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Browse every published article connected to Shannon Lagasse, with exact attribution and full-archive search.
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Browse every published article connected to Shannon Lagasse, or search within this exact expert archive.
The labeling of food is often one of the most confusing parts of maintaining a healthy diet. Everywhere we look there are words like, "Organic," "Non-GMO," "Local," "Fair Trade, "Sustainable," "Gluten-Free," and the list goes on. What do these words mean?
There's a movement that's been trending for a couple of years now. The people of this movement call themselves "locavores," and they eat only foods grown within 100 miles of their home. The benefits of eating local foods are many: supporting local farmers, boosting the economy of a community, getting to know where your food comes from, improved nutrient density of foods, it's environmentally-friendly, and it's a cheaper alte ative to buying organic.
Fat serves a purpose. I know a lot of women who are overweight think that it is the root of all evil, the bane of their existence, but it truly is serving a higher purpose. For instance, a young girl is sexually abused as a child.
In mythology it's written that there are thousands of strands of time and which strand becomes the future depends on the choices that you make in each and every moment. I know it sounds crazy, but what happens to you is shaped by the decisions you make right here, right now. When you put off exercise for another day, you're making a choice the affects your future. When you eat too much or eat foods that you know aren't healthy for you, you're deciding what the future of your health is going to be like.
The other weekend I went to this amazing event called Chantlanta. There was, of course, kirtan, but they also had classes in yoga, 5 rhythms, and meditation. The whole experience was amazing. After only a couple of hours, I left feeling renewed and rejuvenated. I felt like a whole new person. It totally changed the course of my day and the day after that. Have you ever had an experience like that? Something that makes you feel so good that the good feelings last for days? This is a fairly common occurrence with group events like workshops, seminars, and retreats.
I'm pretty sure we all know how to eat. If not because of what our body tells us, then at least from the numerous articles about it in newspapers, magazines, and online websites. Here are a few of the tips that I've found helpful in controlling what, when, and how I eat:
Nourishment isn’t just about what you eat. You can nourish your body in many ways other than with food. This concept is called “primary foods” and is an integral part of the curriculum at the Institute for Integrative Nutrition. This theory is so amazing because it exemplifies the domino effect and how when one part of your life is out of balance, it affects every other part of your life. Let’s take a for-instance scenario:
In our culture, it’s typical to keep setting goals for yourself and striving towards those goals. It’s also fairly standard that once you reach a goal, you set a new one. In our efforts to keep going, keep building, and keep improving ourselves, we often neglect the importance of celebrating our successes.
You've seen the man on Oprah and just about everything other popular talk TV show. Well here's what he has to say about health coaches: "You're more likely to lose weight with a coach. If you don't deal with working on your relationship with food, nothing that's important in your life is going to change." -Dr. Mehmet Oz
You may or you may not know that I’m in the after-effect processing stage of a breakup right now. And if you’ve seen any chick flick since the history of ever, you know that this is usually a pretty emotional time – one that’s also usually accompanied by enough sugar to make even my sweet tooth hurt.
Last week I was driving one of our volunteers to the airport. His time here on the farm was done and he was flying down to Durham, NC to see some friends before returning home for Thanksgiving. Instead of flying out of Logan Airport in Boston, MA, as is typical for volunteers who didn't drive here, he chose to fly out of T.F. Green Airport in Rhode Island. Despite having grown up in Massachusetts, I have never actually been to Rhode Island before. The company vehicles aren't equipped with a GPS nor with maps, so we opted to print out directions to and from the airport on Google Maps.
Sometimes you gotta take a risk. It’s how you break past your comfort zone and into uncharted territory that has the potential to push you forward towards the result(s) you’ve been wanting. For a long, long time I’ve wanted to be in love with my body. I’ve wanted to be OK with the way that it looks and moves and is shaped. I’ve wanted to stop poring over magazines and wishing that I had “this woman’s thighs” or “that woman’s breasts.” That had to change.
