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Delisa's Blog

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Why Should We Bother, (Seriously)

6/18/2022

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I ask my students on the first day of class, “Why are you here? Why are you taking this class?”

The name of the course is The Yes To Life Solution to get Slim & Healthy.

So as you would expect, most students say something like, “I’d like to lose a few pounds.” or “I have high cholesterol and want to get my numbers down.”
Sounds logical, right?

Logical — but not very powerful in motivating a person to change something as ingrained as the way they eat!

What does health mean, anyway? Is it about getting a good report card at your annual physical? Or is there more to it than that?

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Do we want our obituary to say, “Her cholesterol was perfect, her blood pressure was good, and she could still get into her wedding dress!”
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Well, if that’s not what we are working toward, what DO we want?  Why should we bother to change the habits of a lifetime in order to get slim & healthy?

A simple question can help us discover what we REALLY want.

The question? ? ? "WHY?"

So let’s try it:

Why do you want to lower your cholesterol?  
Because I don’t want to have heart disease.

Why don’t you want to have heart disease?
Because I”m afraid I won’t be able to be active, and might die young.

Why don’t you want to lose the ability to be active?
Because I have lots of things I like to do, like hiking and traveling.

Why don’t you want to die young
Because I adore my grandchildren and want to live to see them grow up and have their own families.

Did you notice what just happened?  
Which is more motivating?
“I want to lower my cholesterol.” OR “I want to stay active, continue hiking and traveling, and I want to be here to watch my grandchildren grow up and have families of their own.”

Let’s explore this just a bit further.
The first answer is usually about getting rid of something we don’t want.
This is valid, and can provide a good starting point.
Have you heard the phrase, “pain pushes until vision pulls?”

So we can be grateful for the pain, whether it is physical, emotional, social, or spiritual because it can get our attention and motivate us to look for a solution.

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But when the pain lessons just a bit, or we start getting used to the pain, the motivation begins to dissipate. That’s when we’re likely to fall back into the old patterns that caused the pain in the first place.

But discovering our deeper “why,” our vision of what we really, truly want, has the power to keep us moving in the direction that will get us there.

I call this deeper why a Yes to Life why.  

So, I ask you to think about your own life.
Would you like to be slim and healthy?
Why?


The great news is that a whole-food, plant-based diet provides a tremendous foundation for your amazing body to achieve these goals.

Changing our eating habits can feel hard, but it can also be fun and empowering if we have a Yes to Life why.


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My Magical Summer Feast

6/18/2022

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I LOVE summer!

I LOVE my garden!

I LOVE my King Kale and Cabbage for breakfast!


Yes, it’s that time again. After gratefully buying fresh vegetables at our local stores during the winter and spring, now our garden is the place we go to get the freshest vegetables on earth!

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My garden started in March and April when I planted tiny little seeds (both flowers and vegetables) in little pots in my house. After a few days, little green shoots appeared, reaching for the light. After a few weeks, these tiny seedlings became recognizable little flower and vegetable plants. Amazing! 
I nurtured my babies every day, providing water, light and plant food in the form of “kelp tea” to support their growth. I also gave them lots of love and admiration (and I could tell they liked it!)

Some of them made a transitional stop in my greenhouse for a couple of weeks before going out to live outside in the garden. 

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Once in the garden, I still provided“my babies” lots of love and attention, but the microbes in the soil began to play a big part in their development.  The microbes bring nutrients and water to their roots from far and wide, making a garden a real community activity.

I’ve discovered that gardening is not only a science and an art — it is also magical, mysterious and spiritual. All the information needed to make a kale plant is inside that little seed. But that seed doesn’t grow into a plant until the conditions are right.

The job of a gardener is to create the right conditions for the little seed to take the big step out into the world to fulfill its potential.

We can explain how deep to plant a seed and how much light they need, but we can’t really begin to explain how the life force is stored in that little seed and then suddenly becomes active.

How can we understand how a plant can turn sunlight and water into leaves and flowers?

