Get the Skinny on Forbidden Fats: Separate Fat Facts from Fiction

By Rupina Meer of MyYogaOnline.com

We live in fat phobic times, so whether you're fat phobic, fat curious or just befuddled by conflicting information, it's time to debunk the top three myths about this demonized nutrient that's vital to our health:
1. Claim: Saturated fats lead to obesity and heart disease.
Fiction. The claim that consumption of saturated animal fats is bad for you and causes heart disease is based on flawed evaluation of data. In fact, modern studies based on indigenous tribes from around the world have shown that those who consume the highest percentage of saturated fat have the lowest risk of heart disease. It's the trans fat found in margarine, vegetable shortening, and partially hydrogenated vegetable oils that is the true villain, causing far more significant health problems than saturated fat ever could. Unfortunately the low-fat dogma perpetuated by most government authorities has led many of you to replace saturated fats with refined carbohydrates and that's promoting the current epidemic of obesity, heart disease and diabetes.
Solution: Avoid trans fats and hydrogenated/partially hydrogenated fats and add in healthy sources of saturated fats, such as butter (made from grass-fed raw, organic milk) and coconut oil. Coconut oil is far superior to any other cooking oil as it doesn't oxidize at high temperatures and the medium-chain fatty acids actually boost your metabolism and promote weight loss.
2. Claim: Dietary fat makes you fat
Semi fiction. Eating the right fats actually helps you shed fat. Healthy cell walls made from high-quality fats are better able to metabolize insulin, which keeps blood sugar better regulated. Without proper blood sugar control, the body socks away fat for a rainy day. In fact, when you deprive your body of fat, it thinks there’s a fat scarcity and holds on to the fat it has. Ironically, it’s not eating fat that makes you gain weight, it’s eating the wrong types of fats.
Solution: Ditch the processed foods made with poor-quality omega-6 fats. Take a look at the ingredients of your favorite packaged food. If the list includes oils made from corn, canola, soy, sunflower or safflower you are getting a sub-par fat. Load up on healthy omega-3 fats instead. The best animal sources of omega-3s are wild salmon, sardines, herring, or small halibut. If you're vegetarian, you can load up on flaxseed, hempseed, and walnuts; however, these foods only contain the precursor form, ALA (alpha linoleic acid) that our body can not convert efficiently into its more useful derivatives, DHA and EPA. Aim for 2 servings per week.

Also, go for organic omega-3 rich eggs. These are one of the few animal products that are low in toxins and high in quality fats that balance blood sugar. They also supply the body with DHA and don’t raise your cholesterol; in fact, they do just the opposite, so you can enjoy up to eight of these eggs per week. And finally, take a high-quality omega-3 supplement, free of mercury and other contaminants. Aim for at least 1,000 mg of omega-3 fats. (A ratio of roughly 300 EPA and 200 DHA is ideal). Vegans can also fill in the nutrient gaps by supplementing with 400-600 mg per day of Neuromins DHA, a product extracted from microalgae.
Also, when you incorporate healthy fats as part of your meal, they slow down absorption and increase satiety, so they keep those hunger pangs at bay and you'll feel full between meals without snacking. Remember, there is no such thing as a healthy fat-free diet, so I want you to get greasy with it. But quality is key, so this is not a license to scarf down those double bacon cheeseburgers!
3. Claim: Low-fat products are a healthier option
Fiction. The 1990s brought a rush of low-fat products that promised healthier options. What was not typically revealed was that these foods were replacing the fat taste with sugar, often in the form of high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) that causes metabolic mayhem. Fructose is primarily metabolized in the liver and your liver converts the majority of this fructose into fat. Fructose also fools your body into gaining weight as it turns off your body's appetite-control system. Fructose does not appropriately stimulate insulin, which in turn does not suppress ghrelin (the "hunger hormone") and doesn't stimulate leptin (the "satiety hormone"), which together result in your eating more. This is why you can never stop at just a couple of those low-fat cookies and end up inhaling the entire box and still not feeling satisfied.
Solution: Don't be fooled by low-fat packaging. Become a label detective and scrutinize the ingredients to select the healthiest options. For example, discerning Moms often choose low-fat peanut butter, but by reducing the fat they've added more sugar (as HFCS) and more sodium, so you're better off selecting raw peanut or almond butter that hasn't been processed. Stick with healthy, whole fats found in nature. Think avocadoes, nuts, olives and olive oil and keep that processed crap away from your precious body.

