Healthy Equinox Greetings!

March 20, 2012

Greetings from HumanaNatura at the equinox! In the natural year, we are at the halfway point between the extremes of darkness and light of the winter and summer solstices. Everywhere on earth, there is the greater relative balance and calm that naturally comes to our world twice each year with the equinox.

In the HumanaNatura natural health system, we recommend that practitioners use the opportunity of the equinox to review and update our Natural Life Plan, making changes as needed and renewing and revitalizing our commitment to progressive natural health and quality of life.

If you do not have a Natural Life Plan – guiding your use and personal expression of Natural Living, the third HumanaNatura technique in our natural health system – the link above will take you to our planning worksheets and help you to begin more intentional, health-centered, and progressive life in the days and weeks ahead.

Our newest community newsletter was released today as well, which is published eight times yearly in harmony with the natural year. To receive future HumanaNatura newsletters and learn about the benefits of membership in our global practitioner-activist network, go to Join HumanaNatura.

Tell your friends about HumanaNatura…promote modern natural life!

New Meal, Health & Freedom!

March 19, 2012

OurPlate Score: 10

Salad meal eating the HumanaNatura way and using HumanaNatura’s OurPlate guidelines makes every new meal an added opportunity for new health…and even for new personal freedom! Think of it this way – we all will eat roughly 1000 meals in the next year. To lay the foundation for progressive and enduring health and fitness in our lives, 900 or more of these meals need to be actively health-promoting. Less than this, and our eating patterns will reliably curtail our health and reduce our natural fitness, even if we exercise regularly.

Thus, with each new meal, we have the opportunity to add to our healthy meal count, and preserve our ability to have an occasional meal that is less than ideal. 100 poor meal choices and we have no more nutritional freedom for the next year…900 good meal choices and we create added personal flexibility each day. What’s it going to be?

This easy-to-prepare and strongly health-promoting salad meal might help you to choose healthier meals each day. It starts with a turmeric and red pepper seasoned sauté of cut turkey breast and mixed veggies. It then adds a half-plate of arugula, along with diced orange, and sliced tomato and avocado. It’s all finished with pistachios, parsley, paprika, coriander, and black pepper. A wonderful way to promote our health, and our life and freedom!

Learn more about creating naturally delicious and optimally nutritious meals through OurPlate, HumanaNatura’s simple healthy eating and meal rating tool, and experience how this science-based and completely natural approach to daily meals can change the way you eat, feel, and live. Perfect your skills at making delicious and naturally healthy salad meals that follow the OurPlate guidelines via the Meals tab above, our popular article Perfect Salad Meals, or the Natural Eating section of our comprehensive Personal Health Program.

Once you have begun eating the HumanaNatura way, we hope you will begin to explore your other opportunities for new, more natural, and healthier life between meals – through HumanaNatura’s complete and naturally open-ended system for lifelong and lifewide health and fitness. Check out our overview at The Four HumanaNatura Techniques.

Tell your friends about HumanaNatura… encourage new health!

Competition’s Natural Limits

March 16, 2012

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By Mark Lundegren

Recent reports of a National Football League (NFL)  bounty program in the United States, paying and encouraging players to injure their opponents, are a stark reminder that competition has important natural or rational limits.

In citing this example, however, we must immediately add that sports like professional football, in both its American and International varieties, is a modern preoccupation that already functions far beyond desirable natural limits for social competition – when judged from the standpoint of its net effect on the health and quality of life of its participants and fans.

After all, consider the influences of this most popular competitive sport of our times on the lives and health of those who participate in the sport or follow it avidly. In the case of NFL players, there is perhaps a five times higher risk of chronic cognitive health impairment and comparable risks of premature physical disability and degeneration. International football players fare somewhat better, but still are subject to greatly elevated risks of injury and long-term physical disability. We would add that in both of these and many other competitive sports, drug use is a widespread phenomenon – to enhance performance, to treat pain, and for escape from the unnatural stress and pressure of sports-related competition.

As for professional football fans, anyone who has been to a game in any professional-level league (and many below this level) knows firsthand the widely health-indifferent cultures that this sport and many other supernormally competitive pastimes reliably attract and foster. Such fan cultures are regularly and often strongly marked by patently unhealthy eating, excessive alcohol consumption, increased aggression and violence, elevated stress, obsessive and risk-seeking behaviors, and decreased enjoyment of essential but less stimulating life activities, to begin a list.

