Dr. Crippen is the author of this book and also a practicing chiropractor. His journey into a cure for his migraines led to his expertise on holistic health. This form of medicine treats the body as a whole, instead of just throwing medications at symptoms and hoping they go away.

Anyone who has had a health problem that doctors were unable to help you with can strongly relate to Dr. Crippen’s story that he tells in this book, of searching for answers and being unable to find them in a broken system.

I can strongly relate to this. When my health fell apart in 2014-2016, I had all sorts of crazy symptoms. Thankfully, I had one provider who thought outside of the box. If it weren’t for this one cardiologist I had, I would have never figured out that it was one part of my diet causing all of my problems. (In my case, it was gluten, and you read more about that here.)

So without further ado, here is Dr. Crippen. He is sharing with us a snippet directly from from his new book, Timeless Youth.

***Disclaimer: If you purchase through Amazon links on my site, I do collect advertising fees.***

“Most of the fundamental ideas of science are essentially simple, and may, as a rule, be expressed in a language comprehensible to everyone.”

ALBERT EINSTEIN

Dr. Lisa Saunders, a medical doctor, journalist, and professor at the Yale School of Medicine, whose New York Times column “Diagnosis” was the inspiration for the TV show House, wrote:

“A decade ago, I stood alongside my 99 fellow freshmen as we were welcomed into the ranks of medicine in a ‘white coat ceremony.’ Here, on our first day of med school, we were presented with the short white coats that proclaimed us part of the mystery and the discipline of medicine. During that ceremony, the dean said something that was repeated throughout my education: half of what we teach you here is wrong – unfortunately, we don’t know which half.”

That quote, often repeated by the Dean of the Yale School of Medicine, was originally spoken by Charles Sidney Burwell, a past Dean of the Faculty of Medicine at Harvard, over 50 years ago. It is just as true today as when it was first spoken.

This book will explain why half of what is taught in medical school is wrong.

What if there was a better way? What if, instead of starting with disease and the parts and pieces that make up the body, we started instead with the principles that were true in the beginning and are still true today? 

The first principle of holistic health is The Yellowstone Principle: The Whole Is Greater Than the Sum of Its Parts

In the early 1990s, conservationists with Yellowstone National Park faced a titanic problem. Over the previous 70 years, an ecosystem that was once in balance was spiraling out of control, and conservationists were at a loss to reverse the trend.

One obvious symptom of the change was the ballooning population of elk. But this wasn’t the only change. Many of the trees were losing their bark, which led to a decline in the aspens and cottonwoods. Also, the songbird population had decreased.

Other changes in the Yellowstone ecosystem included a decrease in the beaver population, erosion of the streams, and a decrease in river animals such as muskrats, ducks, fish, reptiles, and amphibians — many symptoms of a diseased ecosystem.

All the symptoms of change, from beavers to rivers to elk, were connected by a single cause.

The ballooning population of elk led to an overgrazing of tree bark, which led to fewer aspens and cottonwoods, destroying the habitat of the songbirds and providing less wood for beavers to make their dams. Fewer dams resulted in erosion of the streams, and a reduced habitat for muskrats, ducks, fish, reptiles, and amphibians. Naturalists hoped they could attack the problem at its source — the growing elk population.

In the 1930s, the park services started trapping and moving the elk out of the park, and then, when that didn’t work, shooting them. This went on for decades. While one symptom improved (the population of elk did decrease) the other symptoms, the trees, birds, and beavers were largely unchanged.

What should be done next?

Plant more aspen and cottonwood trees? Introduce more beavers into the park? Dredge the streams and rivers to restore the wildlife habitats? All were logical — capable of treating one symptom or another — but none would restore balance to the ecosystem.

Why? Because, as the conservationists learned, the solution to the changes in Yellowstone would only be found by understanding the ecosystem as a whole, and not a disparate set of unconnected symptoms.

While the changes in Yellowstone’s landscape were becoming more apparent in the 1990s, the change started in the early 1900s.

When the U.S. Park Service took control of Yellowstone from the U.S. Army in 1916, they systematically killed all the wolves in the park, killing all 134 over the next 10 years. From this point until the early 1990s, there were no wolves in Yellowstone as wolves were a deemed a threat to cattle and livestock.

To make the ecosystem whole once again, naturalists could either kill more elk, plant more trees, add fish, feed songbirds, build dams, or, quite simply, they could reintroduce wolves.

Fourteen wolves were reintroduced in 1995 and 17 more the following year. Thirty-one total wolves were added to a 2.2-million-acre national park spanning parts of Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho.

This seemingly small addition produced a series of remarkable changes.

First, the wolves, a natural predator of the elk, helped thin the elk population.

Then, the potential threat of being eaten changed the behavior of the elk. The elk moved from the valleys and the gorges, where they could be easily hunted, to the areas of heavy timber. This allowed the bare areas of the valleys and gorges to regenerate.

Songbirds and migratory birds returned to the new regenerating trees. The beavers, with their food source of trees restored, began to proliferate. More beavers led to more dams. Otters, muskrats, ducks, and fish that relied on the dams for habitats returned.