Bottom line: Fat also helps with stress management, cognition, mood, sleep, energy, weight management, healthy tissues, skin and hair. So by BFFing healthy fats, you'll not only drop the muffin top, but you'll also enjoy glowing skin, shiny hair and a myriad of other health benefits.

12 Easy Ways to Slim Down Your Stress

By Rupina Meer of MyYogaOnline.com

How to reduce the impact of everyday stress?
Below are my top 12 strategies to reduce mind-body stress:
1. Optimize Your Nutrition -- Clean up your diet from substances like caffeine, alcohol, and refined sugars that exacerbate adrenal stress and eat protein-rich meals/snacks every 3-4 hours to avoid blood sugar swings and the short-term stress of starvation on your body.
2. Supplement -- Take a multivitamin and nutrients to help balance the stress response, such as vitamin C; the B-complex vitamins, including B6 and B5 or pantothenic acid; zinc; and most important, magnesium, the relaxation mineral.
3. Adaptogens -- Use adaptogenic herbs (herbs that help you adapt and balance your response to stress) such as Rhodiola rosea, Siberian ginseng, Cordyceps, and Ashwagandha. The latter really helps with that tired but wired feeling and calms your mind to optimize sleep.
4. Move Your Body -- Exercise is a powerful, well-studied way to burn off stress chemicals and heal the mind, so just do it! It has been proven to be better than Prozac for treating depression.
5. Learn to say “no" -- Know your limits, and don’t take on projects or commitments you can’t handle
6. Avoid toxic people -- You know the kind of person I’m talking about. Drama kings and queens who are constantly taking and never giving. Limit your time with these people or set boundaries.
7. Turn off the news -- If watching the mayhem and madness of the nightly news stresses you out, limit your exposure to the incessant stream of 24/7 media. You’ll still find out what’s going on, and still be able to act as a concerned citizen. But you’ll have more time for yourself. I've stopped watching the nightly news years ago, and still manage to stay informed about the things I care about. The difference is... I get to choose what I’m exposed to.

8. Reframe the situation -- We experience stress because of the meaning we assign to certain events or situations. Sometimes changing our perspective is enough to relieve the stress. For example, being stuck in traffic can be a “disaster” or it could be an opportunity for self-reflection and even a chance to squeeze in a short meditation.
9. Lower your standards --This is especially key for you perfectionists out there. And you know who you are! Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good. Let good enough be good enough.
10. Surrender & Accept -- A Zen teacher once said, “All suffering is caused by wishing the moment to be other than it is.” Many things in life are beyond our control. Learn to accept the things you can’t change, surrender and soften instead of resisting the present moment.
11. Stop being a slave to your to-do list -- Each day spend some time in the morning prioritizing what really needs to be done. Drop unimportant tasks to the bottom of the list. Or even cross them off entirely. The sun rises and falls without us, and sometimes you just have to surrender and escape the tyranny of that to-do list.
12. B-R-E-A-T-H-E (Let it go) -- Our breath is the most important tool we have to modulate the stress response and activate the parasympathetic nervous system (PSNS) also called the rest and digest system. You see the PSNS is in direct contrast to the sympathetic nervous system (SNS) which activates the flight or fight response triggered by stress, fear, caffeine, and just about anything else that creates a heart pounding adrenaline rush. So anytime you feel your stress ratcheting up, try some deep belly breathing or pranayama, and you'll immediately activate your PSNS and feel more relaxed.
The truth is it’s a lot easier to make dietary changes and pop some pills (whether drugs or supplements) than it is to manage our stress. Stress management bumps up against core patterns of belief and behavior that are difficult to change. If you could have done it on your own, you would have, so don't be afraid to reach out for support!

Enjoy a stress-free, joyous and nourished spring!

Raw Material

Boost your energy and endurance with these natural power sources.

By Matthew Kadey of yogajournal.com

Whether you're training for a marathon or keeping up a sweet yoga practice, some goals rarely change: finding healthy ways to add energy, increase endurance, and enhance recovery. We looked at the latest research to identify foods that supercharge a workout and taste good, too.


Beets: New studies show that nitrates in the ruby-red root vegetable help your blood vessels dilate, increasing oxygen delivery to working muscles.

Apples: Recent data suggests that quercetin, a potent antioxidant found in apples, can improve exercise endurance.

Sweet Potato: Its high carbohydrate content makes the sweet potato a natural energy provider for long-lasting workouts. Plus, the sweet flesh is rich in immunity-boosting vitamin A.

Quinoa: The popular South American whole grain is chock-full of energizing complex carbohydrates and magnesium, an essential mineral recognized as being a key player in energy metabolism.

