The Only Little Prayer You Need

The Only Little Prayer You Need

Earlier this year, I picked up a book titled The Only Little Prayer You Need by Debra Landwehr Engle. This really isn't the sort of book I would normally buy, but something about it really caught my attention, so I got it. I'm so glad I did. 

The prayer has changed my life. I've been into personal development for a long time now, but this book helped make some of the other practices I've been using really fall into place. The prayer helps you release fear and embrace love. The prayer is general enough to fit into any religious or spiritual practice, and even works for those who don't observe any such practice.

I was inspired to make a video about the prayer, so I collected prayers that fit a wide range of experiences. Not all of these prayers are mine. I hope you find something in this video that resonates with you, and that you read Engle's book, and put the prayer to work in your own life.

Click here to watch the video. Enjoy!

#IfLifeWereLikeAHorrorFilm

#IfLifeWereLikeAHorrorFilm 

If life were like a horror film, that’s a notion that stirs the imagination. When I was a child, Witches were monsters just like vampires and mummies. The numerous movies detailing the exploits of the wicked witch underscored that point. And fairy tales like Sleeping Beauty seemed to be a primer into the belief that witches were monstrous. Of course, I believed this. If it were in a book, it had to be true.

I was born into a Christian home. I had been christened as a Catholic at birth, but after my parents’ divorce at age six, was raised in the Pentecostal tradition of my mother’s family. In spite of this, I always felt a spiritual calling that was outside of my upbringing. I felt a kinship with nature that was alien to the teachings of my youth. I felt an energy that seemed to course through me at all times. And I felt the pull toward an image and relationship with God that had nothing to do with the church. Who knows why I was born into such a dichotomy? Regardless, it was many years later that I discovered a spiritual model that fit experiences I had been born. It was one that I didn’t know existed before, and one that seemed to be completely backwards to the way I was raised. That path was witchcraft. And stepping onto that path, I became a Witch.

Suddenly, those monsters of my youth became images of defamation that cut across the face of the beautiful reality I was experiencing, and had in fact always experienced. The face of evil that was part of the propaganda to further the ideals of a constrictive social structure that masqueraded as a religious one, a religion that didn’t lift the spirit, but rather like a boa constrictor, squeezed the life out of it, swallowing the soul in the process. Propaganda that made anyone who was different appear evil. Much like the church-taught "evils" of homosexuality, which I had had to deal with after I came out. Apparently, that's another fictitious monster story, but not one for this post.

And so, #IfLifeWereLikeAHorrorFilm, what then? There are as many depictions of good witches in films and literature as bad so, as a witch in a horror film, would I then be a villain, or a savior? One thing is certain. I would not be a victim.

Happy National Iced Tea Day

Happy National Iced Tea Day!

Happy National Iced Tea Day! #NationalIcedTeaDay Even though coffee is the beverage of choice in the United States, in 2014 Americans consumed 3.60 billion gallons of iced tea. That’s over three trillion, by the way. You can imagine how much coffee we drink. We have the Chinese to thank for the discovery of tea, camellia sinensis, over 2000 years ago, and the trade that followed to its popularity the world over.

According to the National Iced Tea Day website, the American love affair with iced tea began with the 1904 World’s Fair and escalated during World War I. Green tea became popular in the early 1800s, not by itself, but as an alcoholic punch. Pass the bowl! Herbal teas, sipping teas, or tisane, often disdained by tea purists, have been popular for much longer than traditional tea (camellia sinensis). According to the Rune Tea website, evidence of Paleolithic plant use could indicate the use of tisane as early as 60,000 years ago.

Tea is a way of life for many. Around the world, people start and end their days with tea, which can be used to energize or relax. Tea is popular with those who want to lose weight, as the caffeine helps boost metabolism. Tea is popular with those who focus on a healthy lifestyle, too. The antioxidants in tea help to minimize the damage of free radicals in the body. And finally, tea is simply enjoyed for the taste and pleasurable aroma.

Whether you enjoy your tea ice cold by the glass or hot in a mug or cup, take some time to enjoy some tea or tisane today. Happy National Iced Tea Day!

Fat Calories and a Healthy Diet

Fat Calories and a Healthy Diet

“How much fat is too much?” “How many fat calories should I eat?” “How much fat is considered healthy?” These are questions that I hear all the time. There’s an easy equation for solving for ‘x’, if ‘x’ is the amount of fat you should eat. Take the number of calories you should eat each day, divide by the percentage of fat intake (we’ll say 25%) and you’ll get the number of fat calories in your diet. Take that number and divide by 9 and you’ll get the number of grams of fat in your daily diet (since there are 9 calories per gram of fat).

