Here’s what I do regularly. It takes 1 minute or less and you will feel revived, refreshed, and re-focused.

(Tip: this is also a perfect refresher for ANYONE who spends a lot of time on the computer).

Click the pic below to watch now!

After you watch and try it, let me know if it works for you! And share with someone who you think might benefit from this little technique.

Do you have any other quick and easy stress-relief tips?

Reduce Stress + Boost Your Energy In 1 minute from tara hantske wellness.

“I was determined to know beans.” – Henry David Thoreau, The Bean-Field

How well do you know beans?

Creamy cannellinis, meaty garbanzos, sweet adzuki, tender pintos, and so many more – beans are one of the most powerful, nutrient-dense plant foods around.

Beans are packed with tons of fiber, as well as plenty of iron and protein. They are rich in antioxidants and phytonutrients. They are low in calories. Plus, studies have found them to lower the risk of cancer, cardiovascular disease, and diabetes.

What To Do With Beans

Many people avoid beans because they just don’t know what to do with them. Are you one of them?

Keep reading:

• Toss beans and diced veggies (such as celery, shallots, and red peppers) with vinaigrette for a bean salad.
• Blend cooked beans with tomatoes, onions, and your favorite seasonings to create a yummy bean soup.
• Top a green salad with 1/3 cup of your favorite bean.
• Puree beans with a bit of olive oil, a garlic clove, salt, and your favorite seasonings. Voila! A fast dip or sandwich spread.
• Add beans to eggs. Top with avocado and salsa!
• Add 1/4 cup pureed beans to your favorite pancake, waffle, muffin, or cake recipe. You’ll be surprised at how moist and springy baked goods are when baked with beans.

If you’re new to cooking with beans, try these tips:

• Wash and soak dried beans for 8-12 hours before cooking.
• After soaking, rinse, fill a pot with fresh water, bring to a boil, then skim off the foam.
• To aid digestion, add kombu, bay leaf, cumin, anise, or fennel to the water.
• Cover and simmer for the suggested time.
• Remember: only add salt at the end of cooking (about 10 minutes before the beans are done) or it will interfere with the cooking process.
• Quick tips: for speedier prep, boil dried beans for 5 minutes, then soak for 2-4 hours. Or use canned beans instead. (Some people find them even easier to digest!) Be sure to avoid canned beans with added salt or preservatives and rinse thoroughly once removed from the can.

Comment below with your favorite way to eat beans

Wait! Plants Have Protein!? from tara hantske wellness.

Water is ESSENTIAL for us to live. Humans can only live about a week without water (weather, your health, and other factors considered). And for optimal health, hydration, excretion, mental clarity, mood, and just overall organ function, you should be drinking half of your body weight in ounces of water per day.

Try these delicious ways to healthily enhance your water!

In the cold, winter months, it can be hard to drink a bunch of cold water all day. So, warm it up! Simply heat some water in your tea kettle and drink to warm you up and hydrate you. In fact, many spas are now offering plain warm water before and after treatments to help relax and hydrate you without the de-hydrating teas.

Adding fresh lemon juice to your warm water is also a great way to rev up your metabolism without coffee. Lemon juice aids in digestion, detoxification, and reduces inflammation.

Throw in a cinnamon stick. Cinnamon has natural warming properties, so throwing it into your water bottle can help warm you up without the water actually being warm. Cinnamon is an excellent detoxifier, too!

Make your water more refreshing in the summer by adding cucumber slices or even just peels (be sure you’ve washed it!). Cucumber aids in reducing puffiness and inflammation in the body and is naturally cooling, so it will help cool you off in addition to the ice water.

Other antioxidant rich ways to enhance your water:

• Throw in a few pomegranate seeds, raspberries or blackberries
• Give your water a natural vitamin boost with orange or tangerine slices
• Drink sparkling mineral water with lime wedges or cucumber slices
• Add mint leaves

Have any other ideas? Share them in the comments below or let us know – what is YOUR favorite way to spice up your water?