Increasing vegetation stabilized the riverbanks, reversed the erosion in the riverbeds, and created a healthier ecosystem.

The changes in Yellowstone could not be understood by looking at only one species, one location, or one plant. The interventions aimed at treating a single problem produced only short-lived changes, and none restored health to the whole.

Instead, to restore balance to the ecosystem, all the pieces must be considered as parts of the whole, where every part impacts every other part.

Just as an ecosystem is made up of many individual plants and animals, of a variety of species, each independent yet interconnected, the human body is also made of many independent parts — cells, organs, tissues, and systems, that interconnect to form a whole.

This idea of holism fits within the context of nature. When we introduce wolves back into Yellowstone, we accept the cascade of changes as natural consequences. In nature, we understand that a change to one part affects the whole.

But somehow, along the way, we started to view the body as separate from nature.

Instead of seeing the body as a whole ecosystem, the way we might with a national park like Yellowstone, allopathic medicine treats the body as if it operates according to a different set of rules.

The body, the thinking goes, is not a whole but instead a collection of parts. This is called reductionism, the idea that a complex system can be understood by understanding the pieces that make it up. It is this thinking that lets us to cut out a cancer from the body without changing the conditions that led it to grow in the first place.

Reductionistic thinking lets us take an antibiotic for a cold — often without knowing if the symptoms are even caused by bacteria — instead of asking why the immune system did not fight off the bug in the first place.

In another context, reductionistic thinking allows for the surgical replacement of a knee without evaluating the health of the whole.

Specifically, without asking how and why the knee degenerated in the first place. And no, getting older is not a sufficient reason to have a bad knee. My favorite questions for patients who use the “I’m just getting old, Doc” explanation for knee pain is to ask, politely of course, “Well, if that is the case, how old is your good knee?”

The idea of reductionism is not universal, but it is foundational to the medical idea of health. Perhaps, it came from the Industrial Revolution with its proliferation of machines to increase output and its concurrent migration into cities and out of nature.

Or, perhaps, from the revamping of medical education that occurred after the Flexner Report, in 1910, with its increased focus on scientific research in the basic sciences like physiology and biochemistry (both of which focus on the parts of the body rather than the whole) at the expense of holism. However it happened, the medical idea of health mandates that we see the human body as a collection of parts, separate from nature.

This change had a profound effect on our health.

It is the difference between shooting elk and restoring wolves.

The idea of thinking of the health of the whole is foundational to how we see nature.

We do not need to consider the health of 2,000,000+ acres of a national park to see the principle of holism. We can observe the same principle in a single leaf.

When it comes to health, plants are simple. They are not like humans. Plants don’t complain. They don’t forget to eat. They don’t sabotage their health with Oreos and reality television. Plants grow. They add carbon dioxide (CO2) to sunlight to create food. They survive.

Because of this, healing plants is easy.

A healthy plant needs optimum amounts of three things: sunlight, water, and nutrients (found in healthy soil). A sick plant, one with brown leaves, needs optimal amounts of three things: sunlight, water, and nutrients (found in healthy soil). That’s it; that’s the whole list. The presence or absence of disease does not change what the plant needs to create health. It may need more or less of each, but healthy plants are the inevitable result of optimal amounts of these three inputs.

But what if things were different? Let’s imagine we enter a world of plants, a world that, for simplicity, we’ll call Plant World.

Let’s imagine Plant World has advanced well past the antiquated ideas of ensuring plants need optimal amounts of sunlight, water, and nutrients. How old fashioned! How antiquated! Instead, in progressive and innovative Plant World, plants are treated like people, following the three-step allopathic model disease care diagnose disease, treat with drug or surgery, eliminate the symptom or disease.

Step one, diagnose disease.

In plant world, before a sick plant can be helped, it first needs — of course! — a diagnosis. How can you treat a plant if you don’t name the disease? In the allopathic plant disease care, as with humans, the disease is given a name, often with a Greek root. We’ll call it Brown Leafitis.

In this progressive system, researchers and plant doctors search for a cure for Brown Leafitis. Lots of money, public and private, is spent researching pharmaceutical treatments and surgical techniques (step two!) to treat the symptoms of Brown Leafitis.

The allopathic plant disease care system even has teams of molecular biologists searching for a miracle drug that will cause an already sick plant’s leaves to turn from brown back to green. Other promising treatments include, covering the leaves with spray paint and the surgical removal of the brown leaf (a leafectomy, if you will). How progressive! How technologically advanced!

Even better, Plant World elected a government that demands equal access for all diseased plants to essential plant medications and includes a team of lobbyists petitioning Plant Congress and the Federal Plant Drug Administration to have medications approved for the new epidemic of Brown Leafitis.

Luckily — for the plants — Plant World disease care doesn’t exist.

We don’t waste our time and money on pharmaceutical drugs or tiny plant surgeries to treat Brown Leafitis. Instead, we restore health in a plant by ensuring the plant has exactly what it needs to create health (sunlight, water, and nutrients (found in healthy soil)).