I have always said that things happen for a reason and, if I wasn't completely convinced of it before, I am now. My move to Overlook Farm began as a chance to get away from my life and volunteer with an organization that I truly believe in. Over the past 2 months, however, it has come to be much more than that. The farm has taught me so much about animals, gardening, where our food comes from, and how it's processed. It also taught me a lot about social relationships.
These days shopping at the grocery store can be a huge pain. We're trying to eat healthily and feed our kids the best possible foods, but with all the marketing and advertising for some products, it's hard to know where to start and what aisles we should be shopping in. If you've ever been confused by ingredient labels and want to know how to navigate supermarkets like a health professional, this article is meant for you.
The warm summer air has people a way of getting people outdoors and opening up tons of opportunities to eat healthily Here are some ways you can shape up this summer: • Drink more water. All the heat and humidity can cause you to become dehydrated easily. Be sure to fill up on water before you eat something in case that rumbly in your tumbly is actually dehydration.
Thanksgiving, and the entire holiday season, is a really tricky time of year for a lot of people. This is a time of year where we're getting together with our family and it can be quite an emotional time, as families often have dynamics that leave everyone feeling like they need to live up to certain expectations. It's also culturally accepted tradition to eat copious quantities of food during these times and holidays have become more about feasting than about nurturing the connection with the people who mean the most to you.
Bio-Individuality. Have you heard that term before? Bio-Individuality is kind of like saying, "There are no two people who are exactly alike on this planet." It means that no body is the same, no mind is the same, and no life is the same from one person to the next. It means taking an individualized approach to the way we deal with health, wellness, and any other lifestyle factors. As any good health coach will tell you, what works in terms of diet, exercise, and lifestyle changes for one person, isn't necessarily what their next client will need!
Let's talk a little bit about that voice in your head. Now I'm not trying to insinuate that you're any kind of crazy or that you're hearing things. I'm talking about the voice that we all hear that just LOVES to degrade us and make us feel rotten. This voice might say things like: • "You're not good enough" • "You're too fat" • "You're stupid" • "You're ugly" • "No one likes you" • "Who are you to being doing ____?" • "No one will ever love you" Now do you get the voice I'm talking about?
Support and accountability are crucial to reaching any kind of goals you set for yourself, especially health and wellness goals. They're the backbone of your success because they give you want you WANT (the support to make it through when the going gets tough) and what you NEED (the accountability, or polite but firm nudge, to get you to take action when you're starting to fall behind).
Life is short. It really is. When you think how quickly this past month has flown by (and that we're already halfway through February!), it's shocking. Every day I hear and read about big dreams that people have, life goals, bucket lists. But how many people go on to accomplish all those things? It's not because of the money, the time it takes, or because they don't have the willpower to achieve. Usually, it's about permission. How often do we wait for someone else to give us permission to move ahead with our life?
I’ve talked before about the idea that there is no such thing as a “good” or “bad” food. That “good” and “bad” imply moral reasoning, of which inanimate objects such as food have none. That “good” and “bad” is a judgment we impose upon food. That “good” and “bad” are subjective: I may consider almond milk ice cream to be “bad” because it has sugar in it and another may consider it “good” because it doesn’t have processed sugar and cream in it.r
When I see someone post about how “not all fats are created equal”, I don’t just think about dietary fats; I think about BEING fat. There’s this stigma with being overweight that we just can’t seem to shake as a society. It’s all over the place, and I’m wondering, “When will enough be enough?”r
Here’s something I found really interesting in my weight-loss journey: the times when I lost the most weight was when I thought of myself as a thin person. I literally found myself jogging or walking and felt like I was this thin person with an extra layer of padding, as if I was wearing a fat sack on my stomach. That allowed me to tap into the physical feelings of being thin, instead of just forcing myself to go through the motions of exercising and eating well to no avail.r
There are some health advocates I know out there who are extremely passionate about their cause, almost to a fault. Today, I read a post by one such person who said that “normal isn’t healthy” and that “plus-sized models are setting a bad example.” Being someone who has really appreciated the coming of models that represent the majority of women in the United States, this post kind of embarrassed me. For sure, being overweight isn’t the epitome of health, but neither is barraging yourself with disparaging comments about your weight or your dress size.
