I had the honor of talking shit with one of my health and colonic mentors, Mike Perrine, on his EveryDayDetox podcast. Mike is the owner of Vitality NYC, where I work on the first Tuesday of every month. You can book me for a colonic in NYC on the Vitality NYC website. Hope you enjoy listening to our chat!
Other than my intestines, I admittedly don’t know where all of my shit comes from. I try to be mindful of what I eat most of the time (no animal products, organic when possible, minimal processed foods, etc etc), but how the fuck does lettuce grow?
With the way of the world and our food system, our health is literally in our hands. I’m tired of complaining about how shitty we treat our animals, how much pesticide is in our produce, how every “natural” product we purchase is wrapped in plastic, how GMOs are an abusive scandal, and how this country is controlled by Big Pharma and the meat & dairy industries. Don’t get me wrong, I always enjoy talking shit, but the bottom line is the only way to guarantee clean food is to grow and make it ourselves.
Our culture has grown so distant from food production that unless you’re a factory farm “slave” worker (I don’t reasonably believe anyone wants to kill animals for a living) or an agricultural “slave” farmer (more on that in the expose documentary, Food Chains), we practically have no idea how to feed ourselves from scratch. So I decided to try growing my own shit for the first time this summer and I am excited to share that it is much easier to grow lettuce than you may think (or not have thought about at all!).
I have both an outdoor garden plot in the Brunswick Garden right across the street from the Brunswick Center and an aeroponic Tower Garden in the Doody Free Girl studio. Growing veggies outdoors involves more effort and way more patience than growing indoors. You first need to check the soil for any heavy metal contamination, take time to water your garden, check for potential pests and respond accordingly, and weed…often. Furthermore, outdoor veggies grow at a snail’s pace without Miracle Grow. So far, I’ve harvested a shitload of breakfast radishes, which are the only veggies that seem to grow quickly and easily (for me anyway). I’m still waiting on my carrots, which are currently as thin and disappointing as a pencil thin bowel movement.
I highly recommend an indoor aeroponic Tower Garden, which ensures you know that your plant food is receiving filtered water, optimal nutrients and NO pesticides. I do not, however, recommend it for those in a studio apartment because the LED grow lights must be on for 14 hours each day and they’re bright as hell. But if you can deal with the light, you can grow lettuce (and herbs, tomatoes, cucumbers, kale etc etc) all year long. It took me just under two months from receiving my order to harvest lettuce that replenishes itself overnight. I purchased everything online from TowerGarden.com, which has endless tutorial videos to accompany your order. Make sure to also purchase the LED Indoor Grow Lights and the Tower Garden Dolly from the site.
If this Tower Garden endeavor isn’t that appealing to you or your pets, you can start with a countertop Aerogarden, which grows just as well. Just grow something! I swear you will feel like a fucking magician! I still can’t believe this actually worked out for me…
I’ve always had a sweet tooth. Growing up, my parents had to bribe me to eat my Abuela’s Cuban food by promising dessert after. I’m 36 years old now and I still love finishing dinner off with a sweet treat. Thank God sugar is healthy!
Not all sugar was created equal, but luckily, you can satisfy your sugar cravings healthfully. The two best ways to do this is by substituting either breakfast or lunch (or both) with a green smoothie and/or a green juice. People are always freaking the fuck out about the sugar content in fresh green juices because juices do not contain any fiber. No one has a better response to this concern than my mentor, Tom DeVito, who healed himself naturally of grand mal seizures by eating sugary fruits and drinking green juices all the live long day for the last 25+ years:
“Sugar: the so-called villain of the American diet just happens to be the only substance, (other than oxygen) the human cell requires for food! This important sugar comes from primarily fruits and secondarily, green leafy vegetables. In addition, fruit sugar cleanses the bloodstream. Chlorophyll builds blood cells. The molecular structures of hemoglobin and chlorophyll are identical. The body converts the green stuff to the red stuff rather easily and rapidly! And that, my friends, is why so-called diet experts making villains of actual, real human fuel, should be treated exactly as they are: clueless fools who studied fiction from a book and didn’t live a health transformation, by way of deep tissue cleansing, whole foods and a plant-based diet! They read some books, perhaps got a degree and live the same lie as everyone else. Counting imaginary values from fake foods which provide little to no value but rather harm, while vacillating between losing an inch and gaining a pound. Don’t allow fiction writers to teach you about your health. Allow your body to experience real food in a depolluted environment. Begin your personal journey and feel it for yourself. There is the classroom, the textbook, the truth.”
