I don’t drink coffee. And not because I don’t like it. I LOVE it. And not because it isn’t healthy, it is.
The sad state of affairs is that when I drink coffee I get reflux and nausea. Every. Single. Time. But more than that. For me, it also leads to anxiety.
This is something I see commonly with my patients and clients. Yes, even with “just” one cup in the morning. Don’t get me wrong…I’m not vilifying your coffee. There are many benefits (I’ll get into that in another post). But if you have anxiety, headaches, reflux, fatigue, or high blood pressure it might be worth seeing what life is like without coffee. After all, you can’t make an educated decision if you don’t know how you feel without it.
Here are some of the reasons that people tell me they drink coffee (and my typical counterargument for those who may do better without it.)
OK I had to put this in here. WHY WOULD ANYONE IN THEIR RIGHT MIND DO THIS?!
- It’s delicious. (So are sour gummy bears, I don’t have those every morning.)
- Without it they feel tired. (You don’t have a caffeine deficiency, something is making you tired and you should address that.)
- It gives them an extra edge/they get more done. (So would cocaine. I mean it’s not going to be laced with fentanyl, and it’s legal, and has lots of benefits but if this is why you are drinking coffee ask yourself if that is ok with you? If so…good! If not, let’s look at why and what else can give more of an edge.)
- If they don’t drink it they get headaches. (That’s withdrawal. Cutting down slowly will prevent this.)
- The term “coffee alternatives” makes them cringe.
- It’s a habit. (Is it a habit that is harmful to you? If so, there are lots of ways to break habits!)
- They need it to poop! (Sure, yes. But you should be able to poop without coffee, let’s address your digestion.)
- A family member drinks it and it’s too tempting not to when the smell is wafting through the house. (Fair…but a good enough reason? There are compromises that can be made here.)
- A hot drink in the morning is soothing, part of a morning ritual. (There are lots of lovely drinks that can be part of a morning ritual.)
And these are all reasonable. Unless they aren’t. (more…)
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Do you think that all natural sugars are ok in moderation? The answer is…it depends.
Ready to learn more about sugar and your body?
Read these two articles (they’re both in the most-read list of my articles):
Dr Samantha’s Top Tips for Kicking Sugar to the Curb
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I saw a patient a while back who went on a new medication that changed everything.
We’d been working together for a year or so and she really, really wanted to see if she could get her health sorted without taking any prescription medications.
It doesn’t matter what she had going on, or what medication was on the table because this story isn’t about the condition, or the medication, it’s about choosing.
This patient worked hard over the course of the last year, and did her best. She would make progress, then at some point get off track, then come back to center, and start the cycle over again. She worked hard. She was aware of her road blocks and she understood that it was her own choices that would get her off track. She worked to not go into shame or self-doubt, and continued to get back on the horse.
In the end what she was able to do within her current bandwidth wasn’t quite enough. After a long conversation she started on medication. When she followed up at her next appointment she told me that with the medication she had the energy to put another 25% into her workouts, had increased focus to assist her in making healthier choices, and she had dropped 3 pounds to boot (icing for her, as she was hoping to lose a little weight…not the goal for everyone of course, but one for her nonetheless.) (more…)
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Once when I mentioned to a patient that I was heading on vacation she responded, with a wink, “oooooh, I hope you plan to have a realllllly good time.”
At first I was a bit confused as to what she was suggesting! Then I realized we had been talking about nutrition so I clarified that this was the topic at hand (thankfully it was!)
I told her that across the board, it is important to me to eat foods that make me feel well. And that this means more thought, more effort, and more commitment when I’m not on my home turf.
That’s not to say that I might not be more flexible when I’m traveling but the non-negotiables for me (no dairy, and no commercially raised animals) are non–negotiables if I’m at home or away. It’s a values thing for me. My values don’t go away on vacation. Feeling well and taking care of my body are paramount.
My life . My values . My choices .
☀️
Your values . Your life . Your choices .
