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Monday, December 31, 2018

From Fat to Fit --Living Your Best Life!

                Fitness = Exercise + Nutrition

Bodies at rest tend to remain at rest unless acted upon by an outside force. It's the laws of inertia and thermodynamics. So be your own force and get your body moving!

As many as 50 million Americans are living sedentary lives, putting them at increased risk of health problems and even early death, a leading expert in exercise science told the American Psychological Association today.

Given that these individuals are doubling their risk of developing numerous health conditions compared with those who are even moderately active and fit, we’re looking at a major public health problem.

The truth is that although exercise is VERY important, they say that six pack abs are made in the kitchen and it's true. A lean physique is 80% nutrition!

There is no need to reinvent the wheel, just look at what successful people do! Dwayne Johnson is 46 years young and has a superb physique so let's take him as an example.  His full regimen is here.

When he is in beast mode, his diet consists of:
oatmeal, egg whites, steak, chicken, halibut, cod, white rice, broccoli, asparagus, baked potato, salad and protein powder. *

He also takes vitamins and supplements such as glucosamine to protect his joints

What he does NOT consume:
bread, pasta, pizza, pastries, (any gluten), cereal, hot dogs, hamburgers, wings, potato chips, fried food, dairy, Starbucks, fast food, alcohol etc.

Note that he LOVES pizza and brownies and pancakes so when he is done training for events or movies he goes an a major BINGE and overcompensates for the time lost, which I do not advocate. Instead, I recommend (unless you are training for a competition) to have 1 cheat meal per week where you have something you like such as a pasta dish and dessert that you miss or a breakfast that you love. I recommend quinoa pasta, or black bean pasta (from Trader Joe's). It has a higher protein content and no refined white carbs. I recommend trying to avoid swinging from one extreme to another so that one does not go from fit to obese like a yo-yo. This happens in the body building world.

The thing about extreme dieting is that you can feel deprived and cranky/moody when you don't eat what you are used to eating. There's a lot to say about the focus, will power and self-control that people who undertake these kinds of regimen's accomplish and how they transcend their desires and become a master over their bodies. I know of some people on very high spiritual levels who are able to conquer and negate physical temptations and bodily pleasure to the point that it does not exist at all for them but that's a rare breed and not where most of us are holding.

In general I feel that if you eat 80% healthy, it's good enough but there is always room for improvement. I'm going to start the new year with a 90 day modified Dwayne plan (will add salmon and lamb for example as a protein source and kale as a green source) and see what happens. Who's with me?

Don't be part of the 35% of sedentary Americans. Make it a lean 2019!







Your Imperfections Are Perfect!

I can give you at least 2 reasons to be happy with what you already have.

Reason 1 It doesn't always work out as you planned. Transformation in the wrong direction...



Reason 2 From beauty to beast, bigger isn't better.  Your face isn't Texas. 



You can find dozens more reasons online.  Stop trying to fix your face, it's already perfect as it is.  Unless you were born with a cleft palate or developed skin cancer or some kind of dermatological condition that needs to be fixed, please don't go messing with your face to try to improve what you were given. You really are enough and you really have enough natural beauty.  Believe it and bring it out by working on your confidence and self worth.

People like Michael Jackson and Joan Rivers had so many procedures, it killed them in the end.  Too much unnecessary medical intervention is deadly!  A doctor with morals, values and a conscious would not be performing botox and other procedures on a 19 year old beautiful girl for example.  What this girl is missing is self-esteem, not collagen.  Her fixing her face is a form of self-hatred and rejecting who she is and wanting to change her outside when what really needs to change is her inside (thoughts, attitude, beliefs, confidence etc).

And isn't it ironic that people do things to make them more attractive and it actually makes them MUCH less attractive?  Elective procedures make people's features look exaggerated, unhuman, unnatural and even grotesque.  

Like in everything in life, we must assess the risk or the cost to benefit ratio before proceeding.  In this article, the ethical anesthetist gives links to many cases of people who died from elective procedures. 

"As an anaesthetist I assess sick patients booked for surgery to treat disease. Sometimes after open discussions between the patient, surgeon and myself we decide that the risks of operation exceed the benefits. This decision, that their quality of life is greater through avoiding surgery, is never made easily.

