5 years ago . . .

Five years ago I was given a unique opportunity to make a miracle happen. Five years ago I didn't know how deep my gratitude could reach and how much light and knowledge and truth could be mine. Five years ago I didn't yet know just how quickly my life could be turned upside down. And even at my own bidding! Because five years ago—in January 2010—I'd declared it the YEAR of HEALTH. Oh the irony. Sometimes it has to get pretty dark before the sun shines in again, but then, if you can wait it out and hold on with hope, it shines brighter than ever before. To get the health I desired I had to first be totally incapacitated. But at the time I didn't realize that my life was actually being flipped right side up.

Five years ago today I walked into a rheumatologist's office for the first time. She painted a picture of a life I didn't want. I wore orthotics and used a handicap parking pass. Sometimes I couldn't flip the blinker on or turn the gas cap of my car. I wanted more. I prayed for more. And I searched and searched until I got more.

Five years ago I was led like I've never been led. Friends, friends of friends, sisters of friends, coworkers of friends, and total strangers gave me the answers I didn't know were the answers.

Five years ago next month I went to lunch with Emily, and she told me about her grandpa with cancer who'd kept on living. I asked her endlessly, and she told me all she knew about choosing foods that were more alkaline—a 20/80 goal—to fuel my body with what it needed most in such a weak state. Plant-based and preservative-free. So I did what she said.

Five years ago I started listening. Listening to my body. Listening to my spirit. Relistening to the CDs of The Omnivore's Dilemma. And listening to the wisdom of people past and present. I remembered that I'd been told my whole life to "eat meat sparingly" and eat "every herb in the season thereof; and every fruit in the season thereof." Five years ago I started to eat real food—the stuff God made.

Five years ago I cried with joy in my discoveries. I dug deep into Chinese medicine and learned about the emotions behind illnesses. Get this. I learned that my colon's role to hold onto nutrients and let go of waste is directly tied to my emotional ability to hold onto and let go of—to let go of the past, to let go of anger, to forgive, and to hold onto the good. Every organ and every system functions according to my emotional health. If my emotions are smothered and ignored, my physical body becomes imbalanced and sick. Five years ago I couldn't get enough of this learning. Five years ago I stepped into a world of endless possibility and total accountability. Five years ago I learned I could change my reality and I could create a new future for myself.

I am forever grateful for five years ago and everything in between. It has been a health journey. A health scavenger hunt. A test beyond all tests. I am grateful for my miraculous body, the drive to keep asking, the inspiration (i.e., partial insanity) to follow, and the amazing people along the way who have changed me forever—body, mind, and spirit.

Wild Black Rice & Edamame Salad

I don't know how many of you have heard of or watched the show "Chopped." To say that my husband loves it is an understatement, so by default I end up watching it with him. Not that it's boring or lame, I just am not so much a TV person. But in all honesty, it's actually a pretty great time—definitely inspiring and nail-biting to watch talented chefs create not only edible but gourmet dishes from three sometimes-obscure ingredients.

Well, yesterday I found myself at home without a car and the perfect opportunity to pretend I was on "Chopped." I glory in a good challenge, especially when it means being creative with what I already have. So I said, "Okay, Katie. Come up with dinner using only the ingredients in this house." (No cheating and running over to the neighbor's to borrow a tablespoon of Worcestershire sauce.) And I promise, there really wasn't much! I'd gone to Costco the day before and bought coconut oil and grapefruit (and a 2-year supply of kitchen trash bags!), but I hadn't made it to the grocery store after we'd been out of town all weekend.

I looked in our pantry and saw a small bag of wild BLACK rice I'd bought a few months ago just to give it a try, and it definitely called out to me! I'd been wanting to try it. Ingredient number 1. (Ingredients number 2 and 3 were Brussels Sprouts and Rosemary, but those ended up in a veggie side dish and in the main course.)

I googled "wild black rice" recipes and came upon this amazing dish! It's not only pleasing to the eye but also to the tastebuds! I made a few changes to make it my own, as I highly recommend you do too. It's way more fun to cook when you put your personal stamp on your food!

Ingredients

1 tablespoons white sesame seeds

2 cups cooked wild black rice or regular wild rice (This was about 1 cup uncooked rice)

About 1/8 cup red onion, diced (I just cut a 1/2-inch slice from the middle of the onion and then chopped. Use a shallot if you have that instead.)

