Layer and freeze each layer before adding another layer.
Layer 1: milk
Layer 2: layer with black cocoa, gluten-free flour, and milk (or cream) that's more creamy and good for beverages.
Layer 3: cold blueberry tea
Layer 4: cold brew coffee (or coffee of choice)
Layer 5: milk
Add a few blueberries if you like.
Make plant-based pandan ice cube. Add pandan mixed with water and freeze
Add the ice cube to the top frozen layer.
Bring drink out to regular room temperature about 10-15 minutes before you want to consume if semi-frozen and 30 minutes or longer if frozen solid. Watch your planet beverage change before your very eyes! For kids, you can swap cocoa or chocolate milk for the coffee layer.
Crow Pose is one yoga pose that can help you feel strong along with the messages you feed yourself. Learn about how in this article.
Do good and Be kind are heart action messages worth taking into the day!
Maybe when you start your balance pose initially, you’re not able to hold the Crow Pose without your feet or toes touching the mat or floor.
…But as you practice regularly, you’ll be able to! 🐦⬛
Crow Pose could be a goal this week that gets your mojo back to blood flowing activity and to keep moving and growing. 🥅
Building Strength Stability
If you want to become stronger, gaining arm strength is one impactful way. Strength represents resilience that’s needed to get through tough times… and build stability and progress.
One starter exercise way is to be in your push up pose. Alternating legs, pull one knee at a time closer up to your shoulders one side at a time.
Then like a push up, push straight up and down. Your hiked up leg is extra body weight to use as muscle weights for your arm. 😉
Then switch leg sides. After a weekly habit of doing arm strength building exercises, your muscle memory will remember (fostering stable reinforcements) and that’ll help you in your Crow Pose…
If only you could see how cool you look!
This exercise I just described (that I’m not sure if it has a name) helps you get to used to vertical arm strength that Crow Pose needs. Chataranga pose is another.
In good form, vertical arms will support your body along with your strong ab muscles. And speaking of the gut, I share below some strong food ways that complement your pose.
…But let’s not got ahead of ourselves. For starters, you may want to see where you’re at with your Crow Pose today. So give it a try today (or now) and fail forward or beam in your Crow!
Keep reading 👇 for tips…
Crow Pose For Beginners (Or Starting Again)
As a beginner, you can have a yoga block in front of you for strength and moral support. Set the soft-place-to-fall security block on the floor on the lowest setting side where your forehead would fall on… don’t worry, as this likely won’t happen.
The placebo effect is a confidence booster. 🤸🏻
…And that way you can enter the pose confidently without fear of injury that can stall your progress or hold you back unintentionally.
Especially when you want Crow Pose to build your confidence (and not build a fine line wall divide that keeps you stuck).
And when you move into your first Crow Pose moments, you can feel like you can handle the world in all its cruel ways that can sometimes make any of us feel like we’re broken down. Stay at peace. ✌️
When you look up and out with a grin on your face knowing you’re able to support yourself, the weight of the world crumbles into the mat.
Plus, you’re building up arms that are becoming more chiseled. 😊
And after you’ve mastered Crow Pose, you can advance to a taller Crane Pose or take a slight bend (detour break) into Side Crow.
There’s always a next or side step. Before you know it, you’ll be flying! 🕊️
Side Crow Pose and Crane Pose
In Side Crow Pose, you crouch down and tip your body to the side where the back of your upper arms catch your legs and side buttock. So you get a different muscle workout and perspective.
And if you want to lengthen taller and gain more stability in your moves, you can try a more advanced pose: Crane Pose.
Cranes are the tallest flying birds. They’re powerful so the pose matches the yoga pose name.
What I like about these two other poses is what they’ll tell you more about your core and arm muscle state.
Many women think they’ll build Popeye arms with regular 10 lb weights, but that’s not the case.
We underestimate ourselves and what we can lift. If you can lift your travel carry-on luggage up to the compact overhead bin, then daily 10 pound weights should be no problem.
If you look more compact, then you could have more muscle that’s lean mass which means it will become denser or smaller.
Think of a compact ball of yarn versus a loose skein that yarn is usually sold in. On the shelves, it’s soft. But if you take it home and unravel the yarn and make a tight ball 🧶, then it becomes hard like a rubber ball.
We want our muscles to have shape, tone, and hard compactness that a rubber ball represents. In between, it can be like a squishy stress ball.
