as their everyday habits? And is what I'm doing match the identity of a healthy person? And if you move throughout your day like that, no doubt, you're going to be making better choices. This is an amazing statistic that is mind blowing, that 80% of our health outcomes are based on our own behaviors, we have choice for 80% of all of our health outcomes, you know, great or not great. Totally in our control.

Wendy  

That is a pretty powerful statement. It's our agency. It's our choice. Total control. 80%. Yeah, it's a really big number. I think so many people feel a little bit demoralized about their health outcomes, and we choose to blame or have excuses for things. But when we look at the number 80%--

Debbie

It's empowering!

Wendy

So empowering. We can change--we absolutely can take back our health. We're a lot stronger than we think we are.

Debbie  

Absolutely. And it doesn't matter how old you are, it doesn't matter at all. You can completely change your body, your mind, everything. Even if you're 80 years old, 85 years old, you can shift right now.

Wendy  

We shift by making health a priority and being smart about it. And that's where we come in as health coaches to help you na

What does it mean to be truly healthy? Eating a "clean" diet and exercising regularly isn't the whole picture. What does a truly healthy person do as their everyday habits? We discuss what it means to have whole-person health and a new offering this spring to help you achieve true health. To take our Wellness IQ Quiz, follow this link: https://nourishcoaches.com/wellness-iq-quiz-2/ (If you want to register for our workshop(s), it's at the end of the quiz.

Hijacked Taste Buds

Our taste buds have been hijacked by the food industry to make us believe we're eating deliciously flavored non-foods that ultimately make us not feel well. How can we retrain our taste buds and get back to eating nutritious, real, whole foods?

Find out what's behind this bamboozling and how to turn it around.

In our podcast we mention a couple of books on the topic (links below) as well as a delicious beet recipe.

The Dorito Effect: The Surprising New Truth About Food and Flavor

Supernormal Stimuli: How Primal Urges Overran Their Evolutionary Purpose

Beet Hummus Recipe

Here's the transcript of speakers Wendy Bright-Fallon and Debbie Peterson.

Wendy  00:00

My husband and I were recently in a store that we usually don't go to. And he said, Wendy, come over here and take a look at this aisle. And I swear it looked a mile long, and it was all lined with candy, the whole thing. And there were all these banners saying how much fun you could have and all these insane colors and very alluring signs. Then we went to the next aisle, and it was a whole aisle of sodas, and then it just kept going on and on. And I really felt like I was in a foreign place. It felt just so fake to me - so unreal.

 

Debbie  00:49

I want to take a step back for a minute and introduce us, because we get so excited about these topics. You're listening to Nourish Noshes and I'm Debbie.

 

Wendy  00:59

And I'm Wendy. We're so glad you're here talking with us.  Let’s be clear, we want to have pleasure with food. But there's so much out there hijacking our taste buds. And what do we do about it? So we're going to talk about this. The evolution of it all.

 

Debbie  01:19

Yeah. Right. That is so attractive to so many people.

 

Wendy  01:23

What we're going to uncover today is how addictions happen. How do we get so lured by the processed stuff?

 

Debbie  01:33

We’ll talk about how these products and foods are hijacking our biology.

 

Wendy  01:51

Yeah, we just have not caught up really to this industrialized world - meaning our tastebuds and our response to all things not real.

 

Debbie  02:07

That's right, exactly. Let's start with taste buds.

A little geeky stuff.

Wendy  02:16

So I did not know this, but we've got 10,000 of these little tiny, tiny taste buds. And each one of them has 50 Plus taste receptor cells.

 

Debbie  02:29

Yeah! What does that look like? That's crazy stuff. That's why we have our tape. That's why we taste sweet, salty, sour, bitter, umami - I think I got them all. Our brain recognizes those flavors, because those are the natural flavors, right? And it sends signals to our brain and to the rest of our body to start digesting – kicking in our digestive process.

 

Wendy  03:01

Yeah, that's when our digestion actually begins - right in the mouth with the salivary glands - when we smell something or see something that tastes good, or that we assume tastes good and looks good - our salivary glands squirt.

 

Debbie  03:17

Right. And we depended on these tastebuds, especially when we were out, you know, hunter gatherers, nomadic lifestyles, where we had to trust that because some things were not safe to eat - our taste buds are programmed to be very sensitive.

 

Wendy  03:36

Yeah, it was a warning signal, right? If it was too bitter, we would say okay, that's gonna hurt me as poisonous. I'm not gonna have any more of that.

 

Debbie  03:46

Right. And on the other side, is that these taste buds were  also survival instincts because we needed to seek out foods that were nourishing to us with vitamins and minerals and things that our bodies needed, like salts and sugars and fats. We had to seek those out because they weren't readily available.

