Your body was not designed to become ill.
When we take care of our bodies, our bodies take care of us.
“Cold and Flu” is not a season.
High sugar intake is a season with buckets of Halloween candy, desserts on Thanksgiving, events surrounded by Christmas cookies, sweets at every holiday gathering, chocolates on Valentine’s Day & more desserts for Easter.
High stress is a season with family members who don’t get along, celebrations to coordinate among multiple households, perfect presents to find, money that shouldn’t be spent, food to prepare, shopping to do, places to be & schedules that are packed.
When we get busy, self care is the first thing to go. Morning lemon water, yoga stretches, regular sleep, nutritious breakfasts, veggies throughout the day, sufficient water intake.
70% of your immune system is in your gut. Nourishing your gut health is a top priority when it comes to maintaining a thriving immune system.
Probiotic before bed THEN 8oz lemon water right out of bed THEN protein for breakfast THEN morning coffee (organic, if you can). (This is my favorite probiotic and this is my favorite gut-loving coffee.)
Manage your stress with time carved out just for you. 10 minutes first thing in the morning before the day starts, 15 minutes before crawling into bed. However it works best in your schedule.
Quiet your mind. Read a chapter in a book for pleasure. Look up a video for some gentle yoga. Sit in stillness and pray or meditate. Go for a walk around the block. (This is my current favorite quick yoga video.)
Turn off your phone. Keep the screens off for a while. Don’t check your notifications first thing in the morning. Start your day slowly.
As tempting as it may be, limit sugary, processed foods as much as possible. These wreak havoc on your gut, which means they wreak havoc on your immune system.
Stay active during colder months. Make sure you’re getting at least 7 hours of sleep at night. Prioritize Vitamin D levels and water intake. (This is my favorite Vitamin D supplement and this is what I carry my water around in.)
And irony of ironies, worrying about getting sick makes you more susceptible to getting sick.
Donuts, bagels, toast, pancakes, waffles, croissants, cereal, breakfast bars. These are the things we hear about when it comes to breakfast.
But here’s the problem.
Carbs for breakfast lead to a blood sugar crash followed by cravings throughout the day - setting yourself up for one bad choice after another.
Carbs for breakfast are typically the easiest choices, but not the best way to start our day.
And I get it. The carbs are comfort food.
But we need to get in the habit of loving foods that love us back - and not in the toxic cycle of eating bad foods for comfort or convenience and then wondering why we feel less than our best.
Planning ahead is so key. And I know this can be tough, especially on a busy schedule.
My favorite solution for a high PROTEIN breakfast is an egg bake. And it’s actually good enough to have for dinner if you really wanted to!
We’re currently still in farmers market season which is great for a lot of different reasons.
Local, organic & in-season foods are the most nutritious for us. And the farmers market is the perfect place to find these!
You also know you’re getting the freshest produce possible, and you’re supporting a small business rather than giving your money to the large corporations.
The most time consuming part of making an egg bake is simply the vegetable prep. The washing and chopping.
If you absolutely need to (depending on the day, the week, or just your season of life) you can purchase pre-washed, pre-chopped veggies from the store.
Here are some of my favorites to use.
- Spinach
- Sweet peppers
- Broccoli
- Tomatoes
- Mushrooms
Going to the farmers market also gives you a chance to try something you’ve maybe never heard of before!
I typically choose about 3 different kinds of vegetables, and then I choose a meat. Either bacon or mild Italian sausage.
I pre-cook the meat in a skillet on the cooktop, then I add in my veggies and sauté. Once that’s done, I whisk up a dozen eggs and combine it all in a 9x12 glass pan & bake at 400F for 35 minutes.
It’s so yummy! And so easy to grab and go!! It can be eaten hot or cold, and it’s soooo much better for you than your “typical” breakfast choices.
Plus it’s a super easy way to get vegetables in at the most difficult time of day to get your veggies in and like it.
If you’re not convinced your mind and your gut are at all related, just think of any scenario where you've seen or smelled something that made you sick to your stomach.
My husband is a huge WWII buff, so there I was watching Brad Pitt and Shia LaBeouf plowing through Germany in a tank. Percy Jackson showed up as a newbie and had to clean the tank out as a sort of initiation. I'll spare you the gory details, but things he saw and smelled in there made him physically ill. It reminded me just how connected the mind is to the digestive system.
That’s just one example of how our minds and guts are constantly communicating with each other. So it makes sense that our mental state can affect our digestive system in other ways too.
