I know baths are on every self-care list out there but that is for good reason. There is a hugely therapeutic element to taking a bath. In a society that encourages us to do, do, do all of the time, it can be hard to hang out in still water for 20 minutes or more. You can bring a calming music playlist, a book, or some toys with you into the bathtub. Yes, you read that right! There’s also no need to feel like a fish in a bowl of hot water. Add bath salts to the water, tea bags, flower petals, herbs, or essential oils.
When I take a bath, it is an opportunity to release tightness in my body and relax. It’s not an everyday thing but I try to honor those cravings when I feel them because it means my spirit is in need of a little TLC (or I’m just sore after a workout). If I don’t have time for a full on bath, I like to also just soak my feet in hot water. You can fill up a basin or sit on your bathroom counter top, if you’re lazy like me.
Our feet are a huge place of stored tension and energy so it’s important to tend to them. You can add a sprinkle of the mustard bath (recipe below) to your foot soak, too! A few minutes, or however long feels good to you, will work wonders for relieving stress and helping you feel revived.
I like to follow up both of these with a self-administered foot massage and lots of lotion!
Okay, let’s move on to the recipe. I bet half the people who clicked over here thought I was talking about squeezing French’s mustard all over myself but nooo. Save that for your hot dogs. For this bath soak, you’ll need dry mustard powder. You can find this in the spice section of most grocery stores or order online for a better price in bulk!
I pulled inspiration from Ayurveda but many cultures have traditionally used mustard baths as a way to heal from sickness by drawing toxins out of the body with the spices, salts, and hot water. It can also be used for body aches and pains. You’re going to sweat a lot but that’s where the healing takes place!
If you happen to be more of a buy than a DIY person, Dr. Singha’s makes the original mustard bath soak which you can find here.
DIY Mustard Bath Soak Recipe
1 cup Epsom salt*
1/2 cup sea salt
1/3 cup organic mustard seed powder
1/4 cup baking soda
1 Tbsp. organic ginger root powder
1 tsp. organic cinnamon powder
20 drops of essential oils like lavender, eucalyptus, rosemary, and clove*
Instructions:
In a large jar, add everything from the Epsom salt to the essential oils. Tightly seal the lid and shake to combine all ingredients.
To Use:
As you fill your bathtub, add 1/3 – 1/2 cup of soak mix to the water. If soaking only your feet, opt for 1 heaped tbsp and add to very warm water.
Soak for 15 to 20 minutes. You’ll likely feel your body heat up but this is natural. This is how the toxins come out. If you experience discomfort, soak for less time. A longer soak is not recommended.
Afterwards, rinse yourself and the tub (to prevent stains) and be sure to drink plenty of water to avoid dehydration.
NOTE:
*If your Epsom salt is enhanced with essential oils already, you could skip the essential oils or reduce for your liking.
It’s a wonderful time to do some home-cooking and enjoy some soup before the weather gets too warm. But let’s be real, anytime of year can be soup time!
Today I’m bringing you guys a recipe. I know, super random! If you’re new around here, you might be surprised to hear that I actually started this blog because I wanted to have a space to blog about healthy lifestyle things like: food, fitness, and practices that I loved. I am still into all of those things but healthy means something totally different to me now.
Something isn’t healthy just because a package says so or because some “expert” created a set of guidelines that they consider to be healthy. We’ve all got some idea of what “healthy” means to us based on media and hearsay but I think the best judge of healthy has to be you.
I’ll get off the soapbox and save that spiel for another time. I wanted to keep today’s post super simple and just share a yummy soup recipe for y’all.
Would you believe that there was a time when I wouldn’t eat potatoes? For reals. I talk about that over on this recipe post for my favorite country potatoes. I am really in tune with the way different foods make me feel and sometimes potatoes don’t make my blood sugar feel all that great. Yet, they’re really tasty so I’d never give them up totally!
I’m sure I don’t need to sell you on the deliciousness of potatoes.
The following recipe is a spin off of the classic Zuppa Toscana Soup from Olive Garden mixed with some Irish cabbage and potato vibes. I know it might not make sense in writing but it makes sense in your mouth! Sausage and potatoes are a hell of a pairing. Then, I’m all about the extra veggies so kale and cabbage come to the rescue for an awesome, satisfying soup.
You’ll want to whip up a pot of this asap!
Fellow soup lovers, what’s your favorite soup? Share with me in the comments down below.