 

Wendy  04:08

They were the way to survive.

 

Debbie  04:11

If you think about that hunter gatherer 8000 BC, who was out there on the savanna? Yeah, there was lots of plants to eat - tons of plants to eat. And those were probably what they ate most of the time because they were readily available. But they had to go out and look for the salty stuff. They had to go out and look for fat in mostly animal products, or they weren't products! they were animals. They had to look for little berries during season. They had to run - they weren't just sitting there on a shelf in a supermarket like it is now.

 

Wendy  04:49

Yeah, and the crazy thing is - I don't know what the statistic is - I wished I'd looked this up…but I wonder how much of the food that's in a traditional local grocery store is actually defined as real foods and not synthetic or processed or factory farmed. A wonder what the percentage is?

 

Debbie  05:12

Oh geez, I don't think I want to know.

 

Wendy  05:16

It's as though it's taking over.

 

Debbie  05:25

Well, it is because it's cheaper. So it's cheaper to make a synthetically factory formed raspberry than to grow and pick and ship the raspberries. You know, it's cheaper to make these fake foods. That's why.

Ooh, here's that statistic:

as a nation, we now consume more than 600 million pounds of synthetic flavorings a year, which comes to about two pounds per person of synthetic flavorings.

 

Wendy  05:59

It's fake over real. That’s a crazy stat.

You know, we're eating more ketchup than tomatoes.

 

Debbie  06:09

Oh, yeah, for sure. And it's tied up in money.

 

Wendy  06:15

It really is tied up in money and its making us ill.

Oh, what was that movie called?

 

Debbie  06:25

Wally?

 

Wendy  06:27

Yeah, the animated movie Wally. It just becomes so depressing. Because everybody moved around on conveyor belts and had big size cups and big size everything. I mean, it just seems like everything's going in that way. And then Wally finds a plant, right? This beautiful plant, and it makes his heart pump or something. I'm trying remembering. But, ugh, how do we get back to real?

 

Debbie  06:58

That's the sad thing isn’t it – we’re heading that direction. Our taste buds - and other things - have been hijacked. They've been hijacked to think that these non-food items are what we really want.

 

Wendy  07:12

Well, and it's convenient, hyper flavored, right. And the sad part is that even though it's got that satisfaction of the sugar, fat and salt, it's actually like a nutrition desert. It doesn't have any of the minerals and nutrients that our body actually recognizes. So we're all kind of walking around like zombies.

 

Debbie  07:42

Yeah, yeah. And I mean, again, let me go back to the fact that the sugar, fat and salt activates our brain, it gives a reward. It's like a dopamine when we face these things, because, again, our bodies have not evolved from 8000 BC when we were hunter gatherers, and we needed that reward system to make us go out and get more of that. And food manufacturers know all that and they're constantly creating new complex flavors and textures that are designed specifically to be irresistible to our biology.

 

Wendy  08:19

Got to take a big deep breath.

How do we unravel all of that?

 

Debbie  08:26

Yeah, well, we can't. There's not much we can do as individuals. I mean, the food industry is huge. And they've hired scientists to specifically design tastes that will get us to want to buy these processed, crazy things. So we can only work on ourselves. And what we can do as coaches is help people be aware that this is going on.

 

Wendy  08:51

I think that's true. Because once you have a little we want more, right? Yeah. Exactly what you said this dopamine hit and it happens prolifically in October at Halloween. And in the store the other day. I mean, they're already promoting Valentine's and Easter candy. You know, two more months of sugar rich rushes. Very seductive.

 

Debbie  09:26

Yes, very seductive. And when it comes down to it, like I said, it's all about money.

What to do about it:

Wendy  09:33

And so how do we trip it up? How do we unhinge ourselves?

 

Debbie  09:39

Yeah, don't spend your money on these foods.

 

Wendy  09:44

Exactly - don't spend your money on these foods. You know, I shop in different places than I used to 15 years ago and because I hadn't been in this store regularly, which is literally right around the corner from my house, I don't have that marketing in front of me all the time. And so one idea is maybe to just simply go to a different shop,

 

Debbie  10:12

Or stay to the perimeter of the store where all of the real food is where, you know, the produce and other real food and don't go in the processed aisles. Stay away from them.

 

Wendy  10:25

Could we share just a couple of samples of people who have had sugar addictions and what they did? Because we've got some fabulous success stories. With the help of our accountability, the client does the work, they really create new boundaries for themselves.

