Trusting Our Intuition

I watched a Suze Orman DVD a couple of years ago.

One guy she singled out had gone to school to get a degree so he could have a better career. He couldn’t find a job and might have incurred student loan debt.

He had been a waiter. Suze Orman berated him. She told him he could’ve had a perfectly fine life if he continued to wait tables.

After she was done trussing him up it looked like the guy was about to cry. His eyes were wet. She had publicly humiliated him.

Frankly, that’s not how I want an “expert” to treat me.

I’m confident we’ve all felt guilty and ashamed when we’ve tried to live by an expert’s rules and failed.

The kicker is: I went back to school when I was unemployed so that I could get a degree that would enable me to have a better career.

Suze Orman is against people doing what I did: going back to school instead of immediately looking for a replacement job.

Yes: I do think we need to trust our intuition more.

We need to pay attention to how our bodies feel and what our bodies are telling us.

Plenty of peers get college degrees. Not everyone uses their degree on the job they have. Yet educating yourself is not ever a waste of time or money if you ask me.

I’ll talk about this in future blog entries: why I think and will always think it’s no crime to want to do what you love and earn a livable wage or salary from it.

Telling a person that he should be content to wait tables when that is not what his soul calls out for him to do is a mistake.

Better: tell him that if he can’t find another job he can wait tables and do something else on the side that brings him more happiness.

Using our intuition to decide what’s the right thing to do makes sense.

Maybe the waiter convinced himself to purse the career-of-the-moment instead of listening to what the still voice inside him told him he was passionate about.

Maybe he could’ve done volunteer work in the new field to put on his resume when he did start to look for a new job.

Maybe he realized in the end that it wasn’t where his heart was after all.

In my blog I’ll talk about what I think is practical to do and what is possible to achieve.

My goal is to be a cheerleader not a naysayer.

You can decide for yourself if what I write makes sense.

I don’t think shaming people or making them feel guilty is pretty.

Getting Real Help

I had a job as the Health Guide for HealthCentral’s schizophrenia website for nine years.

What I wrote for HealthCentral was in the vanguard of mental health reporting. What I wrote was always five years ahead of what other people and organizations were writing about recovery.

Years ago at HealthCentral I would write a series called Family Members Forum. In one of those news article I gave ideas as to how to help a loved one.

Point blank I wrote this: “Ask your loved one: “What do you need me to do right now to help you?”

In this way everyone in society needs to “get with the program” as the expression goes in how they interact with people living with and impacted by a mental illness.

I always wanted people to see me not my pain. Jodi Picoult is quoted: “People are more than the sum total of their disability.”

The producer Mark. R. Weber understands that maybe we can’t end homelessness and we can’t always give a homeless person money. Yet we can stop for a moment to talk to them to ask their name and show we care about them as a human being.

In this way too people need to start breaking bread with those of us who have some kind of mental health challenge. It’s a Catch-22 because a lot of us don’t go around telling people “Hi, I’m so-and-so and I was diagnosed with ______________.”

So a lot of times no one else knows what we’re going through unless we tell them.

What is the solution? Brene Brown wrote about this in her classic book Daring Greatly. We should tell only the people who have earned our trust.

I understand what it’s like to not trust mental health providers.

I had to quite seeing a doctor immediately because of his unprofessional behavior. This is revealed in a humorous scene in my memoir. I fled his office one night and didn’t ever return.

This lack of trust has extended to mental health service providers like state employment agencies for individuals with disabilities.

For at least five years now I’ve realized there was a need in the marketplace for my second book–a one-of-its-kind self-help book.

In September I will start to talk about this book and about a new business I hope to provide to peers linked to this pressing need that has historically gone unfilled.

I ask you: when has any other person asked you: “What would YOU like to do with your life and how can I help you do that?” Instead of telling us: “This is what you should do and there’s no other option only the one I deem appropriate.”

VESID in New York City would send people who were deaf to a printmaking program long after jobs in that field became obsolete. Peers were disillusioned with this state employment services agency for years.

There’s a better way. In this regard I want to start my own peer-owned business to fill this need that has gone unmet. Stay tuned in September for more news about this.

 

Thinking About Recovery

Bari Tessler quotes Jack Kornfield in her book The Art of Money. A gem like this justifies buying her book. I installed in on my iPad.

This quote sums up a great way to think about recovery:

“The true task of spiritual life is not found in faraway places or unusual states of consciousness: it is here in the present. It asks of us a welcoming spirit to greet all that life presents to us with a wise, respectful, and kindly heart.”

Jack Kornfield

Thinking of recovery in this way is a way to take back our power over our circumstances. Our pain doesn’t have to last forever.

Our lives can be hard not because we have an illness–they can be hard simply because they’re not easy. This often has nothing to do with the illness.

I will go to my grave crediting my mother’s one quick action to get me the right help within 24 hours as the number-one reason I recovered. Today more than ever when a person gets the right help right away there can be an ed after the word recover.