Yogurt: With its optimum balance of protein and carbs, yogurt is a stellar fuel for post-workout recovery. Choose plain Greek-style versions for more protein and no processed sugars. Lentils: This humble legume is packed with iron, which researchers at Cornell University recently found to be essential to athletic performance.

4 Ways to Keep Yourself Real.

by Tracy Crossley of elephantjournal.com

What can someone do to have peace, who struggles on the road to some sort of perfection of having only positive thoughts?

1. Allow.

Just allow the thoughts to come, watch them, acknowledge them; we don’t have to fight against them or try to lasso them in. Don’t control—let the thoughts waft in and float by naturally, no ownership.

2. Feel your feelings.

Sometimes when we shove our feelings down or fight them, repressing them, we’re subjected to even weirder thoughts and emotional sludge that makes us feel stuck in a dark space. We don’t have to own our feelings either; allow them to be whatever they are, acknowledge them too. It’s okay, because all of this allowing of thoughts and feelings creates space.

3. Non-Personalization.

Our thoughts don’t have have to mean anything at all, period. Especially in the context of who we are and what we do. When we think thoughts about others in their relation to us, we can start to personalize their actions, words and imagined thoughts in their heads. There’s no reason to do it, because it offers no control and can lead us to feeling bad.

4. Focus on your peace and creativity.

Meaning, when we have thoughts that float in and out, we don’t have to focus on their content,especially if we can’t detach from some troubling ones. We can shift our focus inwards toward compassion and kindness for ourselves. Our perception shifts making space for peace to be creative. Creativity lends itself to thoughts shifting on their own to passion, feeling engaged and okay in our skin.

Crunch Time

Revitalize yourself with a plant-based eating plan that celebrates fresh fruits and veggies.

By Lavinia Spalding of yogajournal.com

San Francisco yoga teacher Stacey Rosenberg had a diet that most people would consider ultra-healthy. Most of the time, she ate organic and locally sourced food, avoided processed ingredients, and listened carefully to her body's cues about what she needed to be eating and how much. But when her teaching schedule turned hectic, she began to opt for quick and easy options like heavy burritos and sandwiches or a slice of pizza from her favorite bakery. "I was falling off some of my healthy habits," she says, "and I wanted to bring whole foods and greens back into my diet."
Rosenberg enrolled in the Eat Green Challenge, an online program started by clinical Ayurvedic specialist Cate Stillman and yoga instructor Desiree Rumbaugh to help friends in the yoga community shift to a plant-based diet. "I don't like making rules for myself around food," says Rosenberg, "but the Eat Green Challenge seemed tailored to each person-you just did your best and noticed how foods made you feel."
For the next 30 days, Rosenberg ate almost nothing but fruits and veggies. She felt clearheaded and hydrated, stopped craving sweets, and noticed improvements in her yoga practice. "I trimmed and toned up," she says. "I felt cleaner, and I had more energy."
After the cleanse, Rosenberg slowly added small amounts of protein, fat, and grains to her meals, listening to her body and trusting her intuition as she went. Now, she starts each day with plenty of water and green smoothies. She fills up on salads, soups, sweet potatoes, and stews, and if she's craving sweets, she reaches for an apple or a banana before a bar of chocolate. When she does find herself indulging in less-than-healthful food, she cleanses the following day.

Spring Cleaning

If you're like Rosenberg and others in the yoga community, you probably already eat relatively clean and green. But springtime may inspire you to kick things up a notch. It's no mystery why the season invites renewal. Longer days increase our exposure to sunlight, creating a biological surge of energy and optimism. So while everyone else clears cobwebs and scours floors, why not take a look at your diet and spring-clean an even more important home: your body?
Shifting to primarily plant-based foods may be the smartest move you can make to reconnect with healthful eating habits, says Amy Lanou, a senior nutrition scientist with the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine. "I'm a huge proponent of building a diet from whole foods," she says, "or foods that have been processed a limited amount."
According to Lanou, cleaning up your diet starts with avoiding what's added during processing—think salt, sugar, fat, flavorings, colorings, and preservatives. Likewise, she says, much of what we actually do want to consume is removed when foods are refined. "If something has been peeled, washed, fried, diced, sliced, and extruded, you lose a lot of vitamins and minerals." By focusing on whole foods, Lanou says, you'll be well on your way to eating more healthfully.
It sounds simple enough, but we all know that changing eating patterns is complicated. The body becomes adapted to what we feed it, and eliminating certain ingredients can be difficult and even physically uncomfortable. Also, busy lives can make a significant dietary reset even harder.
But for those in the yoga community, refreshing your palate and embracing a healthier approach to eating isn't as difficult as you may think, says Stillman, who also teaches Iyengar and Anusara Yogas. "In yoga," she explains, "we're awakening our subtle body physiology, becoming more sensitive, and perceiving everything more accurately. We're much more aware of our mind-body connection than ever before."

