Healthy eating is now available in Restaurants near YOU!

Excuse  – I can’t eat healthy because I eat out too often in restaurants.  

Because you eat in restaurants is not an acceptable reason that you can’t be healthy and eat well to properly fuel y our body.

And before you say it doesn’t work – trust me. I have personally tested this theory in over a hundred different restaurants in 12 different countries – it works.

It’s key to have a plan going in and know how to ASK for what you want.

There are foods that Nourish your body. There are foods that serve to Entertain your Taste Buds… Choose wisely – this is your life.

 

 

Focus on eating:

• leafy greens and whole veggies
• gluten free grains
• wild fish, free range chicken, turkey or duck
• whole fruits
• nuts
• seeds
• coconut oil
• apple cider vinegar
• plant-based protien
• green tea, lemon water or coconut water
• alkaline water

Stay away from:

• dairy
• eggs
• wheat
• gluten products
• processed and refined sugar
• soy products
• coffee, pop, alcohol
• corn products
• peanuts
• trans fats
• processed, created food products that are not made with real foods

 

I love food

I love food.

I truly do. Last night after recording myself talk about groceries I felt a little weird about it. I mean – really – who makes videos talking about what they buy at the grocery store and why? I guess I do. (Watch this 7 minute personal video of me in my kitchen explaining all the items I picked up at the store, what I do with them and WHY)

WHY? I have a love for food. True, real food. And when I hear people say that they love food and I see them eating junk and processed chemical and preservative ridden mimics of food-like products it bothers me a great deal. They are not loving food – they are loving eating. And they do it to satisfy their body because their body is telling them they are hungry.

And it is – hungry for nutrients. But that’s not what we feed our bodies when we’re reaching for quick, convenience – packaged products…

High calorie, low nutrient foods are taking over the shelves at the grocery stores leaving very little room and decreasing demand for fresh produce and true food products.

I have discovered why we think we love food and our story includes all sorts of delicious creations that are convenient and provided to us at a relative cost. Or low price – the cost to your health is VERY HUGE. (You can pay now or you can pay later - either way you are going to pay. Please don't sell your health to the lowest bidder.)

We’re addicted. Plain and simple. And just like battling drug addiction – recognising the bio-chemical component of addiction and learning how your body works can empower you to make different decisions that will impact your health, your vitality, your energy and the overall quality of your life.

Next time you go to the grocery store – perhapse do this: Observe what people are putting into their carts and then imagine – just by looking at them – what their energy level probably is and how healthy they are. Don’t start at people… just observe them – without judgement. To learn – and see what is really going on.

Last night I saw a family of 4 walk by – cart filled with colourful cardboard packages, frozen pizza… fish sticks… pasta side dishes, rice side dishes, items with unpronounceable ingredients that have been shaped and moulded to resemble food products. This family looks sluggish, overweight and have unsightly blemishes or patches on their skin. I can imagine that being overweight translates into being ridiculed at school for the kids. It’s not fair. And it’s not necessary.

There are too many unknowns in our food supply. It is time to get back to basics and make decisions that are in line with fueling your body for success.

 

Education leads to understanding. Understanding leads to knowing better.

Know [Better]. Do [Better]. Be [Better].

 

I work with a fantastic Doctor who helps people just like you overcome challenges and acheive optimum health!

Listen to her next Free Call!

Sign up Now!

Email me personally.
 

 

Warmly,

Melissa

 

 

Hindsight is 20/20…

Have you ever heard that hindsight is 20/20? Of course you have… we all have… too many times it seems off the lips of someone who is basically just saying ‘I told you so…’ As true as it may be it’s (in my personal experience) never nice to hear.

I think the BEST person to give YOU advice is… YOU? Who else knows exactly what you appreciate and value and has all of the relevant experience to make a decision for YOU?

I remember thinking to myself – If hindsight is so damn wonderful why hasn’t anyone explained to me how to make it work in my favor? I then realized that probably they were too busy running around chanting ‘I told you so’ to consider a more rational, productive behavior.

Here’s what I came up with: It’s the secret, private conversation that I have with myself… and I’d like to share it with the up and coming Better Version of YOU that you are BEcoming each and every day…

I'm so frustrated!

~~You know you’re going to feel better sooner or later. It’s ok to get **angry/hurt/emotional/frustrated** - however – as long as you allow yourself to stay in the state of **insert emotion** you can’t do anything else…so please don’t choose to stay there. 

Later is really FAR away... and sooner hurts a lot.

Ok - fine - stay there! Now... Are YOU having fun yet? ~~

Does it look like I’m having fun? (A complete wreck looking back at me with mascara smeared eyes). So-and-so is a complete ass. I’m hurt. This isn’t fair. Life sucks. The world is crashing. My life is over.

