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A Digestive Superhero

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This week I’m excited to introduce you to a digestive superhero I know and love, a veritable Wonder Woman of digestive health: psyllium husk.

Most of you know I love teaching people how to support their digestive health. Talking about poop is as normal to me as talking about the weather, and I feel confident this little seed could help you have such brag-worthy b.m.’s that you’ll start enjoying poop conversations as much as I do.

It’s one of those tools I like to keep in my back pocket, especially when I’m working with folks with constipation. It rarely lets me down.

Psyllium, or psyllium husk powder, comes from a shrub-like plant and is chock full of fiber, both soluble and insoluble. Think of psyllium less as food for you and more as food for the millions of bacteria that live in your gut. It’s vitally important we pay attention to and support these bacterial friends since they profoundly influence so many aspects of our health: immune function, mood, weight, digestive well-being, and much more.

In other words, psyllium can help build a healthy and robust bacterial ecosystem, which is critical to overall health.

When the bacteria in our gut feast on all the great fiber in psyllium, they produce a short chain fatty acid called butyrate, which is shown to increase insulin sensitivity and have anti-inflammatory effects, in addition to improving digestion. Furthermore, as this little husk makes its way down the intestinal tract, it absorbs water and forms a spongy gel, which adds bulk to stool, scrubs the intestinal tract clean, and binds to toxins, ushering them out of the body through well-formed stool.

Think of it as an “intestinal soft scrub.”

And yes, while I especially love using psyllium to jumpstart a stalled digestive system, it can also be helpful for those folks on the other end of the digestive spectrum – those who struggle with diarrhea. Because psyllium absorbs water and bulks up, it can help slow down or stop diarrhea.

It can speed things up, slow things down, bulk things out – it’s a digestive superhero!

In addition to enjoying bulkier, more robust stools (yes, these are enjoyable), side benefits of psyllium husk can also include:

  • more stable blood sugar: in general, fiber helps slow down the absorption of sugars into one’s blood stream, which is pretty much always a good thing. Stable blood sugar is a key building block of health.
  • lowering LDL, or “bad,” cholesterol numbers by inhibiting its absorption in your intestines
  • feeling fuller longer, thereby curbing the urge to overeat
  • weight loss, which is inevitable when you start clearing out toxins and built-up stool
  • clearer skin: psyllium husk can help move yeast and fungus out of your body, helping to clear rashes or other skin issues that have been exacerbated by these conditions

So, are you going to give it a try? What do you have to lose? Probably just some old, impacted fecal matter if you ask me, and that will certainly put an extra bounce in your step.

Keep in Mind

For those ready to experiment with this digestive superhero right away, keep the following tips in mind:

  1. Psyllium should not be treated as a replacement for the beneficial fiber you get when eating fresh fruits, vegetables, nuts, and seeds. It’s a SUPPLEMENT. Make sure you’re consuming plenty of whole foods daily. (FYI: 10-12 servings is considered the gold standard these days.)
  2. Drink plenty of water when you take psyllium – at least a full 8-ounce glass. Because psyllium bulks up, it does have the potential to cause an obstruction if someone is chronically dehydrated. Obviously that’s the last thing we want! Staying hydrated is simply a foundational building block of health, so aim for 50-70 ounces of water daily.
  3. Gradually build up the amount you take, starting with just a 1/2 teaspoon a day and increasing to no more than 2 Tablespoons daily. If the intestinal tract has become lazy, it can take some time to get it moving again. Be gentle with your body.
  4. Finally, if you take medications or other vitamin/mineral supplements, consume psyllium either an hour before or two hours after you take your medications, vitamins, or minerals. It can interfere with absorption if taken to close together.

How to Get Your Psylly On

Like any new food or supplement, psyllium can feel a bit mysterious, but it’s actually pretty easy to get into your body.

Most of the time I simply add it to an 8-ounce glass of water and drink it down. That’s likely the easiest method, and it ensures you’re taking it with enough water, which I mentioned is very important.

Other options include adding it to yogurt or smoothies, but you’ll want to make sure to send it down the hatch quickly if you add it to a smoothie. It starts gelling up within minutes and will make your smoothie pretty darn thick. Some people don’t like that texture.

Are you somebody who likes to make protein bars or power balls? You can often sneak in a couple tablespoons of psyllium powder to your recipe, and chances are you won’t even notice it’s in there. Psyllium acts as a binder, too, so it can even help hold gluten-free products together, which is a bonus.

If you have other ideas, please share in the comments section! I always love ideas and feedback!

