And for the love of you!

This time of year we hear so much about love, coupling, and Valentines. But love is really about you, not someone else. It is about how you love you, love what you do, how you spend your time, and how you share your love. It can be for anything really, it does not have to be romantic love.

Love can be being in love with life, in love with good meals shared with friends, or in love with going for a walk. There is something wonderful about love, because it brings such wonderful energy to how we feel. We all want to feel loved, too. That is just something we humans thrive on.

The thing is, if we don’t feel we get it from others, we think we don’t deserve it or we are not lovable enough, but love is not something we get from others, it is something we cultivate within ourselves.

That is where self-nourishment comes in.

How we take care of ourselves and treat ourselves with love shows up in our daily choices–in our habits, our foods, and in how we prioritize ourselves. Do we give ourselves the time each day to check in, take a moment to breathe, stretch, eat, or even get enough sleep? I find that self-nourishment is one of the hardest things for most people to do, yet it is the most basic for keeping us healthy, thriving, and yes… loving.

And how we love is how live.

Often I hear people say that emotional eating is because food fills the void of feeling loved, but I think it is much more about channeling love and to choose how and what we love. Love makes us feel alive and we all want to love something. If we cannot love ourselves then what do we do?

Over the past 10 years of working with emotional eating, I have found that the issue to address first is far more a stress-tool and coping mechanism, even a habit, than it is about love. Love of course is at the core of everything we do. We all want to love and be loved and we jump through hoops to get it or avoid acknowledging how much we want it, – and sadly we hide in shame when we don’t have it, instead of learning how to create it.

And of course you can love food too!

So share some love, love yourself, and choose a good treat to love, because of course we are allowed to love food. But just like your love for you, it is the intention that counts and the quality of the ingredients. You can compare the quality of the food to how the quality of the ingredients add up, and that is the same as how you feel. The quality of your daily self-care habits add up to how healthy you feel overall.

Choose up, because only the best will do!

Chocolate has that special quality that it can make us feel loved, but only the high cacao % will do because it is the raw cacao that has these qualities, not the stuff full of sugar and dairy.

The raw cacao is considered a Superfood because it is both high in anti-oxidants and contains a number of essential minerals such as potassium, copper,magnesium, flavonoids, and several vitamins including vitamin B1, B2, D, and E. The phytochemical plant pigments from flavonoids act as natural antioxidants and neutralize free radicals that can damage the body, tissue, and cells. Dairy can however interfere with the absorption of these, so skip your candy bar, because it is only very dark chocolate that offers any of the benefits.

Here is a nourishing dessert-smoothie for a healthier treat:

CACAO DRINK:

• 3/4 cup unsweetened coconut milk
• 3/4 cup oat milk
• 2 tbsp raw unsweetened powdered cacao
• 1 whole star of anise
• 4 whole coffee beans
• 1 tbsp maple syrup
• 4 ice cubes

Makes two servings.

METHOD:

Put everything in a blender, blend, pour in a lovely glass and serve it up with love and smiles.

Enjoy YOU while sipping!

START ON YOUR OWN PATH FOR LIFE

I spent many years figuring out what I needed in order to take better care of myself. I studied nutrition, healing, energy medicine, Feng Shui, and anything that seemed to give me a clue to what makes the difference between being healthy and getting ill. I knew already then that I was high risk for breast cancer, so it was my personal journey to find awareness instead of fear. After both my parents died of cancer one year apart, I decided it was no longer enough to just be on my own journey, I also had to share what I learned with others. I left my job and went back to school. In 2004, I founded Path for Life Self-Nourishment to help others find their Path to health. That is still my mission today.

Happy Valentine’s Health