Veggies! Vitamix! Victory!

I eat vegetables now. Raw. Nutrient filled. Healthy. 

A few years ago my diet consisted of (in order of importance) 1. Champagne 2. Hot Pockets 3. Skittles 4. Wine. You might think that's a joke but unfortunately it's not. I wasn't overweight or particularly sick. I functioned through long days of work, rehearsals and partying...for the most part. And I clearly didn't care much about myself.

But then I decided to have some babies with this dude I thought was the shit and suddenly there was someone I really wanted to take care of. And since that someone was living in my body I had to consider changing up my habits! Thankfully dude or "my husband Eric" as some call him, was a real nutrition aficionado and he encouraged me to eat a lot of good foods. We made a big chart to check of food groups, we went on walks, I quit boozing it up, and I slowly but surely started changing my mind about this crazy idea of healthy living.

Today, nearly 2 years and 2 kids later, I can say with confidence that I am healthy and I LOVE IT! I took ample time to grieve over the loss of my microwave and my addictions. Now the fog has cleared and damn I feel good!

My first born had TONS of allergies and because of that I was asked to stop breastfeeding very early. I really wanted to nurse my new baby so I decided to take a preemptive strike against allergies and just cut out every common allergen food group. That meant no wheat, corn, or dairy. And because of my hypoglycemia I'd just cut waaaay back on sugar. On my search for allergy free recipes someone recommended the site, Mark's Daily Apple. HALLELUJAH! That discovery set the path for the way of living my husband and I are embracing now! Mark Sisson is the author of The Primal Blueprint. It's all about the Paleo Diet and living life the way cavemen did. Hunter gatherer foods, specific non time consuming exercises like sprinting and heavy lifting, parenting skills such as baby wearing and homeschooling, barefoot or vibrams, no stress, nature, etc. There is so much that I'll have specific posts on later but basically it all made so much sense to us and we were fired up to get started!

The paleo diet is meat, vegetables, fruits and nuts. Exactly what I need and my body is loving it! It's been a month and I had a nice/uncomfortable detox cleanse from cutting out all the agricultural grains. I now have more energy, no sugar/carb crashes, no food comas, clearer skin and the baby weight is almost all gone! (She's 7 weeks old today.) Most importantly Jazz is still nursing, gaining impressive weight and has never been sick.

We're enjoying making new creations in the kitchen and for the first time in my life I want to cook! It's a creepy miracle that no one in my family saw coming. 

Vegetables lose so many nutrients when cooked that we try to eat them raw but I yearn for warm meals! We found a solution! 

Vegetable Soup in the Vitamix!

First we grabbed all the veggies that looked good from the fridge. Kale, Zucchini, Celery, Carrots, Orange Bell Pepper, Asparagus, Onions and Tomatoes.

Next we chopped them up and threw them in the vitamix with warm water (the exact amount to fill our two bowls) & bouillon (1.5 tbsp). We saved the tomatoes to mix in at the very end for texture.

Voila! Two warm bowls of nutrient filled vegetables. Seasoned to taste with fajita seasoning, salt and pepper. 100 calories per bowl. (2.5 cups) YUMMY!

What are your favorite soup recipes? Have you tried making warm creations in your Vitamix yet?

30 Minute Recording Challenge!

Eric and I have a band. Our band name is...wait for it...Blaze and Eric! Pretty freakin' clever.

Eric is an AMAZING musical freak-show that can play every instrument proficiently. He's incredible on piano, guitar, and saxophone. He's awesome on vocals, drums, bass and ukulele. And I've seen him pick up a violin, banjo, and didgeridoo and play them better than most. Considering that he's also smart, great at sports and has silky curly locks I am 69% sure that he's a robot and/or alien.

I love performing! Dancing is my biggest love so I use our music gigs as an excuse to shake my money maker for hours! Theatre, singing, dancing, playing piano and guitar have all been great creative outlets in my life. I feel so blessed that my husband and I can join forces and create!

Near the end of my pregnancy with Jazz I thought it'd be fun to record a song so I could immortalize my 9 month pregnant voice. It was a bit deeper and breathy than normal with about 1/4 my normal breath support. We decided to kick it up a notch and see if we could make a decent recording in under 30 minutes! We had some equipment set up on our kitchen table we took turns doing two takes each while the other person played with our 1 year old in the backyard. Then we spliced our favorite stuff together and voila. It turned out pretty good and we finished in 24 minutes! I can't wait to do our album recording without the challenges of pregnancy or time constraints.

Here's the end result. Hope you like it!

For more info on Blaze and Eric visit their band website!

What song would you like to hear us cover?

Jazz is Born! (The girl, not the music...)