By assuring a plant has the nutrients it needs, the plant returns to health and the symptom of brown leaves go away, or, better yet, never appear in the first place. Giving the plant water, sun, and healthy soil is healthcare.

We recognize, intuitively, that a brown leaf is not a disease of the leaf, but rather a sign of a problem within the whole plant. We intuitively provide healthcare to plants, but we disastrously provide disease care to humans.

What the medical idea of health seems to forget is that we humans are not reductionistic machines but instead operate under the principle of holism — like plants!

In the case of my headaches, taking pain relieving medications sometimes helped with the symptom of head pain, but didn’t make me healthier. How could I be healthier taking a chemical that (supposedly) helped pain yet at the same time damaged my liver and kidneys?

Doctors who understood the principles of health would take a different approach.

They would see pain in the head not as an isolated symptom but instead as a sign of dysfunction of the whole, much like we view a brown leaf on a plant. Instead of prescribing a drug to treat the symptom, the treatment might include the human equivalent of water, sunlight, and healthy soil needed to restore health.

So how do we find those basic first principles, the human equivalents of water, sunlight, and healthy soil that create health?

We must begin by seeing a disease of a part as instead a dysfunction of the whole.

Timeless You-th tells the story of my struggle to find a cure for my crippling headaches while navigating the established medical system. My headaches persisted and worsened despite seeking the best medical treatment available, including top doctors and pharmaceutical drugs. The overall goal of my book is to teach you five foundational principles of health so that you, too, can create a lifetime of timeless youth.

Timeless You-th is your go to resource to maximize your health without drugs and surgery. Grab a copy on Amazon and share!

The post Why Holistic Health is Life Changing: New Book by Dr. Crippen appeared first on Stories of Our Boys.

A couple of weeks ago I found out that the ladies’ ministry at my church is going to have a cookie contest. It is really more than just a contest, it is a luncheon, but at the luncheon there will be a cookie contest. Then the cookies are delivered to teachers at a local school. We are giving back to our community with something pleasant like Valentine cookies.

Now I am a regular attending member of our church, and also I like to go to ladies’ fellowships. No, I actually straight up NEED to go to them because I have not put forth much effort into getting myself connected here. I need to do more, but I admit I groaned at the cookie part.

Why did I groan at the cookie part?

Well, it is simple. I just do not have a pretty valentine go-to cookie recipe. I do love baking, but making things pretty is a skill I do not possess. It does not come naturally to me, for sure. So I set out on a mission.

Mission: Find cookie recipes, try a few out, and let my family choose one that will not be a total embarrassment to take to the ladies’ fellowship.

I had the best of intentions. Winning is not the goal. That is ridiculous. Simply not embarrassing myself, that’s the goal. I went to Pinterest, and I built the most beautiful of Valentine’s Day cookie boards. You see, pinning things, that I am very good at. In fact, if you would like to see my idea board, just click here. You’ll love it.

Then a week ago, I finally got around to trying out one of the recipes. I tried this one:

That looks delicious, right? They are too, but you wouldn’t believe how much trouble making these was, due to life circumstances, and then in the end, only around 7 of the 24 even got eaten.

Let me tell you what happened.

First, I ground the Oreos and mixed them with the cream cheese, per the instructions. I was ever-so-careful to have all of the ingredients that I needed. Then I flattened them out into a baking pan, all nice and neat and placed them in the freezer to set.

That’s when I realized my heart-shaped cookie cutters were a casualty of this past summer’s move. I searched everywhere: inside, outside, downstairs, upstairs, every single cabinet, every single box, every single drawer. There was no rock unturned, no crevice unchecked, but there were absolutely zero heart cookie cutters. I found Christmas ones and ghost ones, but no hearts. Disappointedly, I moved the pan of chocolate dough from the freezer to the refrigerator.

The next day, I went by the grocery store. I figured I would just buy some cutters there. Valentine’s day is near. Surely they will have them. They did not.

Finally, Alan said, “Just order some on Amazon!” So I did. I ordered these. They were a very good deal. Here is an Amazon ad for them:

They came in the mail two days later, and I ever-so-excitedly cut out my hearts, melted down about 3 bags of chocolate chips, and dipped to my heart’s content. Some of them fell apart, but some didn’t. I actually had a fairly successful looking batch. The kids came home and were pleased.

I took a ton of pictures throughout the process because I expected the whole thing to flop, and then I would write a Nailed it/Failed It Valentine edition, so you could all laugh with me, but then they turned out pretty good.

As for flavor, they were insanely sweet, especially with the white chocolate. The boys and I all agreed they were actually too sweet, so even if what was about to happen had not happened, this would not be the recipe to use for the church cookie competition. (The semi-sweet chocolate did taste much better.) We decided this is more of a candy than a cookie, and also it is a lot of work.

The Problem

No, it was not a chocolate problem, per se. It was more of a health in food services type issue. You see, as the day wore on, it became increasingly apparent that I had a scratchy throat and a runny nose. I was extra careful to wash my hands while working on these. I had no idea what was coming.