Enhance Your Water! from tara hantske wellness.

In my last post, I talked about how our health is determined at the cellular level. Want to get healthy? Start with a single cell.

The really cool thing about our bodies is that being sick, infertile or having cancer isn’t the end all be all. Our bodies and cells change constantly.

Check this out:

• Skin cells renew every 27 days
• Blood cells – 60-120 days
• Entire Blood supply – 3-4 months
• Epithelial cells lining your intestines – Daily
• A new skeleton – every 2 years

You can have a whole new body in 2 years. How powerful is that? So don’t ever give up on your health.

Inside out. Outside In.

There are two ways to nurse your cells back to health & keep them healthy: from the inside out and the outside in.

While we all know the importance of eating healthily, a lot of us (especially women) are quite hesitant to give up our favorite shampoo, mascara, or yummy smelling body lotion. But, this is one of the easiest ways to create healthier cells.

Kris Carr couldn’t have said it better in her recent blog post:

“Did you know that the average person uses 9 personal care products per day containing about 126 chemical ingredients? Many of these chemicals have been linked to increased risk of cancer, infertility, birth defects, hormone disruption and the list of dangers goes on. Babies, children, teens, adults — we’re all exposed to these chemicals on a daily basis and there is still much we do not know about their long-term health effects.”

A 2009 study done in the UK reported that women leave the house with an average of 500 chemicals on their body due to personal care/beauty products alone.

Wowza!

500 chemicals seeping into your bloodstream and feeding all of your organs and cells?! No thank you. (And yes, EVERYTHING that touches your skin, hair, and nails enters your bloodstream- even spray tanning— yep, you guessed it, it’s NOT safer than tanning beds).

While these things are not necessarily dangerous when you use them once in a while, they are when you use them daily. 

Clean up your beauty routine.

While it may sound scary to have that many toxic chemicals in your path, it makes for an  EASY way to get healthy: start using healthier beauty products.

So, here’s what to look out for when shopping around:

1. Evaluate the need. Do you really need all of those hairsprays, mouses, smelly lotions, chemical nail polishes?
2. If it’s made from plants or food, read the labels carefully. Even organic beauty products made with plants or food or botanicals can contain chemical preservatives, which are linked to breast cancer and can act as a hormone disruptor (did someone say infertile?).
3. Know your brands. A lot of larger corporations have heard the buzz on organic and healthy, so they’ve developed brands that seem healthy but still contain harmful ingredients. For example, Clorox owns Burt’s Bees. Interesting partnership…
4. Go fragrance-free. Fragrant products are usually chemically-laden products.

Remember, the easiest things TO DO are also the easiest things NOT TO DO. The sooner you start cleaning out your cabinets, the sooner you can begin healing your cells and body.

xo

Tara

Avoid these Products from tara hantske wellness.

But, diets are usually pretty easy to follow. There are so many meal delivery services or point systems now that you barely have to think about what you are eating — which is exactly the problem. If you aren’t learning what’s healthy and what’s not, the minute you stop dieting is the minute you gain it all back.

On the point system, people love it because they can still have food that is really bad for you. You can have a bagel with bacon and cheese, but you just can’t eat lunch. Or you can have 2 glasses of wine, but you have to skip breakfast.

And on the meal services, the meals are pre-made, frozen and delivered to your door. You mindlessly heat it up and eat it. Do you even know what you just ate?

These do-it-for-you diet systems will help you lose weight. They will not help you be healthy, learn how to cook, grocery shop, or even know the difference between something that’s healthy and something that’s not. They don’t teach you how to be independent – diets teach you how to depend on them… forever.

Let’s dive into your eating and lifestyle habits and figure out how to make them healthier. Let’s figure out what works for you and your life (because humans are not one size fits all – what works for you, may not work for me).

Here’s a super simple way to look at shaving 100 calories off of your caloric intake every single day. And the little things add up, trust me.