Due Dates. Ugh. They are an estimate that falls in the middle of the month our baby could be born. But in this day and age with lots of scheduled C-Sections and unnecessary inductions a lot of people don't realize that it's okay to wait it out for awhile. Jazz was 10 days "overdue" aka born in her perfect timing but because of that damn due date I was anxious, ready for her and bombarded with texts and calls saying, "Where is she? Get her out already! Aren't you going to induce yet? Does it need to be at the hospital now? Is she safe? Get the pitocin and get that baby out!" AAH! Thanks to baby-daddy (he's also my husband but baby-daddy is much more fun to say) I was reminded daily of this concept I've always struggled with, Patience. Lo and behold, she eventually decided it was time to greet the world! Before I describe that magical morning let's rewind.

In March 2011 our son Lyric was born. The birth was ideal (an hour and half of pain with a purpose, everyone healthy, fast recovery, women now hate me, bouncing baby boy). The timing was ideal (professor husband off work for the summer)! And nobody's getting any younger. So, when my 6-week post partum appt rolled around and it was time to discuss birth control options we opted to not. I figured breastfeeding would keep things at bay for awhile but with my sons severe allergies the nursing didn't last nearly as long as I'd hoped and BOOM! baby number two was on her way!
We were very excited! Kids 13 months apart sounded like quite the adventure. Plus daddy-o would be finishing the school year just in time to help me with both little ones for the summer!

38 wks
www.VoAlaska.com

38 wks
www.VoAlaska.com

Pregnancy #2 was...long. I'd just recovered from the first pregnancy so another 10 months of fattening up didn't sound too exciting. Not long after I started showing it became challenging and eventually impossible for me to pick up and hold my son and since he couldn't walk yet that was not cool! I'm a singer and I must admit that gigging pregnant is great for tips! But it's tough for things like, I don't know, SINGING! Can't breathe, where are my lungs?, who's on my diaphragm?, I have to pee again band! Exhausting. At least I still had a full wardrobe of maternity clothes, books on pregnancy and midwives I loved! This time we decided to find out the sex so it was a blast sitting around daydreaming about my baby girl.

Natural birthing was very important to us and the ease of the first birth just proved to us we chose the right path with a drug-free midwife aided experience. We utilized the Hypnobabies program again. LOVE! I prepared mentally for the birthing day, hoping that my strength, faith and perseverance would make the experience go smoothly. And it truly did! Through much research and questioning we learned that hospital births are notorious for checking you in and getting that baby out whether it's the ideal time or not. Pitocin leads to unbearably strong contractions which then leads to an epidural, which in turn slows things back down because you're no longer able to follow the natural instincts of your body. In the end your baby is born and it was all worth it and you now have a war story to tell your friends (please dont tell the pregnant ones your negative birth stories!) but if there was a way to avoid that path we wanted it! And there was. The natural way that's been used forever, all over the world with WAY less complications. (I'll touch more on primal mothering in a future post.)

Visualization Collage I made!

Flashcards to help me stay strong on birth day!

Early in the morning on May 4th we went to the birthing center knowing the baby would arrive soon. I wasn't as far along as I'd hoped so they suggested walking stairs. I did that for a bit but I was very focused on listening to my body and I knew it was more important for me to rest and save my energy for the intense part that was inevitably going to come whether I ran up and down the stairs or not. Hubby brought a guitar and we sang songs in between contractions which helped keep me calm and distracted. And it really entertained the midwives! We had the Hypnobabies CD's playing in the background the whole time. There are CD's specifically for your birthing time stages and the pushing stage. It was AWESOME! As ideal as it was, contractions still freaking hurt like hell! I'm not at all immune to pain but I just kept breathing, focusing, remembering the pain had a purpose and I looked in the mirror and told my self what an amazing badass mofo I was. Ha!
Ooh! I remembered this feeling...it was time to PUSH! Hallelujah! At this point I stopped worrying and focused on helping Jazz get out as smoothly and quickly as possible. 13 minutes later she was in my arms! It was the most incredible feeling!
A few hours later we were home with our perfectly healthy bundle of poop, tears and cuteness. No, I won't be having baby #3 this time next year. I want the energy to play with these two for awhile! Then we'll see...

Welcome Jazz! :)

What were the major differences in your 2nd+ pregnancies? Did you change your birth plan the second time around?

No Sugar = A Happy Brain?

Recently, a friend of mine, we'll call her Junebug, mailed me a book. (Yes! In the old fashioned snail mail. E-mail is so wonderfully convenient but I love the now rare feeling of getting real live mail!) The title read, "Depression Free, Naturally 7 Weeks to Eliminating Anxiety, Despair, Fatigue and Anger from Your Life" by Joan Mathews Larson, Ph.D. Junebug had been suffering from major anxiety, depression, fatigue, etc for nearly a year. She and her husband had been to countless doctors, healers, hypnotists, and shrinks hoping for some answers. They received lots of head scratching, a few valiant guesses and America's favorite cure...PRESCRIPTION DRUGS! None of these helped and the drugs made it worse.

