Have Fun with Fashion & a Healthy Life!

Toast in the New Year by starting today to make healthier lifestyle choices. If you want to loose weight, gain weight, reduce allergies or heal gut related symptoms, make the decision today so that you can reap the benefits tomorrow.

Yes! It does take time to heal naturally and you may experience detox symptoms but in the long run, you'll be in a healthier state.

Remember, your body is a beautiful machine. It truly wants to operate optimally. Chose today to give your body the vitamins, nutrients, oxygen and proper rest that it needs so that you can look good and feel good from the inside out.

Have questions about how to get started? Post a comment or email me. I'd love to offer suggestions.

Have Fun with Fashion and a Healthy Life!

How to Gain Weight with Healthy Fats

Are you under weight like I was? If so, a change in diet could help you to pack on the pounds in a healthy way. My experiences can possibly help you to gain weight.

A little about my past
I was horribly under weight for as far back as I can remember. It didn't matter what diet I was on––from junk food to a heavy wheat based diet to growing up eating cheeseburgers and hotdogs, I never packed on the pounds so I just thought that this was my natural way of being––thin.

The GAPS Diet: My Big Aha!
It wasn't until last year through my research to help save my boyfriend's health did I discover the GAPS diet. This diet promotes eating healthy fats and fermented foods. Hmmm, I'd never heard of such a way of eating. So, I went from one extreme to another: a raw vegan diet for about two years and then back to rice, pasta, breads and baked goods and then on to this new GAPS diet. The GAPS diet includes more meat than I had ever eaten in my entire life coombined with bone broths, lard, duck fat and fermented foods. What in the world???!!!

As I think back to my weight growing up, I remember key numbers like 70lbs, 90lbs, 110 and up until last year in my 30's 125 lbs. I would stay at those numbers for years. My doctors told me that I could stand to gain some weight but I was never given an action plan and in this day of "thin is in" I was comfortable where I was and thought that any more weight would make me fat ...weird, I know.

(5 months before starting GAPS diet. May 2011, 120-125 lbs. Thin face & legs)
So thanks to divine timing and finding Dr. Natasha Campbell McBride's protocol for the GAPS diet, after just a few months of introducing lard into my diet, I started to gain weight. I remember very clearly when I first started eating the lard my body felt happy. It was a sensation that I had never felt before. A happiness! And now I know why. For the first time in my life, I was giving my body what it always wanted, healthy fat!

(November 2011, 7 weeks on GAPS. Fuller face, thicker thighs & legs)
The Secret to Gaining Weight
I think people had it half right when they would say: "Girl, you need some meat on your bones." Well, meat is just the side-kick. It's really the fat, the cartilage... the connective tissue (sounds gross but it's healing food) from the meat that I needed. Who knew?!

So I stopped eating anti-nutrients and filler food (grains and wheat) and took on the GAPS diet full-force.

(foods like this tasty bread actually caused me more harm than good)
I am proud to say that I am now 140 lbs. I had always been afraid of weighing over 125lbs. But at 5' 9" tall I carry the weight well. It's all muscle! I feel well balanced and more substantial. The wind can't blow me over so easily now :)

(May 2012, 7 months on GAPS)

So what about you?

Try these Tips to Gain Weight the Healthy Way:

* Take a break from wheat and grain based foods. These foods are very hard to digest but of course, soaking them overnight and fermenting them helps with digestion.

* Add bone broths to your diet. This food is very healing. Make a soup for example, with beef bones or a whole chicken. The fat and connective tissues are very healing for your gut.

* Add an extra source of fat like lard or duck fat to your bone broths or soups/stews. ...Real lard that you buy rendered or in it's whole state to render yourself. We're talking whole foods. No additives or preservatives.

* Eat fermented veggies to help with digestion and absorption.

Eliminate from your diet: junk food, fast foods and foods that you don't process yourself. Give yourself a chance to heal and you will see results. It may take many months, even a whole year. Following a whole foods diet with healthy fats and fermented food can possibly help you to reach your health goals. It's a BIG task to change your diet but, gaining weight the healthy way is definitely achievable.