Continue reading “Competition’s Natural Limits”

Mixed Protein Salad Meal!

March 12, 2012

OurPlate Score: 10

Salad meal eating the HumanaNatura way and using HumanaNatura’s OurPlate guidelines helps to optimize our daily portions of veggies, proteins, and fruits for lifelong health and fitness. In practice, once we adjust to having half our food volume come from raw veggies, our main focus becomes right-sizing our protein and fruit intake – to meet but not exceed our macro-nutrient and calorie needs, respectively. But right-sizing our daily protein foods does not have to mean less interesting meals, as our many example meals show. One way to optimize proteins and make sure our meals stay interesting over time is a change-up where we mix more than one protein in a meal, and this very tasty meal does just that.

Today’s quick and easy-to-prepare salad meal uses two proteins for extra taste and variety, and was made in about ten minutes. It begins with a stir-fry of sliced ginger chicken, shrimp, red onion, chopped broccoli, and diced tomato. This protein and veggie mix is served with our usual half-plate of mixed greens, along with coarsely slivered cucumber, tomato, and orange. It’s all finished with a few pistachios, parsley, coriander, a little lemon, and black pepper. Super healthy and a super satisfying mix of tastes!

Learn more about creating naturally delicious and optimally nutritious meals through OurPlate, HumanaNatura’s simple healthy eating and meal rating tool, and experience how this science-based and completely natural approach to daily meals can change the way you eat, feel, and live. Perfect your skills at making delicious and naturally healthy salad meals that follow the OurPlate guidelines via the Meals tab above, our popular article Perfect Salad Meals, or the Natural Eating section of our comprehensive Personal Health Program.

Once you have begun eating the HumanaNatura way, we hope you will begin to explore your other opportunities for new, more natural, and healthier life between meals – through HumanaNatura’s complete and naturally open-ended system for lifelong and lifewide health and fitness. Check out our overview at The Four HumanaNatura Techniques.

Tell your friends about HumanaNatura… encourage new health!

Exercise – Our Fountain of Youth

March 8, 2012

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By Mark Lundegren

It’s hardly provocative to point out that exercise has important health benefits.

We all know this, even as many of us do not exercise enough to achieve essential natural conditioning and fitness. Other than eating naturally and avoiding harmful drugs and physical risks, ensuring adequate daily exercise is perhaps the simplest and most direct means we all have to encourage lifelong fitness and vitality.

What is more provocative to say these days is that exercise is our fountain of youth. This is a statement many of us will find too strong, even as exercise research increasingly supports exactly this conclusion. Just as medieval explorers combed the world looking for the source of our vitality, modern people still generally long to understand and achieve lasting youthfulness and robustness – but notably, in a world that is far more secure and informed, and thus more health-friendly, than in the past.

Now, our centuries-old wish for natural robustness and lasting vitality must confront modern health science and its finding that almost all of us can have a long and youthful life if we want one. What is most required to achieve this, in a world that has been made safer and less harried by infectious diseases, is a simple but sustained personal commitment to our natural health, including care with our overall lifestyle and enough exercise to approximate our health-essential activity patterns from earlier natural life.

Continue reading “Exercise – Our Fountain of Youth”

Greening Up Via Salad Meals!

March 4, 2012

OurPlate Score: 10

A key goal of salad meal eating the HumanaNatura way is to increase the amount of healthy raw veggies you eat each day, until they are at least half of your total food volume. In addition to encouraging this essential green foundation of healthy natural eating, HumanaNatura recommends sufficient natural protein foods to meet our physiological needs and then enough fruit to ensure we are getting enough calories to maintain an optimal weight. These important nutritional goals are summarized in HumanaNatura’s OurPlate healthy eating guidelines. As you can see in the photo below, this approach is not only optimally nutritious, it is  remarkably delicious and naturally pleasing to the senses too. What may not be so easy to see is how fast and simple to prepare salad meals like this are.

This delicious and only complicated-looking salad meal was made in under ten minutes with simple ingredients. It starts with a stir-fry of sliced ginger-turmeric pork, diced red onion, and chopped baby broccoli, using cooking oil with just a bit of minced garlic and red pepper added to it. It’s served with our usual generous half-plate of greens, along with sliced orange and diced cucumber and tomato. It’s all finished with pistachios, parsley, paprika, coriander, a little lemon zest, and black pepper. A great, green, and optimally healthy meal!