So what do you say? Are you ready to get your psylly on? If you do, make sure to let me know how it goes.

Love, Claudine

I’ve got the beet! (a recipe you’ll love)

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I’ve got the beet! Do you have the beet? If not, I’m sharing a to-die for recipe this week that is far too good to ignore – EVEN IF you haven’t been a beet fan in the past.

Food just doesn’t get any better than the rich, earthy, naturally sweet flavors of fall. This is hands-down my favorite season for playing in the kitchen, and beets top my list of delights.

These robust little buggers make my taste buds do happy gymnastics and make me bust out in song with the Go-Go’s hit, “We’ve Got the Beat!” (MUCH to my husband’s disdain, I must add. Poor guy, but too bad for him; when this girl cooks, she SINGS.)

Some of you know I’m working on a cookbook for the Aslan Institute, the integrative clinic where I have my office. It’s going to be a collection of recipes from all of the amazing practitioners there. Well, this beet recipe is definitely going in that cookbook. It’s tasty and so, so beautiful – it looks like little pieces of crimson stained glass.

One note: while beets taste super sweet to me, every once in a while I run across someone who says beets taste just like dirt. If that’s you, try adding more orange slices and upping the ginger in the recipe. You can even add a teaspoon of allspice to help mask the earthiness and highlight more sweetness.

Beets with Orange Raspberry Vinaigrette

Yield: 6-8 servings

While this dish tastes delicious right away, it actually improves the longer it sits. Don’t hesitate to make this 2-3 days before you plan to serve it, allowing time for the beets to really soak up the orange, raspberry, and ginger flavors.

9-10 medium beets (about the size of golf balls)

2 Tbsp raspberry vinegar

4 Tbsp freshly squeezed orange juice

1 tsp maple syrup

2 Tbsp freshly grated ginger (or more if you want more zing)

1 1/2 tsp sea salt, or to taste

1/2 tsp freshly ground black pepper, or to taste

1/3 cup red onion, diced small (about 1/2 onion)

zest of 2 large navel oranges

segments of 2 large navel oranges

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F. If using fresh beets with tops still attached, trim off beet greens and reserve for another dish.

Give beets a quick, gentle scrub to remove any remaining dirt, taking care not to break the skins, then wrap beets in a big bundle of aluminum foil. If you need to do a couple bundles, that’s okay. Place bundle/s in a baking dish and roast in the oven for about 60 minutes.

A quick note: in my experience, roasting beets is a super forgiving process. You can roast them alongside other dishes in the oven at temperatures varying from 325-425 and not really have to worry about them. Small beets may roast in as little as 30 minutes; very large beets may need 75 minutes.

Remove beets from oven when tender. Open aluminum foil and allow to cool for 5 minutes, or until you can easily handle them. Cut a small slice off the very top and bottom of each beet, then slip beet skins off by rubbing them with your fingers. You’ll be amazed at how quickly they come off!

Dice beets into 1/2-inch cubes and place in a mixing bowl. Add remaining ingredients and mix well. Serve cold or at room temperature.

A note about making your orange segments: I’m fussy about oranges and really dislike having any of the white membrane when I’m using orange segments in salads or desserts. It ruins the texture for me and adds a bitterness I don’t care for. So rather than spending tons of time pulling the white membrane off, there’s a really easy technique you can employ that’s clearly explained in this You Tube video. You just need a really sharp knife to do it. Make sure you do this over a mixing bowl, as it will release a lot of wonderful juice you want to capture.

The benefits of beets are too numerous to disregard these jeweled beauties. Seriously. Beets are known as workhorse detoxifiers, they lower blood pressure, reduce inflammation, and fight against cancer. They also have a ton of fiber, helping us poop regularly. Enjoy!

Love, Claudine

Do you ever want a do-over?

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Ah, sweet September. It’s hard to believe school buses are back in action, Labor Day has passed, and summer is a memory already.

Can I ask, did you rock your summer as hard as I did? You did? Awesome.

And now are you as wiped-out and off-kilter as I am? You are? I’m glad I’m not alone. Perhaps we can find our way back to our best selves together.

As many of you know, I’m a proud Minnesotan – born and raised in this beautiful state – and if there’s one thing Minnesotans know how to do it’s how to play hard and soak up every minute of our precious summers. June, July, and August were spent enjoying some seriously awesome trips to the cabin, concerts that left me hoarse, the gluttonous Minnesota State Fair (twice!), vineyard/winery visits, long hours lost in my gardens, patio dinners with friends, mushroom foraging in the deep woods, kayaking, and on and on and on.