Our arm muscles are easy to scope out, but the hidden body muscles that give us the most trouble and least strength are the ones we don’t use or stretch often. And in yoga, you can discover those small areas in poses.
Balancing Food Macros to Support Crow Pose Moves
If you’re like many trying to lose weight, be sure to amp up your protein so your body stays full longer. Proteins burn more calories.
Taking a step further, the body burns fat for energy after it runs out of glucose. And that’s why I’m so gung-ho on intermittent fasting for metabolic flexibility. On and off switching teaches the body who’s boss. 😊
As we age, we lose muscle. Our protein macros help make up the deficit, for especially women. We can include large doses of protein foods with specific amino acids to help us restore what’s lost.
Protein food sources also keep us feeling full that saves us time from taking time to eat so we can spend more time doing other activities we want to get to.
If you’re like me, after graduating from baby milk as nutrients, I started out life with sugary bowls of cereal and milk as a breakfast meal. That was what I woke up to, growing up. Protein wasn’t a priority.
With cereal, it’s not the sugary sides that’s the biggest problem… it was the starting with cereal as a meal. Cereal wasn’t and isn’t filling enough and also begs us wanting more sugar in our veins.
But as a snack treat to fulfill sweet cravings, low-sugar cereals are better and I prefer them over sweet alternatives like cookies (my love 💕). Many cereals are fortified with macros and minerals while cookies are mostly empty calories (unless you bake them with healthy goodness like I do these days).
Gluten-free coconut flour, cocoa, shredded coconut, cinnamon, coconut oil, and water make this cookie batter.
But in my earlier years, I was in double trouble working in catering food management at the Doubletree Hotel known for their large paper weight-dense cookies. 🍪
And that’s how I started my breakfast morning at 8 am…
But decades later with better intentions and experiencing a season of excess sugar bothering my skin with eczema, I changed my ways. I didn’t think I could ever switch to starting mornings with a savory meal.
…I mean, forget protein like lean meats. But I let health motivate me and after many bites, savory foods grew on me.
…So I started adding proteins from leftover meals. Because eggs, tofu, and chicken aren’t necessarily the favorite first thing meal when your gut isn’t even awake yet…
And if that’s you…don’t give up on yourself! The a-ha change I made also made me realize that I could ignore my cravings (like unproductive thoughts) if I wanted to and focus on building healthy habits.
Protein substantial foods are also a better stomach cushion for coffee (that’s acidic).
…And you too can start the habit if you want!
Trust your feelings will follow. 💖
That’s how you can change tastes effectively for your health and build in more protein ma-crows in your life, so you can support your Crow Pose and other bird pose yoga areas calling you!
Yoga moves calling for strength can be the canary in the coal mine indicator to add more daily muscle and protein to your body and diet. 🌱
And doing a daily Crow Pose could just be the starting reminder.
Today, I wanted to let you in on my intermittent fasting journey (and provide an Intermittent Fasting Guide) as that may help yours if you’ve begun, or maybe you’re curious what it’s ALL ABOUT.
If either sounds like YOU, I created a FREE Intermittent Fasting Guide with you in mind that you can download. It’s called The Start and Sustain Intermittent Fasting Lifestyle Guide… and it also comes in handy when you start IF and then take a short break.
That’s exactly what I did in 2023 during the holiday season, and then realized what I was missing from the benefits I saw on and in my body earlier in the year. I took a quick selfie for comparison…
…Um, that’s a bit of skin showing there! 👙 Oh and believe me, I’m not someone who bares all skin in case you’re wondering why this photo doesn’t fit along with my food and other healthy lifestyle inspo ones.
But the photo really does hone in on my gut ab area (as deep as I can show) and is the healthy reason why I started intermittent fasting in the first place.
I was feeling discomfort in my gut in the upper stomach area where the esophagus meets the stomach (aka the lower esophageal sphincter).
Despite doing all the healthy tips regularly like sourdough, veggie fiber, and ACV, I could feel a dull feeling in the stomach gut area when the optimal feeling is no nagging ache (or even better, feel nothing in those areas). An uneventful inside body feeling day is a good day.