Thinking about recovery as a process and a way of living our lives that we can honor precisely with a “wise, respectful, and kindly heart” is the way to go now if you ask me.

I’m skeptical when I see links in my Google Alerts for schizophrenia information when the tag line is “Rachel (or whoever it is) talks about what it’s like to have schizophrenia.”

That is totally misleading. The tag line should read: “Rachel talks about what it’s like FOR HER to have schizophrenia.”

It would be unhelpful and disingenuous for me to claim that my experience is the mirror of what everyone’s experience is like.

Instead I’m pulled to talk about my experiences as a springboard for showing readers that with their own kind of creativity and resourcefulness they can come up with their own path in their wellness journey.

That’s the contention that I make that is revolutionary: stating it thus: that recovery is a wellness journey. At least it has been for me and I think too that others can achieve their own version of well.

This is why I keep the blog: because for the last 12 years I’ve so strongly believed in my vision that people can recover and flourish and live life well and whole after they have a breakdown.

Your version of well is not going to be the same as mine and mine is not going to be the same as another person’s. That’s what’s beautiful about living here on earth: we’re like snowflakes – no two of us is totally alike.

We share things in common yes we do. Yet I’m always interested in the uniqueness of each person I meet or interact with. That is a precious gift: the gift of the spirit of a person that each of us was given when we were born.

I’ll end here by saying it’s high time to think about recovery as yes a spiritual practice as well as a lifestyle.

There’s no shame in living life in recovery.

The Art of Money

Bari Tessler has published a book to buy: The Art of Money: a Life-Changing Guide to Financial Happiness.

As an author Tessler has a generous and compassionate voice. As a Financial Therapist Tessler has revolutionized how to approach dealing with money matters.

On her website she talks about calling an emergency fund a Peace of Mind fund instead. In her book she tells readers to rename expense categories in our budgets to reflect our values. For instance Mortgage becomes Home Sweet Home.

Tessler’s vision is brilliant. Her insight and information is right-on. I recommend buying this Tessler book and the Vitug book I reviewed too–You Only Live Once. These two books taken together could be the start of creating a solid foundation with our finances.

You can go on the Bari Tessler website to read more.

In the late summer and into and through the fall I’m going to talk here again about career and job strategies. By the fall I’ll have more news about my second recovery book.

Sources of Protein

I found these sources of protein on a bodybuilding website:

Swiss cheese:

8 gm per 1 oz serving

Greek yogurt:

23 gm per 8 oz 0 fat plain

Sockeye salmon:

23 gm per 3 oz serving

Eggs:

6 gm – 1 large egg

Chicken breast:

24 gm – boneless skinless – per 3 oz

Turkey breast:

24 gm per 3 oz

Milk:

8 gm per 1 cup

Peanut butter:

8 gm per 2 tbsp

Quinoia:

8 gm per 1 cup

Tofu:

12 gm per 3 oz

Green peas:

7 gm per 1 cup

Tilapia:

21 gm per 3 oz

Light tuna canned:

22 gm per 3 oz

Shrimp:
11.6 gm per 3 oz

 

Sources of Fiber

Fiber is thought to fill a person up thus regulating appetite.

I’ve Googled sources of fiber and amounts. Buy a 2-cup measuring cup and you can measure the amount of food you’re cooking or using.

Lentils:

15.6 gm per cup cooked

Black beans:

15 gm per cup cooked

Peas:

8.8 gm per cup cooked

Broccoli:

5.1 gm per cup boiled

Brussels sprouts:

4.1 gm per cup boiled

Pear:

5.5 gm per medium fruit raw

Raspberries:

8 gm per cup raw

Blackberries:

7.6 gm per cup raw

Avocados:

6.7 gm per half raw

Whole-wheat pasta:

6.3 gm per cup cooked

Taken from Greatist website.

The Greatist website appears to be legitimate. It evens features kettle bell exercises you can do and body weight exercises you can do.

I’ll be back next week with sources of protein.

RDA of Fiber Protein and Water

You can figure out the RDA of fiber protein and water you need to consume at the USDA Healthcare Professional Quiz.

I stumbled on this quiz last week and I do not know how the USDA arrived at these numbers to give professionals. You can take the quiz even though you’re not a professional.

The thing is I’m skeptical of the results. The USDA is known to often be headed by industry folk not non-biased government officials. I’ve read in the book Uncertain Peril about the danger of industrial agriculture that the heads of Monsanto and other companies routinely go in and out of heading the USDA.

My RDA count is as follows from the above quiz:

21 gm fiber     40 gm protein     11 cups water / per day

I’m skeptical because in the 1990s the M.D. I saw who had a private practice in nutrition told me to have 50 gm of protein / per day.

The Harvard Protein RDA guide is here. Multiple your weight in pounds by 0.36. That gives me 43 gm protein.

From what I’ve also read within the last two years you’re supposed to divide your weight in half to get the number of gm of protein each day. And you’re also supposed to do this for the number of cups of water each day.

Here’s the Mayo Clinic Guide Water RDA.