In their quest for a cure they heard about Joan Mathews Larson, nutritionist, author and founder of the Health Recovery Center in Minnesota. After Larsons teenage son committed suicide she dedicated her energy to finding out how to truly help someone suffering from emotional issues. She saw first hand that talk therapy and 12 step programs were not enough. Venting and awareness weren't the cure-all. What needed to be addressed was the root of the problem, the brain! With extensive lab tests she finds out where our unique problems are and addresses those with the proper diet and hardcore supplement regimens because many of these issues can be cured by discovering our body's vitamin deficiency's and adjusting.

I'll admit I initially had no intention of reading the book. I wasn't depressed so the title didn't excite me but as I did a little scan through the book I was impressed by the array of information that had been highly researched and tested with amazing results. Plus there were self-tests in each chapter so I could see if any of these common brain tweaks belonged to me. Quiz time! Anxiety Disorder? Nope. Pyroluria? Huh? No. Manic Depressive? Nah. Hypothyroidism? Nada. Anger? Little ol' me? Never. Hypoglycemia? Ding! Ding! Ding! We have a winner! What does win, Alex? No sugar in exchange for a happy brain!! I tallied my score in the hypoglycemia chapter."Scores over 35 are significant indicators of hypoglycemia." I scored 70. Whoa. Well that would explain a lot...once I learned what the hell hypoglycemia was.

Hypoglycemia: Deficiency of glucose in the blood stream. Basically sugar fracks me up. Highs and crashes and mood swings, oh my! Suddenly my life started making more sense. I'm a whiny biotch in the morning. Could it be because I haven't eaten in 12 hours and my blood sugar is suffering? Would simply eating something with protein right away turn morning time from evil to tolerable or even pleasant? I recently realized (by having it rudely pointed out to me) that I'm not the sweetest thing on earth when I'm hungry. If I go too long without refueling my brain gets foggy, I feel lethargic and irritable. It wasn't until I got clean and sober that I was even able to notice that. 2+ years ago I refueled constantly with alcohol, drugs and candy to try and balance the swings and dull the pain. Come to find out, 90% of alcoholics are hypoglycemic! Alcohol sugars are the fastest at reaching our blood stream so its the go-to for many and the cause of severe cravings. As a recovering addict this was a monumental thing for me to learn about myself! Bill W., the founder of Alcoholics Anonymous discovered this missing component to the 12-Step program. Months after establishing AA he found himself very depressed. He was able to correct it by addressing his brain bio-chemically and correcting his vitamin deficiencies. It was then that his depression and cravings truly disappeared. He worked to have this piece implemented into the AA program but by this time millions of Big Books had been printed and they didn't want to alter the program. Argh! In the rooms of recovery there are many people thriving once they're clean and working the steps but there are many others who are still struggling with depression, anxiety and cravings and they cant seem to shake it no matter how diligently they follow the program. It's heartbreaking to see but this could help so dramatically!

The chapter on hypoglycemia detailed what it is, how it effects our brain, what supplements to take and how to change our diet. A few weeks after reading the book I took my routine glucose test with the midwives to see if I had gestational diabetes. (I was prego with baby #2 at the time) When the results came back the midwife said, "Hmm, definitely no GD. Your glucose levels are low. Looks like you're hypoglycemic." My eyes widened, "Really? What does that mean?" "You probably feel horrible and totally screwed up when you eat sugary foods. Best to avoid it!" That was all the confirmation I needed! I cut sugar, white carbs and cut down on caffeine. (I was pregnant and had a 1 year old to chase around. I needed that one cup of coffee!) It took ONE DAY to feel the positive effects. Suddenly the fog lifted from my brain. I didn't have that gunky fog from eating carbs or the sugar crashes I was so accustomed to. I didn't need more than one cup of coffee because I wasn't crashing down every few hours. I felt lighter and I was even being nicer to people! Say what?! I kept up with it for two weeks then as a test (and because it looked delicious) I had some ice cream to see if I would feel any different. After a bowl of creamy goodness I was suddenly very sad about who knows what to the point of tears and then I was soooo tired I couldn't keep my eyes open. So, I took a nap, woke up and thought, Daaaaamn I'm so glad I read that book!

For me this discovery has taken my recovery and quality of life to a whole new level! I don't do it perfectly. Caffeine's still the hardest to break-up with but the carbs are goners and sugar doesn't look as sweet now that I know it takes me to Crazytown. If you're looking for emotional well-being and nothing else has worked please read this book or ask me more about it! I want my life to be the best it can possibly be and this has been a big part of my daily smiles.

Have any books opened your eyes to health issues no doctors had ever addressed? What books and how did the discovery change your life?