 

Debbie  10:51

The work that you're talking about is recognizing that something can change, something can change for the betterment - to make you feel better. Eating more nutritious foods and ditch the stuff that is not making you feel good or not super nutritious. So it's not that easy to do just change everything all at once. But the idea is to recognize first. One of our clients was talking about how she's just going to start the habit of reading labels every time she goes to store and buys something in a package.

 

Wendy  11:33

It was such so interesting because she said she had both half and half and almond milk. And she looked at the ingredients, and realized there was more real food in the half and half. And she said she would have, hands-down, thought that almond milk would have been closer to real food. And her interest really got piqued by by looking at the other things th

Our taste buds have been hijacked by the food industry to make us believe we're eating deliciously flavored non-foods that ultimately make us not feel well. How can we retrain our taste buds and get back to eating nutritious, real, whole foods? Find out what's behind this bamboozling and how to turn it around.

One of the best ways to sustain healthy habits is to journal your food and lifestyle choices. We use them with our clients and have heard over and over again how it has changed their habits for the better and kept them on track. In this episode of Nourish Bytes, we talk about our Nourish Coaches Journal and what sets it apart from others. Listen here.

Get started journaling today!

Here's the transcript:

Wendy  

Today we wanted to talk about journaling our food and lifestyle habits. 

Debbie  

Yeah, we have a tool that we use with our clients so that people can write down their habits throughout the day.

Wendy  

Yeah, we believe awareness is, well, it's the basic key, right, to noticing what our habits are, what our thoughts are. And once we notice them, we can take some pause, and perhaps change them. And when we use a journal, we're looking at everything that's going on in a person's life, from their food, to their sleep, to their movement, their connection, their mindset, what's going on emotionally and physically. And we use this, kind of, as a map.

Debbie  

It's a great way to see how patterns emerge. And it also is a little bit enlightening in that we often move through our days a little bit mindlessly. So having this new habit of writing things down, brings awareness to so many things that we weren't aware of.

Wendy  

What we really find with our clients, when they start doing this, is the “aha” moments. "Oh, I didn't realize that every day at four o'clock, I got hungry," or "I didn't realize I was eating after eight o'clock on most nights." And so the tool is really to uncover these habits and patterns that are serving us or habits that aren't serving us and how can we tweak them so that we can feel, look and perform better?

Debbie  

Right. And the other idea is that keeping this journal makes you think twice about some things that you may not want to write down. And it's not because we necessarily see the things, you know, and it's up to you as our clients, whether you share them with us or not. But the idea is that, do you want to write it down for yourself? I sometimes forgo some things because I don't want to see it written down.

Wendy  

Well, that is a perfect example of increased awareness. The other thing about the journal is you have us as health and wellness coaches as accountability partners. So if you know someone's looking at it, same thing Debbie just said, right, you may think twice about having that extra slice.

Debbie  

And that said, this is a no judgment zone. It's just about data. It's about: did that help you feel better or did that not? None of it is good or bad? Wrong or right? It's just data.

Wendy  

We hold really these food and lifestyle journals is really just data and sacred space to put down everything that's going on in your life.

Debbie  

Alright, thanks for listening to this byte. Our podcast can be heard on most platforms including Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, I Heart Radio, SoundCloud, and TuneIn. Thanks for listening to Bytes.

One of the best ways to sustain healthy habits is to journal your food and lifestyle choices. We use them with our clients and have heard over and over again how it has changed their habits for the better and kept them on track. In this episode of Nourish Bytes, we talk about our Nourish Coaches Journal and what sets it apart from others.

An interview with Spiritual Director and Reiki Master Grace Conte

Have you ever met someone and immediately felt a connection? Something about their energy or how they speak or carry themselves draws you in. That's how we felt when we hosted Grace Conte in our office for a workshop about Reiki. Though we have both experienced reiki, this discipline is fairly new to us and we walked away with a new interest and deeper understanding of this healing model. We wanted to know more about reiki and about her so we invited Grace onto our Nourish Noshes podcast to share more about her life's work. She has a very powerful story about her spiritual path.

In this interview, we learn how Grace's traumatic childhood and long cancer journey became her access point that shaped her hope-filled life of courage, deep spiritual nourishment, work and transformation in service to self and others.

Through her sacred work, Grace brings hope to the parts of ourselves that hold resistance and limits. During our conversation, we talk about the beauty of tapping into wisdom we already hold within - even though so many of us don't know how to trust ourselves. We talk about religion, suffering, science and the power of helping people help themselves. We also talk about how our days can unfold in a more meaningful way through the power of discipline and detachment.