There is no medical benefit to cosmetic procedures and there is significant risk of immediate and long term harm. Any perceived psychological benefits are influenced by the heavy advertising people are subjected to. Societal pressure impairs people’s ability to accept their own natural beauty."


If you would have told someone in the 1940s (during the Polio epidemic) that people would be purposely having their facial muscles paralyzed in the future, they would think you were crazy.  I think we, as a society, are really acting crazy.  Risking death to fill already beautiful people with plastic parts (silicon, saline etc) is indeed crazy.  It shows that we value a perceived "perfection" over life itself.  It shows that we care more about how we look than anything else.   It shows that we reject our imperfections, both our inner and outer flaws.  It shows that we don't believe G-d knew what he was doing.  It shows that we are not happy with ourselves.  It shows that we can't accept ourselves or others the way that we/they are.  Isn't this a pity?  Isn't it tragic?  How did we become such vain beings?  

Being human, by definition means having flaws.  All kinds of flaws.  We are perfectly imperfect beings.  We can accept, embrace and acknowledge that without thinking any less of ourselves!  It's okay, you have permission to have expression lines, scars, stretch marks, freckles, small breasts, a big nose... it's ALL GOOD, It's all from G-d!


I will never understand why people elect to inject Botulism organism a (botox) in their forehead which is so close to their brains and think that there could be no long term detrimental consequences. Who would have thought self induced facial paralysis would be a thing?

I had a 19 year old patient in drug rehab who already started with botox. This person needs to work on self-esteem issues and not on fixing problems that don't exist. Perhaps obsessing over her image is her way of evading her negative emotions.

I think people should work on fixing their inner flaws instead of being fixated on their outer appearance. If you don't want to leave your face alone, at least try something benign such as facial acupuncture, it has similar effects with side benefits such as better health and vitality and does not involve shooting toxins into your face.

People don't realize the risks involved in these common procedures.  There is evidence that botox does alter the brain and the implications are not yet fully understood.

Today I took a fitness class in Aventura, FL (an affluent neighborhood). One of the ladies in the class was obviously older with a noticeably stretched out face. It is so obvious that she had work done. Who do people think they are fooling? No one thinks she looks 10 or 20 years younger than her actual age. Her age is plainly visible even though the lines are gone. The only fool she is fooling is herself.

I know this is mean but I'm going to say it anyway. Botox does not fix ugly. You do not become a more beautiful version of yourself because you got rid of your wrinkles. You still look like yourself. You cannot become beautiful by erasing some expression lines. All you did was erase your expressions but we can still see your neck for example and all the original facial features. 

Aging is something that we should embrace. Not everyone gets to age, it is a gift given to the lucky. We should accept it and welcome it with grace and humility instead of fighting it and resisting it as if it makes us somehow better or more worthy of being loved

Everyone should feel beautiful and confident about themselves but that shouldn't entail feeling the need to inject your face with a toxin. We don't know the long term effects of botulism on the brain. What if in 20 years from now it was pulled off the market like many drugs have been and deemed unsafe? I wouldn't want to be that Guinea pig with regrets.

For natural facial rejuvenation I recommend facial lymphatic drainage massage which you can do on yourself using YouTube tutorials, galvanic micro-current wand (you can buy online), using a cleanser, applying hyaluronic acid containing serums, dead sea mask, periodic facials, drinking lots of water, eating a clean nutritious diet, good sleep, meditation and stress reduction. Your attitude and outlook on life is reflected on your face.

Please don't give in to the high pressures of your peers and society to do unnecessary elective procedures. Vanity isn't worth permanent brain damage or worse!

You are already beautiful just the way you are!










Thursday, December 27, 2018

Quantity VS Quality

There are so many weight loss myths out there. I shared an uber with a personal trainer not long ago and I told her that I want to lose 10 lbs. She said I needed to eat MORE and she is RIGHT! When I did the body building competition I had to eat every 3 hours. I was consuming more calories and I was leaner. This is counter-intuitive: eat more*, weigh less. How is this possible? Because the calorie counting model that nutritionists teach is outdated and wrong. It's not about calories, it's about boosting metabolism (the rate your body BURNS calories). Also, not all calories are created equally. Refined white sugar carbs won't get rid of stubborn fat but a diet rich in green vegetable carbs and lean protein can. If you eat lean, clean and green, without skipping meals, drink plenty of water and exercise 5 days per week for an hour, you should be in good shape. If not, you need to research your body type (and maybe even blood type) and do some fine tuning according to your genetic constitution. Taking emotional inventory is also important to make sure food consumption is not being used as an emotional crutch.

