“Finding the work you love, loving the work you find” is a well-known exercise in the field of job reeducation.

What are the things you love to do? Think about the hobbies and activities do you enjoy in your leisure hours and subjects you read about with great curiosity. This list may include food, massage, exercise, counseling, fashion—almost anything. Take your time, write down it down; make sure the list is exhaustive. Somewhere in this list lies the key to your new career.

If you could spend eight hours a day thinking about or working with some of these subject areas, which ones would you pick? Use these as indicators of the kind of work you might find enjoyable.

When you have identified and selected your strongest interests, start taking steps to make your new job a reality. It may take some time and effort, but the benefits to your health and quality of life will be enormous. Keep in mind that what you need from a job may change with time. You can always use your creativity and intelligence to create a new situation.

Tags: Primary Food by joshua
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Few things are more rewarding in life than meaningful and exciting work. You feel confident and stimulated. Time stops, and the outside world fades away. You are totally absorbed and energized by it.

Too often we equate work with a paycheck. We may think of our jobs only as a means to earn money. Having money to take care of yourself and your family is obviously very important, but it’s a limited view of work. For example, some people go to work to make the world a better place. They may be involved in a project that improves the lives of a few people, hundreds of people or the whole planet. For others, work is a form of creativity and self-expression; whether in a corporate office or an artist studio, work is a place to hatch new ideas and to put their personal stamp on the world.

Doesn’t it make sense to work on something you are passionate about?

Tags: Primary Food by joshua
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In recent years, the idea of eating more and weighing less has become popular. Why not? The trick is to understand caloric density or volumetrics, which means you can eat as much as you want of foods that are nutrient-rich and low in calories. For example one package of Oreos is 2,200 calories. For that same amount of calories, someone could consume 1 pound of carrots, 1 pound of papaya, 1 pound of apples, 1 pound of onions, 1 pound of lettuce, 1 pound of kale, 1 pound of tofu, 1 pound of 2% cottage cheese, 2 pounds of cantaloupe, 2 pounds of celery and 2 pounds of cucumber.

Your body only needs a certain volume of food each day. If you’re having a bowl of soup, your body doesn’t know if that bowl of soup has 100 calories or 1,000 calories. It just eats a bowl of soup. When you choose foods with a low caloric density, you can feel full without packing on the pounds.

Tags: Food by joshua
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People around the world are hungry for American products—movies, television shows and cigarettes—and they love our food. American fast-food restaurants are sprouting up worldwide. In 2007, McDonald’s announced its plan to open about 400 new restaurants in Asia and 150 new restaurants in Europe.

As our eating habits become fashionable throughout the world, so do our health concerns. In November 2006, the European Commission reported that 38% of European women were obese. Food corporations spend millions of dollars influencing people in developing countries to consume more of these modern foods and abandon their traditional diets.

Overweight people now outnumber undernourished people in the world. The World Health Organization’s estimates agree: globally, there are about 1 billion overweight adults, and 300 million of them are obese; in contrast, about 800 million do not have enough to eat. Even Africa, a continent previously thought of as being synonymous with hunger and food scarcity, is seeing a drastic rise in obesity and diabetes.

Tags: Politics by joshua
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Most of us spend eight to 10 hours a day at work and very little time with our loved ones. While we are choosy about who we relate with intimately, we spend years doing work we can’t stand and that may be completely opposed to our personal values.

Work is a huge part of our daily routine, yet how many of us really enjoy it? Do you find yourself complaining about your work, but feel powerless to change it? Or complaining that you are still working your corporate job when you’d really like to do something else? This feeling of helplessness is not a nourishing lifestyle.

Few things are more rewarding in life than meaningful and exciting work. You feel confident and stimulated. Time stops, and the outside world fades away. You are totally absorbed and energized by it. Doesn’t it make sense to work on something you are passionate about?

Tags: Career by joshua
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Scientific research and personal experience both demonstrate that what we eat affects how we think and how we act. Still, most people don’t acknowledge the connection between their food and their mood. Stop and think for a moment about how you feel throughout the day. Do you sometimes feel fuzzy and tired after lunch? Angry and irritable between meals? Energized by a great meal?

