One of my favorite local yoga teachers is Gina Faubert at Serenity Valley in Milton.  It’s a bit of a hike for me, but well worth the trip to the country.  She’s named her studio well as there’s a sense of peace just by pulling into the driveway.  She’s a treasure of information about the body and its physiology, but her real brilliance lies in her suggestions to approach your yoga practice.  As I hold the poses and listen to her encouragements, I often think how useful they are to life outside the studio.  Two encouragements that have travelled with me beyond the studio are “relaxation through action” and “fill the pose, and hold it actively with strength”.

Relaxation through action

Is it possible that moving into action doesn’t require meticulous planning, effort and sweat?  I don’t have to marshal my forces, work on my list, and climb up that mountain of tasks?  Clearly, I don’t have a graceful, flowing ability to get things done.  So it’s a real shift in perspective for me to consider that taking action can be a way of getting relaxed. 

On the mat it’s so easy to see where the extra effort I use to push into a pose is wasted and painful. As is the pointlessness of the internal chatter about how hard it’s going to be and how others find it easier, blah, blah, blah.  In my daily life, it’s not always so clear.  Sure, the pain is acute when I’m procrastinating on something important that will take focus and vulnerability.   Finally getting into action is such a sweet relief.  But do I remember how relaxing it is to get into the flow?  Not often enough.

Fill the pose, and hold it actively with strength

This thought gets me through many a wavering moment.  With this encouragement, Gina asks us to engage fully in a difficult moment with all the energy and strength we can muster.  As opposed to the half-hearted, floppy, droopy attempt that sometimes passes as my warrior pose.  To me, filling out the pose translates daily into fully stepping into the difficult tasks or conversations and holding firm while staying open.  It’s dealing with the discomfort in kind of a badass way.  Instead of contracting from the discomfort, it’s a way of standing tall and saying bring it on.

This week my coach, Tara Mohr, was in town and I had the chance to see her at two different events.  Brilliant woman herself, she’s written the 10 Rules for Brilliant Women – a guide to standing with strength and authenticity as you add your voice to the world.  I love her take on filling the pose, with the rule “Be an arrogant idiot.”  She’s not really counselling that we become that annoyingly confident self-promoter who’s so enamoured with their own unformed ideas that they convince the world of their (faux) brilliance.  But she’s suggesting that we adopt their unwavering belief in their abilities and take a few steps in that direction. 

Stress is like the water we swim in.  Modern life is full of hassles, deadlines, frustrations, and demands. For many of us, stress is so commonplace that it has become a way of life. In small doses, it can help us perform under pressure and motivate us to do our best. But when we’re constantly running in emergency mode, our mind and body pay the price.

One of the most insidious things about stress is that people caught in the early stages – the adrenaline rush phase – are widely regarded as the people who have life by the tail.  They are the high achievers with challenging jobs and rewarding personal lives who pack their days with activity after activity.  The only wrinkle is that their non-stop accomplishment is fuelled by epinephrine (adrenaline), norepinephrine and cortisol, which keep hearts pounding, blood pumping and nerves on edge.  Without building in specific relaxation activities this stage inevitably morphs into the second stage – when the symptoms of stress start to appear – or the third stage – flatlining from severe stress reactions.

Your body has much to tell you about how you react to stress.  It’s helpful to be aware of the general progression from engaged and resourceful to busy multi-tasker to burned out to flattened out.

Busy Multi-tasker Stage

As mentioned above, the first stage of stress is dependent on the rush of stress hormones coursing through your body.  When being in a “fight or flight” response too often prevents the soothing “rest and rejuvenate” response of the parasympathetic nervous system, we eventually feel tired and worn out. This makes you feel both tired and wired at the same time – tired because you are not repairing your body and wired because the stress hormone levels stay elevated.  Some occasional body experiences during this phase are:

• irritation or over-reaction
• fear of slowing down
• sleep disturbances
• headaches
• lower back ache/aches and pains in joints
• gastro-intestinal disturbances
• energy depletion

Burned Out Stage

The longer lasting stress hormone, cortisol, is produced irregularly during this phase, leading to days that feel out of whack. Usually you are tired in the morning and often turn to coffee and other caffeine products to get started. But you start to gain energy after your mid-afternoon slump and find new energy through the evening.  The only problem is that it’s usually wired, anxious energy that makes your mind race and stops you from falling asleep.  You start to feel like you’re always behind and you wonder how you’re going to catch up. Some regular body experiences during this phase are:

• sleep disturbances
• headaches
• lower back ache/aches and pains in joints
• gastro-intestinal problems
• tiredness—both physical and emotional
• elevated anxiety
• cynicism and apathy
• discord with others
• agitation/irritability
• carelessness/forgetfulness
• increase in smoking, coffee and alcohol consumption

Flatlining Stage

By this stage you are having difficulty in keeping up with your daily requirements.  You may need to cut back on work or other responsibilities.  The years of chronic stress have caught up with you and you can’t imagine having one more thing to cope with. You may be suffering from one or more physical stressors as well, like an environmental sensitivity, chronic pain, infection or a low-grade illness that further depletes your stress hormones.  Some severe body experiences during this phase are:

• greater susceptibility to illness
  • migraines
  • chronic gastro-intestinal problems
  • chronic fatigue or fibromyalgia
  • heart conditions
  • asthma
• insomnia or hypersomnia (excessive sleepiness)
• withdrawal/seclusion
• arthritis
• depression
• intense anxiety
• inability to perform one’s job or manage one’s personal life
• uncontrolled anger
• personality change

Stress management is critical for all these stages of stress and in coming posts I’ll be listing suggestions and ideas for lowering your stress load and strengthening your stress response.

Posted by Deirdre Walsh

A decade ago the prevailing belief was that our brain was fixed as we left childhood, or perhaps adolescence.  Any of our experiences later in life left little trace in our brain, beyond minor alterations in neural connections or cell death.  But the new thinking is that the brain continually changes as a result of our experiences—whether through fresh connections between neurons or through the generation of utterly new neurons. 

Much of the meaty research about the brain from the last ten years is courtesy of the functional MRI (fMRI). It’s an imaging technology based on the MRI that moves beyond creating images of organs and tissues. The fMRI is able to detect blood flow in the brain, so scientists can start to map which parts of the brain handle particular functions.

 One of my go-to people for research in mind-body research is Rick Hanson.  He’s a neuropsychologist and author of a number of books about mindfulness and the brain. He does one of my favorite things – take complex information, pull out the important stuff, and put it into bite-sized actions that are simple to do and make a real difference.  His latest book is Just One Thing, is full of simple practices that support and increase a sense of security and worth, resilience, effectiveness, well-being, insight and inner peace.  Hard to beat that list!

Open up to the Sweetness of Life

One of the practices he recommends is savoring pleasure when it appears in the day.  Life is so busy that we’re constantly in motion or our minds are rushing ahead to the next thing. While we often seek out pleasure, we don’t always take in the pleasure in a lot of what we do. He suggests taking an extra 20 seconds to really enjoy those first few sips of coffee in the morning, the way an orange smells when you peel it, or the feel of newly washed sheets on your skin. 

When we really stop and experience pleasure – do a full body enjoyment of it – we become more fully present to life, more grounded in our bodies and more alive and aware. You can feel it in your body like a warm glow spreading, or like a ripple on a lake, reaching all the tender places. Even understanding that your neurons are firing and wiring together when you hold this good experience in awareness is enough to reap the benefits.

How it Works on Your Brain

Savoring the good stuff that’s already around activates your body’s relax and repair system, the parasympathetic nervous system.  This is your steady-state system that signals to your brain that the alarms are off and that it’s time to rejuvenate.  That’s when your body goes back to building your immune system, digesting your nutrients and rebuilding your bones and tissue. Oh, and sets you off looking for a little loving, too. 

Experiencing pleasure also makes us secrete endorphins – source of good moods, pain relief and improved immunity.  We’ve heard a lot about them through the runner’s high.  But they are also released at low levels in mundane daily activities such as playing with a pet, watching a funny movie, listening to our favorite music and generally connecting with things we love.

 Here’s what I’ve been finding pleasure in this week:

• the sudden burst of yellow – the forsythia blossoms, the dandelions, the lime green of the tree buds

• the moment the cool spring wind pauses and the sun warms my skin

• finishing the heavy lifting of my taxes

• seeing a small bike thrown to the side of a driveway and imagining the new adventures that small bundle of energy was rushing to

I’ve been enjoying savoring the pleasure this week, lifting the mundane to a higher level.   