The boys came home from school, except for Caleb, as he was home sick. They all tasted the desserts, but we did not have much appetite, and these were so sweet. No one ate many. Then somewhere around six o’clock, I began to figure out that I was getting sick. Meanwhile, John David was whiny, whiny, whiny, about every little thing, which is not like him.

Finally, Alan arrived home and infused some even-keeled sanity to the situation, as only a healthy person surrounded by the flu can do. He took everyone’s temperature. John David had a high, actual fever. Mine was barely there, but I had the chills terribly. We went to bed and didn’t really get up until three days later.

And the hearts? Everyone was afraid to eat the flu-ridden hearts. They were thrown into the trashcan.

All that work, wasted. So much money I spent on Oreos, cookie cutters, cream cheese, and chocolate to melt, for nought. All that time and energy, and for what? For nothing.

As my fever broke a few days ago, and I started to emerge from the flu stupor of last week, I thought about those hearts and it reminded me of life in general. We all have work we pour ourselves into, and we all have good reasons for the work that we do. But in the end, only the eternal work survives. Only some of our work matters to other souls and to God himself. How much of our work will all be for nothing, will simply end up at the bottom of a trash can, rotting at the dump, or burning in a fire?

If anyone builds on this foundation using gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, or straw, his workmanship will be evident, because the Day will bring it to light. It will be revealed with fire, and the fire will prove the quality of each man’s work. If what he has built survives, he will receive a reward. If it is burned up, he will suffer loss. He himself will be saved, but only as if through the flames.

1 Corinthians 3: 12-15

I am not saying we shouldn’t do the kind of work that won’t last. Things like cooking and cleaning have their own kind of reward in this present life, but there are also bigger things, more important work that we should be doing.

Eternal Work

Last week, Daniel and John David, our youngest two sons, asked to be baptized. They have always believed in Jesus, and a couple of months ago they prayed asking Jesus to be their Savior. It is just a simple prayer, telling God, “I do believe in Jesus, and I know that I am a sinner, and I want Jesus to forgive me and save me and be the Lord of my life.” Daniel has actually prayed the prayer a few times, as many children do as they figure out their faith.

Getting baptized loomed bigger to them though because they were afraid to go forward and talk to a pastor, who they do not even know, and ask him to baptize them. But they did it, and we are so proud of them.

Teaching our children feels like work that lasts. That is work that survives. influencing the life of a child, there is nothing better than that.

Of course, leading your children is just one example. There are so many kinds of work with eternal significance, work that brings glory to God, leads people to Jesus, and helps people in a lasting way.

I do not have some amazing call to action here. I just have a trash can of beautiful, disease-ridden cookies, serving as a reminder that not all work will survive. Do not neglect or look down on the most important work.

P.S. I still need a good Valentine cookie recipe…

The post The Cookie Fiasco: All That Work for Nothing appeared first on Stories of Our Boys.

Lion around at the zoo

A few weeks ago, I was grocery shopping alone at the Commissary.

It’s funny. When I was pregnant, strangers in stores always talked to me.

“You’re so….big. Are you having twins?”

Oh, how I loved those little chats…Then when the boys were babies, people still talked to us, but these days we’re just regular old people. I don’t get comments unless I take all 4 of them out together. Then of course, no one can believe they are all boys. (Ha! I can’t believe it either. It’s okay.)

So now when people talk to me in the grocery store, it’s usually a man who is grocery shopping but doesn’t know what he’s doing and wants help.

I was 80% of my way through the store, my cart was 70% full, and I had just turned down the bread aisle. Only there are apparently two bread aisles because regular sandwich bread wasn’t on this aisle at all, which left me lingering and searching for longer than usual because this is yet another side effect of moving all the time. You don’t know where anything is.

An airman in his mid-twenties (I’m guessing), started talking to me. He asked something like, “How’re you this fine day?”

This caught me off guard. It’s a little unusual, right? We just shop. We don’t shoot the breeze with random people standing by the hot dog buns.

By the way, when I’m nervous/uncomfortable, I tend to laugh. It’s an annoying habit that may sometimes send the wrong message, but I have very little control over it.

So I laughed a little and said, “I’m fine.”

But I’m standing there thinking, “Is this guy trying to talk to me?” Ha! Sometimes in my head I’m still 28 and cute…I forget that I actually look like a mother of four nearing 40…

He kept talking.

“So what’s a good thing to cook? I mean, I like to, but I don’t know what to make. I need ideas,” he pointed towards my cart full of vegetables, cheese, and breads and such, “and you seem to know.”

Oh!! This young man is actually wanting meal ideas from me?

He isn’t just trying to talk to me. I did a completely terrible job of thinking up cooking suggestions for him on the spot. See my mind was wiped clean as I realized that I am now the motherly lady you ask for kitchen tips…

I guess my bubble was burst, but hey. I’m going to redeem myself here. Would YOU like some cooking ideas? I have nothing earth shattering to offer, but here’s a sample of what has been cooking in my kitchen this summer.

How I actually serve lunch. That’s ham, fruit, and apple bread.

That is…this is my cooking plan aside from frozen pizza, hot dogs, sandwiches, and fruit trays because we have honestly mostly eaten exactly that.

