Let’s Build a HEALTHY Aphrodite Attitude

As I’m sure you all know, I’ve loved Greek mythology for as long as I can remember, especially Aphrodite because of her unshakable confidence in her beauty and sex appeal. After I wrote my last post, I thought of another goddess I admired, Psyche; I loved her because of her steadfast determination to fight for what she wants. When she lost her love, Eros, she happily completed the labors Aphrodite assigned to her, regardless of how demeaning and in the end, she married Eros in a great celebration blessed by all of the other gods and goddesses.

In today’s society, Merriam-Webster gives two distinct definitions of the word “psyche.” The first relates to the English translation of the Greek word, psychē, which refers to a person’s soul, personality and mind. Definition #2 refers the way everyone (especially clinical psychologists) have a proclivity to “anticipate correctly the intentions or actions of [someone.]” On the surface, these definitions seem to be polar opposites, but in truth they are interconnected.

A well-respected journal of psychology, “Psychology Today” does an excellent job of melding the two definitions. In my last post, I detailed the three critical aspects of a HEALTHY Aphrodite Attitude, the most important being an understanding that we are inherently flawed, but our flaws are NOT fatal. In fact, they are just as, if not more important, to defining who we are as our strengths. When properly understood and harnessed, your flaws can and will become strengths.

Many women have a broken psyche as a result of the many pressures we face from society. Think about some of the boxes we’re bombarded with from infancy:

1. You have to be a certain dress size or you’re fat and ugly,
2. If you don’t get married and have a family by this age, you’ll be relegated to the life of an unwanted spinster,
3. Follow this career path and keep your opinions to yourself or you’ll be known as a bitch, and so forth.

Whenever I start to feel defeated by the pressures of society, I visualize two trees, one broken and a grand old oak tree. Every once in a while branches break off in a big storm, but that DOES NOT stop the tree from growing. Rather, the tree takes the time to get to know its wound and heals it the best way it knows how. When it is given enough time, the tree will replace that broken branch with two stronger, more beautiful branches. This is a tree after a massive storm:

Dove recently released a sad statistic: only 4% of women in the world consider themselves beautiful

If you’re willing to go on this journey with me and rebuild your Aphrodite Attitude, I want to make your psyche look like this:

An ancient oak studies its injuries and takes all the time it needs to grow stronger, more beautiful branches.

Our goal is simply this: do as an oak tree and absorb whatever criticisms are directed at us and use them to our advantage. It NEVER frets over a broken branch… it studies it’s faults and then takes the time to not only heal itself but grow two bigger and stronger branches in its place. And just like an ancient oak, this will not happen overnight; it will take dedication, but EVERY step you take is important.

Brow Revive SAVED My Eyebrows!

A miracle in a tube!

Back in January, I wrote a post about a FANTASTIC eyebrow regrowth serum called Brow Revive. This serum is incredible because it undid my faux-pas of waxing your eyebrows way too often and way too thin.

To get a full understanding of how awesome this serum is, you need to see what my eyebrows used to look like:

This IS reversible!!

This is what they looked like as of January 22, 2014:

This incredible regrowth took about 10 months of solid use of Adonia’s Brow Revive Serum.

And here are what my eyebrows look like after I got them waxed at my favorite spa (these are completely bare — I didn’t use a pencil or powder to fill them in AT ALL 🙂 ):

I never thought they’d look this amazing again!

My results are better than I could have ever hoped for, but I do have to warn you that your eyebrows respond as well to the serum as mine did; since they are 100% ORGANIC, I highly recommend that you give them a try!!

Let me know what you think about my results and fill me in on what kind of results you get when you start using Brow Revive.

Food Can Bring Out Your Natural Beauty!

The yummy foods you eat also enhance your beauty!

Last Friday I tuned into Bethenny to see what she would discuss in terms of her “Diet Debate” segment, but what interested me more was her segment where she tested our beauty knowledge. Like me, Bethenny is a firm believer in using what you’ve got to improve your life, and it turns out that several common kitchen items can bring out your natural beauty and/or heal a specific health concern.

These three remedies impressed me the most:

1. Turmeric is traditionally used in Indian food, but it works wonders on acne. One of turmeric’s main ingredients is called curcumin and it works so well because of its anti-inflammatory and antioxidant properties. You can either mix some turmeric in a glass of water or make a paste and let it sit on your skin for 10-15 minutes.
2. Strawberries make delicious preserves and jam, but did you know that they are also an effective sunburn treatment? The anthocyanins, the compound that gives the strawberries their gorgeous red color, have awesome anti-inflammatory and antioxidant properties. To get the most of this treatment, mash some fresh strawberries and spread it on your sunburn like a salve. Let it sit for 15-20 minutes.
3. Mint has been shown to be an excellent way to reduce the puffiness under our eyes. The flavonoids help increase the production of antioxidants in the skin under our eyes. Those antioxidants, in turn, help fight the free radicals that give us the dark circles and puffiness we hate. To use mint, crush some fresh mint leaves and make a paste and leave it under your eyes for 15-20 minutes.

