It's HERE! Beautiful Brains, Bellies, and Babies

You've probably noticed a few changes around these parts lately. 

If you've been with me since the beginning of this blog and business, my passion for health, wellness, healing, and recovery is obvious. I've "been through it," overcoming that whole severe traumatic brain injury, coma, broken in at least 18 places thing. I know how it feels to be so physically weak you can't even walk at a normal pace, let alone climb stairs normally. I know what it's like to be in pain all the time, to not trust my thoughts or the words that come out of my mouth because I'm aware of how my brain confuses most things.... and I know what it takes to heal and overcome all of that.

When I launched My Whole Healthy in 2014, I was pregnant with my son. This blog, website, and business was borne out of my desire to help people heal, get healthy, and share my story in the hope that it might inspire someone who needed to hear it. At the same time, I also became a certified personal trainer, and dove headfirst into honing my skills to gain more knowledge and expertise in nutrition and wellness. 

Now, I am a pre and post-natal corrective exercise specialist, and I am SO excited to finally be launching my coaching services in an online format, as well as in person! I know good help is hard to find, ESPECIALLY when it comes to finding a personal trainer you click with, so it brings me so much joy to offer my coaching to the incredible souls I meet here in San Diego, and around the world. My Whole Healthy lives online, and I have connected with so many bright spirits in the online world. My husband being one, as well as many dear friends.

I know that very real connections can be made online, and I know that I can be of service there, too. With the quality of online video conferencing now, it's like we are sitting across the table from each other, and I am fully able to coach you on correct form and function by giving you easy-to-understand cues and tips.

CLICK HERE to visit my appointment scheduling page, and please feel free to share as much on social, and in person, as you like! I can't wait to help you reach your goals.

XOXO

Maggie

Liked this post? Sign up to receive even more from me in your email every month, including tons of free gifts that I'll send you right away! 

5 Steps To Perfect Kale Chips

Prepared kale leaves for making kale chips.

Making kale chips is so easy to screw up.

They're the easiest thing to make but I see so many recipes online that give terrible directions! Recipes all over the internet completely butcher the nutritional value of this amazing snack so I'm going to tell you how to do it correctly.

I love kale chips even more than potato chips when I'm craving something salty and crunchy. They really are crazy easy to make, so there is no reason to pay crazy prices for them at the health food store, but you need to do it right. Here's how:

Step One: Get a large head of kale (preferably organic) or two - here I used a full head of lacinto (dinosaur) kale and a full head of curly kale - and tear it into bite sized 1 1/2 inch pieces, removing the ribs and stems. Rinse and dry thoroughly. Toss kale pieces into a large bowl.

Step Two: Coat the kale leaf pieces in extra virgin olive oil or avocado oil. Use 1-3 tablespoons of oil, you want every piece coated but not swimming in oil. Massage the oil into the kale with your fingers.

Step Three: Season with sea salt and garlic powder to taste. I used 5-8 full grinds of sea salt and a light dusting of garlic powder, no measurements. Start with a light seasoning and add to it as needed.

Step Four: Lay seasoned kale pieces out in a single layer on a cookie sheet. Try to avoid any overlapping pieces! If they overlap, they will stay soggy.

Step Five: Place in a 200 degree F oven and allow the kale to dehydrate (NOT bake) until crisp. Check the kale after the first hour and then as needed. The oven isn't hot enough to burn them quickly but you don't want to leave them under even low heat any longer than you have to. 

Serve as finger food and enjoy your chips! My favorite thing about kale chips is how they disintegrate and melt in your mouth. So yummy.

*** Keeping the heat in the oven low helps to preserve the nutrient value of the kale. High heat destroys vitamins. High heat will also burn the edges of the leaves.

*** If you have a dehydrator, use that instead! Your chips will be even better and will retain most of their nutritional value.

*** Organic kale is important because it is a crop that consistently lands on the EWG's Dirty Dozen.

*** Using oils like extra virgin olive oil and avocado oil add healthy fats to your chips instead of the inflammatory oils high in Omega-6 essential fatty acids typically used on potato chips. Their flavors also work well with the kale!

View fullsize

View fullsize

View fullsize

Liked this post? Subscribe to my Whole Healthy Notes below to receive even more wellness love in your email every month. I'll send you tips to feel better today, recipes, exclusive discounts and freebies, workout tips, meditations, and more!

Make The Best Smoothie Ever!

I love green smoothies. Real, raw, whole food, organic glasses full of delicious, healthy, green goodness. Not fast-food cups full of sugar and artificial ingredients, or even smoothie bar, "all natural" (not organic), smoothies that are overpriced and way too sweet. My husband still teases me about drinking "swamp water" but I love how they make me feel and I think their vibrant green color is gorgeous! Making them at home is definitely the way to go and I'll show you how.

I love the green smoothies I make myself because they give me the nutritional punch my body needs, I can control exactly what goes into them, they're easy to make, and they taste like happiness! By using fresh (and fresh-frozen) ingredients, I swear I can feel the smoothie boost my energy right away and it feels like my cells are celebrating when I drink it. 

I started out by juicing and even though I compost, I hated seeing all that leftover pulp get thrown out, along with the fiber and nutrients it contains. Fresh juice IS delicious and packed with nutrients but by eliminating all the fiber, juice's high levels of natural sugars get absorbed by our bodies very quickly, and that can have a just-as-bad effect on the body as eating refined sugars. Unless you juice all green vegetables, things like beets, carrots and any fruit you add are very high in the natural fruit sugar, fructose. You can read more about the trouble with sugars here.

