This post has been on my ‘to-write’ list for a long time. But now, pregnant, drinking about a quart of the stuff a day, it seems more pertinent than ever.

But isn’t that dangerous? you ask. What about all those dreaded pathogens? The e-coli? The listeria? Aren’t you putting you and your baby at unnecessary risk?

Not at all.

I drink raw milk even (especially) when I’m pregnant. Contrary to most of the pregnancy nutrition advice out there, I believe raw milk is a vital part of the pregnant woman’s diet. And if you like and can tolerate milk (ie, you don’t have an allergy), then I believe raw is the only way to go, pregnant or not.

Here’s why:

1) Full-fat raw milk is a perfect, whole, naked food

Raw milk is a complete source of amino acids, good carbohydrates, and important nutrients such as calcium and vitamins A, C and D. Your body needs the fats in it to properly use and absorb the fat-soluble vitamins A and D. And it has the phosphate your body needs to digest the calcium, something that’s completely destroyed by pasteurization. There’s nothing synthetic or fortified here. This is a truly naked, nutrient-dense food.

2) Raw milk is an enzyme-rich living food

You might not think of milk as ‘living’, but when it’s raw, it is. It’s rich with enzymes, the most notable of which is the enzyme lactase that helps your body digest the lactose so many people struggle with. Raw milk digests itself and for many, it doesn’t present the digestive problems associated with pasteurized milk.

3) Raw milk comes with its own defense system

One of the biggest criticisms and fears about raw milk is that it’s dangerous because we haven’t killed all the bad bacteria in there. Unfortunately, when we kill the bad stuff, we kill the good stuff – pasteurization doesn’t just target the things we don’t want.

This good stuff – beneficial bacteria (those great probiotics we’re all trying to get more of in our diet) – acts as a defense against any pathogenic bacteria introduced into the milk. Yes, that means raw milk comes with its own defense mechanism – a mechanism completely destroyed by pasteurization.

4) The only safe raw milk comes from healthy, grass-fed cows in sanitary conditions

If you’re going to drink raw milk, then knowing the diet and living conditions of the animals it came from is crucial. This is the reason the FDA and big dairy companies don’t want you to know that clean raw milk is actually safe – it requires healthy animals and sanitary dairies. I don’t know about you, but clean milk from healthy animals is the only milk I want to drink.

Hmm… so that means pasteurized milk comes from unhealthy animals and unsanitary dairies? Bingo! As one of my favorite raw-milk advocates, Mark McAfee of Organic Pastures, says, “Pasteurization does not create clean milk; it just kills filthy milk.[1]” Yummy.

IMPORTANT NOTE: Do not drink raw milk from conventional confinement dairies or dairies producing milk intended for pasteurization. This milk is definitely not fit for consumption unpasteurized and can easily make you sick.

[1] McAfee, M. 2010. The fifteen things that pasteurization kills. Wise Traditions in Food, Farming, and the Healing Arts 11(2):82-86

5) When I’m pregnant, my body craves it

I’m a big believer in listening closely to what my body’s asking for, and listening “underneath the cravings” as I’ve described in other posts.

When it comes to being pregnant, as anyone who’s gone through this amazing experience can attest, your body gets very clear on what it does and doesn’t want. In my first trimester many of my favorite foods (healthy and not) were suddenly completely unacceptable to my body. One of the few exceptions was raw milk.

My body has asked for some weird things over these few months, but its one consistent desire has been for raw milk. Reading through pregnancy guidelines I know and trust from both the Weston A Price Foundation and Nina Planck in her book Real Food for Mother and Baby, raw milk is an excellent, nutrient-rich food for an expecting mother.

Want to learn more?

Here’s a link to an easy-to-understand chart comparing the difference between conventional milk, organic milk, and certified raw milk.

If you’d like to find raw milk in your area, start at The Campaign for Real Milk’s website. If you’re not able to find a reputable local source there, then contact your local Weston A Price Foundation chapter and ask for their recommendations.

Related posts:

• The Skinny on Saturated Fats: Six important roles for this maligned nutrient
• When an Egg is not an Egg: What’s on your dinner plate?
• Underneath Cravings: What’s your body telling you?

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On my intake forms one of the questions is, “Is there a food you are absolutely not willing to give up?” Chocolate, sweets and alcohol are just some of the obvious ones.  But by far the most frequent item is…yeah, you guessed it…coffee.

I always encourage my clients to minimize too much coffee in their diet. I could go on and on about its negative health effects. But I’ll never tell anyone they have to give up coffee. If I did, the majority of the people I see would never come back!

However, it never ceases to amaze me when people do go off the stuff. When they come back for a follow up and say they’ve given up coffee and feel great, I always feel like saying, “Umm…could you show me how to do that?”