Learn more about creating naturally delicious and optimally nutritious meals through OurPlate, HumanaNatura’s simple healthy eating and meal rating tool, and experience how this science-based and completely natural approach to daily meals can change the way you eat, feel, and live. Perfect your skills at making delicious and naturally healthy salad meals that follow the OurPlate guidelines via the Meals tab above, our popular article Perfect Salad Meals, or the Natural Eating section of our comprehensive Personal Health Program.

Once you have begun eating the HumanaNatura way, we hope you will begin to explore your other opportunities for new, more natural, and healthier life between meals – through HumanaNatura’s complete and naturally open-ended system for lifelong and lifewide health and fitness. An overview is available at The Four HumanaNatura Techniques.

Tell your friends about HumanaNatura… encourage new health!

Anytime Turkey Salad Meal!

February 29, 2012

OurPlate Score: 10

We all need a handful of go-to protein foods to successfully transition to lifelong salad meal eating the HumanaNatura way. This step gives us both convenience and variety. While you think about this important idea, we’d like to add that turkey is a great choice for your short list! We often think of turkey in the form of giant whole birds served at holidays, but the truth is that smaller, easy-to-prepare portions of turkey are available throughout the year for most of us. They make a delicious, lean, healthy, and often low-cost everyday protein food.

This delicious and super-satisfying salad meal starts with a turkey breast cooked simply in a covered pan with a splash of olive oil, dried garlic and onion bits, paprika, turmeric, tarragon, lemon, and just a bit of red pepper. It’s sliced after cooking and paired with our usual generous half-plate of greens, along with slivered celery pieces, sliced strawberry, diced orange, and a few raisins and pistachios. It’s all finished with parsley, coriander, a little more lemon, and black pepper. Extra yummy and a nice break from chicken, or whatever else is at the top of your go-to list!

Learn more about creating naturally delicious and optimally nutritious meals through OurPlate, HumanaNatura’s simple healthy eating and meal rating tool, and experience how this science-based and completely natural approach to daily meals can change the way you eat, feel, and live. Perfect your skills at making delicious and naturally healthy salad meals that follow the OurPlate guidelines via the Meals tab above, our popular article Perfect Salad Meals, or the Natural Eating section of our comprehensive Personal Health Program.

Once you have begun eating the HumanaNatura way, we hope you will begin to explore your other opportunities for new, more natural, and healthier life between meals – through HumanaNatura’s complete and naturally open-ended system for lifelong and lifewide health and fitness. Info is available at The Four HumanaNatura Techniques.

Tell your friends about HumanaNatura… encourage new health!

Your New Week’s Resolutions?

February 26, 2012

We all know about New Year’s resolutions, and how they often do not produce their intended results. Part of the problem with annual commitments to change is that they do not happen often enough. If we truly want to change the way we live and who we are, it’s a daily and even momentary practice of committing, acting, observing, learning, and committing again.

For this reason, we need to make resolutions often, far more often than we may realize, and also regularly assess our thinking and actions amidst this new resolve. When we reach this stage of sustained personal commitment, we often encounter a second issue – not knowing how, as much as what, to change. Questions of both what and how to change are a big part of HumanaNatura’s natural health system and our crucial practice of guiding our lives with a Natural Life Plan.

If you really want to change – making your life better, healthier, and more naturally fulfilling – HumanaNatura can help. Even before you explore our four natural health techniques, a great first step is to begin to make New Week’s resolutions, instead of annual ones. This creative step forward can reinforce your desire for change and increase your motivation to explore the principles and practice of healthy personal development.

While you inspire yourself in this new way, you can also begin to eat more naturally and enjoyably right away too. Changing your life at mealtime can improve your physical health, while infusing your new growth orientation with the idea that healthier and higher quality life is not just a more focused state, but a happier one too, every day of the year.

OurPlate Score: 10

Perhaps this terrific HumanaNatura salad meal will inspire you to begin the week with a fresh start and new commitment to healthier and fuller life. First meals of the week like this are easy to prepare, motivating, and 100% in keeping with HumanaNatura’s extra-healthy OurPlate meal guidelines. It features sautéed shrimp, scallops, calamari, and red onion seasoned with curry, ginger, and a bit of red pepper. This creates a naturally lean, delicious, and satisfying protein serving, which is then paired with a generous half-plate of greens, julienne cucumber and mango, sliced avocado, and diced tomato. It’s all garnished with a few pistachios and finished with parsley, paprika, coriander, anise seeds, and a bit of black pepper. A great way to start a new and healthier week, and life!