You’ve probably felt similar if you ever experienced heartburn, GERD or acid reflux. Last summer’s heat didn’t help either (hottest recorded in history). That kicks up the Pitta. And, not the kind of fire-in-the-belly you want! 🔥
Even though my stomach case was mild, it’s probably what most people feel who experience heartburn in daily busy and stressful work lives. 🙋🏻♀️
And as someone who once-upon-a-time lived a stressful corporate work life (and works on feeling good and better all the time), I don’t believe you should suffer more than a minute necessary. So, I had to figure it out!… I couldn’t just let it slide. And maybe that’s how you are too in your health areas…
But, lemme backup just a minute so you have some background info…
I started cooking and baking virtually all my meals after the pandemic. So, I knew which ingredients were put into each healthy dish or snack (that I ate 90% of the time). I often show some of the celebrational weekly meal tables, healthy bakes, and dishes weekly here in my blog articles.
…That comes from the side of me that worked a decade in catering party planning, where food is love.
But most my eating ways were healthy (…with a lot less sugar for this former refined sugar addict!). And I was intentionally feeding healthy foods to help a happy gut as that’s where most of the happy hormones (serotonin) are produced.
But I could still feel the gut discomforts even though everything else was running smoothly. And after researching, listening to health interviews, and putting it all together… I came to the conclusion that it’s not the type of food that’s the problem, it’s the fooditself.
Every food ingredient on the planet seems to be in question in some way these days. The only purer ones are the whole ones. And where there are edible food skin nutrients, that’s where the invisible poisons are too.
Even with good intentions to eat more healthy, our daily healthy foods are tainted.
The year prior, I was writing articles for wellness national publications on health and the Blue Zones, the oldest groups of people alive on the planet to date. So I was researching daily and comparing their food and healthy lifestyle ways with my own.
And I realized their B.Z. cheese is not our cheese process, and their bread is not our bread. Starting at the flour.
What we source and bring back home from grocery stores is processed, stripping out the gut valuable nutrients.
…So even with healthy and anti-inflammatory eating intentions, disappointingly we’re still off-setting so much food damage that’s out of our control.
From garden to grocery store, the good nutrients contain some harmful pesticide sprays and/or preservatives to make food shelf life last longer.
…And that means all of us have imperfect guts. And then we add plastic packaged food products, antibiotics, and daily stress into our lives… and that all compounds to the gut issues…
Or in some cases, leaky guts, bloating, IBS, etc. The list is long. And the gut stretches taller than you and me both. With over 15 feet, there’s all kinds of growing bug opportunities where we want to tip the scales to the good ones daily. Doing this impacts so much of our health and daily energy.
And long story short, all this is to say that’s why I started intermittent fasting regularly in 2023 for healthy preventative gut reasons and to help let the body naturally repair the gut.
It’s a great way to lose bad habits like snacking, sugar, overeating, drinking too late, drinking too much, etc. And a great opportunity to let your body detox reset, sleep more efficiently, and lose weight. If you want to discover more about the benefits and strategies, get the free guide.
Add milk and cocoa powder to a pot, and heat until you see a light boil (a few small boil bubbles). Then turn the heat off.
Take the pot off the heat and let cool for a few minutes.
Add your egg yolks to a separate mixing bowl and beat with sugar to emulsify until pale or lighter yellow color.
Add slightly cooled mixture to egg yolks and constantly stir with quick motions (prevent curdling).
When combined, set in refrigerator to cool down for about 15 minutes or longer.
Prepare ice cream maker machine and bowl if you will be using one to set the soft serve ice cream. Take bowl out of freezer for about 30 minutes if it has been in the back of the freezer. Freezer temps vary but you want the bowl cold enough but e.g. not with frozen icicles on the sides but not water condensation. Tip: for the balance, have the bowl a little less cold because you can always freeze the ice cream back up in the freezer. And soft serve is more creamy, watery, and soft than ice cream.
Alternatively, if you are not using an ice cream maker/bowl, be sure to stir the ice cream every half hour or so to remove any forming icicles.
Upper gut is not something we daily talk about but we can feel if we have heartburn.
Looks like rhubarb but it’s actually swiss chard… a super healthy spring veggie from a farmer’s market where you get in-season, fresh, organic produce 🥬
We tend to oversimplify body symptoms of the gut when we’re trying to fix the upper gut. Some upper gut symptoms are easily fixable within a few days of diet changes, and that’s what this blog post article is about.
The lower gut has different symptoms and needs…
Such as bloating symptoms that are usually a discomfort-pain in the lower gut or abdomen.
Similar to a headache, bloating can have many causes including diet with disagreeable foods or food sensitivities, chronic inflammation, and diseases.
Eating less food while increasing more fiber, can help for simple bloating stomach fixes.