Food undoubtedly changes your mood. The most extreme examples are coffee or alcohol, which change your state of mind within minutes. The standard American diet, high in processed carbohydrates and poor-quality animal meat while lacking vegetables and water, leaves many people in a bad mood. It’s hard to feel inspired and happy when you’re living on chemical, artificial junk food. Julia Ross, author of The Mood Cure and a pioneer in the field of nutritional psychology, refers to this relationship as the law of malnutrition. The current epidemic of bad moods is definitely linked to an epidemic of deteriorating food quality and quantity: junk moods come from junk foods, she writes.

Tags: Food by joshua
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Seasonal eating is an important aspect to maintaining health and wellness. This practice, rooted deep in our ancestry, balances the body by reducing illness and increasing energy and well-being.

When people are in tune with their bodies, they notice they crave foods in season. For example, in spring, people crave detoxifying foods like leafy greens. In the heat of summer, cravings consist of cooling foods like fruit. The fall enhances grounding food cravings, like squash and nuts to prepare for the winter season.

Our ancestors ate seasonally because they had no choice. Fresh greens grew in spring, fruit ripened in the summer, root vegetables kept them going in the fall, and people relied on animal food to get them through the winter.

When highways were invented, Americans could eat more or less anything they wanted, anytime they wanted. But there are costs to this convenience. Eating out of sync with the usual rhythms of nature makes you more susceptible to colds, flu and other illness.

Staying in tune with your body and eating appropriate seasonal foods will provide more energy and strengthen immune systems, ultimately achieving inner and outer happiness, beauty and balance.

Try these simple tips for seasonal eating:

·         Adjust your cooking methods for the time of year. During the colder months, put more heat into your food and cook it longer. Try roasting,baking and making stews to keep warm.

·         When springtime comes, allow your food preparation to become a little simpler. You can start to incorporate more raw foods, quick high-temperature sautes and steamed dishes. 

• Because produce is available year round, choosing what’s in season can be confusing. Generally, look for ripe, fresh produce in abundance and check with your local farmers to get location-specific assistance for each season.

Tags: Healthy Tips by joshua
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Ever notice that unhealthy foods are cheaper than healthy foods? You may think nothing of it, but our government policies and practices help lower the prices of unhealthful foods. Since the 1920s, American farmers have received government subsidies to help maximize production, reduce cost of raw materials, stabilize crop prices and keep the cost of food down for the American public, allowing farmers to stay in business. This originally well-intentioned government money has led to the overproduction of corn and soybeans and, consequently, lower prices for these crops and foods containing them as ingredients. This may seem harmless. Corn and soybeans are healthy, right?

In their natural states, these foods are not bad, but the outcome of the overproduction of these crops has led to their increased use in cheap, unhealthy foods found in processed foods on the grocery store aisles. For consumers, these less nutritious foods are cheaper, and particularly tempting to people living on a budget. These subsidies contribute to the obesity epidemic by making it cheaper to produce and purchase unhealthy, packaged foods.

Tags: Politics by joshua
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We can be thankful for our cravings.

Learning to listen to our body is essential. Cravings are the body’s way of sending us messages to maintain balance. The longer we ignore these messages, the stronger the backlash can be. Yet, most people view cravings as a weakness, something to be controlled through austerity and discipline.

The lesson here is to look for the foods, deficits and behaviors in your life that are the underlying causes of your cravings.

So whenever your body is craving something, pause for a moment and wonder, “What’s really going on here?” When you find yourself impulsively reaching for some food, please take a moment to slow down, breathe and reevaluate the situation and consider what your heart and soul are really asking for.

Tags: Food by joshua
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As you increase awareness about the foods you consume, consider that each food has its own unique energy, beyond vitamins, minerals, fats and carbohydrates. When we eat, we assimilate not only the nutrients, but also the energy of the food. Food has distinct qualities and energetic properties, depending on where, when and how it grows, as well as how it is prepared.

By understanding the energy of food, we can choose meals that will create the energy we are seeking in our lives. Virtually no one in the field of health and nutrition speaks about the concept of food having energy, but if you stop and think about it, it intuitively makes sense. Vegetables have a lighter energy than proteins. Greens, such as kale or lettuces, reach up toward the sun and when you eat them, they can provide uplifting, mood-boosting energy. Squashes grow level with the ground and can help balance moods and energy levels.

As you cultivate awareness around the energy of your food, and how it is passed on to you, you can begin to make recognize your own mind-body connection.

Tags: Food by joshua
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