Healthy Bites:
Thanksgiving!
Thanksgiving is almost upon us!
Cooking a big, elaborate meal for a crowd can be exhausting. You spend days shopping, preparing, chopping, cooking—you hustle around the kitchen trying to make sure everything’s timed right—you’re trying to make sure the tastes of your picky kids and vegetarian cousins are all accounted for—and in the blink of an eye, it’s suddenly time to do dishes. It’s easy to forget that the whole point of the day is to actually enjoy the meal!
That’s why I’ll be practicing mindful eating when it comes to the holiday meal. The art of Mindful Eating, with its roots in Zen teachings, aims to reconnect you more deeply with the experience of eating and drinking. It’s the process of deliberately paying attention to what is happening both within yourself and in your environment during mealtime.
When you eat mindfully, you are in tune with the aroma, taste, and texture of food. You become much more aware of your appetite—just how hungry are you? And you become more sensitive to the feeling of fullness, so you’ll be less likely to overeat. Mindful eating brings enjoyment back to mealtime.
Read on for five ways to slow down and savor your holiday meal.
A Green Rx:
Gratitude
Thanksgiving is a holiday all about giving thanks (it’s right there in the name!). We hear a lot these days about the benefits of gratitude—but what does the research have to say about it?
Thankfully, all the studies seem to back up the idea that practicing gratitude has a multitude of tangible benefits on our health and happiness.
Research suggests that practicing gratitude is associated with benefits such as better physical and psychological health, increased happiness and life satisfaction, decreased materialism, and more. Gratitude, the studies suggest, can help improve our relationships with others, help us sleep better, and possibly even counteract depression or suicidal thoughts.
Read on to learn more about what scientific studies have found regarding the health benefits of gratitude, as well as tangible ways to practice gratitude. Let’s make sure to make giving thanks a year-round phenomenon—not just a seasonal one!
This Week’s Instagram-able Moment
I was lucky enough to attend this fantastic end-of-season dinner at Windrose Farms, a highly diversified, vertically integrated (and for sale!) organic and biodynamic farm on the Central Coast of California. Windrose offers hard-to-find heirlooms, seminars and truly amazing produce…catch them Wednesdays at the Santa Monica Farmer’s Market. So much to be grateful for!