Chicken Noodle Soup, like this recipe.

During our 2 years in Georgia, Joshua raved on and on about Mrs. Bowers’s (a local friend’s) chicken noodle soup, so I tried to make it as much like hers as I could!

I guess my cooking is still highly influenced by our time in Georgia because one of my other summer projects was this cake I saw by our Georgia friend, Julie. Hers was a little bigger, which I wasn’t quite ready for that level of baking, so I did a 4 layer version of the red, white, and blue cake for July 4th.

Yes, I photographed it while it was still in the freezer…which is why I will never be a food blogger. And don’t laugh at my melting blue rosettes. It was my first try, so I was pleased as punch.

Want to make a swirly cake like this? Well, you just need a TON, TON, TON, that’s 3 tons, of buttercream frosting, food dye, and some boxed cake mixes because oh yes, I definitely make my cakes from a boxed mix. I figure there’s no shame. That’s just pre-measured flour and sugar and directions, really.

Here’s a link to the YouTube video I watched to learn how to make the buttercream swirlies. Oh my bad, they call them rosettes:

Here’s my menu plan from last week:

I number my cookbooks, and this month I’m using book #16. Does that sound strange?

Ok. I know that looks like I’m planning to bake a lot of sweets, but in my defense, the kids are home all day and we do that for fun together. We will never actually bake 2 desserts in one week, but I dream big.

The apple bread was a huge hit with Alan and Daniel. The mug was a lovely gift from Jennings.

I couldn’t find another one online that was exactly like the one I made, so here’s the recipe for it.

Printable Apple Bread Recipe

Apple Bread

3 eggs, slightly beaten

2 Cups sugar

1 Cup Vegetable Oil (I used canola.)

1 Tablespoon vanilla

3 Cups All-purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon cinnamon

4 Cups cored, peeled, and chopped apples

Topping:

2 Tablespoon sugar

¼ teaspoon cinnamon

Preheat oven to 325, and chop up your apples. Set apples aside.

Stir together the eggs, sugar, oil, and vanilla until ingredients are well mixed. Combine flour, baking soda, and cinnamon and stir into liquid ingredients until just evenly mixed.

Stir in apples.

Divide between 2 greased loaf pans.

Combine sugar and cinnamon for topping. Sprinkle over tops of loaves.

Bake 1 hour and 10 minutes.  I like to set the timer for more like 1 hour, stick a fork in it to check for doneness. If fork comes out clean, your bread is done. If it comes out doughy, bake 10 minutes longer.

I got this recipe from a church recipe collection: Roanoke First Baptist Church Covered Dish, page 192. This recipe was from Virginia Yarbrough, and I altered it to omit pecans for our nut allergy kid.

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Maybe next week I will work on my food photography skills, but hungry boys get quite impatient, so I make no promises.

Happy summer!!

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The post What I’m Cooking This Summer (& Chatty Stories at the Supermarket) appeared first on Stories of Our Boys.

I was all excited to buy “Georgia peaches” now that I live down here, but look. These aren’t actually from Georgia. 🙁 Apparently, peach season is over already. I missed it!

This week I have two cardiology appointments. The one yesterday was fairly easy, and all went smoothly. John David, my faithful sidekick, tagged along for that one. I think he fully entertained the cardiac floor of the hospital. My favorite part was the bit he did with the crayons. See, I brought a brand new box of 24 crayons along. New crayons interest people more than old ones.

My sidekick…..He’s not distracting at all…But he can entertain a cardiology office like no other.

JD enjoyed the crayons very much, but I’m not sure that he actually did any coloring. The door to my appointment room had a large gap between it and the floor. John David found it delightfully fun to roll each of his crayons, one-by-one, under the door and out into the hallway. I stopped him at first, but then I was trying to give the doctor my full attention, so when he eventually resumed his game, I didn’t even notice really.

When I finally opened the door and fetched all the crayons, there were nurses giggling in the hallway. When I got onto the elevator, the elderly gentleman behind us said, “Well, we all know you had a good time at the doctor’s office,” to little John David. John David was wearing his Lightning McQueen back-pack, and he looked ridiculously adorable. He just looked up at all the people who kept talking to him with his little straight, serious face. This is definitely not the toddler you have to worry about running off with strangers.

I asked the man, “Oh, did you see the crayons rolling out into the hallway?”
“Oh, yeah,” the gentleman replied with a smile. “Is this your first?”
“Oh, no, my fourth.”
“What! Gracious! You don’t look old enough to have four! But then you don’t act like he’s your first. First time parents are, you know, different, more anxious and restrictive.”
Haaaa!!! Yep, true, and we’ve all been there.

So the heart problem lives on. I see my electrophysiologist today. It’s all sort of embarrassing when all of my health problems start coming out. Maybe I’ll just keep my mouth shut today about all the other non-heart symptoms that I have. I’m glad I didn’t yesterday though because that doc actually understood my hip problem and referred me to a local orthopedic surgeon, but don’t worry, I’m not hoping to have surgery.

