Sarah Wilson

I think I’m going to start a series of posts of recommendations. Stuff that works for me, that I use/eat/refer to/get inspired by. I’ve had a number of emails asking me to share this kind of thing. Let’s make it a Thursday thing for a while. Yes.

Just as a note, if you’re looking for this stuff later, it will be filed on the “recommendations” page.

So, this week: what I use when my gut is playing up. I have a litany of stomach issues, many stemming from my auto-immune issues, some from just being an over-eater. It’s been called IBS over the years. I just don’t buy the IBS thing. Nobody just has a cranky gut. As in, it’s just cranky for the fun of it. There’s always something else behind it – a stress issue, an adrenal issue, a sugar addiction, an overly acidic system. Or, in my case, all of the above.

Now, I was going to apologise to anyone who’s eating. But if you’re reading this, you’re probably in my same boat – more interested in finding fixes for your pain than dancing around polite euphemisms. So…. shit, poo, week, diarrhea, squirts, farts… let’s get it out there.

Here’s my arsenal for my various crappy stomach states. Of course, I’m not prescribing anything here. I’m just saying, after much experimenting, the below tricks have come to work for me:

1. For when you’re bloated and gassy like Michelin Man: Mintec. These are capsules filled with peppermint oil that you can buy over the counter at all pharmacies and health food shops.

A while back I did a juice detox…and this week I was invited to take part in another one. Disclaimer: I didn’t pay for this detox, but my comments are freely my own. So, the Lucky You Cleanse, is a five-day deal where you consume nothing but freshly pressed organic juices and coconut water, and a whole stack of water.

The deal: 6 x juices, plus a shot of aloe vera, are delivered to your door each morning for 5 days. It begins with an aloe vera elixir followed by a green smoothie (banana and chia and kale…not so good on the page, but amazing in the gob).  Then comes a range of  fruit/veg juices that use high-nutrient ingredients only, plus a “spicy lemonade” made of lemons, cayenne pepper, apple, stevia and celtic sea salt. 

OK. Seth Godin just alerted me to this one. A gizmo that allows you to publish things on the interweb a little privately. OK, just a little. The best way for me to demonstrate it to… demonstrate it: This is who I had lunch with today http://trick.ly/2P3

Yeah, you got it? I’m clearly not that secretive. But you know that, I reckon.

This url shortener – trick.ly – works by allowing link access only to those who can answer an intimate question about you. Inner-circle stuff. I love that the url for the site is actually trick.ly (no dot-com).

Lunch, by the way, was ace. The company was astute and dynamic and authentic. I drank green tea and ate parmigiana. Then there was a sun shower. The end.

On Wednesday I posted a flash mob clip that made me cry. Sometimes I just need to cry, to release the bigness of life that I’m feeling in my being. It’s not sad. It’s just big. And it needs to be expressed.

Whether you need to cry, or get happy, or sad, or clean the bathroom or get fired up to go out tonight, express it with a playlist created by stereomood: emotional internet music.

This cute and really generous site has created a whole bunch of superbly curated playlists that you can play for FREE.

Emotionless? Hey, you can become a more interesting person with intriguing, talking-point musical tastes by just clicking a random emotion. See if the tunes bring something up for you?!

Some of the moods I like: Elegant, Foreplay, Lonely, Spring Cleaning. And, of course, the Feel Like Crying one, which has 260 songs, including tracks from Cat Power, Band of Horses, Janis and Jackie Wilson. Sweet!

I’ve come to accept very recently that it is our personal responsibility to be our own information gatekeepers. Everyone around me is constantly complaining how they’re overloaded. They can’t keep up with email. Their iphone is driving them mental. Blah blah blah. It’s time, I think, we realised that the greatest challenge our generation faces is controlling how we receive information. This much we know: we WILL continue to be flooded. Unless we install our own boundaries. No one else will do it for us.

The new wisdom is knowing this. The new status is being in control of it.  The new power is having firm boundaries. Like, for instance, standing tall and proud and declaring you only check email twice a day. Or boldly deciding you work a four-day week. Or not taking your phone out with you when you have dinner with someone you wish to explore intimacy with. I’ve experimented with all this. And more.