In fact, did you know that all animals have a sweet tooth? And those who do not anymore can thank evolution. So let’s return to nature and take it easy on the processed sugary foods. If you are experiencing insatiable cravings for cakes and unnatural shit, you are suffering from dysbiosis, where an imbalance of good:bad bacteria exists. The best remedy for eliminating the dominance of shitty bacteria is evacuation (aka colonics) and replenishment with probiotics. Those cravings will quickly disappear once you start feeding your healthy bacteria with real food (i.e. plant food).
Colonics are also important when eating natural sugar because fruit and vegetable sugars are extremely cleansing. We are not exactly burning sugar off anymore like other primates, so elimination is more vital than ever. It is when we do not eliminate the waste natural sugar generate in the body that we experience disease, not because of the mere ingestion of the sugar.
Additionally, fruit/vegetable sugar highs are never followed by a mid-day crash and burn. One important tip when it comes to drinking fresh juices and smoothies is to always ingest them on an empty stomach to ensure instant delivery to the cells via the bloodstream. Make sure to “chew” your drink and your smoothies because enzymes and bacteria in the mouth initiate proper digestion and assimilation.
My latest obsession is the Omega juicer. I’ve always used a Breville centrifugal juicer, but the Omega juicer extracts way more juice and nutrients from your fruits and veggies. In fact, it is so efficient it can extract juice from wheatgrass and it can even make nut butters! It’s also more fun to use and a lot easier to dispose of the pulp when I need to make more than two juices. You can get one for $260 at Bed, Bath & Beyond (don’t forget to ask for the 20% discount at checkout). My current favorite 32 ounce organic green juice recipe will cost you under $6.50 at Whole Foods. Simply juice an entire 2 pound bag of organic carrots, half of a bunch of organic dandelion greens, and half of an organic fennel bulb.
In my last blog post, I also promised I would share my current favorite smoothie recipe that keeps me full all day long until dinner. I’ll either milk a juice or a smoothie all day long (not both). I recommend the Vitamix blender as I’ve heard no other blender comes close to blending celery like this machine. Blend three stalks of organic celery, one whole banana, two handfuls of organic spinach, one whole mango, one cup of filtered water, 1.5 tablespoons of Vitamineral Green and 1 tablespoon of organic flax seeds.
Hope this shit was informative. xoxo jen
I’ve been in and out of veganism for the last ten years and recently re-committed about a year and a half ago for not only vanity and health motivations, but environmentalism and animal rights motivations. There is no question that eliminating meat and dairy (even grass-fed and “free-range”) from your diet results in a reduction of excess sodium, antibiotics, hormones, GMOs and mucus in your system. Additionally, the meat and dairy industry are the biggest players in land degradation, carbon emissions and animal cruelty in the history of mankind. However, this post is about another pressing issue: boobies.
I’ve always had small training bra-size boobs that I’ve always been comfortable with (I’m almost 36 years old, yet favor a training bra). When I stopped eating meat and dairy in my mid twenties, I stopped getting severe menstrual cramps and my boobs stayed consistently small even around my period. I not only stopped eating meat and dairy, but I had also given up cooked food all together because I became obsessed with the integrity of raw foods. This health obsession ironically became the unhealthiest period of my life. It took me about two years to realize that my diet was making me an anxious person, at which point, I adopted even unhealthier eating patterns in an effort to erase my anxious raw vegan identity. So over the last ten years, I went from being raw vegan to vegan to vegetarian to pescatarian to carnivore, then back to vegetarian and now vegan with a love (not obsession) for raw foods. And through these phases, I can definitively say my boobs were most tender and grew to adult size during my carnivorous phase.
