What scares you?

Top 5 Things I LOVED This Wk:

1. Driving past Abundance Street in Terrigal and wishing that was my address.

2. Cutting into a boiled egg and finding out the yolk is the perfect consistency. Love it when that happens!

3. Painting wriggly three year old’s toes.

4. Breakfast at the Oldfield’s: the kettle boiling, coffee machine whirring, the smell of hot cross buns, the toaster popping, the scraping of butter on toast, kiddies giggling, the Rip Curl Pro heats playing on the laptop.

5. Homemade minestrone soup with quinoa, fresh parsley and a dollop of cottage cheese on top. It tasted even better at breakfast the next two mornings.

Emma the Naturopath xx

PS. Place a few pot plants around your house to help purify the air.

Hmmm… Can somebody tell me why this is?

When a man comes into my shop and buys a bottle of liquid eg. fish oil or cherry juice extract, I inform them of the correct dosage and offer them a free measuring cup and they reply “Nah I just swig it from the bottle”.

Or they buy some powder eg. Ultra Muscleze or vitamin C, and I’ll tell them to take one teaspoon and they reply “Oh I just shake it into my glass”.

I watch my own husband take his supplements and he does the same thing.

When I tell women to take one teaspoon they say “A heaped teaspoon of just level?”

What’s up with rebelling against measuring? Don’t want to dirty a spoon? Enlighten me gentlemen?

Emma the Naturopath xx

PS. You are welcome for the Matt Corby eye candy to put a pep in your step.

Snack like a naturopath… Well, 80% of the time!

This is my “go to” snack when I’m feeling peckish at home.

Grab a large mug and add:

A tin of fish (tuna/salmon/sardines/whatever)

Finely dice:

Red capsicum

Red onion

Celery

A pickled gherkin

Fresh chilli

Parsley or basil from the garden

Add in:

A squeeze of lemon or lime

Some cracked pepper

A sneaky dollop of good quality mayo

And mix it all in!

Buy plain fish in olive oil rather than buying the “mango chilli” or whatever flavour. Add your own twist. I buy the Fish 4 Ever brand. It’s sustainably line caught and in organic olive oil. But I’m a fish snob.

Great on corn thins and rice crackers with some sliced tomato and sprouts, use vegie sticks like snow peas or parsnip as dippers, mix through some cooked brown rice or quinoa, add to a salad wrap, a baked potato topping, add a poached egg on top or just eat it with a fork straight from the bowl!!

What’s your fave quick and healthy snack?

Top 5 Things I LOVED This Wk:

1. Asking a customer of ours if she knew a good electrician and she exclaimed “Yes… and he’s an Aries!” Well he did a good job so I suppose Aries make good electricians!

2. Reversing my car into my husband’s van because I was distracted perving on him without his shirt on.

3. A brand new pair of ksubi jeans wrapped in black tissue. Thanks Edwards!

4. Receiving an email from a lovely naturopathic student in the States who if a fan of the Facebook page/blog and shared late week’s Sunshine Bites recipe with her friends over there. So touching! Talk about sharing the love!!

5. When someone told me they were blood type C.

Emma the Naturopath xx

PS. Come into the shop and have your zinc levels tested for FREE!!

“The greatest danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss it, but that it is too low and we reach it”. Michelangelo

I learnt a life lesson at personal training last week. Who knew…

We’d been meeting up for about a month or so and my trainer asked me how I was finding our sessions so far.

I told her that I’d been enjoying them but I was really struggling with the cardio section of our sessions. “I’m just not a very good runner”.

For some reason I expected her to say “Well let’s just ease off a bit and go easy on the running. Actually let’s just not worry about it and focus on something else”.

Her reply: “Well we’ll ramp it up and go for longer and increase the intensity”. Umm… excuse me?!

It reminded me how easy it is to shy away from a challenging situation that you’re not good at or that scares you. It’s a habit to continually just do the things you’re good at and turn a blind eye to the challenges that will put you out of your comfort zone but ultimately make you grow. It’s comforting for the ego.

Like when studying for an anatomy and physiology exam at uni, I’d keep revising the digestive and nervous systems instead of the integumentary or musculoskeletal systems which were harder to memorise. Or in my daily yoga practice, how I focus my routine around the poses I’m good at and brush over the challenging ones by only offering them half the amount of time.

It’s so confronting yet liberating when you uncover a subconscious pattern about yourself. When you acknowledge what it is you do, you can start breaking barriers and mindfully move forward. What scares you? When was the last time you put yourself out there?

Emma the Naturopath xx

Eleanor Roosevelt - "Do one thing every day that scares you."

Head over to Facebook and like "Essential Health Coffs" xx

Challenges.

Things happen in three’s right? For example last week I had expensive dental work done, paid my car rego and bought a new 10 class pilates pass. “Ouch” cried my bank balance (and me from the dentist chair).

But a more significant set of threes also occurred last week:

1. Carol: Last year my mum passed on her antique wooden spinning wheel to this wild and vibrant hippie named Carol. Carol started going to spinning classes where she said she would spend the whole 45 minutes swearing in frustration and laughing with joy. She said there was not one class where she didn’t learn something new.

On Saturday she walked into the shop beaming and announced that she had something for me. She placed a crumpled brown bag on the counter and pulled out a pair of soft grey woollen slippers. She knitted them from the first lot of wool that she spun on the wheel. Carol pointed out a thin piece of turquoise wool which she had tied around each ankle and explained that the wool had been on the wheel when mum gave it to her, therefore it must have been the last thing mum had made herself.

Carol gave me the slippers because she said that she wants me to experience the wonderful journey she experienced on this challenge of learning a new skill. And of course, the slippers fit perfectly on my larger than normal feet.

2. Pilates: If you’ve spent more than 15 minutes with me, you will know that I’m head over heels for pilates. I started in February this year and my teacher suggested that I come and check out the advanced class on Thursday night. I went along with a belly full of fish cakes, expecting to sit quietly in the corner to see what I was up for at the end of the year when I was aiming to start thinking about advanced.

“Grab a mat” said my teacher... Forty five minutes later I was a puffed, exhausted and every fibre of my body was pulsing. My triceps didn’t even want to talk to me again til four days later. My teacher gave me the option of staying in Intermediate and building strength or moving up to Advanced if I felt like a challenge. Once she said that word, I knew what I wanted to do.

3. The card: The final piece of the puzzle was when I picked an affirmation card this morning out of the little red teacup next to my bed. I turned over the yellow card and read “CHALLENGE YOURSELF”.

So I opened up my laptop and decided to tell you about it.

When you’re at a cross road next, think “Which one is the easy option and which one is the challenge”?

“Anything unattempted remains impossible”. Unknown Author

"Be not afraid of growing slowly, be afraid only of standing still”. Chinese proverb

“Challenges are what make life interesting; overcoming them is what makes life meaningful”. Joshua J. Marine