 Posted by Deirdre Walsh

When we visited Los Angeles over March break I had one of my most favorite meals (well top 25, anyways) at a cafeteria style restaurant called Forage.  The lunch was delicious, no doubt.  But the thing that really caught my attention was their commitment to locally grown produce.  Not just from farms nearby, but from local neighbours. Once a week they’ll buy produce grown by gardeners in the neighbourhood and create their week’s menu around it.  How cool is that?

Local Sources

In the Toronto area we have a wonderful resource for locally sourced food in Stacey Fokas.  She’s a chef and cookbook author I met last month at a seminar on hormones.  Stacey has made it her mission to search out local suppliers for fruit and vegetable growers, meat producers, bakeries, cheese producers, wineries and breweries.  She’s written about a number of them in her cookbook, Freshalicious, and on her website Freshalicious.ca.

Stacey calls Freshalicious a cookbook like no other, and I have to agree with her.  It’s very inspiring to think about sourcing local foods, but I haven’t had the time to dive into that area.  Stacey has done the legwork and has profiled over 30 local producers who use sustainable, organic practices in their businesses.  She’s based in Caledon, so her sources all are about an hour’s drive from home. 

Stacey suggests waiting for the local produce to come to market to support them and to keep our food choices flexible.  When we buy imported vegetables, like asparagus, the market gets saturated by lower priced products and there is less incentive for local growers to plant them.  Over time, local farmers concentrate on cash crops and stop planting these types of crops.

Ontario is the leading producer of farmed rainbow trout in Canada.  The bulk of the production is in the north, around the waters of Georgian Bay, Lake Huron and off the shores of Manitoulin Island.  Although farmed fish can have a bad rep, Ontario farmed fish is claimed to be among the most strictly regulated in the world. Stacey recommends Silvercreek Aquaculture, located in Erin, at the source of the Credit River, as a source for trout.  A great Canadian source for information about sustainable seafood is Oceanwise They list restaurants and retail outlets for sustainable, ocean-friendly seafood across Canada.

Here’s one of Stacey’s tasty recipes, perfect for spring.

Photo: Stacey Fokas

Crunchy Flax Trout with Sprouts

 Fish

1 trout, rinsed and skinned

Sprinkle of sea salt

1 tsp dried tarragon

1 beaten egg

6 tbsp organic flax

Sunflower oil for frying

2 chopped garlic cloves

Sprouts

5 cups bean sprouts

Sprinkle of sea salt

¼ cup chopped fresh dill

Season the trout with sea salt and tarragon,.  Dip one side into egg wash and then into a plate of flax and set on another plate, flax side up.  Fry the trout on medium heat in sunflower oil and chopped garlic, flax side down first, for 3 – 3 ½ minutes per side.  Set aside on a clean plate.   

Wipe the pan with a paper towel, drizzle with sunflower oil, put back on medium heat, and toss in bean sprouts and sea salt.  Fry for a few minutes until sprouts start to go clear, and finish off with fresh dill.

Serve fish and sprouts with a rice/wild rice.  Enjoy!

Posted by Deirdre Walsh

Most of the time when we feel blocked it is because we are safer that way. We may not be happy, but at least we know what we are – unhappy. ~ Julia Cameron

Whenever I meet someone who is interested in growth and unlocking the potential for themselves and others they inevitably mention reading Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way. It seems like her book is on the required reading list for squeezing more juice out of life. Julia’s approach is to start by creating a zone of safety that allows the space to experiment with the new. That means getting to know those internal voices that can stop us dead or lead us to new worlds – our inner critic and our inner champion.  

The Inner Critic

 Any time we get close to the edge of growth we stir up the inner critic. I’ve written about it here. When we start to take on new behaviors, this critical voice can stop us from even beginning to make a change. It may be so overbearing and judgemental that we seek self soothing behaviors such as eating, drinking, excessively watching TV, sleeping or shopping, etc. in order to drown it out.

Most people are not even aware that this judgemental voice is not real because it’s running critical commentary has been there since childhood and it feels quite natural. As Cheri Huber, Zen teacher, says: “That voice inside your head is not the voice of God – it just sounds like it thinks it is.” The inner critic’s self-appointed job is to spare us the shame and pain that might come from trying and failing. But, with irony abound, the inner critic causes us the endless shame and pain it’s trying so hard to save us from.