Perhaps this is not the best way to start my venture into nutritional blogging, admitting that I’m a coffee drinker.

So this blog is for you, my fellow coffee drinkers out there that scoff, smirk, sneer and roll your eyes at the seemingly endless barrage of how- to- quit -coffee articles out there and think, ”Yeah right”. Because I’m right there with ya.

And God knows I’ve tried to give up coffee. I’ve tried switching to tea and I’ve tried the coffee substitutes. None of it has worked. I even gave it up for 30 days once. It made no difference. Zippo. I craved it as much on day 1 as I did on day 30. I’ll never forget that first sip of coffee on the morning of day 31. I thought I’d died and gone to heaven.

If you truly love coffee and there’s absolutely NO WAY you’re ever going to give it up, here are 6 tips that can turn a really addictive habit into a mild vice:

1. Choose organic

Conventional coffee is heavily sprayed with pesticides. There’s a plethora of organic choices out there. At the very least, do this. Better yet, support companies that promote fair trade practices. And stay away from the flavored coffees which are usually full of artificial flavorings.

2.  Get the sugar out!

OK, this I realize is a tough one for a lot of people. It was for me. Until I did this I never realized that what I was really craving in my coffee was the sugar more than the caffeine. And once I ditched the sugar, my palette became more attuned to the various types of roasts and regional variations. I actually started enjoying the taste of coffee instead of the taste of sugar. Try adding just cream (preferably raw if you can get it) in place of sugar. That helped me get the sugar out once and for all. The fat in cream will cut the bitterness of coffee. Cream also has a natural sweetness that can help you wean off the refined white stuff.  Lastly, please do NOT use those flavored cream/creamer concoctions!  They’re made with hydrogenated vegetable oils, corn syrup and a whole host of other chemicals. Now some of you might be saying, “Cream?!  What about low fat milk?  Isn’t that healthier?” No.  As Bill Cosby once said, “Show me the cow who makes skim milk and then I’ll drink it”. Low fat milk and all manner of low fat products are not health foods. But that’s another blog topic for another blog day.

3. Buy whole beans and grind them at home.

Coffee beans, like anything, will begin to breakdown and become rancid once the inner contents are exposed to oxygen and moisture. To see this process with the naked eye cut open an apple and see what happens. The white flesh starts turning brown pretty fast. This is due to its exposure to oxygen and moisture, the enemies of freshness. They’re also the enemies of anti-oxidants, those things you hear about that create stability and health in living systems and ward off disease. I’m skeptical about the anti-oxidant health benefits you hear about in coffee. But if it’s true, those anti-oxidants will start to oxidize immediately after grinding, which is OK if you drink the coffee soon after. After a few days however freshly ground coffee doesn’t taste so fresh anymore. And if you get the sugar out, you can start to taste this pretty easily.

4. Keep it to ONE cup per day.

For starters, one cup is not a Starbucks twenty plus ounce mega -grande french vanilla frappuccino with whip cream and chocolate syrup. Nor does it resemble a giant caramel coffee coolatta from Dunkin Donuts. It’s eight ounces. Your liver can handle that. I know more than a few people who drink coffee all day long – five, ten, fifteen cups. If you’re one of those, don’t even think about cutting down to one cup right away. Reduce it slowly. If you’re drinking ten cups, get it down to eight in a week. Then get it down to five, and so on and so forth. Other strategies for reducing the caffeine content include a second brewing from the same beans and including half decaf (Swiss mater method only) in each cup.

5. Drink coffee after a meal.

It’s definitely better to wait until you have some food in your system before downing that cup of coffee. Caffeine causes your body to release sugar into your bloodstream which in turn causes the pancreas to release insulin (another good reason to get sugar out!). On an empty stomach this can cause a sharp drop in blood sugar which can then set up more sugar cravings. Guess what will help spike that sugar besides sugar? Caffeine. Furthermore, the caffeine in coffee can suppress your appetite causing you to go longer without feeling hungry. This sets up further episodes of low blood sugar and further coffee and sugar cravings. Having food in your stomach will help modulate this blood sugar response and keep those cravings at bay.

6. Enjoy the heck out of it!

Yeah, that’s right. We live in a world where we’re made to feel guilty about food:  don’t eat this, don’t eat that, this food will kill you, that food will kill you. Of course, a lot of that is true, but you can take any food, create negative thoughts around it and actually make it unhealthier to consume with those stressful thoughts. After all, stress depletes nutrients from the body, too. So don’t feel guilty it, your one cup per day of organic, ground-at-home-with-cream-coffee. Enjoy it! I do every day.