It would seem that the hardest time to control ourselves around food is when we’re in the middle of a breakup. Does that sound about right? Your boyfriend dumps you (or maybe you dump him) and you’re wallowing around in your misery. Every song on the radio reminds you of some moment in time that you spent together. Walking around your apartment you practically hear his footsteps behind you. It’s a difficult time, for sure.
There is a huge problem in the U.S. and in the world: We are relying on other people to call all the shots for us. We highly regard our freedom, even fight for it, and yet we hand much of our power over to politicians, medical professionals, and gurus. We are looking to other people to give us the answers we already have. By searching outside of ourselves, we have created a culture that shuns personal responsibility and denies the wisdom of the inner voice.
I got this in an email from the Institute for Integrative Nutrition today: “CBS News reported that a whopping 40% of all cancers are the result of lifestyle factors including: • poor diet • inactivity • stress • exposure to carcinogens like pollution and cigarette smoke That means that at least 40% of all cancer diagnoses could be prevented if people only knew what foods to eat and how to build awareness around their choices in life.”
What would you do if you spent a year without the support of any beauty products? I don’t read the news. I stopped reading it when I realized that it was the primary source of incoming negativity in my life. Now I catch headlines at Yahoo when I log out of my email and through my Facebook newsfeed.
Last night I got on an Amtrak train headed for New York from Atlanta, moving from my home in Georgia to the Omega Institute to start my job there. The train had sleeper cars, but the majority of passengers chose to ride the more economical coach class. As I was boarding the train, the conductor handed out tickets with seat numbers on it, as the train passes through multiple stops in multiple states. There was a woman sitting in my seat who refused to move. She refused to sit in her assigned seat in the row directly across the aisle because she didn’t want to sit next to someone else.r
Our bodies speak to us. They tell us when we’re tired, when we’re thirsty, and when we’re full. But did you know that your body also tells you when you’re making a bad choice, in a difficult situation, in love, infatuated, and a litany of other emotional states? I’m serious. When you listen, your body talks. It may not be speaking straight up English, but it’s letting you know what’s going on.r
It would seem that we all have dual personalities. We have the person we show the world on a day-to-day basis and the person we are behind closed doors, when we’re alone, in the bedroom, intoxicated, or in any other event where we feel safe and/or significantly lower our inhibitions. This week the subject of alter egos came up at a dinner table conversation and invoked an internal dialogue, ‘Do I have an alter ego? And, if so, who is she?’ And after a decent amount of thought, experimentation, and jou aling, here’s who she is:r
Time flies. Regardless of whether it’s 2012 or any other year, time seems to go by way too quickly. This can lead to the feeling that you’ll never get things done, there’s not enough time to do what you need to do, let alone what you WANT to do, and it can really stress you out. There’s a solution to this and it’s a lot easier (and a lot more fun) than you might think: schedule down-time. We schedule time for meetings, workouts, family, and special events. Why not schedule some time to just relax?
There’s one reason why anything gets done here on this planet we call “Earth,” and that’s motivation. Whether it’s taking the dog for a walk, cooking dinner for your family, going to the gym, or handing in your latest work assignment, you have motivation to thank for it. What motivates you to do each of these things may not necessarily be the same, but there is still some underlying motive for getting it done.
You create your own life. You do it with your thoughts, your words, and your actions. You’re doing it every second of every day.
Have you ever watched someone pull off some kind of incredible feat like juggling or balancing tall stacks of dishes on a stick? It’s incredible to see and mind-blowing to think about how they do it. What it comes down to, though, is something we practice in everyday life: Balance.
Thanksgiving is over and yet the food still remains. If you’re like the majority of American families celebrating this holiday, you’ve got leftovers galore. You’re looking at turkey sandwiches for the next week and pumpkin pie for dessert. Date-wise, the holiday has passed, but, according to your fridge, Thanksgiving isn’t over quite yet. How do you escape gorging yourself on leftovers? 1. Give it away. If you’ve still got whole pies leftover, there’s a chance that a local soup kitchen may be able to hand it out during meal time.r