Entries from August 2007 ↓

I’m feeling a little emotionally broken today and my health is suffering for it. When I’m feeling upset or broken I lose my appetite. When I eat, what I eat and the quantity change completely.

Happy Frances snacks throughout the day on healthy foods like sourdough toast, nuts, fruit and organic muesli bars with three large meals for breakfast, lunch and dinner. I don’t have to put any effort into what I eat, I choose to eat well, regularly and often because I love eating and I love eating healthy foods.

When I’m feeling broken or upset, eating becomes more of a chore. I lose my appetite, occasionally even skipping meals to eat snack foods instead. My sugar intake increases considerably and for some reason I eat a lot of white bread toast. I guess that’s my comfort food.

I’m not broken enough today to completely lose my appetite but in the past I’ve lost a lot of weight because of emotional stuff. In the weeks after I found out my boyfriend of eight years had found someone else, I felt so nauseous, constantly, that I hardly ate at all. I remember returning to work the following week and having to force myself to eat lunch. I’d delay it for as long as possible because I just didn’t enjoy eating food anymore. Even when I did eat, just about all I could stomach was very plain foods.

It got to the point where the weight was just falling off me and I started to worry that I was becoming overly thin. When I’m unhappy I also get gut problems which means the food I was eating wasn’t getting absorbed properly. I was also exercising for at least an hour every day because I always up my exercise routine when I’m unhappy to help clear my mind. So, essentially I was eating nothing, doing a heap of exercise and my digestion system was constantly out of whack. My family started making comments about my weight and I was having trouble fitting into my clothes because they’d become too loose and baggy. Although I was happy I could now fit into those new skinny jeans that are in fashion at the moment, I didn’t like the idea of being any thinner than what I’d become.

When we think of ‘emotional eating’ we usually think of over eating but under eating is a huge problem as well. I felt enormous stress and frustration that I just couldn’t eat. Not having any fuel in my body also made me feel tired and rundown and probably played a bit of havoc on my immune system. The idea of losing more weight also made me feel quite panicked because I didn’t feel like I had much left on me to lose.

I was lucky that I have a fantastic Chinese Herbalist who was able to give me some herbs and teach me a few meditations to help calm my stomach down. My appetite didn’t take long to return and I dropped back to my normal exercise routine. Five months down the track I’ve put the weight I lost back on and am feeling much healthier for it.

Unfortunately there are a lot of depression sufferers who have to deal with this under-eating problem more long term. If you’re one of these people, please speak to your Chinese Herbalist or Naturopath.

Frances Kerr

I got a comment today from David about where to find good vegetarian recipes online. Thanks for the comment David! Unfortunately I don’t have much for him because I get my recipes from friends, books, and a heap of different sites on the net. I’m a bit of a recipe hoard so I don’t often cook the same thing over and over, I love to try new flavours. If anyone can help David out with their favourite vegetarian recipe site, leave a comment

In the meantime, this is a very easy vegetarian recipe that I think I first saw in one of the online Sydney newspapers. It’s one of my personal favorites that I never get sick of.

Roasted vegetables with homemade tomato salsa

• Your favourite roasting vegetables. I love potato, pumpkin, large mushrooms, beetroot, garlic and roma tomatoes.
• Rosemary
• Thyme
• Feta cheese
• Olive oil

Tomato Salsa

• 500g very ripe tomatoes chopped
• 2 tbsp olive oil
• 2 garlic cloves crushed
• Chili flakes to taste
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp sugar
• Basil leaves

1 Preheat over to 200° celsius. Chop the vegetables into large chunks then place into a baking dish.
2 Drizzle with olive oil and season with the rosemary and thyme, and salt and pepper.
3 Roast for one hour or until your liking (I like mine crispy but not burnt!).
4 Place vegetables in serving bowls. Spoon over salsa and crumbled feta cheese.

Tomato Salsa
1 Combine all ingredients into a saucepan and bring to the boil, stirring.
2 Simmer for 15 minutes or until thick.

For those of you who aren’t vegetarian, and I’m not so I’ve had this variation occasionally too, add organic sausages to the veges. Oven baked sausages are delicious, and it all goes sooo well with the salsa. Enjoy!

Frances Kerr

I received a very late house warming present a couple of weeks ago, it was a ’sleep tight’ tea from T2.

Sleep tight is a herbal tea that relaxes your body and surprisingly works on your mind too. I’m a terrible sleeper. On average it takes me around half an hour to a full hour to get to sleep. I have a very restless mind which keeps me awake.

My friend who bought the tea for me was suffering from work stress related sleepless nights. The tea worked so well for her that she bought me some for my house warming then kept asking me daily if I’d tried it yet, she seemed really excited about it. When I finally did remember to try it I was REALLY surprised by the results. Not only did the tea relax my body, but it seemed to calm my mind as well.

You need to drink the tea in the winding down time of the night. When you’re in bed reading a book or watching TV at the end of the night. We’ve both tried the tea when we’re still working late at night (or blogging in my case) and it doesn’t work nearly as well. I usually make a pot of the tea then go to bed with a book and the teapot and cup beside me. It’s a great cosy thing to do in winter.

Sleep tight also tastes really nice. A lot of herbal teas can taste really nasty but this one has a gorgeous subtle flavour which can only be described by its ingredients, which include lemon balm leaf, wood betony, jasmine flower, lavender flower and rose petals.

When buying tea you can tell the quality by the size of the leaves, big chunky leaves and dried ingredients such as flowers and petals are a really good sign. Some tea contains entire dried flower buds!