Sausage, Potato, & Kale Soup
Serves 2
Ingredients:
1/2 yellow onion, diced ~3/4 cup (or sub red onion for more flavor!)
2 medium-sized yellow gold potatoes
1/2 heaping tsp sea salt
1/4 tsp garlic powder & black pepper
3 cups water
2 cups vegetable broth (low-sodium)
1 tbsp minced garlic + a pinch of salt
2 sausages* (I used Beyond Meat plant-based brats)
2 cups chopped cabbage
2 cups torn lacinto kale pieces
Sprinkle with extra pepper, for serving
Instructions:
Start by prepping your ingredients. The soup comes together quickly if you have everything set out on the counter next to you! I used a pressure cooker on the stove top but any soup pot with a lid will work! I also want to clarify the minced garlic and salt listed in the ingredients. Basically, just sprinkle a tiny bit of salt on top of the garlic to help bring out its essence when you’re chopping it with a knife. We all love flavor so this is a major flavor booster! #ChefTips
Moving on, start by putting a large pot over medium heat. Throw in a splash of water (not all 3 cups yet!) and cook the onion until soft. Add potatoes, salt, remaining water, and broth. Cook with the lid on for about 20 minutes or until the potatoes are soft and beginning to fall apart. Turn off the heat and add garlic.
In the meantime, while waiting for the potatoes to cook, prepare the sausage in a separate pan or skillet. When it starts to look crispy, add in chopped kale and cabbage. Cook for a minute, just so the greens can absorb the residual sausage flavor and soften slightly.
Transfer all contents to the pot with the potatoes and stir to combine.
Serve!
Note:
*I used Beyond Meat plant-based Hot Italian sausages. If you don’t want to go the plant-based sausage route, just sub in 2 sausage links (about 152 grams) that you like.
Over the past three years, I’ve opened up to the reality that many behaviors I thought were healthy are quite the opposite. I’ve talked about this before on the blog but I thought it was worth coming back to so that we can explore what happens after becoming aware of disordered eating behaviors.
The thing I wasn’t prepared for was the way the disordered eating mindset and behaviors transcend over time.
*Before we go any further, I want to lead with the disclaimer that I am not a licensed therapist or clinical psychologist so everything that I talk about here on this blog is purely anecdotal. I always encourage doing your own research and seeking professional help when in doubt.*
For anyone not coming from a disordered eating background, the thought you have might be: why would anyone want to put so many restrictions around food and how to eat? To put the answer plainly: any form of disordered eating is done as a method to obtain control.
It can occur when triggering things occur outside of you, or with other aspects of your life, and you turn to food because that can be controlled. Believe it or not, disordered eating has very little to do with the cliched media perpetuation of a teenager just becoming concerned with their body image. When our bodies grow and change, that can concern but it has more to do with the ideas ingrained in us about what the size of our bodies means and what restricting our food intake can offer us.
Christy Harrison, an Intuitive Eating Dietitian, calls diet culture “the life thief”. All of the time that we spend on planning what to eat, when to eat, how to eat, how much to eat, and more, we could be spending on other things in life that could bring us joy. With all of the time we spend in the arena of food and restriction, we could use that time for hobbies, career, connection, and fulfillment in ways we have yet to discover.
Anyone can be a victim to diet culture mentality but if you have disordered eating habits running your life, then that’s how life starts to feel depressing.
My disordered eating habits offered me:
Structure
Rules
Systems
Meal plans or guidelines
Community
Most importantly: control
Yet, if restricting food offered me control, letting go of the rules gave me freedom.
Freedom from disordered eating, in my eyes, involves:
No guilt
Patience
Ease
More time
Connection
Gratitude
Peaceful surrender
I’ve seen some others on Instagram talk about finding food freedom post-ED (eating disorder) life and now being able to enjoy eating all the foods they never thought they could eat before. Usually they have a pretty, sparkly photo of them standing in an empowered pose or at a restaurant, smiling with their plate of food. It’s a really cool motivational clip from the film reel of their life. Naively, I thought that all it took was eating one of my “forbidden foods” and I’d be healed! That would allow me to renounce my restrictive ways, pass go, collect $200, and be off taking photos of myself smiling in a bikini and biting into a huge burger. I’m not making this stuff up; these are actual photos I’ve seen on Instagram!
Really, though, recovering isn’t just one moment. It is days and weeks and months of re-framing your beliefs about food.