Learn more about creating naturally delicious and optimally nutritious meals through OurPlate, HumanaNatura’s simple healthy eating and meal rating tool, and experience how this science-based and completely natural approach to daily meals can change the way you eat, feel, and live. Perfect your skills at making delicious and naturally healthy salad meals that follow the OurPlate guidelines via the Meals tab above, our popular article Perfect Salad Meals, or the Natural Eating section of our comprehensive Personal Health Program.

Once you have begun eating the HumanaNatura way, we hope you will resolve to explore your other opportunities for new, more natural, and healthier life between meals – through HumanaNatura’s complete and naturally open-ended system for lifelong and lifewide health and fitness, available at The Four HumanaNatura Techniques.

Tell your friends about HumanaNatura… encourage new life & health!

Critical Look at The China Study

February 24, 2012

A new article by Vin Miller – The China Study: Is Animal Food Really Unhealthy? – has just been re-published by HumanaNatura. The original article appeared on Vin’s RageWellness website and we are pleased to be able to include his thoughtful analysis in HumanaNatura’s article library. In the article, Vin explores the science that both supports and calls to question key conclusions from the popular, pro-vegan book, The China Study. Vin concludes that the case for veganism is not as strong scientifically as The China Study suggests and that “animal food can indeed be part of a diet that promotes excellent health.”

Vin’s science-based conclusions are of course consistent with HumanaNatura’s essential health technique of Natural Eating, embodied in our OurPlate healthy eating model, which proposes that a diet rich in raw vegetables that includes lean animal proteins and removes unnatural carbohydrate-rich foods is not just more natural, but will prove optimally healthy for most of us. You can read Vin’s excellent, well-researched article via HumanaNatura at Critical Look At The China Study or on Vin’s RageWellness blog.

Learn more about creating naturally delicious and optimally nutritious meals through OurPlate, HumanaNatura’s healthy eating and meal rating tool, and experience how this simple, science-based, and 100% natural approach to daily meals can change the way you eat, feel, and live. Perfect your skills at making delicious and naturally healthy salad meals that follow the OurPlate guidelines via the Meals tab above, our popular article Perfect Salad Meals, or the Natural Eating section of our comprehensive Personal Health Program.

Once you have begun eating the HumanaNatura way, we hope you will explore your other opportunities for new, more natural, and healthier life between meals – through HumanaNatura’s complete and naturally open-ended system for lifelong and lifewide health and fitness, which you can access at The Four HumanaNatura Techniques.

Tell your friends about HumanaNatura…promote new health!

Beautifully Balanced Salad Meal!

February 22, 2012

OurPlate Score: 10

Sometimes HumanaNatura salad meals come out good, sometimes great, and other times, even better than great! This delicious, healthy, and beautifully balanced example of the last category begins with a quick stir-fry of sliced pork and veggies seasoned with ginger, turmeric, tarragon, anise seeds, and just a bit of red pepper to accent the wonderful mix of natural flavors. We then pair this warm protein portion with our usual half-plate of cool raw greens, diced cucumber and grape tomatoes, and a handful of fresh blueberries. A meal like this doesn’t need much else, so we garnished and finished it simply with a few pistachios, parsley, coriander, a bit of lemon peel, and some cracked black pepper. Satisfying and also leaves you wanting more…and ready in about ten minutes!

Learn more about creating naturally delicious and optimally nutritious meals through OurPlate, HumanaNatura’s new healthy eating tool, and experience how this simple, science-based, and 100% natural approach to daily meals can change the way you eat, feel, and live. Perfect your skills at making delicious and naturally healthy salad meals that follow the OurPlate guidelines via the Meals tab above, our popular article Perfect Salad Meals, or the Natural Eating section of our comprehensive Personal Health Program.

Once you have begun eating the HumanaNatura way, we hope you will explore your other opportunities for new, more natural, and healthier life between meals – through HumanaNatura’s complete and naturally open-ended system for lifelong and lifewide health and fitness at The Four HumanaNatura Techniques.

Tell your friends about OurPlate & HumanaNatura…promote new health!