Spring is the perfect time for a fresh start. So, my good friends at The Institute for Integrative Nutrition have produced this beautiful eBook for us to share with  friends, family, or anyone interested in attending: This FREE  IIN: Spring Cleanse Guide.

This comprehensive eBook will help:

Renew your mind
Revive your body and spirit
Refresh your space
Reinvigorate your life 

And, who knows, maybe even lead to your reinvention as a Health Coach!

PLUS, it’s chock-full of scrumptious springtime recipes

What are you waiting for? Go ahead and grab your free copy right now  IIN: Spring Cleanse Guide

Enjoy! (And be sure to tell them Kathy Sciere sent you in the box that asks “Name of the person who sent this to you”)

A few weeks ago I got to live out that fantasy during a business retreat in Santa Monica with my mentoring and mastermind group, Holistic MBA’s Step Into Your Spotlight 2012. We preened, laughed and clowned around like a bunch of teenagers giddy with the excitement of getting ready for our first prom.

I was reveling in the pure joy of the moment, that is, until I collided with my own truth (bullshit).

BAM! There it was, smacking me right in the face: I still have serious body image issues and I still don’t love and accept myself as I am.

So, why should that come as such a shock?

You see, for the last dozen years or so I’ve been mud wrestling with the 45 pounds I gained during three years of unsuccessful fertility treatments. The first 15 came off pretty quickly once I stopped pumping myself with hormones. But I can’t tell you how many times I lost and gained the other 30 pounds.

As the summer of 2010 approached I was sick, fat, depressed and unemployed. And fairly confident my best days were behind me. But somewhere deep down in my despair I found this tiny ray of hope (or was it false hope?) … if I could just lose the weight for good, everything would be okay again.

I got into a reputable medical weight loss program at NYU and by December 31st I had lost exactly 30 pounds. And along the way I found a new career, actually more like a calling. I wanted to help women just like me reclaim their health and their bodies, so they too could live their passion.

Now as a certified holistic health coach I stress the importance of self-love and acceptance with my clients, telling them it’s the first step to any lasting change or transformation. And that means you can’t heal until you love and accept yourself as you are right now. If you don’t learn to love yourself you’re probably going to stay stuck right where you are.

Which brings me to why I was so shocked to have my own crap surface during my fantasy photo shoot.

Sure I had gained back 10 pounds during 2011. But I had also learned some important things about my body, and why I struggle with my weight: my hormones were seriously out of balance and I have an intolerance to about 25 foods, many of them regular staples in my diet.

But here’s the really good news: I feel fan-freakin-tastic! Better than I have since I was in my early 20′s. So, Miss Health Coach, isn’t that what counts — not the numbers on the scale?

Well, I thought that was my new belief. But there I was, looking gorgeous and red-carpet ready in the safest space I’ve know in a very long time — with my Spotlight sisters surrounding me with unconditional love — and with every click of the shutter, I took another step back into my old mental patterns: “I’m fat and I’m old and that’s just the way it’s always gonna be.”

Loving and accepting ourselves unconditionally doesn’t just happen, like the flip of switch. It’s a journey, and I learned that day how easy it is to lose your inner GPS if you aren’t consciously showing yourself love.

So I want to share a few tips on how you can work on loving yourself:

1. FIRE YOUR INNER CRITIC … Just refuse to acknowledge that negative, mean voice that keeps telling you you’re not enough … thin enough, pretty enough, smart enough, good enough … ENOUGH ALREADY WITH THE NOT-ENOUGH TALK.
2. LIVE THE LIFE YOU HAVE … let go of your notion of what your life should be … try to roll with what is.
3. TRY TO STAY IN THE PRESENT … the present is the space where it’s easiest for self-love and acceptance to flow freely. There are no worries about the future, no regrets about the past.

So what will you do to love yourself today? Let me know in the comments, I’d love to hear from you  …

Disclaimer: I do not endorse or necessarily recommend any of the products featured in this video.

Tomatoes are often associated with summer, but we are actually only half way through tomato season. While a fresh, tomato, mozzarella and basil salad does sound delicious, it’s time to enjoy some warm, fall tomato recipes. This gluten-free tart from IIN grad, Sherilyn’s blog, Whole Promise, is a great use for the heirloom tomatoes that can still be found in farmers markets, not to mention that it’s a beautiful dish that will definitely impress your friends and family.

Gluten Free Heirloom Tomato Tart

For Pastry:

1/2 cup millet flour
1/2 cup brown rice flour
1/2 cup buckwheat flour
1.5 teaspoons xantham gum
0.5 teaspoon sea salt
7 tablespoons cold butter, diced
1 egg
4 (or more as needed) tablespoons cold water

1. In the bowl of a food processor, combine the flours, xantham gum and salt.
2. Add the butter and use the pulse option to work this mixture into crumbles.
3. Add the egg and continue to pulse.
4. Add the water, one tablespoon at a time, and work until the dough detaches from the bowl.
5. Transfer to a bowl and cover. Refrigerate for 1 to 2 hours.
6. Before rolling out, allow the pastry to come back to room temperature

For Tart:

¾ cup ricotta cheese
salt and pepper to season
heirloom tomatoes (approximately a dozen) sliced and let to rest on paper towel to absorb juices
greens to garnish

1 tablespoon sheep’s milk feta, crumbled
egg beaten (for washing)

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

2. Place the dough between two sheets of baking paper and roll out to a round shape.

3. Gently lift the dough to the baking tray using the sheet of baking paper underneath.
4. Season ricotta with salt and pepper to your liking
5. Spread the fresh ricotta over the pastry base. Do not spread the ricotta right to the edge of the pastry; instead, leave approximately 5cm clear from the pastry edge.
6. Place the slices of tomato over the ricotta, overlapping them slightly as you go.
7. Sprinkle crumbled sheep’s milk feta over the tart.
8. Fold the edges of the pasty circle in to create a rustic looking free form pie.
9. Season with freshly ground black pepper.
10. Brush the folded over pasty edges with beaten egg.
11. Place in oven and cook for approximately 30 minutes or until the base of tart is cooked through.