What I actually want to tell you all is what a difference eating better has made for me. You know that whole, “You are what you eat?” slogan?? Well, it’s true. I hate it, but it’s true. The last few days, I’ve just re-embraced the fact that I need LOTS of sleep, and I can’t handle wheat, and I feel like a living human again, instead of a dying one, like I felt the last week.

Out for a walk with my work-out partner, JD

See, moving to the South from California was exciting and also bad, or really just I was the one that was bad. I wanted to eat buttermilk biscuits, fried chicken, and pie, pie pie!!!! I decided to pretend like I don’t have a problem with gluten for a while.

Until it caught up with me, and I was back in the hurt locker. So now I’m back to behaving, and I feel better. Eat better. Feel better.

I’ve been getting in more exercise too. I felt too poorly to do much of it last week. Who knew? Food, sleep, and exercise: three things I never realized would be so important for the rest of my life.

That’s why I’m such a fan of Justin Cox’s Kettle Bell Burn program. (You can check it out here.) He teaches the importance of a balanced diet, 8 hours of sleep per night, staying hydrated, 20 mins. of exercise per day, and taking vitamins.

I recently noticed that his current promotion is a free 5-day course on nutrition, so I just wanted to call your attention to that and urge you to sign up.

His regular exercise program is only $30/month, and it’s awesome, but if you’re still on the fence, the free 5-day course is a good starting place.

What, your gym doesn’t have a china cabinet?

When it comes to exercise, arm day is my favorite. I always actually do the whole work-out on arm day. You have to understand. I was never an athlete. I don’t even feel ashamed when I quit. I’m like, “Eh, this is heavy, or I’m out of breath. Time for a nice little rest.” No shame.

Case in point: Yesterday Caleb came into the kitchen asking Joshua to play ball with him. Joshua refused. Joshua was in the kitchen snacking. (Peas. Joshua eats whole cans of peas for a snack. We are baffled and pleased).

So I volunteered. Caleb kind of looked unsure, “Sigh. Okay, but I mean Mom can’t really catch or throw, but….Just so you know, Mom, there ARE bugs out here, and it is hot. I’ll get you a glove.”

(I complain about sweat, gnats, and bugs on the regular.)

9. Wow. It took my children only 9 years to surpass me in athletic skills. Nice. 

Now don’t be mad at Caleb. He was very sweet to me out there. He has played with me before, so he knows that half of my pitches will go over his head or five feet away from him, and I can’t throw very far. And I don’t really care. Sports are not my thing.

My sons say that P.E. is their favorite class. Can you imagine??? Well, I certainly can’t. I even found a way in high school to not have to take any P.E. at all. 🙂

Nutrition and exercise suddenly became so important to me after it actually turned my illness around. I was the queen of having two granola bars and a Coke for lunch, so this epiphany that if you want to feel good, you have to eat good was a truly rude awakening. (Yes, I know that’s bad grammar, but it’s catchy, you see. Eat good, feel good……Eat well, feel well doesn’t have the same ring to me, but we could also use that.)

I want you all to feel better too.

info graph/ affiliate link property of kbburn.com.

Let me know if you decide to give kbburn.com a try, so we can cheer each other on.

Eat better. Feel better.

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Today I met with a nutritionist, also known as my friend Lacy. I bombarded her with all the food questions I could think of about how to lower blood sugar, and I’m going to share the first, most doable steps that I learned.

I’m writing them down NOW before I forget any more than I already have!

Lacy is a fellow home schooling mom. She also has four kids, so there’s no one who better understands what I’m up against. She fully knows the drill of the busy, action-packed life!

This sounds so silly, but the hardest part of ALL of it is just not drinking soda. Coca-Cola has me the same way Marlboro has the smoker crowd! Man, I love my sugary sodas.

Good-bye, soda. We must break up. This hurts me more than it hurts you. Can I still have one on my birthdays?

This is hard.

But I can do it! God will give me what I need.

Let me sum up why I’m cutting sugar.

1. I have high sugar and high sodium in my blood stream. 
2. My head keeps getting fuzzy, like when you have a fever. Sometimes I have a fever, and sometimes I don’t. I also get headaches.
3. We think that some of this is caused by my high sugar and dehydration.
4. I also get mucous-overload from milk products. Talking with Alan and Lacy helped me to reach that conclusion, so I have got to cut back on the milk. Yogurt should not make a person choke on mucous and dry heave, apparently….
5. Inflammation in my shoulder and right hip

Here’s what I’m trying to do about it:

1. seeing a doctor
2. I’m already getting chiropractic adjustments and physical therapy for my pain issues.
3. Now I’m all about lowering the blood sugar and eliminating the milk products.

So here are the tips for cutting down on your sugar intake (Thank you, Lacy!) that I’m implementing this week:

1. Instead of snacking all day, which is my current habit, I need to sit down and eat three square meals a day. Greatly reduce the snacking in between.

Why? I have a sugar problem, so in order for my sugar to be handled properly in my body, my body needs the carbs to be combined with fat and protein. This should help my sugar stay at a better level throughout the day, rather than having constant spikes from my carb snacks. And let me tell you, I have been the QUEEN of carbohydrates, which is what got me into this mess.