Our conversation was such a pleasure and we all felt a deep connection in our beliefs about health and wellness and spiritual nourishment. To learn about her amazing journey and about spiritual growth

You can also read one of Grace’s published articles about aging gracefully: Move Gracefully Through Aging: Utilizing the Powers of Pausing and Subtle Shifts for a (W)holy Peaceful Perspective. 

Grace often holds workshops at Nourish.  Watch our newsletter for more detail or reach out to Grace directly @908-902-5121 or [email protected].  She also holds workshops with the Monmouth County Parks System, Upper Room Spiritual Center and Mind and Body Healing Center in Colts Neck.

In this interview, we learn how Grace Conte's traumatic childhood and long cancer journey became her access point that shaped her hope-filled life of courage, deep spiritual work and transformation in service to self and others. 

Through her sacred work, Grace brings hope to the parts of ourselves that hold resistance and limits. During our conversation, we talk about the beauty of tapping into wisdom we already hold within - even though so many of us don't know how to trust ourselves. We talk about religion, suffering, science and the power of helping people help themselves. We also talk about how our days can unfold in a more meaningful way through the power of discipline and detachment.

Our ancestors didn't have the choice to eat foods out of season, for the most part. However, today, we can find berries in our food markets in the dead of winter. Our bodies, though, know when it's summer or winter and we do best when we are in sync with the seasonal foods that we evolved eating. They can warm us, cool us down, give us energy, help our immune systems, and so on. If we feed our bodies in this way, we can live our healthiest lives.

Transcript of Seasonal Eating podcast

Edited for clarity

Debbie  00:01

One of our many mantras is to eat seasonally. And the reason for that is many, but seasonal food generally is fresher, tastier and more nutritious than food consumed out of season. And in this podcast, we're going to discuss all the seasons and the reasons why it's best to eat food that's harvested locally. And seasonally. I'm Debbie.

Wendy  00:27

I'm Wendy.

Debbie  00:28

And let's talk about seasonal eating.

Wendy  00:30

Let's talk about fall and winter. It's upon us and everything's changed. No more stone fruits. And now we have citrus and

Debbie  00:38

Pears and apples.

Wendy  00:40

Yeah, cranberry season is upon us.

Debbie  00:41

Right, right. However, it's a little bit misleading because stores keep foods that are not in season, because there's a demand for them like berries.

Wendy  00:51

And so eating things seasonally really sparked the tastebuds. That's why an apple in the middle of summer just doesn't taste very good. Because it's from last season. Hanging out in some storeroom someplace.

Debbie  01:03

Yeah, exactly. And right now, apples are delicious.  And you can tell in the stores, there's so many different varieties of apples right now. It's because everybody is harvesting right now. So they're around--apples and pears, especially. So those are, those are the fruits--that and citrus that's what you eat right now.

Wendy  01:20

An apple a day keeps the doctor away.

Debbie  01:24

Yes, so there's so many reasons to eat seasonally in fall and winter, especially because our immune systems are always . . .

Wendy  01:33

challenged?

Debbie  01:34

Good word! They are! They're challenged in the winter, because we're all inside close together and sharing germs a little bit more easily than we are in the summertime. It's not that the germs aren't there in the summer, it's just that now we're kind of packed together a little bit more and we transfer them a little bit more easily. So foods that grow in the fall in the winter or harvested in the fall and winter, ours are supporting our immune systems. Although citrus may not be New Jersey, local foods, they are high in vitamin C, which is a huge antioxidant--it really boosts our immune system. So that's why they grow in the colder weather, even where they're local. It's colder weather for them. So that's why they're seasonal. In Florida. It's it's not 90 degrees, at least most of Florida in the middle of the winter. So it grows in colder weather to boost people's immune system.

Wendy  02:21

In winter, we're needing more warm food. So that's why the winter squash, you know, they're all roasting or we're steaming them, baking them.

Debbie  02:31

Right. And these squashes and root vegetables are denser, heavier foods, and we need those dense, heavier foods in our system. We need the sugars that they provide. And we need that warming quality that they provide. That's what winter foods do is they provide a warming our metabolism kicks in to help digest them. And that keeps it a little bit more warm. And the way we cook in the winter. For sure.

Wendy  02:55

Yeah, soups and stews and roasting and baking,

Debbie  02:59

Right. It's all warming qualities. So that's what we need.

Wendy  03:03

And paying attention to that kind of, you know, Mother Nature is just so smart. Yeah, it really if we follow the seasons a little bit more, and we are-- no one is looking for perfection. So if you are craving berries in the middle of winter, maybe you've frozen some. They'll probably taste a lot better if you freeze them fresh, than getting something. . .