I’d love to hear about how well these remedies have worked for you!

The Natural Cure for Diabetes

Y’all know I love to give you the scoop on the incredible foods nature has to offer us, and I’ll continue to do so, but I think I’ll start finding other sources of evidence besides articles on the web.

Over the weekend, I went to a screening of a documentary called “Simply Raw: Reversing Diabetes in 30 Days,” and to say was good is the understatement of the millennium! For the film, they found 5 subjects with Type 2 diabetes and 1 subject with Type 1.

All of the subjects met with a Dr. Cousens who introduced them to the raw food lifestyle and had them eat only raw for 30 days. As I’m sure you know, it wasn’t an easy thing to do because of all the sugar we Americans have in our diets: the average American consumes approximately 150 pounds of sugar per year!

One man’s story really made me want to break down in tears. Kirt was a 26-year-old African American man from Baltimore, Maryland. He shared a story about how one time he went to the emergency room and the doctors told him his blood sugar level was at 1200; the normal range for blood sugar is between 80-100!!

Kirt impressed me further when he adhered the most to the diet – he gave those 30 days 110% because he knew that that was what was required if he truly wanted to cure his diabetes.

On day one of the program, his blood sugar was about 346 and he was taking 4 to 6 insulin shots a day. By day 30, not only was he able to STOP his insulin, his blood sugar was down to 73! At the end of the movie, Kirt went to his doctor to get the results of some blood work and he was surprised to find that his doctor had reread his file and was going to rediagnose him as a type 1 diabetic and had plans to give him an insulin pump! I’m sure you all know that people with type 1 diabetes produce very little or no insulin – but after a strict 30-day diet of raw foods, his body was totally healed and started making its own insulin!

My moral of the story is, although many doctors mean well, they are definitely undereducated about the power of the food we have available to us. Granted, they take the Hippocratic Oath upon graduating from medical school, but the better musing from Hippocrates is “Let food be thy medicine and medicine thy food.”

Cinnamon

Cinnamon is an incredible spice that not only brings zesty flavor to your favorite foods, it’s also believed to be a powerful antidote against multiple ailments, including arthritis, diabetes, headaches/migraines, and LDL (bad cholesterol).

Western medicine has yet to commission detailed studies on how this ancient Chinese herb can improve your health, but there are fabulous resources, such as GreenMedInfo, that focus on alternative medicinal therapies like spices and herbs. GreenMedInfo does a fantastic job of differentiating between the two main variants of cinnamon, Cassia and Ceylon.

Most cinnamon available in the United States is Cassia (milled mainly in China, Indonesia, Japan, Korea and Vietnam); this is the weaker of the two but is still an awesome source of manganese. Manganese helps to build healthy bones and increase your carbohydrate and fat metabolisms. Cassia cinnamon should be avoided if you are taking blood thinners like Coumadin because it contains higher traces of coumarin, a natural blood thinner.

Ceylon comes from India, Sri Lanka, Madagascar, Brazil and the Caribbean. This variant is considered the “true cinnamon” because it is sweeter, lighter and more refined than cassia.

Long story short, both kinds of cinnamon will adequately flavor the dishes you use it on, but it’s important to heed the warning about cassia consumption.

Scintillating Scallops

When I was a kid, my mother would make flounder and white rice for me. Unfortunately, I was an extremely picky eater back then and I’d refuse to try other kinds of seafood.

Now that I’m older, my desire to experiment has grown exponentially and I want to share with you one of my favorite recipes: Seared Scallops with Herb-Butter Sauce. I’ve tweaked the recipe slightly; you can find the original recipe here.

 For the scallops, you’ll need:

• 1 lb of dry, large sea scallops

• 1 Tbsp Smart Balance with Omega-3

• 1 Tbsp extra virgin olive oil or flaxseed oil

• Fresh ground black pepper

For the sauce, you’ll need:

• 3 Tbsps Smart Balance with Omega-3

• 1 medium shallot, diced

• ¼ cup of herbs (I like chives, rosemary and parsley)

• ¼ cup of your favorite liqueur (I like Kahlúa)

• ¼ cup lime zest

• Fresh ground black pepper

Quick tip: Chop your herbs and the shallot for the sauce before you start cooking the scallops.