2. My biggest issue is that people love to tell you what NOT to eat, but they don’t tell you what TO eat. I

mean, if you take away my bread, my yogurt, and my granola bars, what do I have left??

They always say, “Avoid processed foods, but what does that look like exactly??”

Lacy gave me some “what to eat” ideas. These are specific to my sugar and milk issues, but I think they would be good for anyone!:

lima beans cooked in ham…I think these are okay. I didn’t ask.. FYI, if you boil butter beans in ham, there’s no way you won’t like them.

Vegetables…..like cut up fresh bell peppers of any colors, broccoli, carrots, salad, fennel, onions, garlic, celery, romaine lettuce, and on and on. Cook ’em, roast ’em, eat ’em raw, whatever.

Mini peppers, so sweet and crispy yumminess, even raw.

Alan’s amazing, fresh homemade salsa: tomatoes, lime juice, onion, garlic, parsley. I love this stuff.

Fresh or frozen is better than canned because of the added sodium.

The label on the can of green beans reveals the higher sodium level. Not horrible, just not as good as frozen or fresh veggies.

This steam-in-the bag frozen pack of veggies contains far less sodium.

Avocados! That’s one of my favorite foods anyway, so that’s good news. Eating some fats is important for me, as it turns out.

Meat…..steak, chicken, bacon, fish, ground turkey meatballs…

tiny bundles of yummy beef..They were supposed to be triangles…..Oh well, it was my first attempt!

I loved her ground turkey meatball idea because our family loves meatballs, but I never make them because they are a lot of work. We also like “hamburger steak,” so this is a cross between the two.

Lacy said to just put your ground turkey in the big skillet, sprinkle your favorite spices and salt and pepper on them, and as they cook, cut them into little triangles.

That simple. So yummy.

Confession: I used ground beef, but I think that’s okay.

Carb Suggestions: 

Trader Joe’s whole grain bread…I can’t remember what it was called exactly, and I should have mine in the context of a meal.

Sweet Potatoes (like half of one)

Fruit, but with other things

Beans or peas, which are also proteins

Milk Substitutes

Almond milk or coconut milk. Since our family has nut issues, we may go with the coconut. Some of our kids can still do regular milk.

I put the coconut milk in my coffee today, and that filled me with joy. I just can’t tell you. Coconut milk is naturally a little sweet.

Meal Plates

The plate should be half vegetables, 1/4 meat, and 1/4 carb.

Now obviously, she told me a ton more stuff. It’s still floating around in my head, but these are my FIRST STEP things.

Thank you so much, Lacy! My family thanks you as well!

This week my goal is to sit down and eat lunch with the kids, instead of standing in the kitchen picking on sugars. Once lunch is done, those boys are going to learn the new habit of helping Mom clean up lunch, and I don’t just mean their plates. I mean clean up the whole meal. Laura and Mary Ingalls did it, so I figure what was good for them is good for us too. hehe

Hope you are all having a fun weekend!

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Super Easy Crock Pot Roast!!! I promise it will fall apart. No knives required.

In the great tradition of helping out new mothers, our friends Chris and Corinne brought over this roast, just after we had Joshua. I remember this day like the back of my hand. Corinne was 39 weeks pregnant herself, and she looked exhausted. We asked them to stay with us and enjoy the roast too, and I so enjoyed their visit. I have loved every single one of their visits. They are such an outstanding couple! We always laughed so much with them.

The roast was delicious, and Alan and I just went on and on about it. Corinne said, “It’s really so easy. It’s just a pork roast, and I added like a bottle of ketchup and a can of cream of mushroom soup.”

“That’s it!” we said in surprised glee. Oh yeah! High five.

“Yep.”

Yes, I know, my roast photo has added veggies. That’s because Alan cooked that day. Yes, sometimes I let him cook. I DO have a kitchen control freak problem, but I also have more work than I can handle, thanks to home schooling, so Alan cooks sometimes. When we have yummy veggies on hand, we throw them in too. Yay, Alan!!!

So for those of you that didn’t actually read the story, here is the recipe in instruction form:

Ingredients:

Roast (Pork or beef–whatever)

Salt/Pepper

Cream of Mushroom Soup  (2 cans for a BIG roast)

About a bottle of ketchup, or until you just get tired of squeezin’ ketchup. I really use more like 8 ounces, if I actually measured it.

Optional: Onions, Carrots, Potatoes, peppers, or whatever veggies you like with a roast or happen to have in your kitchen.

Directions: I have this compulsion to salt and pepper all meat before I do anything else, so if you’re like me, go for it.

1. Dump roast in crock pot. Frozen? NO biggie. Dump it in. Cook it longer.

2. Turn cooker to low if the meat is thawed, high if it’s frozen.

3. salt pepper, and add all ingredients—If You are leaving it for too long, you may want to hold carrots until the last 3 hours.

4. Pop the lid on. Don’t peek. Don’t stir. That sets you back an hour in cook time.

5. Let it cook. Times depend on how big your roast is.

How long should I cook a roast?