1 cup shelled edamame

1 medium carrot, peeled and diced small

1/4 cup dried cranberries

1 1/2 tablespoons olive oil

1 tablespoon sesame oil

1/8 cup rice vinegar

1 tablespoon honey

Sea salt

Freshly ground black pepper

Directions

1. Place the sesame seeds in a small frying pan over medium heat and toast, stirring often, until golden brown. About 5 minutes. Remove from heat and place in a large bowl.

2. Add the rice, onion, edamame, carrots, and cranberries to the bowl and toss.

3. In a small bowl, whisk together olive oil, sesame oil, rice vinegar, honey, and a few shakes (or cranks) of salt and pepper. Pour over the mixture in the large bowl and toss. Taste to see if it needs more salt, pepper, or vinegar.

4. Cover and chill for at least one hour before eating.

5. Make enough for lunch tomorrow!

My Top 4 Diet Changes for Rheumatoid Arthritis, Cancer, and Other Illnesses

Oh the joy! There's nothing that makes me want to dance and leap around the room more than when I hear someone say they are ready to take a stand for their health. Lucky me, I've been able to hear it come out of 4 different people's mouths in the last 3 days—this morning I happened to hear it from one of my most favorite aunts, who also happens to have rheumatoid arthritis. I feel overjoyed after hanging up with her.

I'm blogging today to not only share my joy and excitement but to also share how when you set your sights on something, truly desiring it, we inevitably collide with the answers we're seeking through multiple sources. My aunt wanted to know how I first went about changing my diet, and after practically every new thing I told her she'd say, "No way! My friend was just telling me that same thing yesterday," or "We went to dinner last night, and a man there was talking about how his cancer has been getting better because he's been doing that too!"

So it's time to share. Here are the 4 main health changes I made to get improve my nutritional intake and improve my health on multiple levels:

1. Eat alkaline foods.
2. Eat salmon and/or fish oil.
3. Eat cruciferous vegetables (i.e., cauliflower, cabbage, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, bok choy, kale, and collard greens.
4. Drink green smoothies.

You may hear me got on my soap box time after time about alkaline foods, but it's for a reason. Everything we eat falls on a spectrum of acidic on one end and alkaline on the other end. Click here and here for a chart of where foods fall on this spectrum. The goal is to eat more alkaline foods so that your body can reserve it's resources to fighting illness rather than neutralizing acidic foods in digestion.

Salmon contains much needed omega 3s that reduce inflammation and build up muscles to support joints, particularly helpful for rheumatoid arthritis. Salmon is also high in Vitamin D, which has been shown to reduce the production of blood vessels that cancer tumors feed off of.

Cruciferous vegetables are full of disease-fighting phytochemicals and are known to help prevent various forms of cancer, such as colon, prostate, and breast cancers, as well as rheumatoid arthritis. If you're dealing with poor health, it's recommended that we eat these friendly veggies 4 to 7 times a week. At first I thought this was ridiculously impossible until I realized that I already was drinking kale practically daily in my morning green smoothie! Who knew kale was a cruciferous vegetable?—The more you learn. And if you'd like to learn more about cruciferous vegetables, click here.

Drinking green smoothies not the first health change I made 2 years ago, but hands down it was the most significant. Greens such as kale, spinach, collard greens, and chard are packed with vitamins and minerals. They are full of iron, calcium—no wonder there's calcium in cow's milk because cows eat greens all day long, but who knew you didn't need milk to get calcium?—and mega amounts of vitamin A and C. According to Self Nutrition Data, kale is "a good source of Dietary Fiber, Protein, Thiamin, Riboflavin, Folate, Iron, Magnesium and Phosphorus, and a very good source of Vitamin A, Vitamin C, Vitamin K, Vitamin B6, Calcium, Potassium, Copper and Manganese." Apparently it's a vegetable worth including in your diet! Self Nutrition Data is an awesome website for looking up the health benefits of foods.

Here's a blog post bonus to keep inspiring you. It's time to take a stand for your health!

Open to Everything and Attached to Nothing

(Images taken in Cypress, Greece, © 2008 Katie Newbold.)

In 2005 two close friends and I traveled back to Venezuela. We’d lived there together a few years previous and had been taught a richer way to live and a deeper way to love. We missed our dear friends, and we were also ready to take our life’s adventures into Canaima to sleep in the jungle for a few nights and hike to Angel Falls, the tallest waterfall in the world.