As one of my favorite coaches, Michael Neill, put so well: “The problem is not that you say horrible things to yourself; the problem is that you listen to them.”  What I’ve found helpful in dealing with this voice is to understand that it’s our brain’s misguided attempt to keep us out of trouble. With any perceived threat to our safety or reputation our brain vigilantly defends us by pumping out the stress chemicals that make us want to fight or flee the situation.  But to keep us from even getting close to those situations it floods us with these critical judgements that make us doubt our competence to even try.

The Inner Champion

There is another, softer, voice that is there to guide you during change, if you take the time to listen for it. Your inner champion is the internal voice that supports resilience, confidence and, ultimately has us be more successful in life. According to Dr. Amy Johnson, a psychotherapist and life coach, the inner champion has three characteristics that make it very different from the inner critic:

• The real still small voice within you doesn’t think you suck.  Your inner champion may guide you away from things that do not serve you or others, but without shame or criticism.

• Truth has an undercurrent of peace. Your inner champion moves you towards clarity without judgement.  You may feel loss and uncertainty with the guidance, but you will also feel a sense of rightness and closure.

• Fear has urgency. Truth is patient. Your inner champion will guide you to what’s right rather than have you run from what’s wrong.  And there’s all the time in the world for that.

The Inner Champion springs from two other neural systems in our brain – the system that draws us to rewards and pleasure and the one the one that bonds and attaches us to close groups. It draws us towards creating, exploring, connecting and enhancing the lives of those around us.  But because we were designed to survive threat first, the inner champion is like a beautiful bird singing outside the window while the inner critic belts out punk tunes with her band at the front of the room.

This story describes the tussle between the two voices so beautifully:

One evening an old Cherokee told his grandson about a battle that goes on inside people. He said, “My son, the battle is between 2 wolves inside us all.

One is Evil. It is anger, envy, jealousy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, worry, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego.

The other is Good. It is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion and faith.”
The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather: “Which wolf wins?”  The old Cherokee simply replied, “The one you feed.”

For some reason Mother Nature has been particularly indulgent of us this year.  The sun is our companion almost daily and at every window is a burst of green never seen before in March.  The arrival of spring brings out my giddy excitement about changing our weekly menu.  I pull out all the cookbooks and dream of all the delicious meals with all the new bounty. There’s something life-affirming about putting away the stews, squashes, brown rice and roasted vegetables.  Not to mention visually appealing. Good bye, brown.  Hello, emerald!

What also makes me happy is that the interest in local eating is starting to stand for healthy eating and the healing properties of food. Even five years ago it was difficult to find readily available organic or gluten-free choices. Now it is easy to find restaurants and food stores that have something for everyone.  It won’t be that long before the “organic section” with the sad-looking fruits and veggies is a thing of the past.

Where I was surprised to find an incredible resource for healing foods was in traditional Chinese medicine. When I started using TCM for stress relief my favorite part was the acupuncture. I thought the half hour of undisturbed peace and quiet couldn’t be topped.  But when I looked further I found that the approach to food was even more powerful. TCM’s reliance on whole foods, prepared simply and eaten in season rivals the most committed foodie.

Spring eating cries out for salads packed with fresh, young greens and shoots, light foods and simple meals to energize you for all your chores. According to TCM, the best kinds of foods are the ones that reflect the rising and active nature of spring.  After the hibernation of winter it seems like I’ll never have enough energy to rise to the call of spring.  So I asked my TCM doctor, Dr. Lawrence Gao, which spring foods will help prepare for the season.  Here are his suggestions:

• Huai shan root, also known as shan yao, Chinese yam, dioscorea batatas, or burdock root.  Dr. Gao put this at the top of the list because it gives much positive energy.  He suggested to peel, slice and put it into soups with pork or chicken, or mix it with green beans and red pepper for a side dish. He also suggested mixing the root with goji berries for additional energy.
  I bought a root at T&T and cooked some yesterday for dinner.  I found it easy to eat, bland with a texture of potato and just a hint of pear.  I mixed it with some spinach and peas, drizzled with olive oil and a little salt.  Where it gets funky is in the preparation.  When it’s raw it is very slimy and almost impossible to hold to slice.

