I should have picked up on this one pre-2015, when my Dad gave me a call and asked if he should be ordering ‘kalettes’ as a vegetable to sell at his garden centre. It ended up taking me a few more times of seeing them here and there that I realized these were going to be big. Kalettes are a non-GMO blend of kale and brussel sprouts. In my mind, it looks more like kale mated with bok choy. See pic below from kalettes.com
Work/life balance on its own is a thing of the past – instead it’s more about being able to find balance in everything that we do – work, family, hobbies, etc. This is something we’re talking about in The HEAL 30 Day Wellness Challenge too and is also closely linked with #4.
Green garbanzo beans are a baby chickpea, or a garbanzo bean that’s picked 3-6 months prior to regular chickpeas. Given that they’re picked so early, they are actually still green, and contain a higher protein and fiber content than regular chickpeas. There is only one company that sells them in North America – Nature’s Classic. If you’re in the US, you can buy them at Trader Joe’s and Whole Foods, and in Canada, Costco carries them.
This one was new for me in 2014, and is certainly a work in progress. I am using meditation to manage stress and set proper intentions before the day, and maybe you saw the study from Harvard proving that meditation literally rebuilds your brain’s grey matter in 8 weeks. I definitely don’t do it every day, but am finding it really useful when I do. The tools I’m using are yin yoga at my yoga studio, and Headspace (I’m doing the 10 day free trial right now and love it).
This has also been gaining popularity in the nutrition world, and I foresee it becoming more mainstream in 2015. Bone broth is nothing new either – in fact, our parents and grandparents use to make it all the time – so maybe this is more of a comeback. Proper homemade bone broth can be made from beef, bison, lamb, or poultry is incredibly high in minerals like calcium, magnesium and potassium. It’s incredible for digestive issues, hair/nail growth, and even good for connective tissues like joints. I’ll be posting a full recipe with all the health benefits soon.
‘Fitness competitions’ like the Fitbit have become all the rage – and while they are awesome, they are JUST fitness. This is where the whole idea for The HEAL 30 Day Wellness Challenge came to be. Competition and challenges are a fantastic way to motivate yourself to actually do things. Let’s say the fit bit challenges you to do a killer workout, and then you sit down to a bag of chips (this is obviously the extreme version), your workout becomes obsolete. Abs are made in the kitchen, and that’s why I created The HEAL 30 Day Wellness Challenge, which does incorporate exercise, but is primarily nutrition based.
More and more new companies are giving the general public the option to learn more about their health, from a genetic perspective. This ranges from companies like 23 and me, where you can find out about your inherited risk factors for disease to companies like to others that actually can tell how a certain medication or supplement will affect you personally.
The going statistic is that a woman puts more than 100 chemicals on her body before she even leaves the house in the morning. That sounds shocking, but all you have to do is check out some labels on your products, and if you put 5-10 products on your body, you’re there! My recommendation is to check out your health food store for some products to use. It’s definitely trial and error, as some of them simply don’t work, but the more demand there is for the product, the more companies are producing clean label, chemical free products.
Dr Mark Hyman termed the word ‘pegan’ how he eats. It’s sometimes paleo and it’s sometimes vegan. The premise is that the research on ‘the best diet’ is mighty confusing – sometimes it shows vegan is healthier, sometimes it’s paleo. According to Dr Hyman, these two diets have a few things in common: low glycemic load (or no sugar and low starchy carbs), high in veggies, low in meat that has pesticides, antibiotics and hormones, no chemicals (food colouring, preservatives), high in the good quality fats (Omega 3s), high in protein, and ideally fresh & local.
This one is just something I’ve been loving, and you might think I’m crazy. Instead of having breakfast foods for dinner, I’ve been enjoying having dinner foods (or lunch foods) for breakfast. The main reason is that my energy throughout the day is the best. Breakfast foods, even smoothies, can sometimes be high in sugar or starchy carbohydrates, but if I have a high protein, full of veggies meal, I feel really good all morning. Then things can get really crazy, where I’ll make a smoothie as an afternoon snack. (hehe – crazy I tell you!)
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