While this may encourage women to eat meat, sudden breast enlargement can signal estrogen dominance, which may cause breast cancer and man boobies. There are easy ways to reduce exposure to excess estrogen in our system. These include eating processed soy products, meat and dairy in moderation, eating organic, drinking filtered water (not in a plastic bottle), giving your nails a breather from nail polish, using truly natural body products and cosmetics and exploring natural methods of birth control. Most importantly, it is crucial to monitor our elimination because poor elimination increases the load on your liver, which is responsible for metabolizing estrogen out of our bodies. Unplug your rancid hormones with a colonic and consider a future liver cleanse.
In a past life, I was a realtor in Miami Beach. I totally sucked at it and felt completely unfulfilled as a result (or the cause?). It felt like my life was a series of annoying people and different lockbox sequences (insider tip: you can usually guess the code by trying different combinations of the current year and the address because…realtors). But I must admit I learned a few things of value in real estate school.
My real estate professor was the shit. I forget his name, but I will always remember his teachings because he was honest and funny as hell. He proudly declared at the beginning of the course that while dumb, he knows how to pass tests and had come to teach us thy ways. Basically, he spoke my language. A crash course in silly pneumonic devices proved successful in passing an exam and left me with some useless knowledge. For instance, the Statute of Frauds requires that certain contracts be memorialized in writing. He taught us to remember this by thinking of the word “frogs” instead of “frauds.” Frogs make the sound “ribbit, ribbit,” which he would sound as “write it, write it.” This pneumonic device is dumb as hell, but 12+ years later, I still remember this shit!
Another tip I learned involved lead poisoning. Houses built before 1978 were most likely painted with paint that contained toxic amounts of lead. Children are most susceptible to lead poisoning from paint because when they’re not smearing boogers everywhere, they’re sticking shit in their mouths. Eating lead paint chips or dirt infused with a high amount of lead can lead to a host of health issues such as learning disabilities, kidney damage, hearing damage, neurological damage, seizures and even death. Therefore, homebuyers must sign a waiver acknowledging the potential existence of lead with the option to have a lead inspection performed within ten days for an accurate cost analysis.
There are measures to prevent and remedy the existence of lead in your home if you have children. You can hire a certified lead abatement contractor to seal in the lead-based paint on your walls with a coat of nontoxic paint. This is probably the most cost-effective and healthy remedy. Alternatively, removing the paint can create a lot of toxic dust. If the soil around your home is contaminated, you may want to plant some grass over it to keep your child from eating the soil.
My real estate professor dismissed the severity of lead poisoning for those who do not have children. “Open the windows and air out every once in a while.” This is something you should do regardless of whether or not lead is present in your home. The insulation in your walls, wood finishings, cleaners, your furniture etc are full of all kinds of other toxins like acetone, carbon monoxide and formaldehyde. It is wise to open your windows upon waking every morning for at least ten minutes and to keep some air-filtering plants in the house. If you have a garden outside, you won’t need to worry too much about lead toxicity in your produce except for leafy greens.
There is also something you can do on the daily to assist in heavy metal detox. Chlorella has been proven to be an effective heavy metal binder. Not only is it an amazing detoxifier, but it is chock-full of minerals and chlorophyll, which is the ultimate blood cleanser. It is also an amazing source of protein, iron and zinc. I recommend taking this supplement everyday and getting a colonic monthly to assist in eliminating metals from the body. My favorite brand is Vega, a reputable vegan brand that is affordable and widely available in both health stores and online.
In conclusion, my real estate career wasn’t a complete waste of time after all…
Last year for my birthday, my brother gifted me a 23andMe heredity kit to see if we were, in fact, related. Turns out we are both definitively at least 50% “East Asian & Native American,” which apparently puts me down for “likely lactose intolerant.” I honestly never thought about this. I knew that certain cultures, specifically African Americans and Asians, are generally lactose intolerant. But even though I am genetically predisposed to dairy intolerance, I never gave it a second thought because…well…Got Milk?
Let’s state the obvious: milk comes from titties! As a baby, you probably breastfed for a few months or maybe even a year or two. If you were me, it only took a week for your mother to say, “fuck this shit” and quickly embrace the convenience of baby formula.