An even simpler fix is if you aren’t drinking enough water… and as soon as you fill up, you start feeling better.
For upper gut diet-related cause issues, you can change your symptoms from your eating habits in a few days. Some people call this an elimination diet.
…And moving toward more alkalizing foods may be what you need to do (and eat more of) to restore balance in the gut.
One type of upper gut issue already mentioned is heartburn that’s usually coming from a Pitta imbalance and a relatively easy-fix.
Many hard-charging personalities have this symptom often. And that can be exacerbated by stress and the wrong foods. If acid is coming back up the esophagus, then that’s referred to as GERD.
So then, changing diet is a good habit, challenge, and a healthier fix over popping daily antacid pills that look like candy.
Below I’ll give you some better food diet ideas.
But just to be more clear on this (as parts of the body can get confusing)…
Basically, if you have a dull or discomfort in the upper abdominal area where your esophagus meets your stomach, or you burp often, then heartburn-gas symptoms is more likely what you’re dealing with.
Gas gets trapped anywhere in the stomach that comes from air that we intake when we eat foods. And many foods we eat are acidic and stimulate stomach acid.
And…
Two things that are commonly missed in our daily diets:
❌ Often, we’re eating the wrong foods for our situations. We’re eating too many acidic foods that make the heartburn worse. We hear that a food is healthy and we order that when we need to shift gears to alkaline foods such as more veggies (plant-forward).
❌We’ve eaten and because certain food don’t agree with us, we may misdiagnose the feelings as a food allergy or sensitivity when it’s not the food itself… it’s the combination order we are eating the foods.
Our bodies look at digested food differently than we do with our eyes. If we set a reminder to think “our eyes are bigger than our stomachs” (as the saying goes), then we can do ourselves a favor.
Our bodies process what lands in our stomachs mixed with everything still unprocessed (looking a lot like a dump truck if we could see inside).
And, you may be surprised to know that many super healthy, anti-inflammatory foods are acidic making heartburn worse.😳
But let’s be clear… for daily health, energy, and our longevity efforts, we want to eat a diverse selection of anti-inflammatory foods. They are hands-down the best especially if we’re smart about our eating combinations.
But if you’re experiencing the effects of a high acidic stomach, you want to pause or reduce some of those specific foods until your symptoms disappear. For example: EVOO, grains, starches, and most animal proteins. It’s a balancing game (as is most everything good in Life 😊).
Finding the alkalizing balancing foods that are going to keep your stomach more neutral but filled with nutrients, is the perfect balance.
In acidic situations, choose from a smaller food list, like plenty of vegetables and proteins, such as eggs, tofu, chicken breast, and seeds. Try to eat the same things for meals. Remember, it’s only for a few days or until your symptoms go away.
The BRAT diet (bread, rice, apples, toast) was what we used to eat when we had a sour stomach but we can do better than that in macro nutrition with veggies, lean, and plant-based proteins.
And if you want a soft protein alternative to eggs or tofu, try:
Cottage cheese with peaches or Greek yogurt with berries (but not common grocery store pasteurized cheese or milks, or nut-milk alternatives).
Bananas also make good cushions in the stomach, and they are both prebiotic and probiotic. Another superfood carb is apples that are still the Queen fruit all around.
I don’t think it’s a coincidence they’re abundant year-round and there so many varieties blooming every season.
Then with avocado as the King fruit (my name for 🥑), you could add to your protein meals as the fat. It doesn’t always have to be healthy EVOO which is actually an acidic no-no, but great any other time.
And instead of 2 cups of coffee a day, switch one cup to green tea. And maybe an herbal tea later in the day when you aren’t seeking caffeine. Cold brew coffee is also less acidic than regular warm coffee brews.
If you’re a Vata, and you get an acidic Pitta stomach often, changing your “food as medicine” diet to less sweet alternatives can be one of the habit challenges. But definitely doable if you have your mind set on making positive changes.
Just remember, most fruits are okay for sweets, so that’s the saving grace. And it’s better to end on that sweet note.
Because also how you start your food day will matter. Like many, I used to start my breakfast with cereal or sweetened oatmeal. Over time, I replaced those less filling options with a vegetable-protein-fat macro-full meal.
…That may sound like a heavier mid-day lunch or dinner (as it did to me once-upon-a-time), but that combo is a better healthy start and will help with your lose weight goals and energy levels as your body is pleased with your healthy considerations… and will reward you with feeling better.