Resources:

GAPS Diet Links:
http://gapsdiet.com/INTRODUCTION_DIET.html

http://www.gutandpsychologysyndrome.com/gaps-diet/

http://www.gaps.me/preview/

Excellent read on bread and how the entire process including milling and how flour is turned into bread over the centuries has been degraded which has impacted our health:
http://www.foodsmatter.com/miscellaneous_articles/candida_causes_general/articles/bread_staff_of_life.html


Have Fun with Fashion and a Healthy Life!

Try this Hip Pak for Effortless Style

You may call this bag a fanny pack or a Hip Pak either way this exclusively designed bag is luxurious both inside and out! And the best thing about this bag is that it's made in NYC. That's right! Luxury made in the USA.

If you love the touch of soft Italian lambskin leather with accents of Swarovski crystals then you will absolutely love this bag. It's a three-in-one bag which means that you can wear it as a hip pak, separate belt and separate purse. It's perfect for traveling.

I designed this Hip Pak with the idea of "What's in your first aid kit?" My friend and I held a travel theme party where we featured our exclusive designs. The idea was to have a multi-functional bag for a women's essentials while she travels. So I came up with the idea of this Hip Pak.

So while you're taking care of yourself on the inside by giving yourself the best nutrients for a radiant glow and doing your best to reduce toxins from everyday life, treat yourself to a beautiful bag that's luxurious inside and out as you are!

For more details and to purchase this exclusive Hip Pak visit the Kali Collection for your very own Hip Pak.

(Me wearing the Hip Pak at my cousin's wedding)

Have Fun with Fashion and a Healthy Life!

If you are interested in buying this exclusive Hip Pak please email me at: ksimba@newyorkaccents.com. Since there are only a few left in stock, I've taken this product down from our online store.

Buy Healthy Food & Shop with Confidence

Do you prefer shopping at the grocery store or at the farmer's market? A part of this whole "feeling good and looking good from the inside out" idea is knowing what you are truly eating and drinking.

If you're into boosting your health and really knowing where your food comes from then, you're likely to do a large portion of your shopping from a farmer's market. What a HUGE advantage it is to have conversations with the person or representative who raises and produces the food that we eat. This is a really big deal! What we consume affects our health whether we know it or not. So being able to shop with confidence and knowing exactly how the food is processed is critical to your well being.

I'll share three tips that just might sway you into doing all or most of your grocery shopping at your local farmer's market if you don't already.

But first, let's take a trip along the Hudson river to Hastings-on-Hudson, New York

...to meet Cecile Harrison and her son of Cowberry Crossing Farm
in Claverack, NY.

I love Cecile and her husband Richard's ethics and have been buying from them for about a year now. I can truly say that her meats are delicious and raised humanely. They also grow organic produce.

I am a big fan of their beef. It's the best that I've ever tasted (as I eat one of their burgers while I type). This burger tastes like a steak! It's very flavorful. Their beef is 100% grass fed and grass finished. I also buy their beef marrow bones for stews. Every time that we cook with beef bones from Cowberry Crossing farm you would think that we were baking a cake. The whole house gets infused with the smell of baked goods. Seriously, I'm not joking! Now, when we're not able to buy from the farm and have to go to _ _ (you know that well named "healthy" alternative grocery store), the bones there do not compare at all and of course, we do not get that wonderful baked goods smell.

Cowberry Crossing Farm is both certified biodynamic and organic which means that along with not using pesticides, hormones, GMO's or antibiotics, they practice balancing the health of the soil of the farm in proportion with the animals and plants raised and grown.

Yesterday at the market Cecile and I spoke about soy in animal feed in general and how animals grow faster with the addition of soy. We also spoke about drinking water quality. How cool is this---to be able to casually learn and exchange first hand information from your farmer at a farmer's market. I am not able to have this experience at a grocery store. The more that we have these conversations the more our farmer's can learn what concerns us and possibly tailor their farming to our needs. Try asking any of the large food companies that support GMO's and toxic chemical processing to change their ways. Change starts locally and grows nationally. So it's better to support practices that have your best interest.