And of course much of this fun was accompanied by JUNK FOOD, alcohol, late nights, short nights, and little sense of routine many weeks. There was no holding back for this girl. Confession: BOTH of my state fair outings included cheese curds. After those babies I had a beer (or maybe two). Talk about walking on the wild side.

I sure hope you played as hard as me this summer, and if you did it’s probably safe to assume you’re just a bit more BLOATED, heavy, and TIRED than your best self right about now, just like me. If so, you may want to check out the cleanse I’m co-facilitating with my friend Suzy from Defining You Pilates and Fitness in October. Click on this link to explore the 30-Day Fall Cleanse: The Whole Life 360 Experience.)

I love summer, but its brevity often pushes us to go gangbusters and overdo it. If your overdo has left you needing a “do-over,” read on. Autumn is ripe with possibilities for renewal, reflection, and fresh starts, so let’s kickstart some self-love again and get back to the disciplines that help us be our best.

My Top 3 Tips for a Fresh Start

  1. Decide on a single small step missing from your routine and begin with that single small step.

Identify ONE thing you’ve let go of in your life/routine that makes you feel strong and robust, and bring it back. I’m the biggest believer ever that small tweaks are the ticket to long-lasting positive change. I sincerely wish I had a dollar for every time someone tried explaining to me in all earnestness, “But Claudine! I’m an all-or-nothing person! I can’t just change one thing!”

Yes, I know. We all want to wave a magic wand and have four dozen changes stick at once. Who doesn’t? But life, and your mind, and others around you don’t work that way.

Pick. One. Thing.

Do you need to get back to the gym and start moving your body again? Back-to-school means back-to-the-gym for a lot of us.

Are you eating a protein-rich breakfast within an hour of waking up? Routines tend to slip away in summer. It can be surprising to realize that something that was once automatic has vanished.

Are you going to bed later than your body likes? We might be able to scrape by on fewer hours of sleep and rely on solar power during the long days of summer, but it will catch up with us. Allow your body to rest.

So what is the fresh start your body/mind/spirit needs/misses right now? Trust your gut’s answer. No step is too small. Tiny changes will build confidence and energy and will yield surprising results if done consistently.

2. Change something in your environment. It sounds bizarre, but studies show that changes in one’s environment can promote fresh starts or new habits by up to 36%. Isn’t that astonishing?

I believe changing our environment is effective because it’s a pattern interrupt. It helps knock us out of auto-pilot and into a mind-space of being more intentional. Whether you decide to clean out the pantry, rearrange your office, declutter a closet, or display a new piece of art that lights you up, changing our environment clears out old energy and opens our eyes to possibility again.

I have a great story of how this worked for me.

For over a year I had the simple goal of meditating for 10 minutes each morning, which doesn’t seem like it should be that hard, but I just could not get into a rhythm with it. I was finally successful when I cleared a corner of the bedroom and designated that particular space for my sitting meditation. It sounds so simple it’s almost embarrassing to share, but I know I’m not alone. Simple solutions are often staring us in the face.

3. Remember Now is Now.

Humans are a complex breed. We love to believe past experiences and patterns or old beliefs of ourselves are the truth, when the truth is really that we are changing in every moment – as is everything around us.

It can be tempting to fall back into nasty old beliefs that we are perpetual failures and nothing is ever going to change for us every time we eat some sugar or skip the gym. We also like to think we can predict our future based on the chocolate croissant and two cups of coffee we just had. Heck, we could defeat ourselves by 7am each day if we’re not careful.

Every moment is a new moment. Now is now, and you are recreating yourself all the time. Become aware of the stories and beliefs that surface that tell you who you are or aren’t. Acknowledge these stories and beliefs, but don’t give them any power. Just say hello to them, then let them pass through you, like a cool breeze on its way to the next town. They are likely very old voices that got stuck and don’t know a doggone thing about what you are up to these days.

Learning to recognize these voices, like an old friend who’s not actually a very good friend anymore, will be an important step in building new habits. Now is now. Not the past. Not the future.

Let me end by saying that – without a doubt – filling our lives with things that bring us joy may quite possibly be the best thing we can do for our health – cheese curds, beer, short nights, and all – but there usually comes a time when we’ve overdone it and we need to turn over a new leaf. Autumn is that time. Keep me posted on how you find your way back home.

Love, Claudine

Is my face too huge on my new website?