*According to data from the Harvard Health Newsletter, after walking two 15-minute miles and weightlifting for 30 minutes, a 125-pound person burns only 210 calories and a 185-pound person burns 333 calories. So as you can see the calorie counting method just doesn't add up mathematically to the results that they claim are true.

If weight loss equaled calories consumed minus calories burned then all people eating 4,000+ calories per day should be morbidly obese (it's impossible to burn that much in a day with exercise*). But they are not necessarily, some have a very low body fat percentage. The movie star Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, in order to maintain his legendary physique, eats more than 5,000 calories a day. The calories, spread over seven meals, include roughly 2.3 pounds of cod, a fish particularly rich in protein.


Case and Point: If I posted the visual aid above without the words and asked you which man ate 2,000 calories per day more than the other man, most people would guess that Patient X had the higher calorie consumption because he looks over-weight.
The truth is that it's not calories that count, it's metabolism. How do you boost metabolism? Small frequent meals and exercise. I am quite certain that WHAT they eat is also very different. The Standard American Diet is full of unhealthy fats, processed foods, additives, preservatives, food coloring and refined carbohydrates. THAT plus a sedentary lifestyle is why Patient X is Morbidly Obese while The Rock is, well... A beast & A LEGEND! You can eat more and weigh less. It's what you eat and how you eat it that matter too, not just numbers!!!
So stop counting your calories (unless you are in a body building competition) and start eating lean, clean, and green and GET MOVING! There is no magic pill for success, you put in the effort and time will do the rest.

Lastly, don't be fooled by appearances. Some people may look skinny on the outside but they could have a lot of fat around their organs on the inside and can actually be in bad cardiovascular shape. I remember in high school a very skinny girl (genetically vata ectomorph banana small frame) had 3% more body fat than I did (pitta mesomorph pear medium frame) and I was physically bigger than her. So looks can be deceiving.
The bottom line is that if you are not getting the results that you want then it may be time to modify your nutrition and fitness routine. 2019 is a great opportunity to do that. Wishing everyone a happy and healthy New Year.


If you don't believe eating clean works, here's my personal testimonial. When I was in graduate school I did the allergy elimination diet to try to find the source of my sinusitis. I ate only organic fruits and vegetables, nuts, seeds, gluten free grains including white rice, lamb, lentils, beans, and olive oil. I am 5'5" and I started off at 125 lbs. 6 weeks later I was down to 118 lbs. I went to my naturopathic clinic at school because I didn't like that I became so thin. My legs looked like I was riding a horse. I was eating PLENTY of calories but I could not keep the weight on. They advised me to eat more nut butters. The take home message is that your body will shed whatever it doesn't need when you give it what it does need! Our bodies need clean protein and vitamins and minerals from nutritious food. Eat good, feel good, look good. Good?

So when it comes to quality vs quantity, quality wins by a landslide! 


Wednesday, December 26, 2018

Trauma Happens: Recovering from Life

I had a dream once that I was knocked down by 3 consecutive tidal waves. I came to understand the meaning of that dream many years later. 3 big unexpected life events which occurred in my life at ages 11, 25, and 32 that totally crushed me and yet I was able to stand up afterwards unharmed. I believe the lesson in these events were humility, trust, and faith. G♡D was showing me that He runs my life and my illusion of control is just that, an illusion. My mantra is בידו אפקיד רוחי. (In His hands I entrust my spirit). I acknowledge that אין עוד מלבדו (It's all G♡D) and I see that it's also true with unforeseen blessings. It's all out of my hands and beyond my control. I am grateful to finally absorb it so no more tidal waves are necessary.