Craig Fear, NTP, is the owner of Pioneer Valley Nutritional Therapy in Northampton, MA.   He chose the Pioneer Valley as an ideal place for his practice for both the wide and varied access to local farms and for the strong support in the community for local agriculture. He loves to hike, play guitar, travel and of course, drink coffee. http://www.pvnutritionaltherapy.com

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I just finished reading The Vegetarian Myth, by Lierre Keith (Flashpoint Press, 2009) and I can tell you it was not an easy book to read, forcing me to face some pretty grim facts about the direction civilization has been traveling since the dawn of agriculture, about 12,000 years ago. Having said that, I highly recommend it to anyone serious about understanding the depth and breadth of the challenges agriculture has posed on the global, national, community, individual and gut (yes, I mean “tummy”) levels.

Lierre Keith was a vegan for 20 years. At 16 she ached, like so many conscientious young people, to save the world, so she stopped eating animal products and lived, or barely survived as it turns out, on vegetables, grains and the vegetarian diet staple, soy and its many byproducts. She almost died.

Keith chronicles the story of her descent into depression, emaciation, chronic pain and compromised fertility as she systematically disassembles the three major platforms from which vegetarians and vegans decry the killing of animals: moral, political and nutritional vegetarianism.

Says Keith:

The moral vegetarians believe – and they believe it with all their hearts and with all their good reasons – that the question is life or death. But that is not the choice that nature offers any of us. We are all – apple trees and coho salmon, earthworms and black terns – predators, and then prey. Life or death? is not the question that will save us.

But this could be: What grows where you live?…What grows where you live becomes Why are there so many of us? This leads to the question of who controls women’s bodies…

It appears at first glance that Keith is making some giant leaps – from the taking of the life of a worm to overpopulation to the subjugation of women – but she does it thoughtfully and it makes sense.

Addressing political vegetarianism is a little more complicated, at least to me who struggles with the labyrinth that is politics (although I can take you through the labyrinth of the human digestive system with aplomb, so maybe it’s just a question of aptitude.) Keith writes:

Refraining from factory farm animal products is a righteous act, for animals and the earth, but it will not feed a single hungry person. The hungry don’t have money to buy North American grain; getting the money means further dependence on the masters of globalization; and cheap commodities from afar only further destroy local food production, the only real food security that can exist. This is why there are no international aid agencies that suggest vegetarianism as a solution to world hunger: it isn’t one. I understand how the desperate longing for a just and fed world can lead us to cling to simple answers, especially answers that are easy to institute in our personal lives. But buying a soy burger is an emotional quick fix that does not address the tenacious and terrible roots of power and inequality.

Most importantly:

Check the label: you’re probably giving money to the very corporations that are creating the problem.

Can you say “Monsanto?” “Archer Daniels Midland?” “Cargill?”

It is when Keith addresses nutritional vegetarianism that she strikes the loudest chord with me. She and I have great respect for those whose moral, ethical and political convictions lead them to wrestle with these issues, but I think the majority of people will be swayed mostly by the personal. We have to save our own health before we can save the world. If you only read the chapter entitled “Nutritional Vegetarians” it will be an education in itself.

Keith shows us the archeological evidence that we are an omnivorous animal evolved to eat “meat, fowl, fish and leaves, roots and fruits of many plants.” Today:

We are eating foods that didn’t even exist until a few thousand years ago: domesticated annuals, especially grains, and even more their industrial endpoint of refined flours, sugars, and oils…Our own bodies, with their degenerative diseases and overgrowth of cells, are all the evidence we need that this diet is unnatural.

She leads the reader through a short course on the human digestive system and metabolism, including the story of insulin, one of the major culprits in the crime that is the USDA food pyramid (now My Plate) and its recommendation that we eat a diet that is 60% carbohydrate.

Your body will turn that carbohydrate into almost two cups of glucose, and each and every molecule has to be reckoned with.

It’s insulin that does the reckoning – and the wrecking. An overabundance of this essential hormone leads to fat accumulation, high blood pressure, heart disease, arteriosclerosis, oxidation of LDL cholesterol, diabetes and more, much more.

Don’t just consider reading this book if you are a vegetarian, or know one. Even for those of us committed to supporting locally grown, grass-fed and pastured animals and their products for our own health and the health of the environment, there is much here to be gained. I challenge you to read this book and not look differently at food in the fields and pastures and forests, food on your plate, and what it takes to get it from one to the other while still leaving a world for your grandchildren.

Debra Meadow is a Certified Nutritional Therapist in Portland, Oregon. She helps clients get healthy and stay healthy using a nutritionally dense, whole food diet. Her passion for cooking and eating real food comes through in individual consultations, group classes and one-on-one cooking and shopping tutorials. Debra blogs at Blue Raven Wellness and you can find her on Facebook.