Shifting Gears

In the first step of the challenge, a 30-day fruit and vegetable cleanse called "the megashift," participants eat only fresh vegetables and fruits, avoiding meat, dairy, grains, salt, and even healthy fats like oils, avocados, beans, nuts, and seeds. Salads are dressed with mango juice and red pepper, or papaya, mint, and lime juice; snacks are green beans, jicama, and celery sticks. Dinner might be zucchini noodles with tomatoes.
The idea is to detoxify your system and cleanse your palate, not to deprive yourself or go hungry. "For the first few weeks I felt like I was eating all day long," recalls Rosenberg. "Carrot sticks, grapes, strawberries, peaches, plums, potatoes, soups, salads and smoothies."
In fact, says Sharon Meyer, a clinical nutritionist with the Institute for Health and Healing at the California Pacific Medical Center in San Francisco, fruits and veggies contain fewer calories than most other foods, so you'll have to eat more-and more often-to stabilize your energy and avoid fatigue. If you experience major highs and lows in your energy level, she says, add a small amount of oil (such as olive, ghee, or coconut) to help regulate blood sugar and insulin—or include some protein like fish or egg in your diet.
With a significant increase in fruit consumption, adds Lanou, you may experience some digestive issues, specifically loose bowels. If this happens, she recommends adding more vegetables, along with a few nuts and some low-fiber grains. Otherwise, she says, you may not absorb enough nutrients.
For those who want or need to include small amounts of grains, seeds, legumes, and animal protein from the start, the plan is still effective as a reset, says Stillman. It can also be maintained as a long-term approach to eating.
"There's no one diet that's perfect for everyone," adds Meyer. "And that gets to be very exciting because it leads to curiosity about how your body is functioning with different foods."

Listen Up

When you temporarily remove ingredients from your diet, you can reset the palate and curb junk-food cravings in the process. By weaning yourself off sweets, says Stillman, you can alter your sensitivity to them. The same is true for salt; studies indicate that if you usually eat four grams and cut back significantly, food that you used to enjoy will taste too salty to eat. You'll also be able to distinguish nutrient-rich food from less beneficial options, says Stillman. "Processed food will taste like cardboard."
When you begin to add other foods to your diet, Meyer suggests holding back on grains initially, starting instead with an easy-to-digest protein like fish or eggs for three days. When you do add grains, start with rice, which is one of the least allergenic.
Stillman suggests slowly reintroducing fat to your diet until it makes up about 10 percent of what you're eating. "Many yogis will naturally stabilize here," she says. Adding more may cause congestion and bloating. Choose healthful plant-based fats, she says: avocados, olive oil, nuts, seeds, and almond milk.
However you decide to modify your plant-based regimen, Stillman and Lanou advocate a diet abundant in living foods. For those who find raw veggies difficult to digest, Stillman suggests lightly steaming them or making marinated salads to keep at room temperature. "Grate or slice up fennel, massage kale with fruit juice, shred a carrot or beet, and let it all sit together for a few hours to make it more absorbable."
Will a diet that consists primarily of fruits and veggies provide all the nutrients you need long term? Yes, says Lanou, provided that you also include nuts, seeds, legumes, and a supplement or fortified foods rich in vitamin B12. "There shouldn't be any problem getting sufficient protein if a person is getting enough calories from whole plant foods," she says. As for calcium, most dark leafy greens (for example kale, chard, dandelion) have about the same amount of absorbable calcium per serving as a cup of cow's milk. There's also plenty of fiber in fruits and veggies, not to mention carbohydrates, phytonutrients, and antioxidants.
Of course, certain people should consult their doctor before making any significant dietary changes. The Eat Green Challenge isn't recommended for those who are pregnant or underweight, for example, and children and athletes may need extra protein.
In the end, the foods you add to your diet are just as important as those you cut from it—and embracing the idea of happily supplementing rather than reluctantly subtracting can transform your entire experience. It helps to simply reach for fruits, roots, and vegetables first—before anything else—until they become a greater percentage of your diet, says Stillman. It's easy to do, she adds, if you prepare your food for the entire day in the morning.
"Put sweet potatoes in the oven, turn on your rice cooker, make a quart of green smoothies, and call it good," says Stillman. "For breakfast, have a green smoothie or two, which gets you through to lunch. Then there are the sweet potatoes, and you throw a quick salad together. For dinner, have fresh fruit, a salad, and the rice you cooked.""It's not that you'll never touch a piece of pizza again," says Stillman. "But have a gigantic salad first. The idea is to get more filled up on the foods that are truly nutritive."
If you think about it, it's a lot like spring cleaning. We clear clutter to make space for what's more meaningful, beautiful, and important.