Cooking directions (scallops):

1. Rinse scallops in cold water then pat dry with paper towels

2. Warm a nonstick skillet on medium-high heat for 1-2 minutes

3. Add oil and Smart Balance to the pan → to test if the mixture is hot enough, run your fingers under some cold water then splash it into the oil and Smart Balance. When it’s hot enough, the cold water will instantly boil off

4. Pat scallops dry once more before placing them in the pan (spread them around the pan for best cooking results)

5. Season each scallop with your choice of spices and place in the pan to sear

6. Let each scallop cook for 2 to 4 minutes until nicely browned (you’ll know it’s ready when it’s mostly firm to the touch)

7. Flip with tongs and repeat searing on the other side

8. Transfer the scallops to a warm plate (turn the burner down to medium and let the pan cool for about 45 seconds before starting the sauce

Cooking directions (herb-butter sauce):

1. Melt 1 Tbsp of Smart Balance in the pan

2. Add shallots to the pan and sautee for 1-2 minutes

3. Pour Kahlúa and let it simmer for 1-2 minutes or until it reduces by ½

4. Mix in herbs and lime zest and reduce heat to low

5. Add the other 2 Tbsps of Smart Balance to mixture and whisk briskly until it melts completely

6. Return scallops to the pan and roll them in sauce until warmed through

7. Salt and pepper to taste and enjoy!

SlimVox

I don’t believe that diet pills should be the crux of anyone’s plan to change their eating habits, but they might be helpful if you need to lose weight but can’t work out.

A prime example is be when I was on bed rest for my back injury: I could barely move without excruciating pain, let alone exercise. Despite my limitations, I was determined to do SOMETHING to change my destructive eating habits, so I started doing research on what kinds off supplements were available to me. One day I came across SlimVox and I noticed I could pronounce the ingredients and that stoked my curiosity. The more research I did on SlimVox, the more it impressed me, so I ordered it to see how it could help me during my recovery.

Supplementing.com has a terrific in-depth YouTube review on the ingredients in SlimVox; the concept behind the development SlimVox and the fact that they used NO artificial ingredients were the main catalysts that helped me decide to give it a trial run.

SlimVox was developed by women for women because we fully understand how hard it can be for us to shed those unwanted pounds. Men say women don’t lose weight as fast as they do because we’re lazy (a MONUMENTAL cop-out, in my opinion!), but that is NOT the case. A woman’s body is genetically engineered (link) to store more fat than men just in case we get pregnant.

The women who developed SlimVox underscore this point and use all natural ingredients to help us shed those unwanted pounds, with proper diet and exercise!

My favorite ingredients in SlimVox are kelp, ginger and green tea. The fact SlimVox included kelp in the formulation intrigued me greatly. I had heard many times how marine plants like kelp and seaweed were helpful in absorbing toxins in the digestive tract and easing them out (after all, sushi rolls are usually wrapped in seaweed!). Since I had 25+ years of junk food in my system, I wanted something that could really kick-start the detoxification process.

Ginger is an incredible spice because it is an intestinal spasmolytic (something that is really good at soothing the intestinal tract and makes it easier for it to expel toxins from your system). This was important to me because during the first five months my recovery, I could not stand long enough to make a fiber-rich salad or heart-healthy bowl of granola.

Green tea sealed the deal for me because of the potent antioxidant properties that could help repair the damage from my injury (and it had just the right amount of caffeine that gave me a much-needed boost of energy while I took the time to recover from my injury).

Honey is a Natural and POWERFUL anti-bacterial agent!

About a year ago, I started drinking tea on a regular basis and I used to put so many packets of artificial sweetener in my tea, it was ridiculous!! Every sip I took, I thought, “Oh! There’s a new cavity…”

My mom suggested I start putting honey in to replace the sugar in my tea and I was flabbergasted by what I noticed after doing that consistently. Not only did I drastically reduce the need for the sweeteners, I noticed that I wouldn’t sniffle as much. Honey.com confirmed my good results.

In addition to that, when I have honey in my tea regularly I don’t have that nasty stuff that builds up around my eyes as I’m sleeping.

One last thing I’ve noticed about honey is how moisturizing it is! When I have leftover oatmeal, I mix ¼ cup of honey with 4tsp of oats and spread it on my skin. I leave it on anywhere from 10 to 20 minutes and as soon as I wash the mixture off, my redness is greatly reduced and my skin is incredibly soft!

Give it a try and let me know what you think 🙂