Related Posts:

• Confessions of a Recovering Vegetarian
• Gather Naked
• Sweet Misery: How our sweet tooth is killing us

The prevailing belief when it comes to our food and health is that the fewer animal products we eat, the better. It’s perceived to be the healthier, the more ethical, the more environmental option.

I was a vegetarian of some shade or another for the better part of 12 years. I started in University for the politics of it, loving how radical it felt, and continued on and off until, ironically, I studied nutrition. I’ll confess right up front that for much of this time I wasn’t particularly good at it – I was the classic junk food vegetarian. I didn’t eat meat, but what I was eating wasn’t all that fabulous. I was more of a carbivore than anything – pasta, bread, cereals – mostly because I could never fill myself up.

During my years as a vegetarian, I had loads of digestive issues and was constantly hungry. Several times I figured this was because I wasn’t being “pure” or radical enough, so I tried my hand at a strictly vegan diet (no eggs, dairy, or anything that came from an animal). All the issues got worse, not better. The “healthier” I ate, the worse I felt. Occasionally I’d cheat and eat a little meat. To my great dismay, I would feel much better: my digestive issues resolved and I was completely satiated after even a small meal. What a predicament.

I see clients in my practice all the time in this same quandary: well-intentioned, following what they’ve been taught is a healthy, plant-based diet, trying to live their values of environmental sustainability and animal welfare through their food choices, and yet their body rebelling. What a horrible choice: feel good in your body but guilty about the impacts of your choices; or feel good ethically and miserable physically.

When I started studying nutrition, one of the concepts that compelled me the most was bio-individuality. Basically it means that what works for you might not work for me, and vice versa. One man’s food is another man’s poison. Bio-individuality is based on everything from physiology, family background, geography, ethnicity, season, blood type, stress levels, personal preferences… it’s a veritable jigsaw puzzle of factors that determine how our body will react to something.

This means that there’s no one diet that works for everyone. In fact, the diet that works for you today might be completely inappropriate five or ten years down the road. This concept of bio-individuality explains why some people thrive on a vegetarian diet while others, like me, really struggle with it.

But explaining why I did well with meat didn’t make me feel better about eating it. In fact, initially it made me feel worse. My biological wiring wasn’t making it easy to live according to the values I set for myself.

With a little more investigation, I learned that there was indeed a way to eat meat and feel good about it on an environmental and ethical level. Perhaps my innate instincts were turning me on to an important lesson in broadening my understanding of the issues at stake.

I, like many people, lumped “animal foods” into one big category. I’d seen the horrifying images from inside feedlots. I’d seen the stomach-turning videos of abusive treatment to animals. I was well aware of the major contribution ruminants make to water pollution and climate change, not to mention the energy intensity of raising them. What I wasn’t aware of was a whole other source of meat, eggs, and dairy, grown by a small but growing group of independent farmers.

Farmer Joe Salatin of Polyface Farms and his grass-fed herd

These farmers are using traditional farming techniques that not only preserve but enhance their environments by increasing biomass and using minimal, if any, external inputs. They treat the animals humanely, allowing them to engage in their natural behaviors and eat the food they’re biologically designed to eat. One such farmer, Joel Salatin, has become quite famous for the methods he uses on his farm Polyface Farm. Many others are working with similar models throughout the country. Now this is meat you can feel good about!

As a wonderful bonus, not only is this an environmentally responsible choice and makes the health and welfare of its animals a top priority, it also provides meat, dairy and eggs that are far more nutritious. As one example: beef that comes from grass-fed versus feedlot cows is higher in the all-important Omega 3s, lower in fat overall, and contains CLA (conjugated linoleic acid) that promotes healthy weight, lowers triglycerides, and has been linked to cancer prevention. You’ll find similar differences in the nutritional profiles of wild versus farmed fish, eggs from pastured chickens versus those raised conventionally in battery cages, and so on.

I immediately became very selective about what meat we bring into our home. You won’t find standard supermarket fare in our house. Yes, it’s more expensive, so we eat less of it to compensate.

The great news is that when I’m eating this way, I feel fabulous. My energy levels even out, my digestion ticks along like a well-oiled machine, and I feel lean and strong.

And then, every once in a while, hearing the vegetarian model aggressively promoted yet again, I start to question myself. I start weaning out the meat, I eat a few more grains (whole grains now – I’ve moved away from my junk food days) and a few more beans; I increase the veggie content even more than normal (50-70% of all my meals are vegetables regardless), and whaddaya know… the digestive complaints come back, I’m overstuffed but still not satiated after meals, and I start to bloat. Turns out that a plant-based diet really doesn’t work for me after all.