 ~~Life isn’t fair – get over it. ~~

Why are you so insensitive with me – you’re supposed to be nice? YOU ARE ME!!!

~~I’m actually a more rational, sane version of you…~~

Must be freaking nice.

~~Are you ready to not be**angry/hurt/emotional/frustrated** and move onto something else? You dorealize that sooner or later you are going to feel better?

I guess…

~~Why don't you have a glass of water? It will help you to think more clearly.

How about wine?

~~Water is better...

Has anyone told you that you're not very much fun?

~~Just you...~~

~~OK – so what will the Melissa **2 months** from now wish you did right now?~~

Using this perspective of inserting a timeframe that isobviously beyond the time that I’m feeling completely lost, out of control andlike a complete failure I can look back on the situation and rationally thinkabout what I am going to wish I would have done. For me this approach has beenextremely effective. Somehow the situation doesn’t seem as big, bad or ugly because I’m looking back on it not surrounded by it or drowning within it.

When I am totally emotionally involved, frustrated and angry it is difficult to make a rational decision – perhaps you can relate. I’m pretty sure that thinking back must force me to use a different part of my brain that allows me time to have the ‘fear’ chemicals in my system calm down. (that damn lizard brain)

This thinking process helps me be a better example formyself… not following anyone else but by helping to further my own developmentas a human being while creating a Better Version of ME!!

When I started using it I always used years… Like if I wanted to go out with my friends but had a class the next am… the rationalization starts... would it really matter if I missed? I could get the notes from someone… I’m doing well in the class and deserve a night out… you can rationalize yourself into or out ofanything – well I could!

So I started asking myself – what the 25 year old Melissa wish the 20 year old Melissa had done – obviously I don’t want to be in the same place at 25 that I am at 20 so just go to sleep, go to the class and quit thinking about stuff that is a waste of time and a hindrance to your future. In 5 years I’m for sure going to wish I went to the classes, passed with respectable marks and moved on to the next chapter of my life…

There will be events that you are going to wish you attend. Attend them. There will be bridges you wished you burned. Burn them. And there will be apologies you wish you had made. Make them.

By taking the time to 'look back' you get to take advantage of the Hindsight 20/20 thing... You will make the right decision because YOU made it, and you will live your life without regrets.

No one is going to know about this secret conversation, except for 2 people. The you at the moment and the you in the future. The you in the future is going to be proud… or frustrated – YOU decide!

Monsanto's 5 Contributions to Planet Earth

Oh, Monsanto, you sly dog. You keep trying to make us believe you are “committed to sustainable agriculture” with your canny advertisements on American Public Media, even as you force-feed farmers your lab-grown Frankenseeds that expire every year (which are, let’s be honest, opposite of sustainable).

On that note, let’s take a quick look at some of the biotech giant’s most dubious contributions to society over their past century in business.

1. Saccharin

Monsanto burst onto the scene in 1901 with the artificial sweetener saccharin, which it sold to Coca-Cola and canned food companies as a sugar replacement.But as early as 1907, the health effects of the sweetener were being questioned by Food and Drug Administration (FDA) scientists.

After enjoying decades of unfettered consumption, the sweetener was slapped with a warning label in the ’70s when it was found to cause cancer in lab rats. A subsequent three-decade effort by Monsanto to reverse the decision finally won out in 2001. After all, how could a product derived from coal tar not be safe for consumption?

2. Polystyrene

By the ’40s, Monsanto had moved on to oil-based plastics, including polystyrene foam (also known as styrofoam).

As most of us are aware by now, polystyrene foam is an environmental disaster. Not only is there nothing out there that biodegrades it, it breaks off into tiny pieces that choke animals, harm marine life, and release cancer-causing benzene into the environment for a thousand years or more. Despite the overwhelming evidence against it, the noxious containers are still pervasive elsewhere around the country.


3. Agent Orange

 
First developed as an herbicide and defoliant, Agent Orange was used infamously as a military weapon by the U.S. Army during Vietnam to remove the dense foliage of the jungle canopy.

In the process, they dumped over 12 million gallons of the potent chemical cocktail—described by Yale biologist Arthur Galston as “perhaps the most toxic molecule ever synthesized by man”—over towns, farms, and water supplies during a nine-year period.

“When [military scientists] initiated the herbicide program in the 1960s, we were aware of the potential for damage due to dioxin contamination in the herbicide. . .,” said Dr. James R. Clary, a former government scientist with the Chemical Weapons Branch. “However, because the material was to be used on the ‘enemy,’ none of us were overly concerned.”