  Dr. Gao has another recipe for huai shan root that is popular with kids:  take a piece of root, about the size of a potato, and mix it as a smoothie with some frozen fruit like papaya, pineapple or strawberry, a banana, 2 to 3 tablespoons of yoghurt and some hot water, blended together.  This makes a couple of smoothies to have at breakfast.

• Dates. This is a much easier sell for the family.  I’m planning to make date squares for them to snack on when they get home.
  

• Chives.  These are Chinese chives, more like our garlic chives.  Dr. Gao said they are particularly good for men to eat during the spring.  They’re a bit tougher than regular chives and need cooking. I found a good recipe for eggs and Chinese chives here, along with a lively discussion about whether foodie favourite ramps or Chinese chives are better.
  

• Spinach. Lightly steamed and served as a side dish a few times a week.
  

• Honey. Best taken as your first drink of the day.  It is okay to mix it with lemon juice and use room temperature water.  This particularly good for kids.

M

My favorite western author in this area is Paul Pitchford, a teacher about nutrition that blends modern nutrition and Asian traditions.  His book is exhaustive about the properties of foods, when and how to eat them, and how to use them to reduce or avoid the symptoms of disease. As he says:

Thousands of years ago, master healers in China perceived a way to classify food and disease according to simple, easily observed patterns:  one eats cooling foods for overheated conditions, and warming foods are best for people who feel too cold.  Detoxifying foods are for those who carry excess toxins, building foods are good for deficient persons, and so on. This system can be highly effective even if the medical name of a disease is not known.”

Source: Healing with Whole Foods: Asian Traditions and Modern Nutrition. North Atlantic Books, 2002.

Posted by Deirdre Walsh

Image: foto76 / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

People come to coaching because they want to initiate action in their lives and see results.  Each person will define action in a different way – it could be integrating new health practices or changing the “feel” of their life. Whatever you define as action for yourself, you need to build a framework that supports you and triggers the changes you are committed to.  

A good coach will provide as much structure as possible for their clients to succeed.  Our main tool is accountability.  We ask: what were the results? What worked, and what didn’t work? What will you do now?  This process is a superb tool for learning. But what about the daily support that people need to establish new or unfamiliar behaviors?

I heard BJ Fogg, director of the Persuasive Technology Lab at Stanford, at a conference last year explain his theories about triggers.  Fogg is considered a behavior guru by Fortune Magazine and his theories have been adopted by the Davos crowd at the World Economic Forum.  He believes that when you know why you want to change and you are pretty clear on how you can do it, the third piece is when you’re going to do it.  That’s where the trigger comes in.

Triggers are external calls-to-action that will remind/push you towards the new behavior you want to start or finish. The secret to triggers is timing them as closely as possible to the moment that you will do the behavior.  Hot triggers pop up at the moment you are willing and able and they spur you into action, like a note on the fridge to go for a walk instead of having a snack. Cold triggers don’t time the behavior as well, but remind you to think about them later in the day, like an advertisement or a bag packed with gym clothes by the door. Ideally, your triggers come when you are at your weakest.

Digital and mobile technologies are perfect vehicles for designing triggers.  Here are a few examples of some interesting ones I’ve found recently.

•  Habit Labs has recently released a fun game called Budge based on triggers and small steps.  You choose a pre-set game that you want to play – Pushup Animal and Meditation Buddy are the top two.  When you launch your choice you answer questions about your current ability and set the game at a matching level.  Then Budge basically nags you by email or SMS until you do what you said you would.  There’s a social element that lets you follow your friends’ progress. 

•  Get Some Headspace is a meditation resource from England that offers mindful buzzers for mobile phones, newsletter updates and reminder emails as part of its training programs and online community.  It’s very user-friendly, with lots of content.

•  Health Seeker  is a Facebook app, targeted to diabetes patients, that lets players select missions and actions that will move them closer to healthy eating, exercise and diabetes control.  Players can reach out through social media to friends to challenge them and be challenged.   

Here’s an idea that usually makes people start eyeing the exit – how you tolerate discomfort is probably the biggest block between you and what you want out of life. I’m talking about that moment of discomfort when you can get on with the hard creative thing, or you can [insert personal choice of mindless soothing activity].  I know I go for checking my emails far more than I’m happy with.

