Sadie's 5 and were going to Bolivia

It seems like a lifetime ago that my sweet newly wed husband and I sold everything we had, grabbed our backpacks and traveled the the world for a year. 

After a year we became really home sick and so we decided to head back for a a while, and continue traveling later. We didn't realize how much later.

Our 2006 adventure in Bolivia Pics

When we arrived home, after a bit of culture shock, we quickly got back into the swing of things and found ourselves comfortable and glad to be home. At which point we decided to buy a house, settle down and start a family.

That was 8 was years ago, we now have a house, a dog, a 5 year old, and are very ready to travel again, this time with our sweet Sassy Sadie.

Why Bolivia? Life in Sucre, Bolivia is so simple, stress free, and very family oriented. At 2 in the afternoon all businesses close, people go home, spend time with their family for three hours and business opens back up from 5 to 7.

I am so excited and really looking forward to introducing Sadie to a new whole new culture and a new way of living for two weeks over Christmas.

Until then there is alot to do but it's definitely something that we are looking forward to.

Have you been on a great adventure? I would love to hear about it: 

Email me here

Until next time..

Good Health and Happiness to you,

Nancy

I leave you with one of my favorite quotes:

May your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome, dangerous, leading to the most amazing view. May your mountains rise into and above the clouds. May your rivers flow without end, meandering through pastoral valleys tinkling with bells, past temples and castles and poets towers into a dark primeval forest where tigers belch and monkeys howl, through miasmal and mysterious swamps and down into a desert of red rock, blue mesas, domes and pinnacles and grottos of endless stone, and down again into a deep vast ancient unknown chasm where bars of sunlight blaze on profiled cliffs, where deer walk across the white sand beaches, where storms come and go as lightning clangs upon the high crags, where something strange and more beautiful and more full of wonder than your deepest dreams waits for you -- beyond that next turning of the canyon walls.”

― Edward Abbey

Even though our family is all about healthy eating, it doesn't mean we don't go thru times where we learn about what our bodies need and don't need.

This was one of those times, so allow me to share it with you.

Sadie was so tired all the time in spite of all the organic meat, vegetables, fruits and unprocessed foods we were eating. She was on a dose of daily super vitamins and I thought I was giving her everything she needed to thrive as a little 4 year old girl.

She was getting 11-12 hours a sleep every night but in the morning she would wake up so tired. To add to the mix, a red rash surfaced on her face and I had no idea why. I had tried everything from taking out certain foods, to trying creams, and something was just not right!

What was I missing?

After much looking into and alot of thought, I decided to take her to a naturopath to get some allergy testing done. Everything I have been learning in nutriton school pointed to testing as the first step in taking the guessing out of allergies and what was going on.

So we went for testing and after the first set of blood test results were in, we went back to the naturopath for another visit "gulp and double gulp".

What would she say, would it be serious and could it be treated?

You can imagine how I was feeling as a mother, and so many things were going through my mind. 

The naturopath looked at me and said, I am sorry to tell you that Sadie is anemic, has a gluten allergy and also has a low thyroid.

Whaat? Why & how?? The guilt set in, how could I not know this? ? I knew she ate enough iron but maybe somehow her body wasn't absorbing it?

The naturopath prescribed a double dose of Iron for her, said she could no longer have gluten and that when those two things were resolved, the low thyroid should go away.

I was now on a mission, I did alot of research and here is what I found:

Iron: Because my sweet girl could no longer have gluten I had to be very careful about everything that went into her mouth.  I found a gluten and yeast free Iron made of fruits, vegetables and herbs by Flora called FloraVital Iron & Herbs. It is rich in B & C vitamins as well and non-constipating.  Click Here

For those who don't eat alot of meat and want to eat more plant based foods rich in iron, I found a great website that lists all the iron rich foods and more

 Click Here

Vitamin C and B: If you don't have enough C and B vitamins in your body, it doesn't matter how much iron you take, your body will not absorb it. We don't  take alot of C vitamins, so here it was I bought: A Truly Natural Vitamin C, Powder by Healthforce which is not synthetic and which the body can absorb Click Here  

Gluten Free: Sadie's world  has now change and every little thing we eat has to be read thoroughly. I say we because I too am recovering from anemia, I am also allergic to Gluten and to top it all off, I have dairy & egg allergies. So I am aware of everything I put in my mouth, what's in it and what it will do to me if I eat it.