So here are 3 reasons to shop at a farmer's market:
1) Shop with confidence: Get to know the farmer who raises or grows the food that you eat

2) Support local farmers that have your best interest and eat local food
***All farms are not created equal, that being said a farmer's market provides the setting so that you can learn about different farming practices. If the information that you learn about from one vendor does not suite your needs then, definitely move on to another vendor's booth. Keep seeking until you find that positive exchange and good vibe from the person you are buying your food from.

3) Eat freshly picked or processed foods. At the market, you'll most likely have healthier choices of whole foods that are not commercially processed with toxic preservatives. Your food is not sitting on a grocery store shelf for days, weeks, months in aluminum cans soaking in the chemicals from the cans, or sitting in plastic containers that leach chemicals into your food.

Buy healthy food and shop with confidence! So, enjoy a day at the market, sip some apple cider and browse the selections, chat and ask questions. This is a very rewarding experience. We do have choices.

In the New York Hudson valley area? Connect with Cowberry Crossing Farm.

Have fun with fashion and a healthy life!

Adventures with Hazelnut Butter

Are you hooked on nut butter like I am? If so, you've probably thought about making your own nut butter. Go ahead, try it! It's definitely a richer taste than commercial brands...and I'm talking organic nut butters. Every nut or seed butter that my boyfriend and I have made blows away any store bought brand that I've had. Although, I haven't had raw nut butter which by the way, raw nuts and seeds are not a part of my healing GAPS diet due to nuts being hard to digest.

So let's start with a rich hazelnut butter. We made this last weekend and it is D-E-L-I-C-I-O-U-S! Hazelnuts are definitely more involved than other nuts because of the process of removing the skins so try hazelnut butter on a day when you have time to do a few extra steps.

1) First, you'll want to soak raw organic hazelnuts. This goes for any nuts or seeds. The reason for soaking is to remove the phytic acid on the nuts. Wikipedia states that phytic acid is in the hull of nuts. Nuts produce phytic acid to protect themselves from being tampered with before germination. Phytic acid in nuts binds minerals during digestion so we loose important minerals that we would otherwise absorb. Also phytic acid inhibits enzymes that we need to digest our food. So it's very important to take this first step and soak the nuts overnight. Especially if you have digestive problems. According to the Weston A. Price foundation soaking nuts for 18 hours provides more removal of phytic acid.

Fill the jar half way with hazelnuts (they will expand). Soak nuts in a salt water solution. A high quality salt like Himilayian crystal salt and clean water. Use about a teaspoon or less of salt in a jar.

2) After the hazelnuts have been soaked, rinse and drain repeatedly until the water runs clear.

(these are clean nuts after rinse and drain process)

3) Remove skins to take away the bitterness in the skins. Place 1 cup of hazelnuts in a pot of boiling water. Then add 1 tablespoon of baking soda. This is the trick to removing the skins easily. Let boil for about 3 minutes.

4) Rinse in cool water. Grab a friend to help and have a party removing the skins.

5) Pan toast or oven toast the nuts at a low setting to further help with digestion. For this batch we used duck fat which helps to bring out the flavor. Hey if the French can cook with duck fat then, we can too! Animal fats also aid in digestion.

6) Get your blender or food processor and get ready to go! Once the nuts have cooled off. Place the nuts in the blender using the recommended setting. Process until you are satisfied with the consistency.

(used a Vitamix to process the nuts)

I know it's a lot of work but, it's definitely worth it! Enjoy your hazelnut butter with a bit of honey and savor the taste. Hazelnut butter is rich and has a warm, earthy flavor. Mmmmm, mmmm, mmmm!

(store in a glass jar & refrigerate)


Have fun with fashion and a healthy life!