I was at a party once chatting with a professional photographer who travelled to the Arctic with his son, to expand his talents as both a photographer and a father.  I was fascinated with his adventures, but when he talked about pitching a tent – in the snow, in the Arctic – my eyes glazed over. I was completely distracted by how horrible that sounded.  As he was leaving, he stopped by and gave me a piece of advice I’ll never forget: “If you could ever get over being a princess, you could have a very interesting life.” It was then that the connection between an interesting, successful life and ability to tolerate discomfort was planted in me.

The crazy thing is that we tolerate discomfort all the time.  You can recognize it in the things we complain about, day in and day out.  Can’t find anything to wear in your messy closet?  Unfinished projects cluttering up your storage space? Your weekend work event conflicts with an important family milestone?  Sometime our acceptance of tolerations makes life feels just like Dr. Seuss’ The Waiting Place.

The tolerations, insidious energy drainers they are, come in a different sizes.  Annoyances are the small things in life that we don’t take care of.  We ignore them, glossing over that they tax our attention and energy.  We overlook them until they accumulate and cause a temporary breakdown of routine before they really start bugging us.  The larger complaints, the ones that are difficult to solve, create tension in us and in our relationships.  They crowd the fun out of life when their demands seem overwhelming.

We are conscious of how these tolerations diminish the quality of our life.  But why do we get so complacent about them? We probably accept them as normal because we don’t know how to effectively handle them.  The danger is that we use up our entire budget for discomfort on stupid stuff that keeps us held in place.  We have no room for the discomfort of growth because we have spent it all on the discomfort of stagnation.

Choose Creative Discomfort

I vote for saving discomfort for the mucky process of creating something great and really interesting in life.  Look at your tolerations and list them with the costliest ones (time and energy) at the top.  If you need help making your list, here are 1001 tolerations to spark you.

Do a visualization of your life with the toleration removed.  What is different? Brainstorm ways to resolve tolerations by either doing it, delegating it, delaying it or dumping it.  For the tolerations that have no easy resolution, think about how you can be more engaged when you respond to them, moving beyond reacting with frustration or guilt. Once you’ve tackled that toleration, rinse and repeat. You’ll have space to roll in the muck of creating a health, vibrant life before you know it.

Posted by Deirdre Walsh

Food allergies, food intolerances and food sensitivities – all terms that are getting more play in the holistic nutrition and naturopath communities. They are said to play a role in chronic conditions. But where we notice them most is the way they disrupt our digestion and dampen our energy.  They can cause a low level stress response in our body, wearing us down in subtle ways.  But how do they differ? 

• Food allergies are the nasty fast-acting reactions to foods like peanuts, eggs, cow’s milk, fish and shellfish.  The immune system sees the food as an invader, immediately forming immunoglobin E (IgE) antibodies that can cause the skin and mucous membranes to swell.  In severe reactions, blood pressure may suddenly drop, causing anaphylactic shock.
• Food intolerances and sensitivities are more subtle. The immune system may respond by developing IgG or IgA antibodies, but the reactions can be delayed by weeks.  Symptoms come on gradually and you may need to eat larger amounts of the troubling food for it to have an effect on your system.  Commonplace symptoms are indigestion, gas, chronic fatigue, skin rashes, joint aches and pain.   

Since food is one of the key ways that we interact with our environment it makes sense to observe the effects of what we’re eating every day. According to Dr. James Li, asthma and allergy specialist at the Mayo Clinic, causes of food intolerances include:

• Absence of specific digestive enzymes. Lactose intolerance is caused by insufficient amounts of the enzyme lactase, which is needed to digest the sugar in milk. Symptoms are bloating, abdominal pain and diarrhea when consuming milk.
• Sensitivity to food additives. For example, sulfites used to preserve dried fruit, canned goods and wine can trigger asthma attacks in sensitive people. Amines (found in bananas, tomatoes, avocados, mushrooms, wine and Parmesan cheese) can cause irritation of the skin, mouth, stomach and intestinal track, hives, mouth ulcers, or nausea and stomach cramps.
• Celiac disease.  Celiac disease has features of a true food allergy because it does involve an abnormal response of the immune system. Symptoms are mostly gastrointestinal, and people with celiac disease are not at risk of anaphylaxis. This chronic digestive condition is triggered by eating gluten, a protein found in wheat and other grains.
• Other food sensitivities. In some cases, food intolerances are due to physical or emotional stress or exposure to environmental toxins rather than a reaction to the foods themselves.