Choose just 1 of these things to stop eating/drinking on a daily basis and in a year you will be down 10 pounds. That easy (and healthy!).

• 1 can of regular soda (or sports & energy drinks)- eliminates 140 -and switching to diet doesn’t count (diet soda is one of theworst things you can drink)
• 100 calorie snack packs – these are junk food with good marketing to make you think it’s OK to eat them
• 1/2 donut
• downsize your latte
• forgo the muffin, croissant, or bagel from starbucks
• forgo that handful of M&M’s from the bowl at work

And if you want a little extra impact- if you jog for 15 minutes everyday, you’ll eliminate another 100 calories which will translate to more lasting weight loss.

Try this & tell me how easy it is in the comments!

Cut Out 100 Calories Per Day + Drop 10 pounds from tara hantske wellness.

Is buying organic food worth it?

Many people didn’t eat organic foods growing up – our parents and grandparents didn’t have to worry as much about the quality of our food. Foods weren’t treated as heavily with chemicals, nor was the soil. These chemicals and toxins cause and create stress in the body, which eventually leads to disease. Using chemicals to alter the growth, look, and quantity of food is a relatively new procedure — yet it has quickly become the norm.

Getting one or more colds per year is a sign that you should re-think your diet and environmental surroundings. Being sick often is an indication that your immune
system is working overtime and is unable to keep up with keeping you protected.

The food industry has changed drastically in the past 10 years. The consumer
wanted to be skinny, so the industry made fat-free foods loaded with sugar which
made us fat and diabetic. The consumer wants sugar-free foods, and the industry
responded by creating foods using chemical sugar substitutes, and people are still
fat and diabetic.

There is no short-cut or magic pill to make you healthy. The pharmaceutical
industry is trying to correct what processed junk food has done to you and drugs
often only mask your symptoms. When what you need is to correct the real cause of the symptom AND condition.

Why Buying Organic Is Worth It

Eating organic foods will naturally detoxify your body of the chemicals and toxins
that have been building up. Organic whole foods have a higher nutrient content and
contain more antioxidants than conventional, which lessens the toxic load in your
body. By eating organic foods that are toxic and chemical-free, your body has less
to process and lowers the health burden. Simply switching to organic, whole foods
decreases your exposure to pesticides and toxins, while nourishing your cells with
the nutrients they need. To learn more about the nutrient content of organic foods
and soil, visit any of the links at the bottom of this article.

While many make the argument that organic foods are too expensive, it is often
the processed foods (food in a bag or box) that you pay a premium for – it is much
easier on the wallet to stick to whole foods. By eating healthier, you can become
healthier and reduce your visits to the doctor’s office, saving even more money in
the long run. You can either find a way to afford to be healthy now, or be really sick
later. Buying organic food IS worth it.

Start Small.
There are things you can do to help decrease the amount of toxic chemicals you
consume, even without buying everything organic.

According to the Environmental Working Group (EWG), eating 5 of the 12 most
contaminated foods means you are consuming an average of 14 different pesticides a day. On the other hand, if you eat 5 of the 15 least contaminated fruits & veggies,
you will consume fewer than 2 pesticides per day. If you choose to eat all veggies
from the Clean 15 list, instead of the Dirty Dozen list, you will lower your pesticide
intake by 92 percent! Check out the full list here or grab the app for on the go HERE.

When choosing which fruits and veggies to buy organic, choose from the Dirty
Dozen list. While it is a great goal to make everything organic, it may not always be
available, convenient, or affordable for everyone.

Genetics only play a small part in your long-term health – nutrition and lifestyle are the driving factors in what the future of your health looks like.

Do you think buying organic food is worth it? I’d love to hear your thoughts!

xo

Tara

Organic vs Conventional Foods – Is it worth the cost? from tara hantske wellness.

What’s on your list of New Year’s Resolutions?

…………..“Lose Weight” is the #1 New Year’s Resolution. Is it on your list? If you’ve been following my simple advice, you probably don’t feel the need to drop the weight you gained over the holidays (because you didn’t gain any), but if it is on your list, try a different approach this year.

