Sparking Wholeness with Erin Kerry
Nutrition for Mind, Body, and Soul
Want to hear something crazy? I only started eating vegetables regularly about 9 years ago. Before that, it seemed so daunting to chop and season, and I relied on packaged meals allll the time due to lack of knowledge and insecurity around cooking. If that’s you – you’re in good company and it’s not too late to start!
I thought I’d share how I do it! It’s fast, easy, delicious – and a great way to make in bulk and have on hand throughout the next few days!
I’ve been in a pantry cleaning mood lately. I didn’t say organizing. You can ask my husband – organization is NOT my skill set. But I’m trying to make use of ingredients we have hanging out in the back of the pantry. You know those things you need for a recipe, you use a tiny bit of, then you forget about them? Those things.
So when I found green lentils that, for the life of me I can’t remember what we used them for, I decided to go searching for a way to cook them.
I found the original recipe here, and apart from the green curry paste, I had all the ingredients I needed on hand – total win. I added a few different things to the recipe, took away some others, and the result is a flavorful, hearty dish that is thicker than soup but just as warming. Continue reading “Green Lentil Curry”
The biggest transformation that happened for me this last year had nothing to do with my body and had EVERYTHING to do with how I see my body.
If you want to lose weight this year, great. If you want to take a different approach to health by balancing things from the inside out, that’s something I will continue to share about in 2020.
Just remember – someone else’s before and after doesn’t tell the full story. What looks like “discipline” may actually be disordered eating. What looks like gaining weight or hitting a plateau may actually be a year of grief and stress. We can’t measure success or failure from a picture.
What’s always missing in these before and after pictures is the DURING.
Is it time for a change?
I’m not talking about weight loss, or a new goal or resolution. I’m not talking about a diet. I’m talking about getting a new view of YOU in the new year.
You probably have heard me say it – I’m a big fan of treating the root. And as much as I love partnering with people to make healthy habits, I also believe that focusing on laying a solid foundation FIRST is key to success.
That’s why I have partnered with Christian author and body image expert Heather Creekmore to bring you a 10 day wellness group to get your mind and heart ready for the new year.
Whether your goal is to lose weight, be more mindful of what you eat, or just feel healthier physically, spiritually and emotionally – this 10 day community can help kick start your goals.
Each day I will offer strategies to personalize your nutrition and become more mindful of your eating habits. I will bring you my favorite tools for learning how to listen to your body and find what’s right for YOU!
Heather will bring strategies to help you lay a solid, spiritual foundation for improving your body image and quitting comparison. She will encourage you with ways to improve your spiritual health so that your physical goals are easier to meet.
The 10 day group will take place through a private Facebook group January 6-16. We will post daily during the 10 days, and we will be available throughout to offer you support and answer all your questions.
In addition to daily tips, challenges, and special video lessons, we’ll be giving away two gifts to thank you for participating. I will provide my “Fast Track Family Recipes” booklet and Heather is gifting you “Mountain Top Experience: A Personal Body Image Retreat.”
The price to participate in this group is only $20! Sign up here or contact me in the contact tab if you are interested!
I hope you have a happy and healthy new year!
Carrot souffle and sweet potato bake that are grain free, dairy free, and refined sugar free? Yes, please!
Now, before you head to the recipes, I have to say one quick thing. I know it’s a pain when you are looking for a recipe and the blogger spends all this time with the description and build up and pictures and you’re like, “Just get to the dang ingredients, Karen!”
But after I say this I’ll be done – and you can go on your merry way to try out these recipes.
I get annoyed with the phrase “healthy” in regards to food choices during the holidays. Holidays are celebratory, and if you’re stressing out about whether something is “healthy” or not, and you’re panicked about every ingredient in your meal, you’re less likely to be able to digest the nutrients from that meal.
Stressing about food is the opposite of health, in my opinion.
That being said, it seems to me that every year I get busier with celebrations. We have countless parties, and all of them feature lots of food and lots of alcohol. Because monitoring my mental health is always priority for me, and I will do whatever I can to fight seasonal depression, eating loads of sugar and drinking sugary alcoholic beverages can be taxing on my mental stability.