When I was 11 years old or so, my parents got divorced.  As a coping mechanism my young psyche developed perfectionism, probably believing that if I was perfect this would not have happened, my world would not have fallen apart.  So I was the perfect daughter, an honor role student, skipped 8th grade, graduated high school with honors, lettered in Track & Field, tutored my peers, held numerous jobs before, during and after school, and kept myself occupied with sports, music, and friends.  I didn't know what a crutch perfectionism would be until I became an adult and a healer called me out on it.  At first, I was in denial.  After all, I half-assed a lot of things that I did, how could I be a perfectionist?  I came to understand later that a perfectionist doesn't necessarily do everything perfectly but rather expects life and people to be perfect and suffers repeated disappointment because both life and people fail to meet this impossible and unrealistic expectation.  I was subconsciously hard on myself and therefore also very critical and judgmental of others.  Even though I am aware of this today, it is still something I need to constantly work on every time I catch myself doing it.  It's hard to stop things that are on autopilot but luckily I have people in my life who help me to realize when I am falling into these hardwired patterns so that I can consciously make better choices.  My husband is good at helping me with this.

When I was 25 years old, I was drugged and raped by someone I knew and trusted, a friend who I had worked with for almost a year.  I didn't tell a single soul about it.  Not my parents (who I am very close to), not the police, not a doctor, not even my best friend.  I couldn't even tell myself (admit, accept, acknowledge) that it happened.  I was in shock and denial about it and I suppressed it as if it never existed.  I became full of (self) doubts.  My coping mechanism for tidal wave trauma number two was similar to the first one, I got very busy.  I didn't have time to deal with the (emotional) pain.  I was immersed in 2 full time graduate programs: Naturopathic Doctor and Acupuncture, I woke up at 5am and went swimming at 6am (to train for a triathlon), I was sometimes in school from 9am to 9pm because of the double track I was in that had not even been created at the time but I pioneered and navigated it on my own. I trained for and competed in 2 half marathons, 2 full marathons, 1 rollerblading marathon, and a 200+ mile bike ride from Seattle to Portland. I got a massage therapy license and a fitness instructor license. I taught Pilates at my school and at a local gym.  I took up Latin Dancing-- sometimes going out 4 or more days per week and coming home in the wee hours of the morning. I even traveled to Alaska, Hawaii, California and had an active social life and dated.  Rape? As the famous meme goes: Ain't no body got time fo dat!  

So I kept this secret for about a decade.  Then I read a story online about a woman who had been raped and it hit me.  It was before the #metoo movement but that's what I felt. ME TOO!  I was finally ready to deal with the skeleton in my closet that I pretended wasn't there.  I wrote and published an article anonymously online about my experience and what I learned from it in order to try to help and encourage others in a similar situation to get the help that they need and to feel supported and that they are not alone.  People commented on my article that they were glad I shared my story and that it helped them in some way.  I wrote and sent my rapist a letter in the mail.  I found out that he had a daughter and asked him if he would have wanted what he did to me to happen to her. I didn't include a return address, and I don't know for sure if he got it but I wanted him to know that I knew what he did to me even though he drugged me and I was unconscious during the act.  I suggested that if he felt remorse he should volunteer for a rape prevention organization to make amends for what he did to me.  By the time that I was ready, able and willing to deal with it, the statute of limitations had already passed and I could no longer take him to court.  I rest assured that Divine Justice prevails and everyone gets what they deserve in the form of karma.

At the time when I published my article, only pseudonyms were used in the story.  I didn't want my name attached to the story.  Although I didn't feel guilt or shame, per se, like many victims or survivors of sexual abuse do, I was afraid that if a patient or potential patient would Google my name that they would find the article and it would be TMI-Too Much Information: Not something you feel comfortable knowing about your health care provider.  I didn't want anyone to judge me or feel pity for me.  I wanted to hide that part of me because it was too uncomfortable to bear.  That all changed recently when another woman shared her similar story online in the form of a Ted Talk.  I felt fortunate that my incident didn't give me nightmares or Post Traumatic Stress Disorder but something she said, hit home for me.  





In my life I seek to empower those around me: friends, family, patients, social media followers.  I often said things like, "What you think of me is none of my business."  I want people not to be afraid of being their true authentic self.  I want people to be free from the burden of seeking outside approval or validation.  And yet, I was being a hypocrite.  By publishing my article anonymously, I was hiding an unpleasant fact about myself that I didn't want people to know about because I was trying to project a perfect false image of myself and having been raped was not part of the narrative that I embraced as being part of my social history.  Instead of practicing what I preached I was practicing, "do as I say, not as I do."  