I’ve said I provide love and admiration to these plants that I nurture. But perhaps more appropriately I feel awe at their magnificence. I feel humbled by the opportunity to be a part of the garden itself, by the small part I play in the ultimate result of these plants becoming the big, beautiful beings they are. And each of these plants can then go on to produce huge multitudes of seeds which can each repeat the magic of staying dormant until the conditions are right to burst into action.

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The magic continues for me now when I go out into my garden and pick the vegetables which then provide our food.  This morning I picked 3 varieties of kale and collards which I chopped up and steamed with some red cabbage for our morning feast. I feel like the richest person on earth, living in the Garden of Eden, when I can pick and eat this abundance of delicious plants that grow like magic in our garden.

When I consume these plants, I’m eating the energy of the sun. I’m eating the collaboration of the trillions of microbes in the soil. And I’m eating the wisdom of the Universe, which knows how to store life in the tiny seed which became the plant.
I finished my breakfast feast 3 hours ago.

Now those plants are part of me.

They  have become human cells.

They have become part of the gardener, who is about to go out to walk with bare feet in this magical place called a garden.

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Why don't I feel Deprived?

6/18/2022

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I haven’t eaten meat, dairy products or eggs for 31 years.  And not only that, I very rarely consume processed sugars, oils, or other processed foods.

That might sound like a fate worse than death for those who eat these things every day.  (Which means the huge majority of our western world.)
The fear of feeling deprived prevents lots of people from making healthy changes in their diets — especially adopting a whole-food, plant-based diet!
So why don’t I feel deprived?  By most people’s standards, my food choices are considered extreme: extremely limiting, extremely strict, extremely difficult, extremely boring, and extremely un-fun!

The truth is, I get extreme JOY out of eating my food! When I see the vibrant colors on my plate of food, I see beauty. When I taste the unique flavors and textures of the great variety of foods I enjoy, I’m amazed at Nature’s creativity.

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The truth is, I’m in love. And when you’re in love, you don’t feel deprived — you feel amazed and grateful.
My love affair with my food is not focused solely on the taste of this delicious food. It is much broader and deeper than that.
You see, I’m in love with life. And the life force enters our planet through plants.

Without plants, there would be no other life on this planet. Plants are able to turn the sun’s energy into food for themselves and for all other beings who share this planet, including humans.
So I’m amazed by plants. They do what I cannot do. What no other animal can do.

And yet, I have a very intimate relationship with plants, in spite of their obvious superiority!

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When I eat my delicious meals, the plants on my plate are transformed by my equally amazing body into my very own flesh and blood. The energy that fuels my brain — my ability to think, to create, to communicate — came from the plants. The hike I took in Hatcher Pass yesterday, with my dog, Heidi, and partner, Charlie, was fueled by plants. 

My love affair with my food is deepened by my partnership with the plants I eat. Most of the plants on my plate last night grew in my garden.


I planted the seeds in my house in early spring. I tended to the baby seedlings indoors until the weather warmed enough to give them a new home outside. Then the soil, the sun, the rain, the worms, and the bugs and microbes in the soil helped me take care of the plants.
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Did I create the garden? Perhaps the garden is creating me. I think the garden and I are co-creating something wonderful together.  We are definitely part of the infinite life force together, and our lives come together with joy and beauty in the garden.
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Every day I walk through the garden, admiring how big and strong the plants have become, remembering how tiny and vulnerable they were when the seeds first germinated. I nurture them in the ways that gardeners do, watering, weeding, thinning. And while I do these tasks, I feel love for my garden, like you might feel when bathing your young child.

Now the garden is at the stage where it provides food for me. And as I eat the leaves, roots, and fruits of the plants, they become me, and I will continue to plant more seeds, grow more gardens, and the cycle of life continues.

A garden is a spiritual place. Gardening is a spiritual relationship. And eating is a most sacred act.
With this perspective, how could I feel deprived?
Of course, I also eat plants that I buy at the grocery store and feel very grateful for them as well. The plants connect us with the Earth and with Life itself, no matter where they are grown.