Tea-ology

Everyone must know I have this thing for tea because around the same time my sister started emailing me about a tea store in Western Australia called tea-ology. I love the tea-ology tag line, ‘no caffeine, no pesticides, no baggage’, that’s fantastic. Whoever thought of that tagline is a genius. Tea-ology has four healing teas which include ‘gut detox’, ‘liver detox’, ‘kidney + bladder detox’ and ’skin detox’. I ordered two packets of the skin detox tea which is recommended for acne, eczema and psoriasis so we’ll see how it goes. My dad suffers from eczema so mum’s going to get him some to see if it works too.

Tea-ology recommends drinking their teas twice a day. I had my first cup of the skin detox tonight and it was delicious, it had a very subtle peppermint flavour. The packet describes this tea as ‘a subtle infusion of organic chamomile, red clover and peppermint amongst other healing herbs with a mild, sweet flavour’ and I’d say they’re spot on.

I’m very excited about what the tea promises so I sure hope they can deliver. Apparently the herbs in skin detox are combined for their blood cleansing, anti-infective, and anti-inflammatory properties to soothe inflamed skin, open clogged pores, remove blood impurities and improve skin circulation. It’ll be great if it does all that! I’m going to be so beautiful and radiant in a couple of months, look out boys!

For more information on these fantastic teas visit these websites …

• T2 – http://www.T2tea.com
• Tea-ology – http://www.tea-ology.com.au

Frances Kerr

My laziness forced me to buy some natural toothpaste a few days ago. I was on my way home from work and needed a few things including toothpaste which I’d completely run out of. I couldn’t be bothered making a trip to a ‘normal’ food market so I just picked up some natural stuff from the health food store.

When I think about it, really, you put this stuff into your mouth and swish it around twice a day. During this process the paste is absorbed by your teeth, gums and mucous membranes of the mouth. I’m sure we all accidentally swallow a bit too. Go get your toothpaste tube now and try and read the ingredients. Have you any idea what those things are? You’re putting it directly into your body so you might want to find out and make a decision whether or not those things are safe to ingest. Actually, I’ve decided they’re not. There’s a reason why we have to spit toothpaste out, obviously it’s really bad for you!!

I bought a toothpaste called ‘Silicea’ which is made in Germany. The first night I used the paste it was horrible. The taste is really salty and it doesn’t foam up so it sort of started dribbling out of my mouth (so gross). I was a bit unsure whether my teeth were clean enough too, so I brushed twice then considered chewing some xylitol gum. The next morning I put about four times more paste on my brush than the night before and it was a little better.

It’s now three days later and I’m getting used to it. This morning my teeth felt clean and the salty taste didn’t bother me as much. A friend of mine recommended the brand Weleda (also a German brand) so I bought a Weleda paste today (they have three toothpastes in different flavours I think). At $8.50 it was a little more expensive than the $4.50 Silicea but the tube is bigger to start with. It also had a more peppermint flavour and although it didn’t foam up, the gel was slightly thicker so it didn’t dribble out of my mouth as much. I brushed an hour ago with the Weleda and my mouth still feels really fresh!

What’s so different about ‘natural’ toothpaste?

Natural toothpastes are free from fluoride, detergents, synthetic fragrances, colours and preservatives. The kind of stuff that you don’t want to be putting directly into your body. Out of the five toothpastes in Weleda’s range, I bought the ‘Plant Gel Toothpaste’ which is to protect delicate gums. To be honest, I had no idea what the difference was between them when I was at the shop, the information is hard to find on the box. I just bought the green one because it looked like it would have a peppermint flavour which is what I’m used to when it comes to toothpaste.

So, until I find something better Weleda is my brand of toothpaste (by the way, the also have my favourite lip balm). It puzzles me why I didn’t think of all this before. That’s 27 years of putting toothpaste chemicals into my body twice a day, that’s not good!

Frances Kerr

My ex asked if I could post recipes on my blog. Now that I’m no longer around to cook healthy food for him, he has no idea how to do it for himself! I could do the mean ex-girlfriend thing and ignore his request or give him a recipe that takes FOREVER to cook and tastes really bad, but I’ve decided to be nice and post my first high on health recipe.

This is a good one for lazy people like me. It’s really easy to cook and extremely healthy which is why I eat it all the time. It’s my own variation of a recipe that was given to me by mum. A good recipe needs a photo so next time I cook this meal I’ll take a photo of it.

Lazy Fran’s Fish & Vege Soup

• 4 cups of vegetable stock
• 2 potatoes
• 2 cups of roughly chopped soup vegetables (whatever’s in season!) e.g. carrot, celery, parsnip, green beans and mushroom
• 1/2 cup red lentils
• smoked fish (You can buy smoked fish in the deli section of your food store. I usually buy salmon, trout or kelp.)
• natural yogurt (optional)
• fresh coriander (I have trouble finding organic coriander so this is usually left out)

1 Heat stock in a large saucepan over medium heat. Meanwhile, roughly chop potatoes and soup vegetables into smallish chunks.
2 Add potatoes, vegetables and lentils to stock and bring to the boil. Simmer until the vegetables are done.
3 Remove any bones from the fish then break flesh into small pieces.
4 Remove soup from heat then stir in the fish. Season with pepper if that’s what you like.
5 Garnish with yogurt and chopped coriander. Serve with the bread of your choice!

Variation for people who aren’t lazy: For an even HEALTHIER alternative, soak 1/2 cup of mixed dried beans in water overnight then boil with the stock for 1.5 hours (before you add the vegetables). You can use canned beans but they’re not as nutritious and can cause gut problems with some people.

That’s it, be healthy and enjoy!

Frances Kerr