Stress, anxiety and depression can all lead to gastrointestinal issues, wreaking havoc on the gut. And what happens when our gut is out of whack? Eczema flare ups. Then we get stressed or anxious about our eczema and it turns into a vicious cycle.
There’s a strong link between the mind and the gut, and it’s important to keep both in balance. Stress-reducing activities like yoga, meditation and deep breathing can help maintain good gut health.
Even more, do you find yourself being negative or complaining a lot? Making the extra effort to see the good in things rather than focusing on the bad can do wonders for your mental health - and therefore, your physical health. You'll be happier, and by extension you'll be healthier!
I challenge you to do ONE thing today that will make you happier, and see how that feels in your body.
Then try it again tomorrow. And the next day. Soon I'll be willing to bet you feel a huge difference.
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I was so discouraged but I knew what had happened. I was eating too much of my trigger foods.
Overindulgence seems to be a conversation around every holiday. Well, in this case it’s not so much overindulging in too many sweets or too much food in general.
For me, this past weekend was overindulgence in my trigger foods. Again.
The thing with this is that it’s okay to do every so often, because sometimes just having a nice time with loved ones and eating the dishes that were brought to share overshadows the obsession with avoiding all the foods you’re “not supposed to have.”
So I ate foods with garlic and onions and my hands (my eczema trigger point) LET ME KNOW IT.
Was I uncomfortable? Yes. I’ll be honest about that. As I’ve said in the past, my eczema burns and is quite uncomfortable. It can even get to the point of my hands bleeding.
And then of course I was at someone else’s house who doesn’t use the fragrance free soap I do, so that was making it worse with every hand wash.
In hindsight, I truly should have thought further ahead about what I was going to eat and I should have brought a dish that I knew I could eat with no problems.
Even health coaches can drop the ball with this!
Moral of the story is overindulgence is inevitable at times. (Or maybe moral of the story is bring your own dish, always. LOL) So damage control was the next step for me. When I got home the first thing I did was apply my favorite soothing ointment filled with skin-loving essential oils. Drinking plenty of water, taking digestive enzymes, taking a probiotic (sometimes I’ll double or triple up), drinking a warm cup of herbal tea & getting a good night’s rest are next on the list.
And of course, going back to avoiding my trigger foods again :)
Do you know which foods trigger your eczema? How do you handle flare ups? Tell me in the comments!
If you loved this blog post, there's more where that came from in my free Facebook group here. You'll want to get in there now because that's where I'll be launching a 5 Day Eczema Relief Training very soon!
Want to get a head start? You can also grab my new guide on 5 Steps to Taming an Eczema Flare Up here!
*Updating on July 1, 2023 to mention I'm divorced now, because I feel like that’s relevant 🙃*
Thinking back on my wedding day, I'm reminded of my motivation to eat cleaner & avoid eczema triggers. I knew there would be a LOT of pictures of my hands, nice and up-close. The last thing I wanted was for red, scaley skin to be in every picture from my wedding day.
I do not advocate for unsustainable, majorly restrictive diets. That’s not what our bodies were made for, but sometimes it’s necessary for a short period of time for your body to recalibrate.
Leading up to the wedding, I was restricting most fruits including fruit derivatives - palm oil (in most gluten free breads, crackers, baked goods, peanut butters, etc.), vitamin A palmitate (in most store-bought dairy alternative milks), grape-based vinegar & anything with avocado, olives or coconut. Anything with garlic or onions was out too.
I didn’t come up with this list on my own. I was tested for food sensitivities by a naturopathic doctor. That didn’t make this list any easier to follow.
And you bet your bottom dollar I indulged like crazy on the honeymoon - eating the foods I had been depriving myself of for so long.
That list of food sensitivities is not a fluke. When I eat too much of certain foods on that list, I’m destined for a flare up. But I’m learning my boundaries.
A year later, I'm able to eat some of the foods on my trigger list without having a flare up.
The trick is to know what your body can handle, and not to overdo it. And if your body starts to rebel whether in the form of an eczema flare up or an unsettled stomach, you know you need to pull back.
The moral of the story is I was desperate for clear skin on my wedding day, and for me that meant restricting for a bit. But not forever.
Variety is the spice of life. Your body craves variety. Feeding it the same 3 foods all the time is not only boring, but it’s not good for your body systems - including your immune system.
Your immune system depends on a healthy gut, and a healthy gut is made up of a diverse microbiome. A diverse microbiome is nurtured by a variety in diet.
So just remember - if you need to go on a special diet for a special reason for a short amount of time, that’s totally okay. But don’t forget to keep some variety in your diet, and your life for that matter!
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