Digestive issues and constant hunger aside, I kind of miss the simplicity of my vegetarian days. It was so easy to just label anything that came from an animal as “bad” and end the conversation there. Unfortunately, the reality is a lot more complicated, and not nearly so black and white. Ultimately it depends on your individual biology and it depends on the source of your meat.

Here are three ways your body could be telling you it needs animal protein:

1)   After a plant-based meal you experience great digestive distress.

2)   After a plant-based meal you feel excessively full but still hungry and not satiated.

3)   You experience powerful sugar cravings in the afternoons and evenings.

What’s your body telling you?

If you’re body is like mine and does better on an omnivorous diet, here’s a starting point for finding quality, pastured meat, dairy and eggs: www.eatwild.com

Related posts:

• When an egg is not an egg: What’s on your breakfast plate?.
• Underneath cravings: What’s your body telling you?
• The skinny on saturated fat: Six important roles for this maligned nutrient

Cravings. The word alone elicits feelings of guilt, powerlessness, and uncontrolled urges that need to be mastered.

But what are cravings? Could our bodies actually be telling us something?

If you’ve read my book, you’ll know that I have a tortured (and no longer secret) love affair with a very un-naked food: boxed macaroni and cheese. Yes, the stuff with white pasta and fluorescent orange dye. Sometimes I don’t think about it at all. At other times, I can hardly stand it I crave it so badly. What’s up with that?

Our bodies are communicating with us all the time. Trouble is, most of the time we’re not listening. Or if we hear it, we ignore it or try to shut it up.

Cravings are our bodies speaking to us, loudly. Perhaps we’ve missed some subtler cues, so we get an uncontrollable urge. Uncontrollable gets our attention. Uncontrollable is hard to ignore.

When your body craves something, instead of trying to muscle through it or just giving in immediately, take a few moments to listen to the craving. What’s it telling you? What’s it asking for really?

Maybe your body’s asking for something that’s got nothing to do with food. Love, distraction, comfort, ritual, acceptance. These are all vitally important things, and if these needs aren’t being satisfied, food is one way to fill the void.

Maybe your body’s asking for a nutrient. Craving chocolate? Your body could be low in magnesium. Craving fat? This is a typical sign of essential fatty acid deficiency. Craving sugar? Maybe you need more protein or fat in your diet.

Maybe your body’s asking for a change of pace. If you’ve been too strict with yourself, maybe you need to chill out a little. If you’ve been excessively debaucherous, maybe it’s time to settle down and find your healthy groove again.

But here’s the thing: you’ll never know what your body’s asking for until you take the time to listen.

Here are some of my favorite tools for listening:

• Glass of water –  if you find yourself craving something, instead of just automatically indulging, stop and have a glass of water first. Take the time of drinking the water to check in with yourself. At the very least you’ll have snuck in an extra glass of water, and often we mistake thirst for hunger.

• Journaling – If you have the time, take out your journal and write “What are you really wanting?” at the top. Take a few deep breaths, don’t overthink, and just write what comes to you. This is a great tool for allowing your body’s inner wisdom to come through.

• Compassion – Most of all, you want to be compassionate with yourself. Judgment clouds our listening and confuses the message. Be easy with it. Remember, this isn’t about willpower. This is about listening and learning.

Next time you crave something, take a moment to look underneath it. What’s your body really asking for?

Related posts:

• The Naked Truth: when food is comfort
• Taming Temptation: setting yourself up for food success
• Naked Chocolate? Get some raw goodness from Lix Marx at Sweet Nuit

I’m so thrilled to be a contributor for the October Unprocessed challenge by food blogger, Andrew Wilder. Here’s a bit of my post:

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Imagine this: You sit down to lunch over a big heaping bowl of salad. Every color in the rainbow is represented, all your favorite goodies from sun-dried tomatoes, some artichoke hearts, maybe an olive or two. Tender greens, fresh herbs, juicy tomatoes. Maybe some leftover wild salmon from last night’s dinner.

Your mouth is watering as you tuck into your delicious, unprocessed lunch and you reach for the bottle of salad dressing.

Just as you’re about to pour, you remember it’s October Unprocessed and maybe you better check out that ingredients. You’re pretty confident it’s got only the good stuff because after all, it’s screaming its health benefits from the label. Low fat! Low sodium! Organic!

What a disappointment to find the list filled with artificial crap you can’t pronounce.

It’s sad but true. I’ve seen many gorgeous, nutritious, absolutely amazing salads get destroyed by this stuff . . . Read the rest of my guest post here!