I’m still very much in that process. I had been restricting for a long while but I finally opened up to the desire to surrender to the needs of my body. I was ready for peace to set in because I truly wanted to ditch the diet culture and all of their groupies. What did this miraculous moment look like?
So I first inched into this “freedom” territory by allowing myself as much healthy food as I wanted to eat. If I eat nothing but nutrient-rich food so why measure out my servings of quinoa, right? Right but also wrong. I was still organizing food into categories as if there is good and bad food. This had to stop if I was ever really going to find food freedom.
Remember the days and weeks and months I mentioned? Yeah, insert those here! I took time to work through my beliefs and ask myself why I valued certain foods above others. Then, I was able to conclude that I needed to also allow myself to eat foods that weren’t traditionally “healthy” in my book.
The true healing happens when you are willing to rebel against what you think you know. Only then are you able to see the expansiveness of the other side–of freedom.
Something I wasn’t prepared for in recovery was the amount of food I would want to eat.
It’s almost as if my body wanted to make up for all of the time I spent holding back on food. I had restricted myself, not just by omitting certain foods but, by labeling foods as good or bad. So, once I decided not to label food, I kind of just wanted to eat everything…and as fun as it sounds in theory, it was very uncomfortable to deal with.
I felt excited to have food freedom but, still, in the back of my mind, I couldn’t help but wonder: what will happen to my body?
If you like this content, also check out the episode of the Make It Happen Podcast: Living A Bigger Fuller Life with Melanie Le Blanc Sturgeon.
I think our bodies are beautiful systems that know what to do naturally. Just the same way we see a cut on our finger bleeds but, given a few hours, slowly starts to seal and heal on its own–so, too, can our bodies. Many processes are occurring inside of our bodies at any given moment. There are processes that help keep oxygen coming into our lungs, blood flowing through our veins, and our brains able to interpret this writing on a screen as information you can understand.
When we go too long without eating, our bodies seek an equilibrium.
It might seem scary when you catch yourself grabbing seconds, eating higher-calorie foods, or finishing your restaurant plate instead of saving half to take home. Where is the Disordered Eaters Recovery Squad to come be my cheer-leading team as I maneuver through so many new situations? (I don’t know if such a thing exists but if you can find a solid support group then that would be the next best thing!)
In the deprivation days, food was the enemy. During the days of uncertainty, food became a friend.
I knew I wanted to eat and I knew I had to allow that for my body to get back to a state of safety that it once knew–a balance.
Everyone’s journey looks different but, for me, this is where I thought I had healed but now realize I only shed a layer. I thought as long as I wasn’t undereating, I was fine. However, I started to turn to food for comfort. Naturally, for so long, food was a pleasure I didn’t allow myself to have. My body, now thankful to eat, also deemed food a scarcity. It’s okay to reach for food out of pleasure but I’m now getting into deeper layers and asking myself why I feel this way.
The steps everyone goes through are likely different, and so is the time frame, which I only say to discourage anyone from comparing. Our journeys are incomparable because each one of us has our own beliefs and issues and circumstances to work through.
Essentially, the purpose of me writing this post today is just to put it out there that habits don’t just die all at once. No matter what anyone says, healing comes in layers.
It wasn’t until this past year that I woke up to how much I have been relying on food. I have treated it as something greater and higher than me instead of just something to satisfy my belly and give me fuel. This is the part of my healing that I am actively working through. It’s more challenging than anything I’ve faced because it’s also something that has affected me longer than I realized. I have to remind daily myself that I am okay. I am safe. Food is delicious but it isn’t everything–and it certainly isn’t a reflection of my worth as a person. I can see that now.
I’m ever-curious to test out different techniques and tinker with aspects of my lifestyle to improve my health. Most recently, I’ve been trying to bring inflammation levels down and improve my digestion. I am rather prone to stress and the littlest things raise my cortisol levels. So, I felt like I needed to take things up a notch and bring a better balance to the way I’ve been eating. Thus, I decided to give The Balanced Blonde’s, aka Jordan Younger’s, Plant Based Recipe Book and 22 Day Detox a try.
Today’s post is a review of The Balanced Blonde’s Plant Based Recipe E-book and my experience with the 22 Day Detox.