If you aren’t sure how much fat you should eat each day, visit www.3days3ways.com to get your free wellness profile.

Tracking fat calories

Do you really want to do that each day? Some people do, and that’s great, but most of us don’t. Luckily, there are some easy ways to control the amount of fat in your diet while not compromising flavor, or feeling deprived.

First, steer clear of deep fried foods. I can hear the grumbles coming from Mississippi now. No, I’m not picking on our neighbors to the south, but my time on the Gulf Coast introduced me to a wide range of deep fried foods, including deep fried cauliflower. Now, you don’t have to eliminate these foods, just treat them as a sometimes item rather than a staple. Deep fried foods not only include the battered and fried items everyone thinks of, but also things like potato chips.

Second, switch to low fat versions of foods you use frequently like milk and mayonnaise. For occasional items like ice cream, provided it really is an occasional treat, stick with the regular version. Why turn a special, occasional treat into an occasion for discipline? Unless you’re into that sort of thing. Moving on…

Third, eat lean proteins. Now, when it comes to lean protein choices, conventional wisdom turns our attention to “poultry breast, fish, shellfish, egg whites, nonfat dairy

products and soy products; they have much less fat than steaks, ground meats and

sausage” (Bowerman). And I agree with this list to a point. When people buy steak, they go for marbling, which is the white specks of fat in the meat. Fat gives the meat flavor and keeps it moist, provided you don’t cook it into shoe leather. However, loin and center-cut ribeye have just as much fat as a chicken breast, ounce for ounce. So you can make good choices when looking for red meat. Look at the nutrition labels, which brings us to our next point.

Fourth, read the nutrition labels. If you are trying to make yourself aware of the fat calories in your diet, make a point of checking the nutrition labels and doing the math. Yes, it will be a chore at first, but as you educate yourself in the amount of fat per portion size (and you mind the portion size), tracking your fat intake and making good choices will get easier. This is just like starting a new job. At first, it takes a little more time, but after a while you get faster and it seems like second nature.

Fifth, and this goes back to the topic of cooking, use smaller amounts of oil, or use substitutes for oil. Graham Kerr, long ago, did a demonstration showing that one cup of onions can be caramelized using a single teaspoon of oil instead of a tablespoon. But, you can caramelize onions without oil at all, as demonstrated by Chris Daniels for Healthy Eating. My own method differs slightly. After adding the onions and the seasoning, I add enough water to cover the bottom of the pan, but not submerge the chopped onions. I put the lid on the pan, over medium heat, for eight minutes. After eight minutes, I take the lid off the pan and let the remaining water evaporate, after which I brown and deglaze until the desired level of caramelization is reached. Using the water at the start softens the onions more quickly and prevents the smaller pieces from burning up before the rest finish caramelizing.

Wow, that’s a lot of talk about onions, but you can cook many vegetables in the same way. Add just enough water to cover the bottom of the pan but not submerge the vegetables. Cover to steam (the length of time depends on the type of vegetable you’re cooking and how you’ve prepared it), and then uncover and let the remaining water evaporate. When you hear it sizzle, season and serve, or proceed with your recipe. But why just use water? You can use chicken broth or white wine just as well. Do not use “cooking wine” which is an abomination. If you wouldn’t drink it, don’t cook with it. But, what if you’re not cooking vegetables? You probably know that you can substitute part of the oil in baked goods with apple sauce or chia gel to keep the batter moist. A tablespoon of water in a non-stick pan over medium heat will keep eggs from sticking. What are you cooking? Leave me a comment below and I’ll give you a suggestion.

Sixth, if you eat regularly in restaurants, and I’m talking more than twice a week, make it a point to order something grilled, broiled, or baked. These cooking methods tend to use less fat. You can lower your fat intake this way, and yes, you can still treat yourself periodically.

Lastly, if dessert is something you eat regularly, switch to fresh fruits and sorbets, while enjoying a special dessert occasionally. If you typically snack during the day, choose lean protein, low-fat cottage cheese, or crisp veggies. Like everything else, you can still enjoy an occasional treat.

Visit www.3days3ways.com and get the skinny on your fat intake with your free wellness profile.