I know, I know, this isn’t what you’ve heard in the media or from many high profile health-types. The basic formula we’ve been taught is saturated fat = bad. This over-simplistic conclusion is based on the following logic: dietary consumption of saturated fat and the cholesterol that often comes with it leads to heart disease.

This argument is the essence of what’s called the Lipid Hypothesis, a theory proposed originally by Ancel Keys in the 1950s and eagerly adopted by nutritionists, the American Heart Association, and the medical community at large.

Trouble is, the theory was wrong. And has been proved wrong in study after study. How this incorrect theory gained such popularity and has been so difficult to shake is a story unto itself, which I’ll let Sally Fallon and Dr. Mary Enig explain in their excellent paper, The Oiling of America.

It turns out that saturated fat – yes, even saturated fat that comes from animal sources – plays many important roles in your body and health. For example:

• It’s is a key component of your cell membranes, giving them structure. In fact, 50% of your cell membranes are made up of saturated fat.
• It’s your heart’s preferred fuel, which is why the fat around your heart is highly saturated.
• Certain types of saturated fats have antimicrobial and antiviral properties, and strengthen your immune system.
• Saturated fat decreases lipoprotein (a), a factor strongly correlated to the risk of heart disease. This means saturated fat decreases your risk of heart disease.
• Saturated fat protects your liver from damage due to medications and alcohol. Yes, that’s why after a debaucherous night the thought of a fatty meal is so appealing. Your body is protecting itself.
• Saturated fats are very stable and thus protect highly unstable unsaturated fatty acids both outside your body (when cooking with heat) and inside your body. Further, saturated fats help your body make use of essential fatty acids.

Let’s not forget that fat makes food taste good, keeps you fuller longer, and is the source of that consistent energy we all want.

The important thing to consider when eating any type of fat, saturated or not, is its quality. Toxins accumulate in fat, so consume only those fats that come from healthy animals fed appropriate diets and living happily outdoors. Butter or meat from grass-fed cows and eggs from pastured chickens are two great examples.

To incorporate healthy saturated fats into your diet, use them for cooking. We use butter, ghee (clarified butter), coconut oil, and occasionally lard for all our cooking. Save the olive oil and the delicate nut/seed oils for salad dressings and sauces put on the food after it’s cooked.

And most of all, enjoy it! What fabulous news that something as tasty as butter isn’t the bane of your healthful existence, but an integral part of it.

If this subject piques your interest and you’re curious to learn more, here’s some further reading I highly recommend:

The Truth About Saturated Fat by Dr. Mercola

Know Your Fats by Dr. Mary Enig

The Coconut Oil Miracle by Bruce Fife

Related Posts:

• Smokin’ Hot or Unsafe? Is cooking with grapeseed oil a good idea?
• The naked numbers: my adventures in calorie counting
• When an egg is not an egg: what’s on your breakfast plate?

Let me rephrase: there’s nothing better than the END of a nice, deep, detox. The first part sucks, and yeah, detoxing hurts.

Headaches. Lightheadedness. Fatigue. Strange poops. Strange smells. Nausea. Hunger. I’ve felt them all, and if you’ve done a cleansing regime of any kind, you’ve probably felt them, too.

Today marks day 10 of a 12-day program I’m doing to recalibrate my system. I’m at that point where my body is purring in appreciation. But if you’d talked to me Saturday, well, that’s a whole different story. As I sweat and pooped out my summer sins, I begged my body forgiveness and its accumulated toxins speedy exit.

Here are my top six strategies for surviving a detoxification program.

1) Drink loads and loads of (filtered) water. When you think you can’t drink more, drink more. Now, don’t send yourself into hyponatremia (dangerously low levels of electrolytes due to excess body water), but do some serious rehydration. Most of us are walking around wildly dehydrated without even knowing it and when you’re cleansing, water has an important flushing role. Flush baby flush!

2) Sleep as much as possible. You’ve heard me say it before, but it’s worth repeating: your body only heals when you sleep. Detoxing is tiring on your body – it’s hard work to clean up! – and if you’re on a cleanse with limited food intake this is only more exaggerated. Take advantage of the built-in excuse for extra sleep. Plan for naps, don’t book morning appointments, head to bed an hour early. Your body will thank you.  To help you with this:

3) Plan nothing. Most detox programs have a curve to them. A gentle entry (hey, this isn’t so bad after all), a phase of deep detoxification (OMG when will this be over?), and then a gradual shift back to a new, better-feeling better-looking you (yehaw!). During that middle phase, clear your calendar. Trust me. This is when the uglies show up – the headaches, nausea, lightheadedness, interesting odors – and I promise you’ll prefer to be snoozing on the couch with a big vat of lemon water by your side than out and about wondering if you’ll find a toilet in time.