The e-book is a compilation of SOS-free, plant-based, vegan-friendly recipes that have helped her in her healing journey from Lyme Disease and a whole host of various symptoms like: inflammation, eczema, acne, bloating, IBS, and so forth. The recipes are so simple that it is almost a little silly calling some of the recipes “recipes” but when you’ve over-complicated the way you think you should be eating, recipes for easy meals are very fitting.
Just to give you all a little more information on the e-book, Jordan includes her tips for detoxing from chronic infections both food and non-food related, offers suggestions for dealing with detox symptoms, anecdotes about her experiences with spiritual healing and emotional eating, tips for dining out, and food-combining. Oh, and of course, explanations on SOS-free which stands for Salt, Oil, and Sugar-Free. So, the recipes in her e-book are all salt-oil-sugar-free and are adaptable for food combining.
All Vegan Mac & Cheese (with chopped broccoli) from Jordan Younger’s Plant Based Ebook.
Disclaimer: I am a huge fan of The Balanced Blonde and her Soul on Fire Podcast. I adore Jordan and relate to her in many different ways so this post is not a personal attack on her but a review of the plant based e-book and 22 day detox for anyone who may have heard of it or be interested in purchasing it and wants to know a little more.
If this is your first time here on my blog, let me give you a little background info about me:
It’s important to note that I’ve had disordered eating tendencies in the past so I hesitated before buying her e-book. I’m already primarily plant-based but do include some processed/packaged food items like protein bars, dairy-free store-bought cheese, tortilla chips, and kombucha. I knew those items needed to go but what seemed really intense was the thought of cutting out salt and oil. I have done sugar detoxes in the past and like to do them at least once a year to re-calibrate my taste buds. I know I have sensitive blood sugar levels and that makes my heart go from calm to racing from one moment to the next. This is just a physical representation of what is happening in my body–i.e. my cortisol levels levels spike. Basically, sugar is already limited in my diet because it has to be so I can minimize experiences like what I just described. I do however use a lot of pink Himalayan sea salt and cook with coconut/avocado/olive oil fairly often. So, I sought out Jordan’s book with optimism that a more plant-centric way of eating would help alleviate my concerns mentioned earlier.
My experience with the 22 Day Detox program part of the e-book:
I tried to follow Jordan’s advice for 22 days of SOS-free, properly combined, plant-based meals. During the first few days, I missed the salt for sure! I missed a drizzle of olive oil over my salads, and the taste of roasted vegetables just wasn’t quite the same without either of the two. By day 4, I’d say the worst was behind me and my taste buds were adapting. I was also committed so I found creative ways to make food tasty for me–usually that involved lots of lemon juice!
I felt like my digestion improved pretty soon after starting this way of eating. I liked the way each of her recipes used a LOT of plants so I was really loading up on the good stuff here. My appetite fluctuated before based on what I’d eat but Jordan’s method of structuring meals light to heavy seemed to work well…for a while.
A swiss chard leaf wrap with tofu, cabbage, romaine, tomato, avocado, cilantro, carrot, and a coconut aminos-lemon dressing. Not in the e-book but very inspired by the plant-forward recipes!
I enjoyed starting my day with fruit or a smoothie, like she does, but I can’t handle the amount of bananas or fruit she eats. I get brain fog an hour or two after eating too much sugar. Even if it’s natural from fruit, it just feels like too much for my system all at once. I love fruit but each day I felt like I was riding off of sugar until lunchtime rolled around so that wasn’t fun. I was also making her SOS-free desserts at first before I realized this was WAY too much sugar for me in a day so I cut those out.
Jordan says that once you get into a flow with SOS-free food, you’re not driven by cravings and it is easy to make no-fuss simple meals to eat for nourishment. I can see that but I also started to dread meal times. I felt bored with steamed broccoli and sweet potato over salad and just wanted to eat to fuel myself and be over with it. In some ways, this was great because it was breaking my emotional attachment to food.
What threw a wrench in my plans was the salt cravings that stirred up around Day 13. I got serious cravings for some salty tortilla chips and I tried to just eat my regular SOS-free meal but the craving would not go away. The next day, the craving for something salty persisted: chips, crackers, even some carbonated water would have been great at this time! On Day 15 I woke up feeling dehydrated and not even wanting to eat breakfast because of how drying food would feel in my mouth. It is on this same day that I write this review, after having enjoyed some Simple Mills sea salt crackers (PRAISE up that I had these in my pantry)! Now that I think of it, I was also feeling incredibly lethargic on the 13th and had trouble concentrating and that just continued all these days. I felt weak and super deprived and, knowing my past, I didn’t want to force myself to stick with something and disregard my best interest. In case you’re thinking something else could’ve been to blame for my low energy, that is possible but the dehydration was a dead giveaway that I needed something more so I decided to honor my body.
