Beck Anderson Yoga & Wellness Hammock

Last fall I was flipping through a catalogue and the EBY studio in Green Bay and I found GladRags–washable, reusable cloth menstrual pads. I didn’t know such a product existed. I didn’t even know I needed such a product! But when I saw the name (no picture even!) the lights turned on and I quickly did the math.

“$10-ish per cycle (I would buy Seventh Generation and Natracare)…one cycle per month, twelve months in a year…twenty more years (God willing) or so… $2400?!“

Ok, ok. I’ll admit it before my loving husband rats on me and tells the whole world what a less-than-perfect mathematician I am: I used a calculator… even though it was super easy math.

So $2400 for 20 years. And if you aren’t using a Diva Cup already, you can expect to at least double that price with the cost of tampons!

No wonder why they say having daughters gets expensive!

Enough with the chit chat. Here’s a photo of a (very pretty) day pad with two inserts; each pad comes with two inserts. To use, wrap and button around your undergarment. Easy peasy. I’ve found that 6 day pads is perfect for a frugal person like me, but then I supplement with night pads (which double as Postpartum Pads).

What about cleaning?

Great question, and you can find official answers here. I take an old ice cream bucket (it is so challenging to get one when you don’t eat ice cream!) and fill it with cold water. I liberally spray each item with a natural stain remover like Bac-Out by Bi-O-Kleen (recommended by GladRags) and then let it all soak. I exchange the water for clean water maybe once or twice, and I’ll let this bucket sit around for a day or so.

Unfortunately, when I did find my ice cream bucket, I didn’t get a lid with it. If that sort of thing would bother you in your house, GladRags offers a pretty (and opaque) container to store your goods in until laundry day.

How long will they last?

GladRags says they are made to last for 5 years but that some of the women are using the same ones they first bought in the 1990s. I can’t tell you anything since I’ve only been on this particular bandwagon for around 6 months.

Are you doing the math? I’ve spent under $100 for my start up collection (two Day Pad 3 packs, three Nighttime packs, and two carry bags) and I fully expect that to last me over the next 5 years and longer!

Essentially I’m saving around $2000 in the next 20 years (what will I do with all that extra money?) plus I’m Saving the Earth by reducing the amount of trash I am personally responsible for creating.

How do I win?

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2. Use the Rafflecopter widget to get points.

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A friend told me about the Diva Cup about 5 years ago. She was raving about how simple her time of the month was because of this product.

Really? I thought. How could this little reusable latex-free, BPA-free, plastic-free cup be that good.

Of course I wanted to try it.

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I had someone raise their eyebrows in surprise at me recently when I claimed that I don’t count calories. This has actually happened a number of times.

Not even calories from fat?

Especially not calories from fat.

And the reason why is quite complicated, so really pay attention here!

According to a calorie counting website, a person of my gender, weight and moderate level of activity needs between 2,100 and 2,289 calories to maintain my current weight. So if I wanted to lose 1 pound, I supposedly need to create a deficit of 500 calories per day.

Here is a semi-typical food day for me: (more…)

This is my attempt, this e-mail with its calculated words, to describe accurately hosting my very first weekend retreat. I cannot say if it will even come near succeeding, so just imagine something so much more healing and emotionally balancing than I can describe!

Now is the time for each of us to bloom where we are planted, to say yes, to be brave and commit fully to ourselves, to be vulnerable, unfolding delicately yet fully into the space in which we find ourselves.

The Long Life Cocktail is great for increasing elimination and balancing hormones. This drink is filled with emulsifying enzymes from unsweetened cranberry juice that will help digest fat globules in the lymphatic system, and the psyllium (or ground-up flaxseed) will help bind toxins so they aren’t reabsorbed in the body. Flaxseed binds to estrogen receptors and interferes with enzymes that convert various hormones to estrogen and may help control estrogen dominance and the resulting water retention and weight gain.

This recipe is from Ann Louise Gittleman of The Fat Flush Plan.

Long Life Cocktail

Ingredients

4 oz unsweetened cranberry juice (Knudsen’s, Trader Joe’s, Mountain Sun’s)
28 oz water
1 tsp powdered psyllium husks OR 1 TBLS freshly ground flaxseed (or ground and then refrigerated)

Directions

1. Mix unsweetened cranberry juice and water together to make Cranberry Water.
2. Mix 8 oz of Cranberry Water with either psyllium husks or flaxseed

Mix the psyllium quickly and drink even quicker. It may be easier to get down with a straw. Drink 1 glass morning and night.

If you are on medications, take them a few hours either before or after drinking the Long LIfe Cocktail as the fiber can inhibit the effectiveness of prescription medications.

Many of the women I coach have the prevailing idea if they only decrease the number of calories they consume, the weight will melt off. This is, in fact, the prevailing nutritional basis in the world yet we are still in the middle of an obesity crisis. Could our one solid formula, calories in equals calories out, be the culprit? (more…)

As a yogini, a female practitioner of yoga, I’ve been studying the first two limbs of the 8-fold path, the Yamas and Niyamas.  The Yamas are considered “restraints” and include:

nonviolence (ahimsa),
truthfulness (satya),
nonstealing (asteya),
nonexcess (brahmacharya), and
nopossessiveness (aparigraha).