This is not an exact thing. DON’T take your roast and chop it all up before cooking it. That will just get you an over cooked, dry roast. Bleh.

Small roast (as in a pound or two): 5 hours is good.

Big roast :7 or so.

For frozen roasts, try the high setting, at least for a few hours of that time. By the way, I have cooked a thawed roast in as few as 3 hours, but then it didn’t fall apart as nicely as one cooked 5 or 6.

Great News: No matter how bad you feel like life is kicking your tail, when you managed to get something in the crock pot in the morning, come supper time, YOU ARE the champion.  

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Sometimes school looks like this. Thankfully, all of the boys love books. They don’t always love the same books that I want them to love, but they do love books.

By the end of the homeschool day, I have this NEED to zone out. Does herding children all day make you feel as beat as it does me??? Blogging is my version of zoning out, so let me tell ya what’s been going on lately in our School for Wiggly Boys.

-Things are going well. Caleb is making a speedy recovery. Yesterday, you could see his lip shrinking all day long. It was quite the wonder. Today he looks downright adorable, a bouncy little boy with a smile full of chipped teeth! 🙂 Bless him. (For that story read: this.)

Caleb keeps starting out to the trampoline, only to remember, “Oh, yeah, I’m not allowed to jump,” and come walking back in with his shoulders slumped in disappointment. The problem is that his entire plate of top front teeth is loose, so until we get a lid on this situation, Caleb is not permitted to do much in the way of fun. :/

Actually, I just heard Daniel enter Caleb’s room, and Caleb told him, “I’m trying to play with my Legos SILENTLY.” lol  Ironic, coming from Caleb. It sounds like Daniel has him convinced to let him play too.

-Last night at dinner, we were all practicing our presidents song. We are learning the names of the U.S. presidents, in order, this semester. This is something we’ve just started. I can almost sing them all now. Having a good song makes ALL the difference in memorizing.

Alan hasn’t listened to the song as much as we have, so he doesn’t really know the tune. It gave me the greatest joy to watch Alan trying to figure out who came after Theodore Roosevelt, and hear Caleb chime in for him, “Taft, Wilson, Harding, Coolidge.”
I was SO EXCITED. We haven’t even gone over that part yet. He’s just soaked it in from listening to the song!

So here’s a link to a slightly different presidents song than the one we use, for those who also want to teach this to their kiddos:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WFWMo4trudU

–Let’s talk about food for a minute. Like most parents, we live for compliments about our children. Parenting is such a challenge, and we need all the back pats we can get. Over Christmas, my mom commented on how amazing the boys’ diets are. “What did you do to get them eating so healthy?” she asked.

Well, first of all, THANK YOU, Mom!!  Thank you so much! I didn’t even notice they were eating healthy.

It is kind of hilarious. You can bake them cookies, and they often won’t even eat them. They are terribly picky about their sweets. Don’t waste your time with anything called “casserole” either.

Joshua’s typical “dessert” consists of chicken and sweet peas.

“Can I just have a big bowl of sweet peas!??” he often asks.

Ironically enough, Caleb can’t even have sweet peas. He’s terribly allergic. They make his throat swell, and then the bathroom part begins. It’s terrible.

It’s such a relief that peas are not like peanuts. Nothing is. We can have all the peas we want in the house. They are not an airborne allergen. Unfortunately, that is not the case with NUTS. Don’t even get me started on that one.

As long as you have plain fruits, vegetables, and meats around, yes, my kids will be very happy. They do eat healthy!

The dentist was going over food options with Caleb, for his week of broken teeth. Caleb asked, “Can I still eat green beans?” The dentist looked very surprised.

“Uh, well….they are crunchy. Make sure you steam them real good first. It will take out some nutrients, but ….”

hahaha  Alan didn’t bother telling our wonderful California dentist that our green beans come from a can and don’t have a whole lot of nutrients left anyway. 😛

— The other night, Alan and I were settling down to sleep. I confessed that I’d been drinking like 3 cups of coffee per day. Alan said, “Yeah, I’ve noticed that. That can’t be healthy.”

“Really?” I asked.

“Eh, I don’t know,” he replied.

hehehe Nah, we’re not so sure.  The third kid started my coffee drinking habit, and home schooling has taken it to a whole other level!!!

—My idea of ‘fun’ has also changed. Last night Caleb, Daniel, and I spent a good half hour laminating science centers and a multiplication game, and it was such a blast. Every teacher needs a laminator!!

You can find awesome file folder multiplication games at this site:

—-My New Year’s goals aren’t going so well this year. I HAVE been studying Jesus, but I can’t remember what the other goals were….I hope it wasn’t “Wear real clothes every day,” because I have definitely failed at that. Today, I was reading this really cute book called Marvin Redpost Class President, to the big boys, when Caleb looked at me and said, “Mom, your pants are on inside out.”

“Oh. Yeah. I noticed that,” I told him.

Have I fixed that yet? Nope. Don’t worry. I’ll change pants before I go to AWANA tonight. hehehe

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