According to the Vietnamese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, that lack of concern led to 4.8 million exposures to the herbicide, along with 400,000 deaths and disfigurements and 500,000 babies born with birth defects.

4. Bovine Growth Hormone

Did you know the United States is the only developed nation that permits the sale of milk from cows given artificial growth hormones?

With the lone exception of Brazil, the rest of the developed world—including all 27 countries of the European Union, Canada, New Zealand, and Australia—has banned growth hormone use in milk destined for human consumption.

“The milk we drink today is quite unlike the milk our ancestors were drinking without apparent harm for 2,000 years,” said Harvard scientist Ganmaa Davaasambuu. “The milk we drink today may not be nature’s perfect food.”

According to the Center for Food Safety, thanks to increased consumer demand (and certain movies), approximately 60 percent of milk in the U.S. is rBST-free today.


5. Genetically-Modified Seeds

Not content to do mere incidental damage to the environment, Monsanto decided to get to the root of the matter in the ’80s: seeds.

But with much fuss being made over the company’s aggressive scare tactics and rampant mass-patenting, the biotech giant has, true to form, fought back with a multimillion-dollar marketing and advertising campaign featuring smiling children and making outlandish claims that “biotech foods could help end world hunger.”

“Unless I’m missing something,” wrote Michael Pollan in The New York Times Magazine, “the aim of this audacious new advertising campaign is to impale people like me—well-off first-worlders dubious about genetically engineered food—on the horns of a moral dilemma…If we don’t get over our queasiness about eating genetically modified food, kids in the Third World will go blind.”

What’s clear is that no matter what its justification, Monsanto is a) never giving away all these seeds for free; and b) rendering them sterile so that farmers need to re-up every year, making it difficult to believe that the company could possibly have the planet’s best intentions at heart.

“By peddling suicide seeds, the biotechnology multinationals will lock the world’s poorest farmers into a new form of genetic serfdom,” says Emma Must of the World Development Movement. “Currently 80 percent of crops in developing countries are grown using farm-saved seed.”

Continue Reading: http://wakeup-world.com/2011/08/15/monsantos-5-most-dubious-contributions-to-planet-earth/

 

Credit for the words is to the listed website.

I made the pictures :-)

Do you subscribe to Option #2?

If there are 28 people in a kindergarten class and 27 of them think it's a good idea to eat glue and staples - it's still not a smart idea. What's my point?

Democracy isn't always a good idea - especially when it's an Electoral College or, obviously a group of juveniles who haven't been educated about the intricacies of how the world works. Everyone knows eating glue is bad, right?


Reading this post - I just had to respond - Celebrating victory right now incites to me being content to being entertained rather than educated. Treated as a commodity rather than a human being will free will. There truly are two options - Option #1... Be a part of a system that focuses on 3 main parts. Art & entertainment. Humanities & language. Technology & politics. There has been a system created that allows individuals to be distracted from fulfilling their own life potential of something specific that is personally relevant to them and becoming hypnotized (for lack of a better descriptive word) by mass-attraction (social correctness). They are enticed by clever marketing and distracted by pretty pictures. They are misinformed by nifty, emotionally stimulating, popular 'social issues' that negatively reflect differences rather than celebrating similarities. Driven by ego, social correctness, greed, fear... option #1. Rather then discuss ways to make things better, collectively, they make rude jokes and expect to be taken care of.

There is another choice - we have all experienced enough to understand that 'collectives' cannot understand and give meaning to individual lives. These groups are better at screaming 'crucify him' rather than 'let's take a subjective look at our own behavior'. Organized sciences can manipulate interest groups by convincing them why they don't want to be like the other guy, rather than on focusing on what they DO want to be like; economy, ecology - even politics. The voice indicates that regardless if the choice is logical, the other way is sooo bad for this list of options so apparently it is the better of two evils. Bad idea.

Option #2... Is consciously understanding your own personal life fulfillment. Pulling away from what's popular and focusing on what's innately right for YOU. Giving effort to someone else's dream is self-destructive. Even if you do win - the reward won't taste that sweet. It's not your dream.

Spend some time alone with the most important person on earth. YOU. Figure out how YOU think, innately. What's your style? What makes you tick? How do you enjoy life, interaction and what can you contribute? Option 2 requires rising above what's popular and doing what's essential to your own life fulfillment. Not because someone says or you're scared, but because you've researched, educated yourself and have decided that, for you, this is the right decision.

Thoughts?

Feeling STUCK?

How can YOU get unstuck? Could it be as easy as changing your perspective?

In my travels I am learning that people from different places are all the same… in the sense that they are ALL just people. Old or young, male or female, from here or there... And guess what – your parents are just people too. They might seem really old to you but they were once the same age as you are now… and they were also children, perhaps with a sad childhood or even a rough one.

