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5 Ways to Boost Your Metabolism NOW

August 08, 2018 in Nourished Body

Friends, I wanted to share with you one of my favorite excerpts from my Living Wellness for Growth Groups (pages 69-72) to help boost your metabolism this summer. Mindful eating is another favorite. If you're interested in reading the rest of the book, you can get your own copy here! Enjoy!

Week 2, Day 2: Metabolism

Years ago, when I first started talking about the metabolism, I used to describe it as a woodstove: throw a log on to get it started and then feed it before it burns out. Simple, right? In some regards, this does describe the importance of eating regularly throughout the day, rather than skipping meals and eating all at once. But your metabolism is so much more complex. Your metabolism is more like the inner workings of a city, controlling the flow of processes, hormones, and systems within your body.

What Is the Function of Your Metabolism?

The chemistry behind your metabolism is complicated. Think of your metabolism as the stoplights and law enforcement in a city, carefully regulating the flow of traffic to maintain peace, much like your body chemistry (metabolism) constantly regulating chemicals and hormones to maintain balance. According to an article from the Mayo Clinic staff (2014), your metabolism is responsible for breaking down, digesting, absorbing, transporting, and storing or burning the food you consume (calories). There are many moving parts in an efficient traffic flow and in a healthy metabolism. It’s easy to blame weight gain on a slow metabolism as a result of age or genetics, but in reality, the speed or rate that you burn calories has more to do with what you eat and how often you exercise. Your metabolism is a chemistry lab, not a drag race. Unless you have a metabolic disorder, weight gain is a result of consuming more and/or the wrong kind of calories than your body needs—usually because the calories we consume are void of nutritional value, causing you to eat more.

Get Moving in Your Everyday Life

March 18, 2018 in Nourished Body

Today on the blog, we're excited to share a guest blog post by Carisa Rasmussen from Clean and Lean. We love, love, love the message Carisa shares with Clean & Lean which is, "Build Strength. Build Confidence. Build Wellness. Cultivate Joy."

Carisa shared a little bit already during the fabulous fitness segment on our Living Wellness LIVE Episode 3 about the importance of exercising even a little bit each day. During the show, Carisa shared that her "why not's" for exercising have become her "why's" for exercising. How true that is! We loved how Carisa shared that we need to prioritize ourselves & take care of ourselves, whether its eating nourishing foods or making time for exercise, in order to best care for others. Without further ado, I'll pass it off to Carisa to share practical tips for how to add movement into your everyday activity.

Press Release: Weight Loss and Wellness Go Hand in Hand

November 19, 2017 in Nourished Body, Nourished Mind, Nourished Soul

We're very excited to something big: our official Press Release for Living Wellness for Growth Groups! Our book was published in February, but it recently won the Gold Evergreen Metal for the Living Now Book Award!

About the Award

Four years ago, the Evergreen Book Medals were launched to commemorate world-changing books published since the year 2000. We all seek healthier, more fulfilling lives for ourselves and for the planet, and books are important tools for gaining knowledge about how to achieve these goals for ourselves, our loved ones, and for Planet Earth. Divided into five categories, these books are honored for their contributions to positive global change.

We're so honored that Living Wellness for Growth Groups won the GOLD Evergreen Metal for the Health and Wellness category!

Weight Loss and Wellness Go Hand in Hand

Not everyone recognizes the link between nutrition, fitness, and faith, but longtime personal trainer Ashley Darkenwald is an exception. In her award-winning new book Living Wellness for Growth Groups, she takes readers on a journey of self-discovery toward exceptional health through freedom of mind, balanced living, and an abundant relationship with God.

Roots: Going Deeper

October 22, 2017 in Nourished Mind, Nourished Soul, Nourished Body

I recently had some dental work done to fix alignment issues in my mouth. The treatment was pretty straight forward:

I was to pay x amount, follow the instructions attentively and in x weeks I will achieve x results.

The more I thought about it, the more it sounded like how I use to view my work as a personal trainer.

Clients would pay x amount, follow the instructions carefully, and in x weeks they would achieve x results.

Both of these equations lead to a positive end result. The difference between these two equations, however, was that one ends in lasting change all the time, the other does some of the time. Can you guess which one is which?

The answer is in the roots. See, my dental changes are a permanent change because my dentist made sure to address the problem deeper than the surface level. In my early days as a personal trainer though, my guidance and strategies often seemed to just stay at the surface--clients would commit to my program, loose weight, stop the program, gain the weight back. What I didn't realize at the time was that our health and weight journey is usually grounded in deep emotional, psychological, and/or spiritual roots. Let's dig a little deeper :)

Your Foundation

June 18, 2017 in Nourished Body, Nourished Mind

To conclude the sermon on the mount, where Jesus gives instructions on how to live an abundant life, he tells a parable about two people: one who built a house on sand and one who built a house on rock. When turbulent weather came, the house with the firm foundation was
the only one left standing.

Your foundation, physically, emotionally, and spiritually, determines your ability to weather life when it gets rough.

With almost 30 million people, approximately 10% of the US population, struggling with high glucose and 86 million struggling with prediabetes (Centers for Disease Control), it's time to get to all of our why's? Why are we eating enriched flour, bleached flour, white flour products, puffed grain products, factory-made modern soy? How do we break the cycle? Do we have the knowledge to do so?

Removing processed carbs from our diet is one of the secret weapons to reducing sugar cravings once and for all.

What would happen if we all started to eat to nourish our bodies, rather than to stuff them and satisfy every craving? What would happen if we made our food choices based on what we needed in a given day rather than what was handed to us through a window?