The Niyamas are like “observances” including:

purity (saucha),
contentment (santosha),
self-discipline (tapas),
self-study (svadhyaya), and
surrender (ishvara pranidhana).

I’ve been thinking on Satya, or truthfulness.  From a small child, most of us are taught to be truthful in the things we say, as in, Don’t Lie.  But truthfulness in Satya is closer to “authenticity” than the opposite of lying in our words, as I understand it.

In the book I am reading, the author says she heard “the Yogiraj Achala say you have to watch our for nice people…[and] then I began to see the distortion that sits between nice and real.”  This was a mind blowing paragraph for me, and I’ve been thinking about it for the last week and a half.  I grew up in Minnesota, the land of “being Nice.”  I am not suggesting there is anything wrong with being nice, but simply to accentuate the difference between “nice” and “real.”

I am a very nice person, just ask anyone who does not know me well!  But am I a real person to these people?  I used to think it just took a while for me to get comfortable around new people (which is partially true) but perhaps it only takes a while for me to begin to be real with people.  I’m busy trying to be nice and appealing to this new person and my real self gets out of focus.  Often Elav will ask me “why were you so quiet?” right after a 5 or 10 minute conversation with some new people we were with.  Why indeed?  Probably because I was busy smiling and nodding and being an agreeable, nice person.  It’s my “make friends” tactic: who wouldn’t want to be friends with a nice, agreeable, smiley person?

Now I have a deeper understanding: being real doesn’t mean you stop being nice.  It means figuring out what’s stopping you from being real.  It means focusing on being real, not only nice.  I have the niceness down pat so now it’s time to work on Just Being Me.

The New York Times reported today that the incidences of strokes in young people are increasing, even for children as young as age 5!  Possible reasons include the rising rates of obesity, diabetes and high blood pressure among teenagers and young adults or it could be changes in the way hospitals track patients admitted for strokes.  The American Heart Association, from their American Stroke Association Meeting Report, points out that while there has been an increase in young people, a decrease has been noticed in the elderly.  “Ischemic stroke occurs when blood supply to the brain becomes obstructed, usually by a clot or narrowing of the arteries.”

The experts are blaming obesity and diabetes and high blood pressure for the increase in strokes – OK.  Instead of nibbling on the issue, why not go a step further and look what causes obesity and diabetes?  Obesity and diabetes are symptoms of an underlying issue, the issue being an unhealthy diet comprised of fake foods and drinks (know this is a complex issue and this is a simplified statement) that the human body cannot utilize (though it tries so hard!) without incurring damage.  But is the U.S. taking steps to correct the issues?  Perhaps banning High Fructose Corn Syrup or MSG or suggesting less carbohydrates in the American diet?  Nope!  (Definitely not changing the guidelines, read more here.)

But that doesn’t really mean much for you or me, unless we follow the guidelines because health is ALWAYS every single individual’s responsibility.  You are your own best doctor, is what was said at the Wise Traditions Conference in 2010.  When people walk into RK Health Food in Marinette, Wisconsin where I volunteer and ask the cashier how much vitamin D they should be consuming every day, I wonder how serious they really are.  They know they need more vitamin D – cold climate, middle of winter, very little sunlight, and most people don’t eat liver or other vitamin rich foods – but wouldn’t you do the research?  It appears to me that being healthy is some vague notion of “at least I’m doing something.”

The best thing for your body is to do exactly what has been proven.  Proven how?  Proven through the fact that humans are alive as a species today: eat what your ancestors ate.  That means no soy, no vegetarian diet, no vegan diet, no fake or processed foods and no overloading on carbohydrates or unhealthy and processed fats.  Simply real, nutritious food.

Dinner tonight at my household!  I set the ground beef out a few minutes ago to thaw and I’ll be picking up some last minute groceries this afternoon.  Until then, here is the plan of how to make a loaded Taco Salad.

Taco Salad

Ingredients

1 lb. Ground organic, grass-fed Beef
Lettuce
1/2 Onion, diced
Taco Seasoning
5 Roma Tomatoes, cut into chunks
Raw Cheddar Cheese, shredded
Salsa
2 Avocados, cut into chunks
Sour Cream
Optional: Tortilla Chips and/or Taco Shells (Bearitos and Garden of Eatin’ are decent brands)

Directions

1. Brown the beef in a pan, then add the diced onion and taco seasoning.  Taste to establish correct seasoning.
2. Set the dinner table: tomatoes, cheese, salsa, avocados, sour cream, chips and taco shells.  And the beef, of course.

ENJOY YOUR TACOS!

“It would be a shame to find out that your diet wasn’t as good as everyone was saying 15 years from now…“

Sunday night began the first of eight nights where prominent leaders in the health industry talk about all things diet-related ON LINE, hosted by Kevin Gianni.  This completely free event features Dr. Mercola of Mercola.com, T. Colin Campbell, Sally Fallon Morell, Dr. Robert O. Young PhD. author of “The pH Miracle”, Dona Gates of “The Body Ecology Diet”, and more.  Each debate starts at 8pm EST and is online for only 24 hours (except the first night, Sunday night, is available for an additional 24 hours).

If you haven’t already, get registered.  No matter what your diet is, you will learn something new.