I’m all about breastfeeding if that option is available. According to WebMD, studies have shown that exclusively breastfeeding for up to six months can result in fewer respiratory illnesses, ear infections and bouts of diarrhea. It also can help prevent allergies and asthma. Breastmilk is essentially a natural vaccination as it contains antibiotics that help babies fight infection and disease. However, breastfeeding hurts like hell and not every woman is able to do it for various reasons, so I respect every woman’s decision to breastfeed or not to breastfeed. After all, I was breastfed for one week and didn’t turn out so bad, right? 😉
But let’s examine this scenario with regards to whether or not we should be eating dairy as grown adults: the most one will typically breastfeed is for up to six months, maybe a year. You could even breastfeed for a few years if you and your mother are so inclined because your body is still producing lactase (the enzyme responsible for digesting milk) until you are about four years old, when you will most likely have a full set of teeth (ouch!). Once you turn four years old, your production of lactase drastically decreases, and in some people, it completely stops. So it is no wonder most adults feel bloated and constipated when they eat too much dairy. Additionally, most adults are not ingesting human milk, but cow’s dairy, which contains the casein protein, a known carcinogen according to The China Study by Dr. T. Colin Campbell.
Aside from our physiological evolution, let’s look at the milk itself. Not only is it cruel and unusual punishment to force a cow (or a human) to breastfeed for life, but it is completely unnatural. It is so unnatural, in fact, that hormones and antibiotics must be pumped into these poor animals in order for them to produce enough milk to feed not just a baby calf, but the human race. Consequently, the cow’s udders are squeezed so forcefully that a generous amount of pus and blood is extracted, which is an excellent reason to pasteurize milk. Trust me, this shit ain’t healthy. It causes severe inflammation in the body.
I believe most people instinctually know that dairy is unhealthy and the first thing people tell me when they are trying to lose weight or trying to become vegan is that they are addicted to cheese. I have great news! There are soooo many good cheese alternatives today! Nothing tastes as good as healthy feels, so you won’t be missing that puss-filled shit when you are winning at life. If you are in the NYC area, I encourage you to visit Riverdel Cheese Shop in Brooklyn just to get an idea of how many different puss-free cheeses are out there! Otherwise, many of these brands can be found in specialty health shops and Whole Foods nationwide.
Miyokos Kitchen: my favorite flavor Black Ash, Smoked Farmhouse and Mozz. They also have an excellent vegan butter.
Kite Hill: available at most Whole Foods mixed in with the regular gourmet cheeses. They make the absolute BEST vegan cream cheese – my favorite it the jalapeno. Kite Hill also makes different varieties of almond cheese including cream cheeses, soft cheeses and ricotta. I also LOVE LOVE LOVE their mushroom ricotta ravioli!
Violife: the best shreds for your homemade pizza. Also, the best vegan feta cheese!
Treeline Treenut Cheese: widely available in most health food stores, TreeLine makes a whole line of nut cheeses. My favorite flavors are cracked pepper and chipotle-serrano pepper.
Parmela Creamery: this company makes delicious shredded cheese for tacos and other recipes. They also make a good sliced American cheese among others.
