Back to school and what better time to recommend Carol Dweck’s enlightening book, Mindset.

Our mindset creates our whole mental world and drives every part of our lives, from relationships to parenting.

If you have the fixed mindset, you believe that your talents and abilities are set in stone-either you have them or you don’t. You must prove yourself over and over, trying to look smart and talented at all costs. This is the path of stagnation. If you have a growth mindset, however, you know that talents can be developed and that great abilities are built over time. This is the path of opportunity – and success.

How about you? What type of mindset do you have and, more importantly, what type of mindset are you teaching your children?

Why do we all believe that we have to be perfect when we diet?

The JOOS Cleanse is about stepping out of perfection and learning which way of eating is best for your body-type so that you can develop sustainable, healthy s
Time to debunk a couple JOOS Cleanse myths:

Myth: “I just broke the JOOS Cleanse because I’ve eaten the wrong foods.”

When I ask someone who tells me what they’ve eaten, they typically respond with a list of foods that are totally acceptable on the JOOS Cleanse, such as Larabars, raw nuts, Mary’s Gone Crackers with hummus, brown rice vegetable sushi, corn tacos loaded with sautéed vegetables and tofu, a falafel sandwich with brown rice tortillas to name a few. Sometimes they’ve even gone out for a glass of red wine. Frankly, so what if you’ve snuck in a piece of chicken or a sip of coffee? Just make it the exception and go back to the cleanse the next day. There are so many foods that are acceptable and delicious on the cleanse.Your Lifestyle Counselor can help you with this.

Myth: “I only ate one meal and I’m starving.”

I just spoke with a woman who is doing the cleanse and did a very intense workout. She thought she could only have one meal and was feeling starving and deprived. Ideally, part of the cleanse is having one meal and unlimited fruits and vegetables throughout the day, but some people may need more. If you work out intensively and/or have a busy lifestyle, you may need a bowl of oatmeal in the morning or a Vega shake with a banana and almond milk afterwards. Again, your lifestyle counselor can give you suggestions.

The JOOS Cleanse is NOT about starvation or deprivation; it is about learning mindfulness and how to pace yourself. If you are genuinely hungry, then you need to
eat more. If you are not hungry, but eating out of habit or boredom, again your Lifestyle Coach can give you strategies how to deal with that.

I can assure you that the JOOS Cleanse is not complicated, unless you allow it to be. In fact, once you get the hang of it, you may find that you will be able to follow the principles of it for months to follow. Sure you will probably fall off track. We all fall off track if we don’t practice anything regularly, such as exercise…and healthy eating habits. So the key is to plan ahead

Most of you are familiar with the 90/10 rule in your daily eating: 90% whole foods and 10% whatever. This also should be taken into account when you plan your year; that is, know that 10% of the time you are going to go “off track,” such as periods during the summer and holidays.

My recommendation is to do a minimum of 3 cleanses per year and plan when you’re going to do them at the beginning of each year. That way, if you fall off track, as we all inevitably do, you know you have a schedule in place to help you regroup.

The line below is an insightful blog by a woman from Healthworks who just finished a one week cleanse last week.

http://livewellwomen.wordpress.com

Remember, this isn’t about perfection, which is an illusion in our minds; it’s about learning how to incorporate sustainable healthy eating habits into our daily lives.

Our neighborhood lost our electricity for approximately 7 hours on Friday. As I took a walk with my 9-year old daughter, Fia, in the evening, we marveled at people sitting at their dining room tables huddled around candles eating take-out. There were more people out walking than usual and we all greeted each other with warm smiles. The energy in the neighborhood seemed more relaxed than usual.

When Fia and I arrived home, we sat on the living room couch and had a long conversation about her week at camp, friends, anything that came to her mind. Typically, I’d be running around the house doing yet another load of laundry, attending to never ending emails, making beds, etc. I actually had a good excuse to take a breath and give my daughter my undivided attention. Sadly, it felt like a luxury.

For dinner, since I couldn’t cook. We had raw nuts and fruits and vegetables I had purchased that day at a farmers market. When I asked Fia if she wanted dessert, she said, “No Mommy, I’m really full.” I was, too.

This experience underscored for me how the more stimulus we have around us, the more absent we become because we’re so distracted. Less truly is more, particularly when it comes to being present and mindful in the way we eat and deal with the relationships around us.

How many times do we say something we regret because we’re over-tired or anxious? How often do we beat ourselves up for turning to food for comfort because we feel so overwhelmed with life?

One of the biggest goals of the JOOS Cleanse is to enable us to regroup. I do the JOOS Cleanse at least 4 times per year, in each season, because inevitably, life creeps up on me and I need to get back on track.

JOOS would love to support you on your road to a healthier lifestyle!

This past Wednesday, I attended my first Zumba Class with Alexa at Siagel Productions at 94 Rowe Street, Auburndale! My friend Suzanne wore her Polar watch and it registered she burned 900 calories in one hour. If you want to have so much fun, see friends and have a terrific work out, this is the class to attend. Every Wednesday at 10am. Hope to see you there next week.

For more information, please go to: http://www.siagelproductions.com/

I saw a friend Saturday morning at yoga who experienced a highly traumatic event five years ago. Through this period, she’s read countless self-help books and embarked on an intensive spiritual path to understand how this could have happened and to alleviate the pain. On the surface, she was always upbeat, but I suspected that there must be going on inside.

When I saw her Saturday morning, I detected a more melancholy mood that I had never witnessed in her. I asked her what she had planned for the summer and she said, “Nothing. No fancy vacations. I’m not making any plans. I’m taking this period to regroup.”

As I practiced yoga, it struck me all the paths we take to escape the pain, instead of confront it, the way my friend is. Some of us escape in harmful ways through alcohol, drugs and, of course, food. Others of us take a seemingly more “healthy” path and turn to sports and reading countless self-help books.

There comes a time, though, that if we really want to deal with the pain and alleviate it, we have to do what my friend is doing and just sit with it and figure it out for ourselves.

I remember when I was going through my own painful time and a friend said to me that if I really want to feel my best, I had to eat only raw foods. So, I tried it for a year. Now a raw food diet may be great for some body types, but not mine. I was too thin and my stomach was terribly distended. People in the raw food world told me that I wasn’t food combining properly; yet, no matter what I did, nothing alleviated the discomfort, until I started adding healthy cooked foods back into my diet.

This was a very important experience for me because it taught me that I had to find the diet that worked best for my body-type. Remember, one person’s food is another person’s poison.

This is precisely what the JOOS Cleanse will help you do: put you on a path to discover what diet plan is best for your body so that you feel healthier and more vibrant.

We would love to support you on your road to a healthier lifestyle.

Many beverages are NOT hydrating, including soda, coffee, tea, milk, pasteurized juices and alcoholic beverages.

In the heat, we need an extra boost, which is why we turn to drinks with electrolytes. but many of the sports drinks that contain these electrolytes, including many sports drinks, also contain sugars and high fructose corn syrup.

The best solution I’ve found so far is to add a small amount of Himalayan pink crystal salt to pure water.

I’d love to hear your suggestions about hydrating!