If it’s more important for you to be carefree on vacation than it is to stick to your eating plan, if you don’t mind dealing with whatever it is that comes down the pike from getting ‘off track’, so what? If a short period of indulgence doesn’t make you feel regretful on the other side, and you’re not dealing with a concerning health issue (celiac disease, diabetes, etc) that will be impacted significantly by short term indiscretions then seriously, don’t worry about it. As long as you’re not (more…)
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A number of years ago, I was introduced to bone broth. I admit that I was a little squeamish about the idea of it at first, but I decided to give it a try. Although I tend to avoid things that are all the rage, I understood that bone broth has a wonderful nutritional profile. I was thrilled when I discovered that it was also delicious and really affordable if I made it myself!
We often buy a roasted chicken from our local health food store as part of our weekly food plan. We never get all of the meat off of it so when we’re done I wrap the carcass in a bag and throw it in the freezer. Once I have two, it’s broth time! I also will have been storing carrot butts, celery ends, onion skin, and other veggies in the freezer as well.
Bone broth has become part of my diet and one small thing I can do to be a good steward of the planet. Traditional cultures and cooking always used up all the animal parts. So often we simply take the pieces we want and toss out the rest, creating a lot of waste. I love to be able to take our leftovers, turn it into something wonderful and then use that to cook yet something else!\
The nutritional profile.
Stock contains a number of minerals including calcium, magnesium, phosphorus, silicon, sulphur and additional trace minerals. It also has chondroitin sulphates and glucosamine from cartilage and tendons. Stock also becomes gelatin when it cools, and gelatin has a long history of medicinal use. As a matter of fact, in Chinese herbal medicine it’s still included in several herbal formulas for providing sustenance and supporting the yin.
Several hundred years ago gelatin was used to stretch small protein meals into complete meals and was considered invaluable. In the 1950’s, an American researcher, Francis Pottenger found that gelatin had the quality of attracting and holding liquids. To that end, stock was used therapeutically for digestion by attracting digestive juices to food in the gut.
How to make bone broth yourself
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One of my favorite things to do with patients is to illustrate concepts with drawings (I actually do this across the desk and draw upside down which makes it even more fun…but I’m a dork like that!)
For allergy patients I draw a nose sniffing a flower and then how the body responds with a cellular reaction, ultimately leading to a runny nose and sinus inflammation. For diabetics I draw the path that carbohydrates take to end up being dropped off as a form of sugar in the liver.
There is one picture I draw for all of my patients. It’s a bucket. A stress bucket.
We are all born with a certain ability to handle stress. I represent this with a bucket. Some people are born with small buckets, and some people are born with big buckets. This will affect how much stress a person can handle before symptoms of distress or illness start to manifest. This is why two people can go through a similar experience and one person can recover while the other will be completely undone.
Imagine the bucket holds all of life’s stressors. The big things. The small things. The minutiae. The things you put up with on a day-to-day basis that don’t serve you physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually. When the bucket overflows, you experience the symptoms you are individually predisposed to, be it a psychological symptom such as anxiety, or a physical symptom such as headaches or fatigue.
This premise changes the game.
Here’s why…
We often feel overwhelmed by all of the things we can’t change. The things we don’t have control over. But, if we step back and look at the bigger picture we can see that we have much more control over our own stress than we’ve been led to believe.
Here’s how…
If you look at the accumulation of all of the things in your bucket (more about identifying these in another post soon,) you can identify dozens of things that you can change (take out,) and change with relative ease. Naturally, then, your overall load decreases and you have increased bandwidth to deal with the things that you can’t change, as well as those things you choose not to change.
With these small changes you can also implement practices to ‘manage’ your stress better (like coloring, get your free pages here!) But here’s the rub– you don’t want to only manage stress because at some point it becomes too much to manage.
You don’t want to add a bunch of stress-management techniques that just add more things to your already overburdened schedule and to-do list!
I talk about this a great deal in my book Overcoming Overwhelm, so go grab that if you want to learn more! It’s on sale on Amazon! 💕
And in the meantime I have a challenge for you. Think about what three things you can take out of your bucket in the next few weeks. Write them down in your planner, and then write down the specific action steps to implement it!
Yours in Health,
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