Consuming lots of sweet treats and drinking alcohol frequently during the month of December will throw off my sleep, make me less well-rested the following day, and then cause my cravings to skyrocket – perpetuating the cycle. So while I don’t want to stress about my food, I do want to be MINDFUL about what I’m choosing and how those choices will make me feel afterward. (For more on eating for mental health and my thoughts on that, check out the Sparking Wholeness podcast episode 10.)
Which leads me to the recipes.
Continue reading “Healthy Holiday Sides with Carrots and Sweet Potatoes”
Nourishment comes in many forms beyond food.
Being aware of triggers that negatively impact my mental and physical well-being (because they’re connected) is key.
Your relationship with food affects your mental health as well. If you’re stressed about what you’re eating – or what you can’t eat – that sets off a fight or flight response in the body that is not health-promoting.
There is comfort in food. There is joy found in a good meal with friends, in a special holiday gathering. So the last thing I would say is you have to turn down dessert at every special event because it’s going to cause some mental health relapse. It probably won’t. If you have a leaky gut and food sensitivities, it might cause problems. I don’t know your body and your situation. It will take trial and error and individualized support.
I do want you to be aware of some of the most important things I’ve found that hinder and benefit my mental health, based on my own experience and all the latest research on how food IS mood.
Check out my most recent podcast episode, Eating for Mental Wealth, for more information on how I view nourishment! Click on the tree logo on the right to access the show page or listen on iTunes here.
Yes, I’m going there. We’re talking about poop. Specifically – we’re talking about gut bacteria and its impact on overall health and well being.
This week’s special guest on the podcast, Dr Chris Jones, is a chiropractor, Doctor of Natural Medicine, and gut expert. He is the owner and director of Wellness Movement, an online health consultation business.
His mission is to help those with autoimmunity and chronic GI problems regain their health so that they can FINALLY FEEL BETTER.
One of the reasons I was excited to speak to Chris is because he has so many amazing stories of transformation through his testing and healing protocols. As a self-proclaimed gut health nerd, I wanted to hear more about what he thought of the gut/brain connection, the microbiome and autoimmunity, and of course – how nutrition and stress factors in.
Listen to the episode here. For more information about Dr Jones and what he does, head over to www.doctorchrisjones.com
Exactly 20 years ago, I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder.
But I didn’t go public about it until last year.
Why? The stigma. The jokes. The complete misunderstanding and misinformation about what bipolar disorder really is.
Here’s what it is:
But most of all – it IS manageable and it doesn’t have to hinder quality of life or functioning.
Like I said, I hid it for a long time. I’m learning to manage it through a variety of tools – gut health, nutrition, movement, sleep, talk therapy.
On the first episode of my new podcast Sparking Wholeness, I share my entire journey in a way I never have before.
If you haven’t struggled with mental health issues, that’s amazing and I’m so happy for you. But chances are, someone close to you needs hope. Someone close to you needs a step toward healing. And that’s what this show is intended to do – it’s just another way to spark a little fire towards wholeness.
Click here to download and listen to this episode, or click here for my show page – and to be able to subscribe to my podcast feed (please subscribe). It will be available on iTunes soon.
Please share this message with a friend.
In case you didn’t know by now, I’m kind of a gut nerd. Learning about the different ways my body responds to various foods has made such an impact on my overall health and well-being. That’s why I was so excited to finally take a food sensitivity test with EveryWell. They test for reactions to 96 different food items.
The kit comes with all the instructions you need for a finger prick test. (Embarrassing side note – I had to get the husband to prick my finger because I was too nervous to do it on my own.) Then I squeezed blood onto a little card with circles to drop the blood samples, and mailed it into the bag they provided.
Continue reading “Food Sensitivity Test Results (and a coupon code)!”
It’s that time of year – some like to call it Cold and Flu Season, but some of us in the nutrition world call it Sugar and Lack of Sun Season. Recently I wrote all about sugar cravings, but what I failed to mention is that sugar suppresses the immune system. As days get shorter and colder, we get less sunlight… meaning less vitamin D which our immune systems need as well.
So what to do to strengthen our bodies this time of year?
Here are 5 ways to boost your immune system for fall and winter (to see more tips in more detail, check out last year’s immune boosting tips here). Continue reading “Immune Boosting Tips for 2019”