Debbie  03:28

--that was shipped to all the way from Chile or somewhere else where they're in season right now, which is what's happening. Yeah. So another interesting thing about seasonal eating is that our bodies actually change throughout the seasons. Our microbiome changes throughout the seasons. So right now, our bodies are adjusting to match the season. And they're promoting all these different digestive microbes that are supporting balanced immunity, our digestion for these heavier foods, our mood, our energy, our blood sugar, our sleep. Everything is being supported by our altered microbiome right now. It's kind of shifting into the colder weather. And those bacterias in that microbiome are there to help support themselves and their host, which is us, to survive better in the colder weather.

Wendy  04:17

Yeah, so I think too in the fall/winter, we want to make sure we're not running away from fat because we need it. Yeah, we need the fat to absorb all the nutrients of all those squashes and all the vegetables we're having now.

Debbie  04:32

And the vitamins that are available through those foods, those are fat soluble vitamins, right? A lot of the vitamins that we need in the winter are the fat soluble vitamins which is why we crave fats and salts in the wintertime. Our bodies and nature know what to do if we actually listen to it.

Wendy  04:53

So one of the other wonderful things about eating locally and shopping with the seasons is that it's actually less expensive. Berries, right now, they're really expensive, because we are shipping them from other countries. So, eating with the seasons and eating locally, not only we're voting with our dollar to support the local farmers, you know, keeping it in our backyard, right? It's cheaper.

Debbie  05:20

That's right, we want to support the local farmers too. It's also environmentally much, much better, because we're not shipping them from another country using all that gas, and petrols  and all of the chemicals that they use, and all the stuff that they do to transport them and preserve them.

Wendy  05:37

Keeping them looking all pretty and perfect.

Debbie  05:40

So there's a lot of energy that goes into that, that's not necessary, if you can just buy foods that grew, you know, right around the corner here, and are in season, they taste better too it just tastes better when you have food that was just harvested. Yeah. And what goes along with tasting better is nutrient density. You know, the reason it tastes better is because all the nutrients are intact. So, if you're eating something that was harvested, you know, 5000 miles away, or 10,000 miles away, it's gonna take a while to get here, and those nutrients die on the way here. You know, the stores do, for the most part, have seasonal foods there, if you pay attention, the ones that they're usually out in the open are the ones that are seasonal, because they're gonna taste best, and they want to sell us the foods that taste best, because they want us to buy it again. So pay attention to that and go to your market, go to your local markets, buy organically when you can, because that's important too. That's voting with your dollars. If you go to a store that advertises local, choose that, you know, we want to support those farmers and it should be cheaper too. It's it's a win win all around!

Wendy  06:43

All around for us, the environment, the local farmer. Everything benefits when we eat more locally. And in order to get creative, going to spices, warming spices are a fabulous way to mix up the palate, so you don't get bored through the winter.

Debbie  07:01

That's right. So cinnamon, cardamom, curry . . .

Wendy  07:06

Nutmeg!

Debbie  07:07

All these warming spices and deliciousness is all serving our bodies well.

Wendy  07:13

In the winter, we're eating more fat, and meat. And so we tend to be a little bit more quiet in our bodies as well. So in the spring, when everything's moving around, we need to actually flush that out. So if we're eating the greens, and the chlorophyll and that energy, and it actually helps move our toxins through the body, actually flush it out. So greens are like a rainforest in the body and provides us the energy that we need to kind of transition to the life.

Debbie  07:53

And it's not so much that what we're eating in the winter is not good for us. It's what we need at that time to keep us warm. But what keeps us warm, we don't want in the spring so much we need to let go of that so that we can start to cool off towards the summertime. And it's a matter of also rehydrating ourselves after the long winter of dehydration. Most of us get somewhat dehydrated during the winter. It's just normal. Everybody feels a little drier, their skins drier. We have rough patches on our bodies, no matter how much moisturizer we use, and that's normal. That's winter. So how do we rehydrate--our body actually does it for us, if we're eating the right foods, it's kind of interesting, you might notice that you start to retain water in the springtime.

Wendy  08:39

And it's also interesting that the spring harvest is very low in fat. And that helps our body reset its ability to metabolize fat as fuel.

Debbie  08:53

Right. And that makes the body burn the fat for energy then.

Wendy  08:56

It's miraculous! It's so natural.

Debbie  09:00

Right? And that an interesting--that's exactly what we need to do. If we eat the right foods. We eat low fat, it'll take care of it--it'll get rid of the extra fat automatically without having to do all of these efforts that people go through to try to get rid of their winter weight. And what a lot of the greens do, especially the dark greens,...