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Man oh man, am I ever excited about my new website! After YEARS with a static web presence showing a dated, decade-old picture of me, I finally have a new dynamic site I’m excited to show off. It’s pretty, but more importantly, it’s functional and it’s going to help me run Wellness with Claudine MUCH more efficiently. I’m crazy-excited.

I love my new site, but I also have my insecurities about it too, like whether or not my face is too huge on the home page. If you would be kind enough to share your feedback, I’d be grateful. And please be honest.

Creating this site was an interesting and stressful process for me, and get this, I’m not even the one who built it! For crying out loud, I hired someone who did 90% of the work, which makes it a little hard to explain exactly why I found the process stressful. But I guess anyone who knows me knows that nutrition is my thing – technology isn’t. I love devouring nitty gritty details about digestion or hormones, but ask me to make decisions about my website or learn how to run its back office and I immediately feel blurry, overwhelmed, and irritated. It’s like a bad blood sugar crash, except I’m not crashing.

One day when I was feeling frustrated and tempted to abandon a pain-in-the-butt task I needed to do to get the thing launched, I had a profound realization that the frustration and irritation I was feeling was likely akin to how many of my clients might feel when they’re embarking on (or continuing) the journey to improve their health. They can’t see the light at the end of the tunnel – no matter how hard they try.

It was an important space for me to step into again because it put me squarely in the shoes of my clients. See, even though I find shopping and preparing healthy food for myself and others fun, many of my clients don’t (yet). The same could be said about exercise; I think it’s enjoyable, but I’m sure some of my clients would like to strangle me when I suggest that they, too, could learn to like it. The truth is that following through with new, foreign tasks that I knew were necessary but didn’t want to do took some healthy doses of positive self-talk and discipline.

So I wanted to offer some tips for staying on track for success when you really don’t want to. Don’t get me wrong, these tips aren’t about making something easy – they’re about getting ourselves to follow through when we don’t want to:

  • For crying out loud, hire a professional who knows what he/she is doing. I think my new site is pretty doggone cool, and I never, never, never could have built a site like this myself. And nobody would expect me to because technology is NOT my thing. I’ll admit that in the past I have “put up” websites myself using templates in order to save money, and you know what? They sucked. They didn’t look good and they didn’t generate website traffic, which added up to a whole lot of wasted time and energy. This time I was serious about making a positive change happen and hired a professional who could help me achieve my goals. I hope with all my heart that this is the role I play for my clients. This is what I strive to be every single day – your partner-in-crime in achieving the goals you have for your health.
  • Get clear about why the task/project at hand is important. What’s the ultimate result you’re going for? Clarity and purpose go hand-in-hand. In my case, this new website will ultimately mean my business will run more efficiently and make it possible for me to spend LESS time on tasks I don’t enjoy instead of thinking about them and having them sit on my to-do list in perpetuity. When trying to improve your health, I’d say most people are trying to avoid bigger health concerns down the road and improve their quality of life now. That’s super motivating provided we stay in touch with that greater vision and purpose.
  • I had to remind myself that almost everything takes longer than you anticipate when you’re learning. This reminder was then followed by a deep breath and some self-encouragement, “It’s okay, Claudine. It’ll get done, and you’re not stupid for not ‘getting it’ right away.” Just like when we’re learning to cook and care for ourselves in a new way, showing ourselves some compassion and patience during the growth process is critical. When we’re faced with a learning curve, why do we so often think we should already know how to do something?
  • Break tasks down into small steps to decrease overwhelm. This is super important. No step is too small, and any step taken in the direction you want to go is better than nothing.
  • Identify preconceived judgments you have about the situation or task at hand and ask yourself if they’re really true. It’s embarrassing to admit, but there were times when I’d already decided that a task on my to-do list was going to bite just because it was website related, and then it turned out to be no big deal. How often do we do this to ourselves?! I thought revising the content for my site was going to take me FOREVER, but it didn’t. Human beings have a knack for making things harder than necessary. Learn to check yourself.

I became an Integrative Nutrition Coach because I love to support and nurture people on their health journeys, not because I was super stoked to deal with technology and website stuff. But it’s a necessary “evil” of being an entrepreneur.

No matter how much we wish it weren’t so, sometimes we just have to buckle down and do the work we’ve been avoiding. It’s great spiritual practice. If there’s something you’ve been avoiding because you think it’s too hard or because you’re positively sure you won’t enjoy it, I hope a little piece of you feels more capable and inspired to tackle it now. Inch by inch, life’s a cinch. Just take the first step.

Now tell me, what do you think of my new site and my big face?

Love, Claudine