Sometimes it is hard for us to look past our own perceptions and imagine what life is like for others. We see things the way WE see them and that’s how they are… right? 

WRONG - This is an important concept to understand and take some time to think about… this can be extremely helpful in many situations because once you become more agile in your thinking, you are able to grow and become a better version of yourself. J

Often if you ask someone about WHY they haven’t reached all their dreams and goals they can provide you with a list of excuses longer than their arm… You can make excuses, or you can create an amazing life – but you can’t do both…

Some excuses are really reasons… just kidding – ‘reasons’ are just excuses that we have justified to ourselves.

The sum of all of your experiences is now sitting in your chair. That’s right… YOU are the sum of what you remember about the experiences that you have had… how we ‘remember’ something is often quite different than what actually happened.

If there is a car crash and it happens in front of a group of 12 different people, do you think you would get 12 statements that are exactly the same? Not one chance – you will get 12 different accounts of what happened and if you didn’t know they were talking about the same thing you may not even realize it because their individual accounts will be SO different… another example – ever played ‘Telephone’?

Are you wondering yet how you can have different perceptions that can lead to real change?

Here is the secret to permanent change:

1.             The perception you have of your memories is not based on reality. Your memories are LYING.

2.             Believe the truth instead of the lies… easier done than said so don’t think about it – just do it. (believing the truth is not as fun, sometimes it can be quite painful – it’s not easy but is worth it)

3.             Change your perceptions of your past and your childhood by reviewing your memories and the ‘feelings’ you have attached to them. Challenge the memories that are frozen into your brain about your childhood – rediscover them now with the rational thinking you have developed as an adult. As you gain a new perspective, based on rational thinking rather than emotional childhood memory, you will alter your self-talk. And when you adjust the conversation you are having with yourself, all day long, you can change your thoughts and your behavior. Changing your behavior will yield you different results :-)

Changing your perception of your memories from childhood will change the perception that you have of yourself TODAY!

Now, back to our parents – can we look at their life from an outside perspective and use our logical, rational thinking to imagine what life might have actually been like for them? Remember that they didn’t have the same luxury of technology that you did growing up… in fact they had many struggles through life, including carrying the burden of the stories their own parents shared with them as they grew up…. And they certainly didn’t have the benefit of reading this J

So is it fair to blame your current problems on something that happened years ago? NO

Let’s explore ‘humanizing’ our parents. Is it possible that they didn’t have a very good start in life? Weren’t they just a result of their own conditioning and environment, the same as you have been?

By exploring how your parents became the way they are, by using logical reasoning and our adult thinking, we can move them from possible abusive failures or whatever category we have them in to fellow strugglers – real people with real problems. It certainly doesn’t excuse their behavior, but it does help us to understand and revise the memories we have by looking at them today, instead of from the memory we created so many years ago.

30 Days to Bliss - Day 1: Make the Choice

I have fallen into the ‘must be perfect to get started’ rut. Thank you to my dear friend, Dara Kennedy, for starting a group and inspiring me to get back at my blogging. I have lost my beloved iPad (left on plane L) which had about 30 partial blog postings done. … Guess that teaches me my lesson about not finishing what I start or thinking too much about something and trying to make sure it is perfect before I put it online.

So when I saw this group today - 30 Days to Bliss – I though – there is no time like the present.

Dara’s post - Day 1: Make the Choice – is like a direct order. So I am. Thank you Dara.

I am so excited to be a part of such an amazing group and enlightening concept. Like many of you, I have been sort of like a caged bird or trained elephant… Let me explain…

A little bird is caged after breaking its wings to ensure that it doesn’t hinder the healing by getting out and trying to fly too quickly. Sometimes the healing takes so long that when the door is finally opened, the bird doesn’t venture out because it has forgotten how to take off. This group will serve as a support system to help inspire us to ‘take off’ and fly again.

When elephants are young and born into circus service, they are chained with a heavy cuff around their leg. As they grow they just accept that since there is a restriction on them that keeps them restrained they learn to associate the cuff with restriction. As they grow bigger and stronger they could easily break away from the chain but they don’t even try because of the way that they have been conditioned to believe. When they finally perform in the circus there isn’t even a chain – just a cuff or ‘bracelet’ around the ankle. It offers enough of the same ‘feeling’ that the elephants don’t even try to escape.

Can you relate to feeling caged even if the door is open or restricted even though the chain is removed? Make The Choice is so important because it reflects in the direction of what we ARE looking for, rather than what we are NOT looking for.

You WILL end up with what you ARE or NOT looking for – so focus on the ARE!

https://www.facebook.com/Sterlingize.Me  

https://www.facebook.com/groups/30daystobliss/