When this hit me, I reached out to the publisher and asked her to please add my name as the author of the article.  I was ready to be a role model of authenticity.  I will no longer play into society's errant notion of blaming and shaming the victim.  If I were the criminal in this case, THAT would be something to be embarrassed and ashamed about.  But something happened to me, against my will, and I decided not to be held hostage to it any longer.  I realized that if someone found my article online and didn't want to be my patient because of it, then that person was not meant to be my patient. However, I sense that the opposite is true.  

After over 3 years of working at a drug rehab center, when I finally had the courage to share my story with my community acupuncture session, it was following watching the Ted Talk video above together with them in a group and things clicking into place for me.  Instead of being rejected as I had feared, people came up to me afterwards and hugged me and shared their similar stories with me.  I received empathy, love, support, and compassion not judgement, criticism, rejection, and shame. My fears were in vain.  What a breath of fresh air.  To be open and honest and real is far more respectable, productive, and liberating than being secretive, fearful, and false.  When your thoughts, speech and actions are all congruent, you can have inner peace.  It is a gift we can give ourselves, being authentic.  

My patients were surprised when I told them that I didn't turn to drugs and alcohol to numb the pain because many staff working at recovery centers are also in recovery.  I suppose sports, studies, and salsa dancing are a healthier coping mechanism than substance abuse, but underneath those healthy things I was doing was the emotional pain that I didn't want or know how to face and deal with.  We were more similar than different, we just chose a different means of avoidance and distraction.  We both sought to deny or evade an uncomfortable past event we just went about it in different ways.  

Now I know that the only way to get over the pain, is to go through the pain.  If I could go back to my 25 year old self, I would have trusted myself and gone to make a police report.  I didn't want to accuse a friend of raping me (since I had no memory of the actual rape due to the date rape drug that was put in my water) but the police could have sent me to a medical examiner who may have found physical evidence of the incident but I didn't know that back then and I was shocked and traumatized, I couldn't think straight.  I do wish I would have told someone about it.  20/20 hindsight as they say.  Life is lived forwards not backwards.  As one of my teachers says, "Don't ask why me, ask what now?"  

So now my mission is to be a resource and lamplighter for those who went through difficult times to come out triumphant instead of victimized and downtrodden.  I seek to lift others up who have also been hit by the tidal waves of life.  We all have scars and baggage and traumas that we survived.  The question is do we continue to live in the past and suffer by losing our power and freedom or do we push forward and thrive not despite of the trauma but rather because we authentically embrace and accept the totality of our selves and all of our experiences.  

My third tidal wave came in the form of an unplanned out-of-wedlock pregnancy.  This was a major crisis for me.  The pregnancy, the stigma, and being a single unwed mother was not part of the script that I wrote for myself.  Surrendering my ego and following the Creator's plan was not easy but I see that with the other 2 trauma's He was breaking me in.  I thought I was in charge of my life and He showed me over and over again that stuff happens that's out of my control and life goes on, just like in theater, the show must go on. The question is how would I adapt, would I become bitter or better?  

Just like a toddler who is learning how to walk repeatedly falls and must keep getting up without dwelling on all the past failures, we too as adults get knocked down by life and must repeatedly get up.

The truth is that after my third tidal wave I opened a business and closed it 3 years later.  It didn't take off as I had hoped, wanted, or planned.  Overall,  I felt defeated by life, like nothing was going my way, as planned, as anticipated, or as I had envisioned.  I felt beat down, fatigued, and discouraged.  

So now I'm taking off my mask and putting myself in recovery.  Recovering from not believing in myself, recovering from feeling like my parent's divorce was my fault, recovering from perfectionism, recovering from not accepting my imperfect life, recovering from fear of rejection, recovering from denial, recovering from negative self-assessments, recovering from life not going as I planned. 

I never wanted my parent's divorce, rape, and having a child out-of-wedlock to be part of my narrative.  I never wanted it to be part of my story.  But there it was, and there it will always be and the only way over it is through it.  Instead of running and hiding, all I can do is face the music and dance and help others to do the same.  We are all injured and wounded warriors in our own ways but we must be there for one another and remember that the wound is where the light enters.

I may not be able to erase my past but I can certainly cultivate a compassionate future of acceptance, surrender, faith, confidence, trust, and empathy for myself and others.  That is all there is left to do now.