I love smoothies because they keep all the fiber, along with the nutrients, and actually fill me up! Plus, I can pack way more veggies into a smoothie than I could ever sit down and eat in one sitting, so they help me get the nutrition I need. To digest the smoothie well, it's good to hold the smoothie in your mouth for a few seconds before swallowing so the enzymes in your saliva have a chance to work! It's food, not just a drink to chug down. Remember amylase from high school biology? It starts the breakdown of carbohydrates and that all starts in the mouth. 

Some people think you need a bunch of specific or fancy ingredients to make a smoothie, like cashew milk or greek yogurt, but I never do that. All you need is water, fruit and fresh greens like spinach, collard greens, kale, etc. If you're brave and want a noticeably earthy flavor, beet greens and chard are amazingly healthy leafy greens, too!  Try different kinds and see what you like.

The only thing I'd highly recommend investing in is a high-power blender like the VItamix or the Ninja. Those babies really make the difference because they're powerful enough to pulverize your fruit and veggies and make a deliciously creamy smoothie. Who wants texture and chunks in their smoothie, right?

These blenders can be pricey but the smaller, less professional versions cost less and if you don't need to do any hardcore blending, and are willing to chop your fruit and veg into smaller pieces before you blend it, they work just fine. My mum has a small Ninja that's perfect for making single serving smoothies.

I made this smoothie with about of cup water, big handfuls of organic baby kale and baby spinach, a granny smith apple, a frozen banana saved from when it started to turn brown and I didn't want to throw it away. This is a great way to save bananas you don't get around to eating! Then I added half a bag of frozen tropical blend fruit (sliced banana, pineapple chunks and strawberries). That's it. Water, greens and fruit. And it was an AWESOME 30+ ounces of healthy, delicious lunch, no loss of fiber or nutrients, in a giant mason jar mug.

I like adding a stalk or two of celery, a whole cucumber, and even an avocado instead of a banana for creaminess if I want a more veggie-focused smoothie with less sugar sometimes, and different fruit like blueberries, blackberries, mango, peaches, oranges, a little lemon, or whatever suits my mood at the time.

I also try to rotate my greens, using different kinds week to week so I, number one,  get flavor variety, and number two, avoid overloading my body with a plant's naturally occurring oxalic acid and alkaloids, etc. These are the plants natural defenses against the bugs that eat them, and in  very concentrated amounts, they can be harmful to us. It's why we don't eat rhubarb leaves (they contain these things in very high concentration and they ARE poisonous ). I've never heard of anyone getting sick from using only spinach or kale week after week, but I just want you to know that the possibility exists so you can get the most out of your smoothies. You can read more about it here, here, here and here.

And always, always use organic produce because leafy greens and fruit typically retain high levels of pesticide residues, according to the Environmental Working Group's independent testing. My body has been through so much already, I'm always aware of what I'm feeding it because I know my brain is still healing in many ways and my cells need food that helps them function, not toxic chemicals that make their functioning harder. 

I prefer using frozen fruit because it gives me the most choice during the winter, even in California, and my blender does warm up my smoothies a little bit from all the friction happening during blending. I've seen a lot of info circulating on the internet about heat destroying the enzymes in raw foods, and cooking certainly changes which vitamins etc. we are able to absorb from different foods, but I can't find a definitive source that says the warmth from blending deactivates or destroys beneficial enzymes. But I like to keep my smoothies cold because they just taste better! Let's face it, warm smoothies are gross.

Frozen fruit isn't QUITE as nutrient dense as fresh fruit (fresh meaning picked by you or your farmer that day and eaten right away - fruit in the grocery store has often come from hundreds/thousands of miles away, picked before it's fully ripe just so it will make the trip and  it's not fully mature when you buy it) but frozen fruit is frozen immediately after being picked, usually at peak ripeness, locking in those nutrients, and I love the variety and the convenience it provides. We've got to find what works for us because it's not good for us if we can't be bothered to make it and it never gets in our bodies!

I want to mention that smoothies and fresh juice are also naturally very acidic, and can be very sweet if they contain a lot of fruit, so I try to swish some fresh water around my mouth when I finish drinking my smoothie to help protect my teeth. I lost all but one of my front teeth in the accident and they were replaced with dental implants, so the natural teeth I have left are very precious to me. And it's pretty counterproductive to drink green smoothies to boost my health but destroy my teeth at the same time. Green smoothies have a lot of beneficial fiber and nutrients but I try to use common sense, I don't drink them every day and I change it up.

Smoothie ingredients

Earlier in this post I mentioned my 30 oz. mason jar mug and I know that's a BIG smoothie. I love those mugs though because they often come with lids, so if I can't finish my smoothie, I screw the lid on and stick it in the fridge for later. I always finish my smoothie at the latest the next day because the longer it sits, the more it oxidizes and loses nutrients as the vitamins and enzymes do break down.  

You may have also noticed the straws I'm using! I never use plastic straws anymore because of the chemicals they contain that I don't want in my body (chemicals in the plastic can leach into the beverage your drinking as you suck on the straw). Plus, they're wasteful and I really believe the health of the planet affects our health directly. Instead I always use reusable stainless steel or silicone straws that don't leach any unwanted chemicals into my beverages, and can be washed and reused. Don't worry, they don't add any funky tastes to what I'm drinking and they're a much healthier way to go!

So give a green smoothie a try and tell me what you think, or if you drink them already, leave your favorite flavor/ingredient combo in the comments below! Maybe I'm missing out and you know something I don't know!

xo Maggie

PS - Add a clean boost to your smoothie with my favorite vegan protein!

---

Liked this post? Subscribe to my Whole Healthy Notes below to receive even more wellness love in your email every month. I'll send you tips to feel better today, recipes, exclusive discounts and freebies, workout tips, meditations, and more!