4) Remove temptation. Okay, so you’ve committed to two weeks where no sugar passes your lips. Then why are you tormenting yourself with leftover cheesecake in the fridge? Toss that stuff or find it another home. Removing temptation is one of the most important strategies for success and for your sanity. If it’s not staring you in the face, you’re much less likely to reach for it.

5) Keep moving. This might feel counter-intuitive, but even on a liquid fast movement is beneficial. A nice evening walk. A gentle, short run. A bike ride. Some restorative yoga. Take your pick, there are many options. But remember that one of your primary detoxification systems – your lymphatic system – requires your physical movement for its circulation. It doesn’t have the benefit of a heart to pump its fluids around. When you’re eliminating toxins, it’s all the more important to make sure that lymph is flowing nicely.

6) Get a buddy. Cleansing is much more fun if others are doing it with you. Who wants to go through a healing crisis alone? It’s much easier on the soul if you can compare notes and cheer someone else along. You keep each other accountable, and you have someone to share your victories and miseries along the way. If your buddy is your partner or roommate, all the better. Turn your abode into a sacred cleansing zone.

Got a detox coming up? Try these strategies to ease your way through it. Looking for a program that’s customized to your needs? Write me and let’s see what would make the most sense for you.

Related Posts

• Easy raw cucumber mint soup
• Sweet Misery: How our sweet tooth is killing us
• Naked Superfoods: Kale arame salad

This battle is about food. It’s about your right to choose what food you eat.

It’s not about health – although of course your health will be directly affected by the outcomes. It’s not even about money – okay, it’s about money, but then it’s always about the money.

It’s about choice and freedom. The freedom to choose what you feed yourself and your loved ones.

Last night I had dinner at a beautiful family farm nestled in Wheeler Canyon in Ventura County. It was a farm representative of the kind of place we all like to think our food comes from: small, family-run, kids out playing at sunset. Cows grazing on rolling green hills, mama goats and their kids scuttling about, chickens outside pecking at bugs in the dirt, piglets playing. Idyllic. Peaceful. Magical.

Certainly not the stage for three armed police raids, the owner handcuffed in front of her own children for an offense yet to be named.

The family raises chickens, pigs, goats, cows, and sheep, all using small-scale, traditional farming practices that treat the animals, the environment, and our health with deep respect. They sell eggs and pastured meat at farmers markets from LA to Santa Barbara. Their crime? None has been officially named. They’ve not been charged with anything, ever.

Similar raids have been going on all over the country. The target: small, independent family farmers and local real food buying groups. Raw milk producers are at the top of the hit list, even here in California, where the sale of raw milk is legal. Yes, raw milk is a hot topic. But whether you love it or loathe it, what’s missing is your right to choose to drink it or not.

Farmageddon is a new movie by Director Kristin Canty, mother of four who resolved her son’s allergies and asthma by switching to raw milk from grass fed cows. Horrified at the challenges both the farmers and consumers are having getting access to this nutrient-dense food, she made a compelling documentary about their fight. Check out the trailer:

What can you do?

If you’re in Los Angeles, San Diego, Chico, or New York, go see the movie. Check the Farmageddon site for screening dates over the next couple of weeks.

Support your local farmers. Make a commitment to shop at the Farmers Market this summer. Farmers Markets are the best places to get naked foods and you’ll get a chance to actually meet the people who grow your food.

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Well, I thought I’d get naked with you all, and open the kimono so to speak. Here is a week (well, five days) in food exactly as I ate it.

Every single one of these meals is home-made. I ate two meals out at restaurants, and thought about including them, but that doesn’t give you any information on eating naked. And they were my 20% meals, so my ‘free for all.’ In this week that was one dinner and one lunch.

For each meal, I’ve listed the ingredients, how much time it took me to make the dish, and, if available, I’ve linked it to a similar recipe on this site so you can try it for yourself. You’ll see we use the principle of “make it once, use it lots”, which I talk about in the Cook Naked chapter of my book. The dressings and several of the bits and pieces I threw into salads were leftovers from the weekend. Doesn’t have to be fancy!

Disclaimer: foodie and health nut I am; photographer I am clearly not. The quality of these photos is shameful as they’re just snapped from my phone, but it’s good enough to give you a sense of portion size and what it looks like.

Day 1

This is how I start every morning.

A teaspoon of raw apple cider vinegar in a mug of hot water with a dash of cayenne. Wonderful tonic and it’s great for the digestion.

If you struggle digestively, try this a half hour before your meals.