And when you’re not facing any upper gut acidic issues, if you want to add other healthy bread, starches, or desserts, that’s your choice. But, better to add those later in your meals and day than at the start.
…In my working with catering events for about 10 years, I got used to the idea of 3-4 course dinner meals with appetizers called hors d’oeuvres. But that’s a bit heavy for everyday eating. Would you agree?
One of the simplest platters we served was Crudite. It was a plate of raw veggies such as carrots, celery, cauliflower, broccoli, and colorful bell peppers.
And this can be part of the lighter home dinner fare. Instead of a creamy, ranch-type dressing to accompany, you can eat veggies plain or add a Greek yogurt with a dash of Worcestershire sauce (for a healthy sour cream copycat) or vinegar that’s going to help your gut. Or spices like coriander and fennel.
And if you want to kick it up a notch, when your upper gut is back to its norm, you can make a stuffed bell pepper with very little prep needed as a plant-based full meal…
Cook your whole grains like quinoa or wild rice, and then stuff at the bottom, layering with legumes, veggies, and your fave herbs like fresh cilantro or parsley.
In one of the Blue Zones with the oldest living people, they have a dish called “three sisters” (corn, squash, and beans). You could do that…
And also enjoy with a lime soaked-yellow corn tortilla (or sprouted toast) if you want to stay on the longevity-healthy theme.🤸♀️
Stuffed bell peppers is a great way to stuff with proteins, whole grains, and more veggies!
Onions are good for teeth as they’re antibacterial and spinach has teeth remineralizing properties, so chomping on a few leaves is a good thing! 🥬
Have you ever thought about the worse that could happen in a situation like dental worry, but it didn’t end up so bad?… Or end up at all?
…And that’s usually because your worry prevented a bad outcome. Some worry is healthy… it’s built into our DNA human-ness.
But in society, we tend to demonize all worry when it can help us to magnify an area we should focus more on, and then put the thoughts to rest.
Worry is healthy when it prevents growing problems. And worry is healthy when it helps us come up with better solutions.
When it falls healthy short and is outta balance, is when the scales need to tip back to peace and calm.
Don’t let your worry take over your Vata mind and from living life… because long-term stress is an inflammation cause in the mind-body connection that shows up in or on the body as a warning.
When you’re conscious knowing what you’re doing and thinking, you activate your subconscious to help you out in the back of your mind.
…EVEN when you can’t connect the dots.
Your subconscious mind is like your passenger seat helper who’s providing directions even when you’re focused on what’s in front of you.
…So, when I didn’t get to the dentist because of the pandemic and several moves later, I thought I would have a bad report.
A month before I could get into the busy dentist’s office, I did everything to keep my teeth and healthy smile at their maintained best… flossing with multiple flosser types, brushing, rinsing, and even scraping. And if you have teeth and dental worry about your teeth, then you may floss more often.
These days, it’s so much more easy… we have much better dental supplies from convenience stores than we did as kids… or imagine what they did back in the Stone Ages?
And those memories and dental worry kept me magnifying on healthy habits leading up to the Big D-Day…
At that dentist chair moment, time stood still and I was pleasantly surprised with the assessment. I had nothing to dental worry about.
It was a compliment when I heard the word “good” from my new dentist, and was even asked about how I take care of my teeth.
She asked me what I did. And my response was, “I do everything!”
I shared my routine and healthy daily teeth habits that make up for the food and coffee acid, and sugar buildup. Really the best tip is to brush more often softly or with an electric toothbrush. 🪥
…There’s nothing new under the sun. ☀️
But I also told the dentist about teeth healthy foods I ate to fortify the good and diminish the bad. We add back healthy for a more neutral effect.
So often we forget that foods act as secondary toothbrushes when we can’t get to our toothbrush.
You don’t need to dental worry if you brush after eating sugary foods.
And with acidic sources… you can soften the blow. For ACV, use an eyedropper or a straw where you drop the liquid to the back of your throat.
And certain foods are teeth helpers that have Vitamin D, calcium, and other minerals that re-mineralize natural teeth enamel.
That’s double bonus points for bones and teeth. 🎯
Stronger teeth enamel helps prevent common inflammation or an infection spreading inflammation.
Because inflammation or worsened infections in the mouth can cause problems just like inflammation in other parts of the body.
To counteract, they say that flossing can add 4 years and so can eating beans. (They these days are healthy social media sources that’s common knowledge). But at worst, you won’t lose 4 years, so it’s worth the effort gamble. 😉