Lowering your fat intake doesn’t have to mean giving up your favorite foods or depriving yourself. In fact, it can be a game, if you treat it that way. Keeping track of your fat calories will take some focus, but if you keep at it, it will get easier.

Sources:

Bowerman, Susan MS, RD, CSSD, FAND. “How Much Fat Should You Eat?”

Home Cooking and Good Health

Home Cooking and Good Health

Home cooked meals are the best things ever. I have a friend whose business entirely revolves around the home-cooked meal. When you cook at home, you save money and time. And the best part is that you know exactly what’s in your food. For those of us who count calories, this allows us to more accurately account for what we’re eating. But some people see the time and work it takes to cook a meal as a disadvantage. As someone who cooks at home most of the time (we have an altar to Julia Child in our kitchen), I can tell you that if you learn just a few techniques well, you can cut down on time and prep work, and actually enjoy the process.

Here are a few tips. First, choose a few quick and easy recipes that you like and know how to prepare. If you’re in a time crunch, you can pick one and put it together in no time. Add to your quick and easy recipe collection until you have at least a dozen, that way you won’t bore yourself to death cooking the same thing over and over. This will also help keep your family from planning a culinary mutiny.

Second, have some basic ingredients on hand. Those quick and easy recipes I mentioned above? They won’t be so quick and easy if you don’t have the ingredients in your freezer or cupboard when you need to prepare them. Here’s a thought: when you choose those recipes, collect small groups of recipes that each use the same ingredients. That way, you can change it up and still keep your ingredients list simple.

Third, let your supermarket do the prep for you. Some items like vegetables and fruits can be purchased from the deli counter already peeled, sliced, or chopped. In some cases, the portions will be prepackaged and in others you can take a “take-out” container and fill it with the items you intend to use. When you get home, you can assemble the rest of your ingredients and throw everything together. Well, maybe not throw, exactly, but you get the idea.

Fourth, get two or more meals from one. If you are cooking for two, you can make enough for four and freeze the extra portions for another meal. This works well for pasta dishes. Alternatively, you can turn leftovers into completely different dishes. I have a friend who can turn yesterday’s mashed potatoes into some of the best salmon patties you’ve tasted. This may require some experimentation, but it’s worth the effort.

Lastly, use the titans of meal preparation, the slow cooker and the pressure cooker. Slow cookers are amazing because you can put the meal together the night before and store the crock in your ‘fridge. In the morning before you leave for work, just pop the crock in the cooker base and turn it on low. Pressure cookers are exactly the opposite. When you get home, you can put a roast in your pressure cooker, and what would have taken three hours to cook can be done in 45 minutes to an hour. Modern pressure cookers are extremely safe, and there are even some electric models with digital displays.

Cooking at home can save time and money, and can give you a great tool in your journey toward good health. And if you really don’t have time to cook, give my friend Rudy a call.

Sources:
Susan Bowerman, MS, RD, CSSD, FAND. “5 Tips for Quick Meal Preparation”

Weight Management and Calorie Counting

Weight Management and Calorie Counting

Tracking your weight management via calorie counting seems pretty easy. After all, if you burn more than you eat, you lose weight, right? If you’re not losing weight, then you’re eating and burning at the same rate. And if you’re gaining weight, then you’re eating more than you burn. Straightforward stuff, but keeping track can be difficult. Even if you keep a food diary, and you’re very honest about it, you can still get tripped up. Here’s why.

Tracking your intake

It’s great to keep a food diary during your weight management journey. It helps you become aware of what and how much you eat. Some people just don’t realize their eating habits until they pay attention enough to record them, whether they’re eating too much or too little. If you find that you aren’t reaching your goal, and you are recording everything, including condiments, sauces, gravy, and beverages, then compare the nutrition data on the food you eat with another sources, or sources, to see if it’s accurate. It might not be.

Tracking your activity

Going to the gym is great. If you do cardio on a machine, then you have your calorie output right there, right? Yes, and no. The algorithms used to calculate calories burned vary from one company to the other. The machine also doesn’t take into account your height or build. Because of this, the reading can be over- or underestimated. Also, unless you are using an activity tracking website or a personal device like a fitbit, then you might be overestimating calories burned during other activity, such as aerobics or weight lifting. By the way, comparing your calorie burn output on a machine to the calories burn output on your fitbit can help you get a more accurate reading there, too.

Tracking your rewards

Sometimes we convince ourselves to exercise by promising ourselves a reward. Two rewards can be quite compromising in your weight management efforts. The first is rewarding yourself by taking it easy the rest of the day. The second is rewarding yourself with food or drink.