Green smoothies are my favorite breakfast or lunch and sometimes I have a smoothie for both breakfast and lunch! Having a green smoothie is a fast and easy way to make sure you are getting your greens, antioxidants, vitamins, fiber and a good shit. Depending on what you put in your smoothies, they are generally easy to digest. I suggest you quit playing yourself and get a Vitamix blender, which will literally take years off of your life. It can blend anything into a velvety smooth, easy-to-digest texture in a matter of minutes and it also cleans itself in less than a minute by blending soapy water at high speed. After years of convincing myself I didn’t need a Vitamix, I finally purchased a reconditioned Vitamix from William Sonoma, which comes with a 5 year warrantee and will probably last a lifetime. If you sign on to Williams Sonoma newsletter, you will get an extra 15% off and free shipping as well, so take advantage of our faltering retail economy. The newer models have a cool single-serve cup attachment, but based on the reviews and that they cost a million dollars, they seem to have more challenges than they’re worth. I recommend sticking to the older models. That said, below is my favorite dairy free green smoothie that you can quickly whip up every morning before work. You’ll feel healthy, hydrated, and light as a feather after your smooth, smoothie poo. Other welcomed side effects include satisfaction, more energy, heightened senses, less cravings, clear skin, sex appeal and magical powers. All ingredients can be purchased online thanks to FreshDirect and HealthForceSuperfoods.com. My secret smoothie ingredient is Anita’s Creamline Coconut Yogurt. Anita’s Creamline Coconut Yogurt is the only yogurt I recommend eating everyday. It contains only three ingredients: coconut, coconut water and cultures (no added sugars or bullshit). It is made in small batches in Brooklyn and now widely available via Fresh Direct. Health Alliance’s Vitamineral Green powder is one of the few (if not the only) green powder available with the utmost integrity. Bonus: this smoothie is delicious and satisfying in more ways than one 😉
Summer Smooth Move Smoothie (2 servings)
2 mangos (my favorite are fresh Mexcian Ataulfo mangos, but any frozen variety will do) 1 salad’s worth of spinach (or other green of your choice) 1/2 cup water 1/3 cup Anita’s Creamline Coconut Yogurt 1 scoop Glutagenics 1.5 Tablespoons Vitamineral Green 1 frozen banana (I like to keep peeled bananas cut into thirds in the freezer at all times)
Blend that shit. Enjoy!
My mother has always justified her potato chip habit as a means of greasing her engines. Her mother would always tell her to eat oil to avoid feeling dry (must be some Chinese shit). Needless to say, I’ve grown up having no qualms about eating oil and love me some potato chips….new fave here.
So while potato chips may not be the greatest source of healthy fats, I cannot recommend eating fat enough. It is not only good for lubrication of the joints, but also of the intestines and our brain. Our culture is lacking in Omega 3s, which could significantly improve joint pain associated with rheumatoid arthritis, lower triglycerides (blood fat), lower inflammation (remarkably so with inflammatory bowel conditions) and also protect against Alzheimers and dementia. I got this info off of WebMd, which recommends supplementing with fish oils. However, with the advent of GMO salmon and farmed fish, it is becoming abundantly clear that we cannot blindly trust our food systems, not even those derived from the ocean. For more on this, please check out the one hour documentary Fillet Oh Fish on YouTube (but not while you’re eating!). Farmed fish exposure to pesticides and antibiotics is worse than our factory farmed animals and the fish industry is much less regulated. In fact, it is getting more and more difficult to discern which fish are truly wild and some companies are purposely mislabeling farmed fish as wild. Increased farmed fish consumption is being linked to cancer risks because of the higher fat content. Fat is where animals (including ourselves) store toxins, so these fattier fish are loaded with heavy metals, antibiotics and pesticides.
An easy way to get your Omega 3s without worrying about nasty fish juice is to find a high quality organic cold-pressed flax seed oil and throw a tablespoon in your salad everyday. I feel super blessed to have recently learned of a local supplier in upstate NY called Oillee through one of my lovely clients. I love me a company with integrity… my flax seed oil was delivered a day after it was pressed! It doesn’t get much fresher than that, folks! I also appreciate that the oil comes in a dark glass bottle versus the brand I was previously consuming, which comes in a dark plastic bottle. If you need a good recipe, please refer to my post on Tom’s salad…just throw some oil in it!
Many clients find me after reaching the end of their rope with meaningless diagnosis (ahem, IBS, ahem), medications, dietary changes, psychics, “healers”….you name it. It’s most rewarding for me to work with new clients who’ve just about exhausted all avenues because they ultimately come to the truth: everyone (especially thyself) is full of shit!
Digging through my blog, you will learn that constipation and gas literally stir up all sorts of shit in your body. Seemingly unrelated symptoms like back pain, belly fat, heartburn, acid reflux, migraines and even fatigue can all be attributed to system backup. One of the most underrated causes of bloating and constipation that is constantly dismissed by doctors and patients alike is stress. It is widely accepted that many degenerative diseases and gastrointestinal distress are caused by stress.