To this end another nifty little tip for stemming the tide of group work emails onto one’s phone, from timesonline.

A great idea: Australian company Merry-go-round make reusable greeting cards. Regifting…from the card up! The cards have little slits inside that hold a message on a separate slip of paper. Recipients can then replace the slip of paper with their own new message. And play it forward. Featuring the artwork of children’s book illustrators, they’re printed in a limited number. I like this bit: users each fill in a little blank tree on the back, so you can follow how  many sets of hands it’s passed through. Sweet.

You might have noticed that Amazon carousel book thingo I’ve stuck on my site. It’s a bunch of books that I love, that have made my life better, and that I mention on this blog at some point. Bad idea? Annoy you at all?

To be upfront: if you buy the books via that widget I get some affiliate percentage for suggesting it to you. But I thought it might be handy for some…hmmm….

I lived without a car until I was 29. And last year my car was stolen and I took the opportunity to spend 6 months car-free. It was  liberating.  I reduced my circle of influence to a 10km radius (the distance I could ride my bike in comfortably). It limited my choices and steered things to simplicity, implicitly. Creating circumstances that limit our choices are key to living a more streamlined life. I swear!

Anyway, Tammy Strobel of Rowdykittens has put together this ebook with practical tips on how to do it yourself. You can buy it through me direct…and I’ll be upfront, I get 50% via her affiliate program. It’s a lovely set-up. I pass on the good word, and she says thank you. Click here to buy Simply Car-Free for $US9.95

I’m not about to venture into the food bloggosphere, but I’ve been asked to share the recipe for the muffins I took to this morning’s brunch. I’ve kind of made it up.  Apologies to all home economists everywhere…I know this might horrify you.

So, five bodgy steps:

1. turn oven to 180 or so (my oven doesn’t have a dial)

2. beat 2 egg yolks, 1/2 cup honey and some grapeseed or camelia or just plain olive oil (2 tbls?) with a stab-mixer

3. add this glug to a bowl containing a cup each of grated pumpkin and almond meal, 2 cups of gluten-free flour (I used buckwheat and some besan flour), a big shake of cinnamon, 1 tsp of baking powder, a handful of chopped basil leaves and a fistful of chia seeds.

Chia seeds are a superfood – the most nutritious on the planet, according to some. They contain 19 amino acids, stacks of omega 3 and, oh, the fibre…when added to liquid they get a glutinous coating that makes one’s bowels work somewhat smoothly.

4. then stir in enough water (I don’t really know how much) to get it to a thick consistency (I use the stab-mixer again) and stir in egg whites that you’ve whipped up a treat

5. finally, spoon into muffin trays that are lined with little squares (10cm x10cm?) of baking paper and POP into the oven. After about 5 minutes I sprinkle with some pepitas and then bake for another 10 minutes or so.

Trust me, these will work out. Don’t worry about exact measurements, so long as the consistency is cakey. Bear in mind the chia seeds soak up stacks of liqued. So if you end up with a runny batter-like stodge, add more chia seeds.

*Get fancy and sprinkle with fresh torn basil and some flowers flogged  from the neighbours garden when presenting to friends at brunch when you’re 25 minutes late.

Yum.

Another week, another installment. A month or so ago I posted my musings on my not-so-amusing journey with hashimoto’s.

This week, I’ve invited Melbourne personal trainer, BioSignature practitioner and blogger Kat Eden to give her comic – or otherwise  – input.

thyroid disease can feel like you're hovering in a pool of sludge

I came across Kat on the site Dumb Little Men and loved her tips on living life better. I contacted her cold (it’s one of my favourite things to do – contact someone I find interesting and just start talking) and found her advice very sound, especially in regards to hormones and digestion.

Over to Kat:

What causes this whole caper?

From my way of thinking, and based on clinical experience I’d say stress has to be one of the biggest players in sparking auto-immune disease. In particular chronic stress. It doesn’t really matter where the stress comes from, or even if it’s a whole bunch of little stressors rather than one great big life-changing event. Your body doesn’t separate one type of stress from another in terms of the way your nervous system and hormones respond, so the accumulation of stress can be (often quite suddenly) very toxic.