For me, the idea of eating processed foods feels like severe deprivation. Foods that have been made in a processing plant (a factory) cannot have the energy of plants grown in a garden.

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And by the way, I also grow many varieties of beautiful flowers in my garden, who also bring me tremendous joy and nourish my spirit.

I teach nutrition and cooking classes, and most people only hear me talk about how good these plant foods are for our bodies. . . How the fiber, antioxidants, and phytochemicals provide what we need for optimal health. . . And how to prepare these foods in ways that taste delicious while providing us with the nourishment we need to live well.

And yes, all those things are very important to me! I love being slim and healthy!
I love knowing that my body has what it needs to keep my immune system strong so that I don’t live in fear of whatever virus might happen to be passing through.

I love having the health I could only have dreamed of when I was in my 20’s and suffered inflammation throughout my body.

I love my amazing, self-healing body and want to give it the highest quality of food, which means whole, unprocessed plant foods.

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But my love affair with my food is so much bigger than all that.  It is my love affair with life itself.
This might all sound a bit crazy to you.  But I invite you to stick your toe in the water of this way of thinking for just a moment. It won’t hurt.  And you just might be able to enjoy eating healthy food as much as I do!
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A quick fix?

6/18/2022

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Do you have a fire in your kitchen?

Quick! Grab the fire extinguisher!

It will make a mess, but who cares — you’ve got to get that fire put out ASAP!

There are times we need to take immediate action to avoid a catastrophe, even if this action creates other problems. Such as driving your car into a ditch to avoid a head-on collision.

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There are plenty of other times when a quick fix just isn’t a good idea — because the problems it causes outweigh the problem you’re trying to fix.

OR, the quick fix is temporary, and you get the problem back again.

OR, the quick fix just doesn’t work.

Where do “diets” fall in the realm of quick fixes?

Well, being overweight isn’t a good situation, but it’s not an immediate, life-threatening emergency.

Most diets can help you lose weight temporarily — but they come with serious “side effects.”

When the focus is solely on weight loss, we’re likely to make food choices that actually harm our health — such as eating Atkins type diets, or keto diets. (I actually took this list from an ad online!)

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And most diets require such deprivation that they can’t be sustained long-term. Thus — when you achieve your weight loss goal, you “go off” your diet and begin eating the way that caused you to gain weight in the first place.
Also — in my personal experience, diets make you crazy! You can get obsessed about food — about your weight — about excessive exercise.
So I’m all for losing weight, but not at the price of losing our health or our sanity, or when it is followed by the almost inevitable regaining of all that weight — and often even more.
So — my focus is truly on health — and on losing weight as one aspect of getting healthy.This is why I call it the Yes to Life Solution to Getting Slim & Healthy.
This does require changing what we eat, since the Standard American Diet — even the healthier versions of it — are at the root of our health and weight problems.
And even though most people in my program see positive results quite quickly — within the first couple of weeks — this isn’t a quick fix.
It’s a permanent solution to a long-term problem, and it requires a permanent commitment to the many delicious health-promoting whole plant foods found in my classes, my cookbook, and in my own kitchen.
A few years ago, I sought out training in how to market my programs so I could help more people get slim & healthy.
The marketing gurus insisted that I needed to sell my program with the typical claims:
Lose 10 pounds in 30 Days!
When I argued with my coaches, telling them this isn’t what my program is about, I was told, “Sell them what they want, and then give them what they need.”
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Well, I guess I’m just not cut out to be a great marketer as I couldn’t bring myself to follow their advice.
So I tell the truth. My programs work wonders for helping you get slim & healthy.
But if you want long-term results, you have to make a long-term commitment to healthy eating.

Occasionally, a student asks me: So how long do I need to do this?
My answer: Just as long as you want to feel good.

ALL weight loss diets require a lot of effort, so why not put this effort into something that will actually help you get healthy?

I recognize that food choices are part of a whole web of beliefs, habits, and traditions. That’s what makes it so difficult to make the changes we need to make if we want to experience optimal health.

But making these changes with other people makes it easier.