Mindful Eating

May 27, 2017 in Nourished Body, Nourished Mind

In today’s post, I want to give you a sneak peek at one of the activities we complete during a Living Wellness Growth Group: Mindful Eating. It’s one of my favorites! We’re revisiting this topic because the benefits you can gain from being more mindful of what and how you are eating are just too good not to share!

Before I share the Mindful Eating exercise, let me give you a little context about our Growth Groups, what mindfulness is, and how this topic of Mindful Eating became part of Living Wellness.

What is a Living Wellness Growth Group?

Living Wellness Growth Groups are 8-week long nutrition/fitness/spiritual book studies, where a group of participants come together one a week to learn about & practice healthy living. Each week we practice a different component of healthy living—from exercise to grocery store tours and fermented foods demonstration to mindful eating. Living Wellness Growth Groups are wonderful places to be and become the healthy individuals we desire to be.

Mindfulness & The Benefits

Mindfulness is a really popular concept right now, and its popularity is showing up in all types of circles—fitness, nutrition, healthcare, even kindergartens!

When we discuss mindfulness, we are talking about the concept of becoming more aware and in-tune with the both the external (what you are doing/interacting with) and the internal (what you are feeling, tasting, experiencing).

New Beginnings

March 19, 2017 in Nourished Body, Nourished Mind

"The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness" (Lamentations 3:22-23 ESV, emphasis added).

These verse from the book of Lamentations are some of my favorites to dwell on for several reasons, but one reason I'll share with you now is that God's mercies are new every morning. Let's break that down a little bit.

First, God gives us new mercies--not day old, not half spent ones (I admit this is how I often feel)--new mercies. Second, these new mercies are not new when I'm faithfully praying, when I'm at church each week, when I've met my nutrition and exercise goals for the day. No, these mercies are new EVERY morning regardless of what I've done. What a relief! No matter how badly yesterday went or how much you have to tackle today, our Lord blesses us with mercy every morning.

Why I Wrote Living Wellness for Growth Groups

January 29, 2017 in Nourished Home, Nourished Body, Nourished Mind, Nourished Soul

We’re counting down the hours of our Kickstarter campaign to launch the new Living Wellness for Growth Groups! Right now it’s t minus 58 hours and we’re less than $500 from our goal!

In light of the campaign coming to a close, I wanted to share my heart with you—why I wrote Living Wellness for Growth Groups. I wrote this book not for the fame or money, but to share the knowledge I have gained in my own journey of living wellness.

Trust in the Lord with all your heart Bible Verse Banner.png

Trusting God's Best for Your Health: Excerpts from Living Wellness for Growth Groups

January 22, 2017 in Nourished Mind, Nourished Body

I trust God when he says he wants the best for me and my life (Jeremiah 29:11). I trust God when he says he wants me to have a full, abundant life (John 10:10). I didn’t always trust him, though. Especially when it came to my health.

I trusted myself, my doctors, and my over-the- counter medications to keep me functioning, because, let’s face it, that’s what I saw everyone else doing. Well, it turns out God has thoughts about being transformed, starting with the renewing of my mind. Read Romans 12:2: “Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.”

When I began trusting God with my health, I had to ask for a new mind-set. I started to think about food and exercise differently. The past several years have been an intentional journey to honor God with my whole life, not just my spiritual life. My health has changed radically since I decided to trust God’s best for my life.

Looking Back and Looking Ahead: Your Wellness Field Guide for 2017

January 01, 2017 in Nourished Body, Nourished Home, Nourished Mind, Nourished Soul

Friends! Happy New Year!

New Years is such a great time for renewal. This is the time we look back at the previous year's trials and triumphs. We reflect on what's happened and how we've changed as a result. It's also the time to thoughtfully consider what we'd like to change in the new year.

It has been quite a year - perhaps one of the most difficult years of my life. But this last year has also been one of the most wonderfully-growing years of my life. I’m so grateful for my family and friends who have supported and loved me, even when I’ve stuck myself in a cave.

Dear friends, as you reflect on 2016 and look ahead to 2017, I want to empower you with seven health and wellness tips. Use these like a field guide as you navigate through 2017.

These tips come from my life experiences and from writing and refining my new book, Living Wellness for Growth Groups. Let's jump into 2017. Let's get shoulder to shoulder and share and support each other's goals and resolutions for 2017.

Longing for More

December 25, 2016 in Nourished Mind, Nourished Soul

As a kid, the week between Christmas and New Year’s was always full of fun and excitement-- a whole week off school, new toys and clothes, staying up late or getting up early--but it also had this gnawing feeling, an ache, a longing for something more.

This longing feeling always started on Christmas Day. My parents have always been very generous at Christmas time. I think gift-giving is also one of their primary love languages, so that meant there was always quite the pile of wrapping paper to clean up on Christmas day. If a gift had multiple components that could easily be separated—say a pair of socks-- my parents would often wrap each part separately because my siblings and I loved the thrill of opening another gift. Okay, no they didn’t actually wrap socks individually, but you get the idea :)

Since I’m reminiscing about Christmas growing up, I also need to confess that I was “that kid” who was counting how many gifts everyone had under the tree, and I totally would scope out where all my presents were in the days leading up to Christmas.

So why am I telling you all of this? Well, after the last box was opened, after frantically searching through the pile of shredded wrapping paper to find your doll’s left shoe, after looking around at your new bounty of loot—it hits you: Is that it? Isn't there something else? The longing for something more sets in. It’s like now that the excitement is gone, the longing for something more begins the fill the void that excitement once filled.