Testing for food intolerances

The gold standard for identifying food intolerances is the elimination diet followed by a challenge diet to see whether a suspect food really does set off a reaction.  The test is simple, but that doesn’t really mean that it’s easy.  If your symptoms are severe it is best to work with a qualified nutritionist recommended by your doctor.

The first step is to eliminate foods that are major triggers.  The list of forbidden foods is lengthy:  dairy products, wheat and other gluten-like grains, eggs, corn soy and soy products, peanuts, citrus fruits, yeast, refined sugars and artificial additives, preservatives and colorings.  All these foods are eliminated for at least two weeks.  It’s recommended to keep a food diary of what you are eating and when to identify any allergens that you eat by mistake.  Better still is to include any instances of the common symptoms of intolerance, like fatigue, digestive disturbances and skin issues.

The second step is to add back the foods one at a time into your diet to see if symptoms recur.  It’s important to add the foods back one day at a time so you can pinpoint the offenders.  Once symptoms are associated with a food or food group, the intolerance can be confirmed with a challenge – eating the suspected food and then watching to see if symptoms develop. 

Overall, the program takes about a month of carefully monitoring your diet.  What may help you stay motivated is that clinical trials using food elimination diets have reported improvement rates as high as 58% for atopic dermatitis, 71% for irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), and 90% for migraines.[1]

If you are working with a complementary practitioner they may recommend other tests: an IgG anti-food blood test or muscle strength training (applied kinesiology).  These tests do not have the clinical support that the elimination diet does and are generally not supported by physicians.  Dr. Randy Horwitz, an immunologist at the Arizona Center for Integrative Medicine at the University of Arizona, notes that when food sensitivities – not true allergies – are a problem, traditional allergy tests often yield negative results. He says that in his practice he has not seen uniformly good results with any of the other tests. Results “go all the way from questionable to downright useless,” he says. Still, there are people who swear by these tests and they have found significant improvements in energy when they eliminate the foods that were identified.  They may be worth the cost if you don’t have the ability to closely manage your diet for a month, or you are concerned about a child or parent who is suffering from symptoms. 

I’m

We all know that the hardest step in transformation is the one where you pull your foot out of the gooey mess that is inertia. It’s like chewing gum on the bottom of your shoe on a hot day.  A sticky, stretchy mess that won’t let go. But inertia is not such a warm fuzzy place to hang out either.  It’s full of yearning for better, self-doubt about how to get there, and fear of change. It certainly doesn’t have the social cachet of ‘a job well done’, but it is just as critical to success.

In the coaching world this unglamorous stage has a name – contemplation. It’s feels a bit like peering over a fence, trying to see what’s on the other side. You struggle to jump up, get a peek or two, before falling back to the ground. There’s no sense of forward movement, just endless ambivalence. Yet, there’s a very important job to accomplish during the contemplation phase – making sense of what you see on the other side.  You are deciding whether you want to pursue what’s over there, how you’re going to pursue it, and when.

Here are a few things to consider as you work your way through contemplation:

• Don’t jump into making any decisions until you feel ready.  The moment of rightness will come if you welcome it.
• Important people in your life may be very enthusiastic about helping you change, with lots of good ideas for you.  Always remember that you are the best judge of what will be best for you.
• Think about the pluses and minuses of changing.  Ambivalence is the name of the game at this stage. Change is hard and you can’t paper over that.
• Consider a lot of options for what you want to accomplish.  There’s always more than one way up any mountain.
• Look at what other people have done in the same circumstance.  You will find your own route to success, but there’s gold in the success stories of others.
• Ask yourself how ready you are to start working on a plan. Rate your commitment from 1 to 10, with 10 being ‘I’m sitting down for an hour tonight and making the plan’.  If your number is low, ask yourself why you think you need to change. Is this your idea, or someone else’s idea? If you’re mid-range, like a 4 to 7, explore what would need to happen to move you up to an 8 or 9.
• Expect your level of commitment to change from day to day.  Just notice what’s going on when it seems doable and when it doesn’t.

 The reward at the end of contemplation is connecting with what’s over the fence and seeing yourself there.  Knowing that you’re writing your own story of hope and achievement and taking the first step to your future.

 Posted by Deirdre Walsh