My classes provide an opportunity to learn about the healthiest foods, and how to prepare them in simple and delicious ways. They also provide the group support that makes it more fun and easier.

I’ll be sharing about another group program that I’m putting together that will help deal with the larger issues relating to changing our food choices in another blog post.

So, to sum this all up . . .

If you’re wanting to lose 10 pounds in 30 days, you can probably find dozens of programs online that will sell you that.

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But if you want to get slim and healthy for life, I invite you to take my Yes to Life Solution to Get Slim & Healthy Zoom class.
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what kind of future do you want?

6/18/2022

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"Make your decisions based on what you want your FUTURE to be — not on your PAST — or you’ll keep repeating it!"

What is your life like now? Do you want it to stay this way? If so, you’re in the minority!

Did you know that according to the World Health Organization,
Americans rank 40th in the world for Healthy Life Expectancy?

That’s pretty shocking for the wealthiest country in the world.

But numbers don’t tell the story of the misery experienced by so many people who are suffering from carrying excess weight and living with chronic diseases that make life just plain hard.

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Almost 3/4 of Americans are now overweight or obese. And we know it’s related to the food! But I doubt that even one of them consciously CHOSE to get that way.
Instead, we tend to go along in our lives, making our choices based on habit, past programming, marketing, and social norms — without realizing that each choice is creating our future life.


Eventually, our misery catches up with us and we may ask ourselves, “How did this happen?

What can I do about it?” Feeling overwhelmed, and trying various solutions, we can feel hopeless and depressed.

Having been there myself, I have great compassion for the multitudes who are still in this place.

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So I’d like to share some ideas to empower you to begin creating the life you would really love to experience.

The fact is, most of us don’t think very much about the most important decisions in our lives — the ones that are creating our level of health and happiness. In fact, we don’t even consider them decisions most of the time.

What kinds of decisions are these?

    •    The kind of foods we eat
    •    How we spend our time
    •    With whom we spend our time

This list could be much longer if I added in the details, but let’s just look at some of them.

The Foods we Eat
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Most people choose food based on what they like, and they like the foods they are used to eating! We didn’t originally choose these foods. They were provided for us by parents and other caregivers. They are influenced by our culture and traditions. And of course, they are also affected by advertising and social norms.
The foods we have been eating have led to the size and health of the bodies we now have. And since the huge majority of Americans are now overweight and have chronic health problems, it’s obvious that we are eating the wrong foods.

So if you want a different body in the future, you’ll have to choose different foods than you did in the past.

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As I write this, I’m thinking “This is SO obvious that it’s silly to be writing a blog post about it!” And yet . . . when it comes to buying food at the grocery store or ordering from a menu, VERY FEW people think about this obvious connection. Instead, we make the same choices we’ve made in the past. The choices that got us to where we are now.
Now let’s look at How We Spend Our Time
Our bodies are made to move!
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And yet we spend most of our time sitting down. We work sitting in front of computer screens. We relax in front of the TV. Some of us add some exercise into our days, and yet, the greatest part of most people’s days are spent moving very little.

How can we change this?


First, just remembering that we are made to move and that our bodies work MUCH better if we move throughout the day can help us see opportunities to move.

Instead of relaxing in front of the TV, we can put some lively music on and dance around the house. We can take stairs instead of elevators. We can take a walk with a friend instead of having lunch with a friend. We can set a timer to remind us to stand up during our work day and move around. Stretching, bending, twisting all help keep us flexible and lubricated!


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With Whom Do We Spend our Time?
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We tend to become more like those we spend time with. So let’s be very conscious of this and choose our friends wisely. Hanging out with people who have qualities we admire and aspire to helps us to become more like them. Our weight is influenced more by our friends than it is by our parents!

So think about what you want your future to be like.
How would you like it to be different from your present situation?

Can you recognize the choices that have brought you to this present situation?

And can you see what choices you can make that will begin to move you toward the future you want for yourself?

Can you recognize people you know who have the qualities you would like to have more of? -- Who eat the way and spend their time the way you’d like to do?