I’ll describe my takeaways at the end of this post but now I’ll review the e-book itself:
The anecdotal part of her e-book is very nice to read and her stories shine right off the pages. But this is a recipe book, so that’s what everyone is curious about, right? From the get-go, Jordan advocates for SOS-free, plant-based, and food combining as much as possible. I won’t dive into the details about what each of those terms means in this post, but I found some of the recipes conflicting in the food-combining aspect and deceiving in the SOS-free aspect.
TBB Go-To Everyday Salad, followed by her All Vegan Mac & Cheese.
From a purely critical standpoint, she uses a lot of nuts/seeds (cashews and tahini in particular) in almost every recipe. The nut-based dressings and dips technically do not combine with starches yet she pairs them with potatoes, legumes, or gluten-free pastas. There are also some smoothies that call for coconut milk in combination with fruit (which is meant to be eaten alone per food combining principles). You can be as strict with this as you want, of course, but I think this should be more consistent.
The SOS-free aspect also surprised me because a recipe or two calls for some special Bio-Salt and ingredients like salt-free mustard. Sorry, but these aren’t really accessible for the average person. (I tried searching online and couldn’t even find a salt-free mustard anywhere). For anyone who thinks oil and fat are the same thing, they are not. The recipes in the e-book do involve nuts, seeds, and avocado which are all delicious, and whole food forms of plant-based fats. I think they are used a little excessively, as I mentioned earlier. Lastly, the sugar-free aspect. Jordan explains that sugar-free does not mean no sugar at all. She believes natural sweetness from fruit is perfectly fine. Though, she makes a number of recipes that call for the addition of maple syrup and, to me, that’s an added sweetener.
The desserts are meant to be sweet, but they are mostly raw and very date and nut-heavy. I did forget to mention that aspect earlier–many of the recipes are raw. I’d say over half of the recipes in the cookbook are raw or involve raw, uncooked ingredients. This isn’t bad but it might take some getting used to if you are used to cooked foods. I feel like I haven’t shown the most positive experience but I do want to mention some recipes that I think are pretty stellar in her cookbook!
Iconic Green Warrior Smoothie
The Balanced Blonde Go-To Everyday Salad
Buddha Bowl
SOS-Free Pad Thai
I can recognize that all of the recipes in her book are ones she has felt good eating but they don’t always align with the food combining principles that she touts in the guidelines. The same with the SOS-free guidelines. I think my needs are specific and did not align quite as well with the recipes Jordan enjoys but for someone who is coming off of a Standard American Diet, transitioning off of processed food, or simply looking to eat more whole, plant-based foods, this recipe book would be great for you.
Jordans SOS-free Pad Thai with tofu on top.
This was an interesting challenge for myself and made me conscious of how much salt and oil, in particular, I use on a daily basis in my food. I feel I can eat many of the same planty meals salt-free and oil-free with ease. Yet, the inflammation aspect that I sought to alleviate with this way of eating did not change. Understandably, I only went 2 weeks instead of the full 22 days but I already ate a very plant-filled diet so I don’t think that changed much. What I do notice a difference in is how I don’t need as much oil as I thought I did. My body feels lighter and less congested without the oil so, moving forward, I’ll seek to keep oil to a minimum. When I did follow food combining principles, that also helped my digestion out so much. It’s hard to stick with (I’ve tried it before) but this detox reminded me how good my stomach feels when I don’t bombard it with tons of food groups.
Major praise to Jordan for putting out the e-book to do her part in helping people align them with their healthiest selves in the best way she knows how. I believe in the power of plants but there are also different ways to incorporate them for everybody so I hope this post proves informative and encourages you to find what works for you. If you want to share your thoughts, feel free to sound off in the comments below!
Growing up in Saudi Arabia, Photography, and Being a Go-Getter
In this week’s episode of the Make It Happen Podcast, Melanie is joined by Cris Lopez. He is a budding photographer with a big heart and some interesting experiences from his adolescence. Cris and his family adopted the Muslim culture when he was only 7 years old and made the full move to Saudi Arabia when he was 15. There are many cultural shocks that came with that. He also tells how these experiences have impacted his sense of self and his appreciation for life now.
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