For the most part, life would be boring without its stresses. However, many of my clients (and I assume the general population here in the tri-state area) are burdened daily by the demands of their high-pressure jobs coupled by those of their families. I’ve lived the desk life, so I can empathize. But I was less of the driven type and more of the is-it-five-o-clock-yet? type and I’m not really into the having kids thing, so perhaps it suffices to say my empathy is limited. That said, I’m not disqualified from giving you the following advice based not only on patterns I’ve observed in my clients, but on hard scientific Doody Free Girl evidence.
Do not eat at your desk when you are stressed. If there was a belligerent drunk knocking down the front door of your apartment, your heart rate would rise, adrenaline and cortisol would course through your system and you would instinctively do whatever you could to protect you and your cat. You wouldn’t be able to (nor want to) do all of this while munching on Jackson’s Honest salt and vinegar potato chips. In fact, you would probably vomit. The same thing happens when you eat under pressure at your desk (minus the drunk boyfriend and the cat). Your body will reject the food from a nutrient perspective. Scientists have discovered that the fat tissue around your midsection is active and is actually a member of your endocrine system, holding on to fat as future energy stores. This happens even more so when you’re stressed because your body is less likely to respond to the hormone leptin, which signals when the body is full. Furthermore, your body is in no position to receive nutrients, resulting in knots, bloating and constipation.
So resist any temptation to eat at the desk because it is most likely unwarranted. You are stressed and looking for something to make your boss go away. You are not starving for anything other than magnesium. So reach for a Metagenics MetaRelax beverage instead of a piece of the third office birthday cake this week that tastes like shit anyway. MetaRelax is a delicious citrus powder supplement sweetened with only stevia that contains 150mg of magnesium, B6, B12, folate and taurine. It is a vegan formula designed to cause the mysterious disappearance of stress, depression, anxiety, constipation and your annoying boss. Magnesium has been proven to aid in 600 enzymatic processes in the body, lower the risk of heart disease, increase calcium absorbency while preventing vascular calcification, lower depression and anxiety, and even move your bowels. I am so excited about this product because I have a hard time swallowing chalky magnesium pills and now I look forward to taking this critical mineral everyday. For those who do not have any issues swallowing pills, Metagenics makes an excellent supplement called Bone Builder, a ratio-balanced blend of magnesium and calcium.
Last week I felt like utter shit. My sinuses were congested in an allergy-kind-of-way and I was chronically tired. It was no mystery to me. I know I’ve been eating a whole bunch of crap (lots of soy, wheat, fried foods and too much wine). You see… if you eat like shit, you feel like shit. And if you don’t take big shits, you feel even shittier (Damn, I just realized I’m a sage).
One of my New Years Resolutions was to stop eating meat and that just segued into eventually becoming vegan again with the exception of some honey and wearing my old leather. In a past life, I was a raw vegan for about two years, which propelled me into the alternative health world and then into insanity. After becoming completely orthorexic (unhealthily obsessed with clean eating), I finally admitted I had a problem and needed to chill the fuck out. So I transitioned back to eating cooked vegan foods, then pescatarianism, then vegetarianism, then straight up carnivorism and finally constipationism. So I threw this journey in reverse and have arrived back at veganism (not raw veganism) because videos like this really strike a chord with me and keep me from being a “weak ass motherfucker”:
But eating too many nasty tofucken-like dishes has been slowing me down and proving to be just as constipating as its meat counterparts. Plus who knows what’s in that shit?
For those following, you know I wanted to do another one of Andreas Moritz’s Liver & Gallbladder Cleanse early November. I started my Liver Cleanse on Monday and just completed it today. For the first time, I released no stones in the toilet unlike past cleanses. I guess this disproves the theory that the stones released on the seventh day are, in fact, gallstones and not coagulated olive oil. I’m feeling like a better version of myself, thanks be to God.
So my takeaway from both my alternative health journey that started about ten years ago and my entire liver cleansing journey that started just two years ago as my New Years Resolution in 2015 is that no diet will make anyone perfect. Finding a lifestyle that incorporates a mostly plant-based diet that is kind to your liver will benefit you, your digestive tract, your karma and the environment. And having this knowledge is empowering for those times you just feel like fucking shit.
You can find instructions for the Liver Cleanse here and follow my journey under the Liver and Gallbladder Cleanse category on the left side of the screen. And you can book your Liver Cleanse here.