We are creating our lives in every moment of our days . . . with every bite of food we put in our mouths . . . with how we move or don’t move . . .with every walk we take . . . with every book we read and show we watch . . .with every conversation we have.

Each tiny choice is adding up to the experience in this moment, and is contributing to the future we are moving toward.
So . . make your decisions based on what you want your FUTURE to be — not your past — our you will keep repeating it.


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It's Strawberry Time in Alaska!

6/18/2022

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I LOVE summers in Alaska.
And July is extra special because it’s strawberry season (in my garden!)

It starts with a dribble — about 2 or 3 ripe berries which we greet with great excitement!
“One for you and one for me.”

Within days our harvest has increased.
”A handful for you and a handful for me.”

And then it’s a quart to eat and a quart for the freezer.

THAT’s when strawberry shortcake season begins!

If you know me very well, you know that I’m committed to eating only healthy foods — and of course, strawberries are super healthy!

But strawberry shortcake? ? ?

No problem!

I can make it super delicious without any processed sugar, refined flour, oil, or fatty dairy products.

You’ll have to make it yourself to see how delicious it is, but I’ve made a video to show you how easy it is to make every part of it: Drop Scones for the shortcake, Strawberry Sauce and Dreamy Creamy Topping.

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Recipes
Drop Scones
(Yields: 8-9 scones)
1 cup whole wheat flour
1/2 cup oat flour (make your own by pulsing rolled oats in a blender)
2 Tbsp date sugar, (or blend 1 date into the nondairy milk)
1/4 tsp salt
1 1/2 tsp baking soda
1 cup nondairy milk
1 tsp lemon juice

    1.    Preheat oven to 350 F
    2.    Mix lemon juice into nondairy milk and let it sit for about 10 minutes, to thicken slightly
    3.    Stir dry ingredients together in mixing bowl.
    4.    When milk has thickened, add to dry ingredients
    5.    Stir just until mixed. Let it sit for a couple of minutes to thicken. Do not stir again.
    6.    Drop large spoonfuls of batter onto cookie sheet, lined with silicone mat or parchment paper
    7.    Bake about 10 minutes, until lightly browned.
Note: To make this gluten free, you can leave out whole wheat flour and use 1 1/2 cup oat flour instead. The scones will not rise as much, but are still tasty.

Strawberry Sauce
(Yields: 1 1/2 cup sauce)

1 cup seedless red grapes, washed
1 rounded cup fresh or frozen (and thawed) strawberries
    1.    Blend grapes in blender to liquify
    2.    Add strawberries to blender and just pulse a couple of times. You don’t want them to be completely liquefied

Note: Keeps in frig for about a week, and also freezes well.

Dreamy Creamy Topping
(Yields: 2 cups)

1 (12.3 oz) box Mori-Nu silken tofu, firm or extra firm
1/4 cup raw cashews (optional)
3 Medjool dates, soaked, pits removed
1 tsp vanilla
1 cup fresh or frozen strawberries (Optional. Leave out if using topping on pie.)

    1.    Soak dates in water for 10-15 minutes
    2.    Mix ingredients thoroughly in a blender
    3.    Chill and serve as you would whipped cream


To Assemble Strawberry Shortcake:

    1.    Cut scones in half (like a burger bun)
    2.    Spoon strawberry sauce over cut scones
    3.    Top with Dreamy Creamy Topping
    4.    Add sliced fresh strawberries to the top
    5.    Eat with joy! This special treat is actually GOOD for you!

To download a printable copy of the recipes...click "Download File" below.
strawberry_shortcake_recipes.pdf
File Size: 31 kb
File Type: pdf
Download File

(The Drop Scones and Dreamy Creamy Topping are both in my cookbook: The Barefoot Gardener in the Kitchen Cookbook, available on my website, at Natural Pantry in Anchorage (Alaska), and a kindle version on Amazon — along with 130 other delicious recipes!)
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    Delisa Renideo: Nutrition & Cooking instructor, teacher, coach, gardener, cookbook author and lover of life. I love helping people say Yes To Life!

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