If you reward yourself by taking it easy the rest of the day, then you deprive yourself of your normal activities, which burn calories. If you are typically active, and by that I mean running errands, attending events, being busy, then you are burning more calories than you would sitting still. If you burn fewer calories the rest of the day than you would normally, then you may as well have not worked out because you’ll end up burning the same amount of calories as you would have in your normal day anyway.

Now, if you reward yourself with food or drink, then you are on a slippery slope. Remember when I said that most people don’t correctly estimate the number of calories that they burn? Thinking that they’ve burned a large number of calories, they might treat themselves, and add more calories than they burned in the first place. Nice treat, but nothing to show for it in the end except for extra calories. If you want to treat yourself after a workout, or after a series of workouts, do it with a non-food item. You could get yourself a new music album or CD, or if you’ve really reached a milestone, a new garment for your wardrobe. Make it something that you’ll treasure and that will be a real reward.

Visit www.3days3ways.com to request a free wellness profile, where you’ll find out how many calories you burn daily and how many calories you need to meet your weight management goal, plus a whole lot more.

In the end, remember to use additional resources to track your calorie input and output, and reward yourself with non-food items. Tracking your weight management progress via counting calories might seem pretty easy, but remember that there are pitfalls, and things are not as cut and dried as they might seem; but also remember that tracking something is better than tracking nothing, just be sure that you are tracking the correct numbers, and good luck!

Sources:
Bowerman, Susan, MS, RD, CSSD, FAND. Calories In and Calories Out: Finding the Right Balance

The Power of Protein

The Power of Protein

Protein is a key nutrient for our physical and mental health. The 22 amino acids are typically known as the building blocks of life. All major organs, including the skin, are composed of and maintained by these building blocks. But protein also is used to make enzymes and hormones, and to help blood carry oxygen throughout the body. Protein isn’t just a nutrient, but a macronutrient, and as such, we need much more of it.

The typical American diet is carb-based. We eat lots of refined flours and grains, lots of sugars, and some fruits and vegetables. Protein is supposed to make up between 10-35% of our daily calories. The exact number, or protein factor, differs for each person based on height and body weight. Men typically need more protein than women.

Protein is taken up very quickly by the digestive system. It satisfies hunger. It maintains muscle mass, resulting in a higher resting metabolic rate, allowing you to burn more calories at rest, even while you sleep. Protein helps normalize blood sugar and insulin levels, so you don’t get that sugar crash or those afternoon slumps.

Getting more protein in your diet is easy. In fact, here are seven ways to add protein to the meals and snacks you eat every day.

First, protein powder can be added to shakes, yogurt, or baked into muffins or bread.

Second, eggs are a great source of protein. Each egg usually has 7 grams of protein. In some countries, eggs are the primary source of protein. Eggs can be cooked in a variety of ways, and added to other foods.


Third, cottage cheese is a great source of protein. You choose whether you’d prefer low-fat or regular depending on your goals. I love cottage cheese sprinkled with cinnamon if I’m in a mood for something slightly sweet, or pepper if I prefer something savory.

Milk and soy milk are both good sources of protein. It’s easy to cook with milk, even if you don’t drink it. Milk is easily added to sauces and gravies, soups, or added to hot cereals.

Beans are an excellent protein source, and can be cooked in so many ways, it’s actually dizzying. Beans can be mashed and made into a dip like hummus, or used to thicken soups or sauces. They can be added to most savory dishes and even sweet ones. One of my favorite treats when I visit my local sushi restaurant is red bean ice cream.

Tofu comes in a variety of textures, from silky to firm. The silky tofu can be mashed and blended into smoothies or sauces. The firm tofu can be stir-fried of pan-fried and used to augment or replace chicken or beef in a recipe.

Plain, non-fat yogurt is so versatile. You can use it to add tanginess to a sauce or smoothie. You can use it to add richness to a soup or a gravy. You can add your own fruits and honey to make a healthier flavored yogurt with fewer additives.

Protein is a critical macronutrient. Use your creativity to come up with other ways of adding it to your diet. But be selective, and choose the right sources for you. Do you know how much protein your body needs each day? Visit www.3days3ways.com to request your free wellness profile and get your daily protein factor today.

Sources:
Bowerman, Susan MS, RD, CSSD, FAND. "7 Ways To Add Protein to Foods"
Heber, David M.D., Ph.D. "PROTEIN 101"