One Sunday during our trip we were sitting in the chapel of Las Brisas in Maturin, and the Sunday School lesson was on the Word of Wisdom. (Click here to read a previous post explaining the Word of Wisdom.) The teacher was outlining what the Word of Wisdom counseled us on food and what substances aren’t so great for the body. A man in the back raised his hand, made a comment, and then ended by saying, “The Word of Wisdom doesn’t address food combinations, though. Eating rice with pineapple isn’t good on the stomach,” mentioning some other bad food combos I don’t remember. My two friends and I rolled our eyes and whispered to each other, “Who is this crazy guy?” We obviously knew better because we were American with modern medicine and common sense, right?

Well come to find out, this man actually does have a foot to stand on, as many of you may know. Just yesterday, actually, I spoke on the phone with a university about their PhD program in holistic nutrition. The woman told me that the school nutrition program is based on an alkaline and acidic diet, and I told her how by following an alkaline/acidic, 80/20 eating pattern I was able to eliminate a lot of my rheumatoid arthritis pain. She told me that in this program I would learn how improper food combinations can spike RA pain even if I am eating an alkaline diet. Ah-ha. 

I have to admit that there have been many moments in my 30 years on this planet where I’ve thought I’ve known more than another person or that my way was better. I still find myself falling into that category time and time again. Except now I’ve adopted some of those very same outlandish beliefs I once snubbed and am on the other side of the table now. It's been a long humbling road, but I’d like to say I'm now at a place in life to be open to more, if not all, possibilities. It's so freeing! I'm much happier this way and much more guided. I seem to receive answers to my prayers much easier now too, because before if an answer wasn't in my line of vision, it didn't exist or couldn't possibly be my answer. No wonder we start thinking God doesn't hear us.

In January of last year my dear friend Andrea challenged me in the best way possible. She asked me what it would feel like to be open to everything. To let go and be guided and be open to every possibility, not clinging to what is familiar. One year ago began my quest to be “open to everything and attached to nothing,” and it has spurred my healing process one hundred fold. If I’d remained in my box of what was familiar and comfortable, I would’ve kept getting the same results—illness, stagnancy in life, a limited perspective, and the same level of faith.

In the many books I’ve read that tie negative emotions to physical illness, the overlying emotional cause of rheumatoid arthritis is being rigid and trying to control the details of life. By initially taking on that challenge to open myself up to everything and let go of familiar ground, I was literally paving a path of healing in that very act! Being flexible and open is still a struggle for me, although I’ve made so much progress in the last year. Recently I’ve been going even deeper within myself to cut off limiting beliefs and better understand why I feel a need to be rigid, controlling, or a perfectionist, and all I can say is I’ve never done anything so difficult in my entire life, but I’ve never been so close to my Savior, Jesus Christ. Even if no one else understands what we’re struggling with, He does and He will always be right there with us to ease our burdens and feel our pain. 

(Images taken in Cypress, Greece, © 2008 Katie Newbold.)

Cookie Mix on Trial

Many, many months ago I put the Namaste Chocolate Chip Cookie mix on trial. Read what I thought of them here. Since that time I've found an even better tasting gluten-free and dairy-free cookie mix. The Cravings Place: Chocolate Chunk Cookie. Try them. You won't regret it. Just look at these guys (see mouth-watering photo above)! Again, my long-standing recommendation to you is to make all your food from scratch, but it's nice to have an emergency backup just in case.

Why these cookies over the Namaste ones? They are more substantial and fluffy. Are those good descriptors? I'm not sure they are, but the Namaste cookies would not stay together. They were wimpy and thin. I literally crave these Cravings Place cookies, and it's great to have a treat that has only 4 grams of sugar from beets as opposed to 16 grams of refined sugar. Use coconut oil where it calls for dairy-free margarine. One time I added apple sauce to this mix instead of  coconut oil, and they ended up way too sweet and way too dense.

WARNING: Sugar depletes the body of minerals because of its acidity. To regain pH balance, our bodies pull minerals from our bones and teeth to neutralize the acid in our systems. Be wise and eat sugar in moderation.

