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An Addition to the No Shoes Team

An Addition to the No Shoes Team

New Addition to No Shoes Nutrition

Today is a special day. I am pleased to be introducing to the world to a new addition here at No Shoes Nutrition. Penny DeJager, a former student of mine at the Canadian School of Natural Nutrition, impressed me so much with her knowledge and love of nutrition last year that after her graduation this past September I asked Penny if she would consider joining No Shoes Nutrition to bring her knowledge base and expertise and join the team. I was delighted when her answer was yes!

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Could your Diet be Making you Stink?

Could your Diet be Making you Stink?

Is the food you are eating making your body odor worse?

Have you ever been walking in a mall, crowded restaurant or party and get a whiff of body odor? Did the thought of “What the heck did that person eat?” come to mind? It’s a known fact that what you put in your body to process will affect your energy, weight, state of mind but did you know it can also affect your smell?

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Are you Magnesium Deficient?

Are you Magnesium Deficient?

Could a Little Magnesium Solve Your Problems?

I have recently been learning more and more about the mineral magnesium. I have even been supplementing with it and have been finding the benefits are changing my health in great ways! As most of my readers know, I am a foods first holistic nutrition consultant. I will always recommend you try to get the foods high in magnesium before supplements but according to Health Canada nearly half the population is deficient in magnesium.

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How Many Carbs Do I Need?

How Many Carbs Do I Need?

How Many Carbs Do I Need to Eat?

I get asked the question “How many carbs do I need?” on an almost daily basis. Our culture seems almost obsessed with carbohydrates these days and for good reason. Most of the convenience foods that we rely on when we’re busy and when we need a pick-me-up are made of mostly carbs.

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Are you Allergic or Intolerant?

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Are you Getting your Gut Bugs?

Are you Getting your Gut Bugs?

The Yogurt Culture

If you have been following my blogs and my feeds you know how much I love fermentation and the microbes, they contribute to our guts. Currently many of us find digesting dairy difficult but milk contains agents of extraordinary transformation. Bacteria. Bacteria that can produce a plethora of fermentation products that improve the way your body works. The same microbes that turn milk into yogurt, benefit your gut, brain, immune system and overall physiology.

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Phyto whats? In Where? And Why?

Phyto whats? In Where? And Why?

Is there more than vitamins and minerals to think about?

When we think about the nutrients in food, we most often think about vitamins like vitamin C in oranges or minerals like calcium and magnesium to keep our bones healthy. Very rarely have I heard a mother say, “Eat those veggies because they are full of phytonutrients!” So, what are these phytochemicals and how do they contribute to our health?

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Tis The Season!!

Tis The Season!!

Are you Canning, Pickling and Preserving?

As traditionally done, its the season for the harvest to come in. We all know that there is much too much to eat during harvest and it’s going to be a cold winter so preserving the extra is needed. Most cultures have persevered foods by various methods to extend the shelf life of the food harvested in the fall.

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Can Drinking Tea Make you Healthier?

Can Drinking Tea Make you Healthier?

Drinking Tea for Health

Drinking tea has become popular again recently. When I was growing up we used to think of tea as “grandma's” drink but now it’s new and trendy with just as many tea shops popping up as coffee shops. Tea has a history stretching back thousands of years and with many quality brews comes many quality nutrients that your body can benefit from.

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Is Too Much Stress Making You Tired, Hungry and Fat?

Is Too Much Stress Making You Tired, Hungry and Fat?

Stress, Hormones and Getting Fat

We all have more stress than we should these days. There is traffic, school, career pressure, balancing family and friends with the rest of life and being about to pay for it all. This is not “real” stress, well, at least not in the sense that we are in imminent danger and about to plummet to our death kind of danger. I’m not even sure many of us have experienced that “true” primal stress but that doesn’t mean we haven’t tricked our brains into thinking we are in danger and about to lose everything.

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The Art of Oil Pulling

The Art of Oil Pulling

Oil Pulling For Better Health

How does swishing oil around in your mouth for five to twenty minutes every morning sound? Cool or Gross? What if you heard that doing so might clear up your skin, improve your oral hygiene, and whiten your teeth, among a slew of other health benefits?

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Do You Have An "itis"?

Do You Have An "itis"?

Is Inflammation Holding you Back?

If you have an illness or a condition that ends with “itis” you have a chronic inflammation problem. Some examples are arthritis, bursitis, sinusitis and tendinitis. This inflammation can be systemic and can be happening in the body without you being aware. It contributes to other illnesses such as diabetes, osteoporosis and even Alzheimer’s. Unfortunately, there are quite a few of us dealing with the issues of chronic inflammation. Do any of these questions ring true for you?

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Eat Yeast? Are you Serious?

Eat Yeast? Are you Serious?

What is Nutritional Yeast and Is it something I should be eating?

The first time I really learned about nutritional yeast was a couple years ago when reading a food label. What is this funny thing and isn’t yeast supposed to be in bread? I thought yeasty things were bad for my health not something I want in my food!

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How Are You Spending Your Calories?

How Are You Spending Your Calories?

Eat Your Nutrients Before Your Calories!

I know we don’t like to talk about calories, or count calories or think about calories. We’re all just ‘intuitively” supposed to eat and “know” when we are full and when our body has had enough. Then how come so many of my clients are ALWAYS hungry?

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Fiber - A BIG BAD F-word!!

Fiber - A BIG BAD F-word!!

Fiber - A BIG bad F-word! 

When I say fiber, do you think of cardboard or tree bark? I know when I have brought it up with clients I often get the stink-eye from them like I am going to ask them to eat saw dust! Some refer to it as their roughage, my grandma calls it getting her greens, but we all need it to get ourselves moving, stay at an optimal weight and feel our best. The big question is “Are you getting enough?”.

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Protein and Weight Loss - What you need to Know!

Protein and Weight Loss - What you need to Know!

Proteins and Weight Loss – What you need to Know

There are three important macro-nutrients that we need to eat each day. Carbohydrates, fats (that’s right you NEED fat!) and protein. Protein makes up 20% of our body weight and is found in ALL food groups. When our body breaks up proteins to be absorbed into the body the building blocks are called amino acids. These amino acids are what we use to build that 20% of our body weight!

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How to Make your DREAM come True!

How to Make your DREAM come True!

How to Make your Dream come True!

The stories are everywhere, always uplifting, always inspiring:

  • The woman who created a wellness clinic in her inner-city neighborhood.

  • The man who lost 200 pounds after being housebound for a decade.

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Love Your Guts - Eat Fermented Foods!

Love Your Guts - Eat Fermented Foods!

Fermented Foods – Love Your Guts!!

If you’ve been on social media or even watching the news there has been lots of talk recently about fermented foods. Is this a new trend in the dieting roller coaster? Will there be a new fad diet using fermented food? I doubt it but wouldn’t put it past the media! Fermented foods have been around for centuries and have been dietary staples in many cultures!

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Traditional Diets

Traditional Diets

What we can Learn from Traditional Diets

In the 1930s, a Cleveland dentist named Weston A. Price, DDS, traveled to isolated parts of the world to study the dental health of people unaffected by Western civilization. His studies revealed that dental caries and deformed dental arches, which resulted in crooked teeth, were the result of nutritional deficiencies and not genetically inherited as previously believed.

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Fasting, Is it for You?

Fasting, Is it for You?

What is Intermittent Fasting?

Intermittent fasting is not a diet. It doesn’t cut calories or starve you. It changes “when” you eat not “what” you eat. It’s about cycling between periods of eating and periods of not eating. We all fast overnight while we sleep. That is how the name breakfast came about. It means break-the-fast.

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