Now I need to be completely present and aware of Sadie's diet.

So being the mother that I am, I did alot of research and have been cooking all types of delicious gluten free foods for Sadie and I. It's actually not that bad, and we even found a little store by our house that is all Gluten Free.

I am happy to say that, that was a few weeks ago and Sadie and I are on our way back to great health. With the iron rich foods and supplements we have been taking, we have energy again, think more clearly and we are in a good place.

So my advice to you is, if you or your little one are suffering from chronic symptoms, are unusually tierd, or you think something is just not right, question everything, don't just take it for what it is, do research, do testing, do whatever you can to get them and you back to great health again. 

Smiles, Hugs & Health, Nancy & Sadie too

Some Gluten Links I found Helpful♥

Gluten Intolerance Group www.gluten.net

Gluten Free Easily www.glutenfreeeasily.com

The Gluten Free Nutrition Guide  www.glutenfreedietitian.com

Gluten Free Kids http://www.celiaccentral.org/kids/recipes/

Whole Life Nutrition

http://www.nourishingmeals.com/p/going-gluten-free.html

Raising Glten Free Kids:

 http://www.sheletthemeatcake.com/2010/07/raising-gluten-free-kids/

The "V" Word for a month

Yesterday I celebrated a month of being vegan, and can I just say "wow" what a great adventure.

So allow me to back track a little.  As I am going to school to be a holisitc Health Coach, we are exploring bio-individuality* & over 100 different dietery therioes that go from Atkins to the Zone Diet.  One of those diets we explored was  a Vegan diet,

It was something that sounded appealing to me,  so I thought, why not try it. How hard could it be and  what better way to learn, than to explore & experiment with my own body. Maybe it was for me?? So I went for it, and for a month, I are nothing but vegtables,fruits, nuts, beans, legumes  & grains. YUM! Ina nutshell here is how it went.

 What I liked about it:

• It helped me get out of my boring usual recepie comfort zone. I tried new recepies, and explored with a huge variety of vegtables, nuts, beans & grains.
• It made me feel better, stronger  and cleared up the rash on my face, that had been there for 6 months.
• It helped me learn how to get more veggies into my 4 year old daughter & husbands  diet.  My daughter wasn't too excicted at first but now she eats, celery, almond butter &  mixed spinach salad.
• I felt more energy when I did my workouts
• My digestive system worked even more regularly. 

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​What I didn't like so much:

• ​I gained a little weight because I ate more fruit, grains & nuts
• I  had more sugar cravings in the evenings because I lacked dense protien in my body, which I feel also contributed to weight gain.

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What I learned from it all was that it's exciting & fun to try new things, to really explore and get into it. There is an entire world full of amazing vegtables,nuts, beans & grains that I had no idea were out there. I  learned  that it is possible to be strong & feel great without eating meat or animal products. I also learned that for now, being a Vegan is not for me, because my body requires certain things that being on a vegan diet does not provide. And I am okay with that.

What I plan to do now is incorporate small amounts of lean organic meats like fish, chicken and pork into my diet once a week, limit nuts, fruits & grains to smaller portions and enoy a mountain of fresh organic vegetables .

So there it is, my amazing adventure as a Vegan for a month!

I enjoyed every minute.

Now it's onto my next adventure, training for a 100 mile Bike Ride in May. I will let you know how that goes. Until next time!

Thank you for reading

Health, Happiness & Smiles, Nancy 

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*bio-individuality  means there’s no one-size-fits-all diet – each person is a unique individual with highly individualized nutritional requirements. Personal differences in anatomy, metabolism, body composition and cell structure all influence your overall health and the foods that make you feel your best. That’s why no single way of eating works for everyone. The food that is perfect for your unique body, age, and lifestyle may make another person gain weight and feel lethargic.

Want to know more? Click the link below

http://www.integrativenutrition.com/glossary/bioindividuality