There's Always More on Coconut Oil

A good friend just let me borrow her two pH books, which are all about the benefits of alkaline foods (vs. acidic foods) with lots of easy recipes I can't wait to try out—I hadn't a clue what to do with the enormous artichoke I bought last week, but now it looks like I'll be making Artichoke Pesto Dip. For now I'm flipping through the pages and jumping around to get a feel of the books, but since I just came upon some more great info about the benefits of coconut oil, I thought I'd share. I know a lot of you are leery about coconut oil because of the word "oil." I know it's hard to retrain those synapses. I know we've had it drilled into our heads that fats are bad, but that's not completely true. Our bodies need good fats to be our healthiest. Here's what The pH Miracle for Weight Loss has to say on page 88:

"Coconut is the second incredible fat-rich food you should never do without when you're working toward a healthy weight [the first was avocados]. Technically a saturated fat, coconut oil—as long as it is cold pressed and not converted into trans fat by heating processing—has been shown to reduce the symptoms of digestive disorders, support the work of the white blood cells, and help prevent bacterial, yeast, and fungal infections. Coconut oil is high in lauric fats (which comprise 50 to 55 percent of its makeup), a medium-chain fat that the body converts into monolaurin. Monolaurin helps reduce acidity and, thus, weight. By controlling yeast, coconut oil reduces yeast's appetite—and your cravings for sugar. It also curbs hypoglycemia and helps eliminate hunger pangs. The final bit about coconut oil: it speeds up your metabolism. A study conducted in Yucatan, where coconut is a staple of the diet, showed that people living there had metabolic rates 25 percent higher than people with a similar profile living in the United States. (Bonus: The women in Yucatan had none of the symptoms commonly associated with meopause.)"

If you've tried everything else without success, maybe it's time to try coconut oil. I buy mine online at Mountain Rose Herbs. Click here to go to the site. And remember that you want "Coconut Oil (Virgin Unrefined)."

A Balancing Act: Alkaline and Acidic Foods

As you probably know already, your body has to digest whatever you eat. The typical American diet is made up of way too much acidic foods—soda pop, white bread, mayonnaise, processed cheeses, white sugar, etc.—which means our bodies have to work extra hard to neutralize those foods. And why do our bodies neutralize the food? Because it's all about balance. Our bodies know that healthy=balance. When our bodies are worn out or sick, they don't always have the strength to neutralize the acidic foods we eat, so they pull minerals from our organs and bones to help neutralize the acid. It makes me want to cry to think how much I've been overworking my poor little body. In a healthy state our diets should be 60% alkaline, and in an unhealthy state our diets should be 80% alkaline.

Your first thought may be that citrus or tomatoes would be acidic foods, but they are actually alkaline. After our bodies digest the food, whatever remains of each food is either alkaline or acidic. The remains of a lemon are alkaline, so the body doesn't have to do any extra work to neutralize it.

I'm currently working for that 80% alkaline. It's not easy, but it's possible. Today was a frustrating day, and I felt burned out from having to put so much energy into what I eat. I'm tired of it, but that doesn't mean I'm giving up, of course. I'm just tired. But my body is thanking me already.

For more background on alkaline and acidic foods, click here. The charts I've found that divide alkaline from acidic foods vary, as the Web site authors admit, but I liked the chart on this Web site in particular because it gives ranges from High Alkaline to High Acid.

Alkaline vs. Acid Foods

Okay, you guys. This is really getting good now. I love doing all this research and knowing I'm onto something.

Saturday I went to dinner with a friend Emily who briefly explained her vegetarian eating habits. They were inspired by her grandpa, who converted over when he was diagnosed with prostate cancer 20 years ago. He's a walking miracle who's survived countless death sentences. They keep giving him a couple months to live, but who's counting after 20 x 12? Some quick math in my head says that's 240 more months than doctors ever imagined.

So in the process of our conversation, Emily explained that her grandpa and, more recently, her dad are on an alkaline diet. Ring any bells? I'd vaguely heard of it, but I do know from my years of chemistry that alkaline and acid are complete opposite ends of the spectrum. Our society's foods tend to be more acidic, so an alkaline diet brings our body back into balance.

So I haven't spent much time researching alkaline and acid foods in depth, but I just came across this food chart to give us something to build on. It was helpful to me, so maybe it will be helpful to you. Click directly on the chart images to read the text without a magnifying glass.

PS: I had my first taste of almond milk just a few minutes ago. Not bad, not bad at all. And it's even included on the alkaline side of the chart below.

 

This alkaline and acid food chart comes from the Energise for Life Web site.