Breakfast:

Portabello mushroom and zucchini sautéed in ghee, with scrambled eggs (also cooked in ghee), 1/4 avocado, big spoonful of cultured salsa, and a little bit of grated mozza cheese. Prep time: 8 mins

Ghee is clarified butter. You know those little bits of white that separate out when you melt butter? Those are the proteins, and they tend to burn. Ghee is the butter oil without those white bits. It’s good for use at high temperatures because it doesn’t burn as easily as butter. It’s used in a lot of Indian cuisine.

Lunch:

Big salad with romaine lettuce, fresh parsley, cucumber, celery, tomato, 4oz seared ahi tuna (leftover), 1/3 cup leftover mixed rice (TJ’s mix of long grain brown rice, black barley, & daikon radish seeds, soaked for 12 hrs, then cooked in homemade chicken broth with some butter and red pepper flakes added), umeboshi dressing (we made it on the weekend). Prep time: 5 mins

Dinner:

Steam-sautéed veggies (broccoli, cauliflower, kale, zucchini, carrot) topped with chicken breast sautéed in coconut oil, with marinara sauce (homemade on the weekend), a little bit of grated mozza, and some fresh parsley. Prep time: 15 minutes (would have been faster but I cut my finger chopping the zucchini)

Bed-time snack:

This is my favorite coffee substitute: DandyBlend (roasted chikory, dandelion, and barley root – seriously yummy). I have it with some raw cream and a couple of drops of stevia.

Order it here, or find a store that carries it.

Day 2

Breakfast:

Leftover veggies from last night (broccoli, cauliflower, kale, zucchini, carrot), reheated with a little coconut oil and then added eggs to make a veggie scramble. Prep time: 7 mins

Lunch:

Leftover salad from yesterday; little bit of quinoa (leftover from weekend); white fish with olive, sundried tomato, and pesto. Here’s where I get to cheat – my husband’s a chef and I get some of his leftover food from his kitchen. If I hadn’t had this, I’d have had the leftover chicken from last night’s dinner, which was also in the fridge. Prep time: 5 mins.

Dinner:

Mung bean noodles with tempeh, seaweed salad, cultured shitake mushrooms, and spicy cultured cucumbers. Hubby Chef James Barry added a little red miso to the noodles and sprinkled top with sesame seeds. We got the tempeh, seaweed, shitakes, and cucumbers from Dave’s Korean at the Culver City Farmer’s Market – all amazing cultured Korean dishes. Prep time: 8 minutes, just enough to heat the noodles.

Day 3

Breakfast:

This is one of my favorite in-a-hurry breakfasts. Most of the time required doesn’t involve you.

2 soft boiled eggs with steamed kale & cultured butter. Only thing missing was a big scoop of cultured veggies, but we’re out and the next batch isn’t ready until tomorrow. Prep time: 10 mins (mostly unattended)

Lunch:

This was more of a snack, since I was in a hurry and not really hungry. And I have to confess I ate it so quickly I forgot to photograph it, but I had eaten it a couple of weeks ago and thought it looked so pretty I took a picture of it. It was full-fat yogurt (organic) with homemade grainless granola and blueberries. Prep time: 2 mins

Dinner:

This was the most extensive meal I made all week: Hearty Miso Soup with onions, mushrooms, zucchini, grated carrot, kale, 2 types of sea weed, mung bean noodles & tamari gluten-free soy sauce. Prep time: 15 mins

Day 4

Breakfast:

Two pastured eggs scrambled in coconut oil with onion, mushrooms, zuchinni, kale, sundried tomatoes, and a little goat feta and parsley on top. Prep time: 10 mins

Snack:

An organic apple and the most amazing cheese. Can’t remember the name of it but it’s from Switzerland. I got it at The Cheese Store of Beverly Hills. Just discovered this place last week and fell in love.

Lunch:

Veggie scramble with nitrate-free salami, zucchini, mushrooms, and leftover rice. Little bit of parmesan cheese and paprika on top. Prep time: 10 mins.

That night we went out for dinner, so I’ll skip straight to day 5…

Day 5

Breakfast:

Ah, the green smoothie. A personal favorite of mine. Romaine lettuce, parsley, cucumber, celery, avocado, lime juice, and soaked almonds. Add water and a vitamix and you’ve got yourself a serious smoothie. (no sugar either!) Prep time: 5 mins.

That day I was treated to a delicious lunch out by a friend of mine, so we’ll go straight to dinner…

Dinner:

A big ol’ salad with reheated sliced lamb. Salad had romaine lettuce, lightly steamed broccoli rabe, grated carrot and daikon, 2 big scoops of cultured veggies, and umeboshi dressing. Prep time: 10 mins (lamb was reheated at same time as broccoli)

Do you have photos of your favorite naked dishes? Post them on our facebook page and let us know what you put in them!

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