Instead of weight loss as your goal, make health your goal. I guarantee that if health is your goal, and weight loss is an added bonus, you won’t beat yourself up so much and you’ll feel like the weight just fell off. Weight loss and success reaching any goal is just as much mental & pshycological than it is physical. Set yourself up for success- When you are trying one fad after another to lose those extra pounds, you can actually do more harm to your body than good— making it even more difficult to keep it off or keep up with the fad.

DE-tox, instead of DE-prive.
Chances are you are like most people who have been on a bit of a bender the past few years. It’s not your fault. The media influences what we as a society think is “healthy” or “safe,” and after some field research, we find out that “fat-free” and “sugar-free” is actually worse for you. You thought you were getting “healthy,” when really, you were creating a toxic environment in your body. Your body doesn’t respond to fad-diets- diets don’t work- you’re addicted to Starbucks, sugar, and white flour. Everytime you eliminate something, you rebound even worse than before. It’s a roller-coaster that is nearly impossible to get off of without guidance. You are literally going through withdraw. You can do it alone, but it will be tough.

The good news? Fully committing health to yourself isn’t a bad thing. Sure, you’ll have to give up some things you’ve grown to love, but in the long run, you won’t be diabetic, your thyroid won’t have an “issue,” you won’t have IBS, you will be MUCH less prone to cancer and heart disease, and the weight will fall off, naturally- healthily. You’ll feel amazing- people will ask you what you did. They will want what you’ve figured out. And you’ll be able to tell them how to get it.

To wipe out those toxins, you’ve got to fill your body with goodness. And the goodness tastes & feels good. You don’t have to eat things you don’t like, but you do have to try new things. You don’t have to be hungry, but you do have to cook. It’s not about what you are giving up, it’s about what you are putting in.

Choose Health from tara hantske wellness.

Take your free 10 minute health assessment and get exactly that – a risk-free starting point. Customized recommendations in 3 detailed, personalized reports. Just for you. Free.

This is an exclusive service I’m super excited to be able to offer – take advantage and start the New Year off knowing exactly what you need to do!

Click HERE to take your assessment now!

xoxo

Tara

PS- want access to a new health management tool? track your weight, plan your meals with 1000′s of recipes, plan workouts with 100′s of videos, make your grocery list + MORE! watch this video after you take your health assessment!

Have 10 minutes to get healthier? from tara hantske wellness.

Coconut is amazingly powerful and good for your total health. Coconut water is becoming more and more popular, especially among athletes, for replenishing electrolytes. (side note: without electrolytes, you could die, so athletes & hot yogis, be sure to replenish!) Coconut, in general is a wonderful thing for you to enjoy- be it water, oil, milk, or raw.

Coconut has been used in medicine for thousands of years to heal bruises, burns, rashes, asthma, constipation, cough, colds, fever, flu, irregular or painful menstration, earaches, kidney stones, sore throat, swelling, and the list goes on and on. Read more here.

To simplify, start adding coconut oil into your life. Here are 7 easy & effective uses for it:

1. Cooking
Use coconut oil just like you would vegetable or olive oil. Coconut oil has a higher heat tolerance, which means it’s chemical structure doesn’t change until a much, much higher heat as opposed to vegetable or olive oil. Certain oils change chemically at a high temperature, making them very unhealthy (trans fats). In fact, oilve oil should not ever be used for cooking. Here’s the best part about using it to sauté/fry/cook with……. your body metabolizes coconut oil immediately! It doesn’t store it for later- meaning, your body converts it to energy right away. MUCH better for your health and your waistline

2. Rashes/Burns
Coconut oil is wonderful for your skin, especially for quick healing of rashes or burns. And a rash you might not think about using it for: diaper rash. It’s better than diaper rash cream and doesn’t have any chemicals!