Enjoy!

Earlier this year, the USDA revamped the food pyramid and created a diagram called “My Plate.” This new and improved guide to the ideal diet is divided into sections to illustrate how a meal should appear. One half of the plate is designated for fruit and vegetables, about a fifth for protein, and a quarter for grains. Dairy is presented on a smaller plate or glass to the side.

My Plate seems to be a step in the right direction for the USDA to improving the standard American diet. The protein section is much smaller than it was in the food pyramid, while the fruit and vegetable serving is larger, encouraging the recommended daily servings of 2 and 2 ½ cups respectively.

While My Plate seems like a good idea, is it really possible for every American to eat this way?

According to an article in the Washington Post, it’s not. Increasing fruit and vegetable intake to the amount now recommended by the USDA for all Americans would require an increase of 13 million acres of farmland designated for this kind of food production.

The problem is, farmers are not encouraged to grow any kind of fresh produce by the US government, who provided $200 billion in subsidies to commodity farmers from 1995 to 2010. Two-thirds of this money went to animal-feed crops, tobacco and cotton. The remaining subsidies went to human-food crops, including wheat, peanuts, rice, oil seeds, sweeteners and crops that were turned into ethanol.

Farmers who grow fruits, vegetables, or tree nuts do not receive any of the government subsidies. Representative Sam Farr (D) of California, whose district includes some of the most productive fruit and vegetable farms in the country, says that his farmers “don’t get a dime of support from the federal government. If the market falls, they eat it. If a disaster comes in, they eat it…they grow what they call ‘specialty crops’ – that’s the stuff you eat all the time.”

It seems that even with a new food diagram, the Big Ag meat, dairy and commodity farmers have a tight grip on the American farm system, making it impossible for My Plate to be an accurate depiction of the American diet. Our food system is proving again that it is broken, what do you think we could do to fix it?

With the crisp autumn air and brilliant shades of red and orange in the trees comes a less pleasurable side of fall: the beginning of flu season. Though there are different theories as to why we’re more vulnerable to contagious viruses in the cold weather, it can sometimes seem inevitable that we’ll catch a cough, sore throat or the sniffles come wintertime.

In an effort to stave off sickness, many people choose to take supplements of vitamins, minerals, and herbs that are known to help the body fight disease. Though supplements can be literally life saving for people with nutritional deficiencies, a new study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition cautions against the overuse of dietary supplements.

According to the study, people who take multi-vitamin and multi-mineral supplements are a health-conscious crowd that tends to eat healthy, well-balanced meals. These people are getting enough nutrients from their food, and by taking additional dietary supplements, they may actually be overloading on vitamins and minerals that can cause potentially serious health problems. “We always would hope that the people who are taking dietary supplements are the ones who need it the most, but it doesn’t seem to be true,” says Cheryl Rock, a nutrition researcher at the University of California, San Diego.

On the other side, many people fear that even when eating a diet rich in whole, seasonal fruits, vegetables, and whole grains, it’s still difficult to get the proper amount of nutrients necessary to fight illness. Research shows that fruits and vegetables are not nearly as nutritious as they once were. Biochemist Dr. Donald Davis of the University of Texas at Austin studied 43 garden crops and found that the average vegetable today is up to 38% lower in nutrients (including riboflavin, vitamin C, calcium, iron, phosphorus, and protein) than produce from 50 years ago.

Davis attributes this decline mostly to the industrialization of agriculture: “During those 50 years, there have been intensive efforts to breed new varieties that have greater yield, or resistance to pests, or adaptability to different climates. But the dominant effort is for higher yields. Emerging evidence suggests that when you select for yield, crops grow bigger and faster, but they don’t necessarily have the ability to make or uptake nutrients at the same, faster rate.”

If you do choose to add nutritional supplements to your diet, it’s important to keep in mind that much of the concern about “vitamin overdose” risk lies in the difference between water-soluble and fat-soluble vitamins. It’s difficult to overdose on water-soluble nutrients like vitamin C and vitamin B, for example, because your body will only absorb what it needs – any excess amounts are excreted in your urine.

Fat-soluble vitamins like vitamins A, D, and E, however, are stored in your body tissue and if you consume too much, can accumulate to potentially dangerous amounts in a condition known as hypervitaminosis. The same risk of overdose goes for minerals such as iron, zinc, and selenium, so it’s important to monitor the amount you’re taking when incorporating these supplements in your diet.

In addition to nutritional supplements, there are other wonderfully simple ways to make sure you’re keeping your immune system strong as flu season approaches: get plenty of sleep, stay hydrated, and perhaps most importantly, wash your hands often!

What’s your stance on nutritional supplements?