Here’s the Mayo Clinic Fiber RDA:

Age 50 or younger:                    Age 51 or older:

Men: 38 gm                                  30 gm

Women: 25 gm                            21 gm

As you can see there’s different RDAs depending on which calculator and which “expert” opinion you believe. You can’t trust those diet books that people who are not professionals write. The last I counted at a public library in the diet section [613.25] there were a total of 30 diet books on the shelves. Thirty diet books!

I didn’t ever go on a diet when I wanted to lose weight. I read books on nutrition and changed how I ate one food at a time. I have also always done some form of exercise since I was a freshman in high school.

In my estimation the resources and sources I’ve listed above do seem like reputable guides to the RDA for fiber protein and water. The USDA guide for my fiber RDA was in line with the Mayo Clinic guide.

This should all reassure us that we don’t have to consume tons and tons of fiber protein and water just a realistic amount linked to our weight in pounds and other individual factors.

In coming blog entries I’m going to list types of common food and the gm of fiber and protein they have.

Indeed we can all can having orange juice not only because of its sugar. An actual orange as opposed to orange juice has 3 gm fiber for a medium orange. Orange juice of course does not have any fiber.

 

 

 

 

 

Organic Zucchini Recipe

SDC10453

This organic zucchini recipe is quite simple: cut zucchini in half and hollow out center and fill with grated parmesan cheese.

Heat in oven for 350 degrees for 30 minutes.

Voila–a healthful summertime and early fall meal or dinner.

The ceramic Starbucks Venti cup is a Rodarte limited edition design. Rodarte is a fashion house. The cups were available about five years ago.

You can buy some nice ceramic cups in Starbucks. That coffee shop has some OK bistro food selections.
I will return with other recipes in the coming weeks. As always, you can click on the recipes category to the right or on the bottom of this page if you’re on a cell phone. I’ve posted a number of other recipes that are in season now.

Happy Eating!

 

 

Summertime

It’s summer.

I’m revising and editing and adding to my second book on recovery. I hope to publish it within two years with a traditional publisher. It fills a need in the marketplace.

I’ll be able to give more details about the book in the fall. Right now I’m keeping it under wraps except to say the book has a passionate and professional voice. That’s how it differs from a clinical treatise that an M.D. would write.

In this season I’m going to research healthier food options and talk about them here.

I like the Amy’s Organic soups and Pacific Organic soups. I have soup year round for lunch and for dinner with a salad or vegetable or fish.

The Earthbound Farms organic spring mix salad greens container is not that expensive so it makes sense to buy this product instead of regular iceberg lettuce.

What we put in our heads–positive or negative–effects our mental health. What we consume in our mouths affects our health and in so doing this it effects our mental health too.

May through November is Greenmarket season so that gives a lot of us seven months of healthful food options to buy and to prepare.

I shop at local Greenmarkets because of the “No Pesticides” signs above the produce on the stands.

In coming weeks I’ll post more photos of meals with recipes.

More towards September I should have news about the second book.

The Top 10 Fitness Motivation Tips

Set a SMART goal: one that is specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-sensitive.

Be realistic yet challenge yourself. Research shows that setting easy goals makes us less motivated to try to achieve them. A challenging goal can be achievable when it’s a personally meaningful goal that we’ve set for ourselves not one that others have told us we should embark on. To achieve a goal we must be invested in it.

Focus on what you did do not on what you didn’t do.

Setting up impossible demands on yourself will set you up to fail. Be proud you exercised twice in one week instead of beating yourself up for not exercising five times.

Change one behavior at a time.

In the 1990s I started my inchoate quest to have better health. The first week I replaced whole milk with skim milk. Next I cooked chicken without the skin. Then I stopped cooking meat. And so on.

Reward yourself often for little victories as well as milestones.

My favorite is to shop at Banana Republic with coupon codes. The cost of the treat should be commensurate with the goal. I’m not advocating for spending a lot of money on rewards just on the kind of reward that boosts a person up.

Set performance goals as you go farther along.

Achieving perfect form, lifting higher weights, doing more reps or mastering an exercise you previously weren’t good at all count as possible performance goals.

Find the kind of exercise that is best for you.

I’m a big fan of strength training most of all for everyone as we get older and want to maintain a healthy weight and have functional fitness throughout our lives.

For you, your own Tour de Fitness might be taking spinning classes.

Focus on the positive long-term consequences of developing a consistent fitness routine instead of dwelling on the occasional setbacks that are often only temporary.

If for a week or two you haven’t exercised as often as you wanted or have “fallen down” in a way that upsets you be kinder to yourself and remember that “fitness is forever” and you’re not perfect. Aim for progress instead.

Remember that nutrition is 80 percent of fitness.

Food habits go hand-in-hand with exercise habits. Endless snacking and unhealthful eating can torpedo your efforts at the gym.

Re-frame your perception of “exercise.”

In my own life I use the umbrella term fitness not exercise. Fitness is an organic approach that encompasses lifestyle (thoughts and feelings, spirituality, finances, career and relationships, among other things).

Have fun.