5 Ways To UnDiet Your Yoga Practice.

by Meghan Telpner of elephantjournal.com

There is much to be said for what we do on our mat.

We know it goes well beyond the physicality of our practice in connecting us with our truest, sweetest being. Somehow, however, we often put up a block to what else we can be doing to strengthen the practice of yoga.
It’s not always about logging more hours on the mat, or getting more training.
Sometimes, the deeper practice comes from questioning everything that happens around our mat and off our mat. One of the first places to look, might even be the accessories of our practice—the products we use that are intended to heal us, lend to a deeper and more beneficial practice, but that may actually be doing the opposite.
This is how we can start to look at UnDieting our yoga practice.
To UnDiet is to questioning what we see around us and stop accepting it as normal because everyone else is doing it; we can undiet the way we eat, the way we work and our beauty care routine.

We can also UnDiet our yoga practice in five simple ways:

1. Ditch the bottled water.

There is no “away.” Let’s be clear. We are all part of this universe and now, unfortunately, so is every bit of plastic ever created. Plastic bottles of water create unnecessary waste, not to mention the BPA that leach from our bottles into our bodies and that disrupt hormones at trace levels. It is not about safe levels—there aren’t any. Drink 100% pure, clean water and do so from glass or stainless steel. Forgot your bottle before class? Get to know the tap or the water fountain. Disposable and/or recyclable plastic is no longer an option.

2. Those oils smell nice…sort of.

Everyone loves a good shoulder and neck massage in shivasana, or maybe a deep inhale of lavender or spruce to tickle the neurotransmitters into calming down. But are those oils truly healing? Most oils that you buy for about $10 a bottle are inedible—meaning they are not food grade, and are made of synthetic chemicals. If we wouldn’t throw it into our blender and make a smoothie with it, should we be rubbing it on our skin or inhaling it, allowing it to bypass our detoxification organs? Those cheap synthetic oils are best used to clean our floors—and that’s about it. Ensure your essential oils, whether as aromatherapy, or a cleaning agent are 100% food grade.

3. Post yoga fuel.

Energy bars sold in the health food store must be healthy, right? They are, after all, at the health food store. Look at the ingredient label: very few of these bars contain any whole, real food ingredients. If you wouldn’t buy each ingredient on its own, probably best to take a pass on it. Make your post yoga fuel real food—an apple and almond butter, a power smoothie, or home baked granola with nuts and dried fruit. There are loads of options, just try and stick to the ones that don’t come in cellophane wrappers.

4. The mat clean up.

Yoga mats will eventually start to deteriorate—that’s sort of inevitable. Sort of. This happens far more slowly if you take the time to clean down your mat after each practice and let it hang to dry. Eco mat or otherwise, you don’t want and shouldn’t have to replace your mat as often as you do. Make an eco-cleaner of water, tea tree essential oil, cinnamon essential oil and a little vinegar or lemon juice. Spritz your mat after every use, wipe it down and hang it to dry. Depending on how often you use your mat, you should likely shower it down once a week to once a month. Remember—there is no land called “away”—so we need to stop throwing things there.

5. What are you burning?

We love our candles. They bring an energy into the room, cast a warm glow and often lend a soft scent. Most of those candles, however, are totally and completely toxic. Most conventional candles are made of 
paraffin—the final by-product in the refining of petroleum. When we burn paraffin candles this carcinogenic substance becomes an inhalant—like secondhand smoke.
 Many candles also contain wicks with metal cores containing lead which is extremely dangerous when heated. And of course, those artificial fragrances and colors which are really one massive chemical cocktail. Instead, seek out fragrance free beeswax candles, and just let the beeswax and your food-grade essential oils do the aromatherapy.

Once we start to pay attention to the accessories that surround us during our practice, a time in our day when we are likely most present, we will also start to notice ways we can UnDiet, clean up and do better in other areas too.
As with yoga, UnDieting our lives is a practice, and one that is best started today.
Today is the day!