Lots more where this came from… head on over & grab the rest on my blog http://ow.ly/7Sslt

xo
tara

7 Uses for Coconut Oil from tara hantske wellness.

True life is lived when tiny changes occur.
-Leo Tolstoy

New Year, New You
A lot of people begin the New Year by making resolutions. We’ve all been there. We take a vow to lose weight, exercise more or spend more time with our family. We start the year with great intentions, but then we quickly relapse into old habits. Why is it so hard to stick to those New Year’s resolutions?

Here are some ways you can make your intentions a reality this year:
1.     Write down your intentions and keep them in a visible place, like taped to your bedroom mirror or the dashboard of your car.
2.     Get to the source of whatever is keeping you in a rut. Are you in a stressful relationship that causes you to eat a pint of Ben & Jerry’s every night? Are you stressed at your job and feel too tired to exercise after work?  If you don’t tackle the root of the behavior, it will be much harder to accomplish your goal.
3.     Be clear about what your life would look like once you achieve your goal. If you resolve to go to the gym more, how will this benefit you? Get connected to the result of your action, and you will be more likely to stick with your plan.
4.     Share your resolutions with friends and family. Hold each other accountable for achieving your goals. If you want to go to the gym more, have a friend call you two or three times a week to check on you or invite them to join you.
5.     Reward yourself with every little accomplishment.If your intention is to lose weight and you lose 1 pound a week, pamper yourself with a massage.

Big changes do not require big leaps. Permanent change is more likely to happen gradually than through one big restrictive plan. Allow yourself to climb the ladder one rung at a time.

Happy New Year!

Food Focus: Sea Vegetables
In traditional Chinese healing, sea vegetables correspond to the winter season and to the kidneys, adrenal glands, bladder and reproductive organs. The strengthening, balancing and cleansing properties of sea vegetables are known to help these organs as well as the hair, skin and nails. Sea vegetables (or seaweeds) provide a variety of minerals and vitamins, including calcium, iron and iodine, and can help balance hormone and thyroid levels in the body. Eating too many processed foods or foods grown in mineral-depleted soil can result in a lack of minerals in the body, leading to cravings for salty or sugary foods. Adding sea vegetables to your diet can help balance your energy levels and alleviate cravings.

Recipe of the Month: Mighty Miso Soup
Prep Time: 5-10 minutes
Cooking Time: 10-15 minutes
Yield: 4-5 servings

Ingredients:
4-5 cups spring water
1-2 inch strip of wakame, rinsed and soaked 5 minutes
in 1 cup of water until softened
1-2 cups thinly sliced vegetables of your choice (see notes)
2-3 teaspoons barley miso
2 scallions, finely chopped

Directions:
1.    Chop soaked wakame.
2.    Discard soaking water or use on houseplants for a boost of minerals.
3.    Place water and wakame in a soup pot and bring to a boil.
4.    Add root vegetables first and simmer gently for 5 minutes or until tender.
5.    Add leafy vegetables and simmer for 2-3 minutes.
6.    Remove about 1/2 cup of liquid from pot and dissolve miso into it. Return it to the pot.
7.    Reduce heat to very low; do not boil or simmer miso broth.
8.    Allow soup to cook 2-3 minutes.
9.    Garnish with scallions and serve.

Note:
Any combination of vegetables can be used in miso soup. Here are some classic combinations:

• onion-daikon: cleansing
• onion-carrot-shiitake mushroom-kale: mildly sweet
• onion-winter squash-cabbage: great in wintertime
• leek-corn-broccoli: great in summertime

Variations:

• Add cooked grains at the start of making the soup. They will become nice and soft.
• Add a tablespoon of uncooked quinoa or millet at the beginning and let it cook with vegetables for 20 minutes.
• Add cubed tofu toward the end.
• Add bean sprouts toward the end.
• Season with 1/2 teaspoon ginger juice for an interesting twist.
• If using dry shiitake mushrooms, let them soak for 20 minutes, slice and add at the beginning.

New Year, New You from tara hantske wellness.