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How I Stay Vital with Vital Proteins
As we head into 2018, I know for so many, setting heath and wellness goals for the start of a New Year is of utmost priority. I often get asked questions about my favorite supplements to recommend, why I take collagen daily and what it does, etc. etc. So today, I am sharing some of my favorite products from Vital Proteins that help me #STAYVITAL and play very important roles in my own health and wellness, along with the health of many of my clients.
With so much of the focus surrounding wellness often being centered on What to Remove from the Diet, I really do love the idea of instead shifting our perspective to What Can I Add? While I always suggest getting your nutrients from whole food sources, at times we simply just cannot consume enough to reach the necessary level with select nutrients. Mindfully including properly-sourced supplemental sources of important and essential nutrients to boost our healthy diets and ensure our bodies are getting what we need, is something I believe can play a very significant role in our continued healing journey, along with maintaining our vitality for many years to come.
Beth’s Top 5 Vital Products from Vital Proteins:
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Matcha White Hot Chocolate with Matcha Marshmallows {Paleo w/ Keto Options}
This Paleo Matcha White Hot Chocolate is a cozy, winter dream come true. Frothy, luscious white hot chocolate meets a classic rejuvenating matcha latte, with all kinds of nutritious, superfood goodness you can feel good about – from antioxidants to healthy fats plus healing, immune-boosting, gut-healing collagen, if you wanna include it. It’s paleo and dairy-free, with options for keto and vegan! The maple-sweetened paleo matcha marshmallows on top, those are totally optional, but listen – don’t be stupid!
This Matcha White Hot Chocolate is practically a superfood tonic disguised as a treat! First and most importantly, this delightful, healthful treat features Vital Proteins brand new Matcha Collagen. Antioxidant rich matcha tea, can help fight free radicals in the body and promote long-term health. Matcha being the whole leaf, ground, also contains 137 times the amount of free radical-fighting antioxidants as any other green teas. The matcha is combined with high-quality grass-fed collagen which promotes bone, joint, and skin and digestive health. Collagen is the most abundant protein in the body and is responsible for supporting, healing and sealing the gut plus maintenance of healthy connective tissues, such as bones, joints, skin, hair, and nails. Read more about the benefits of collagen here.
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Boosted Chocolate Tahini Fudge {Gluten-free, Paleo}
Well, I might just have to quit after this. This Boosted Chocolate Tahini Fudge features two of my favorite things together in a marriage so perfect I am not sure any treat can ever compare. At least for this girl. As if it couldn’t get better, this treat features the bonus healing powers of one of my favorite daily supplements.
This fudge is dreamy. It’s rich and decadent, it’s unique and “mmmmm”-inducing. Here’s the thing though, if you don’t like tahini, it may not be for you (though you could likely swap in some almond butter or sunflower seed butter). But if you are a lover of all things tahini, you’re in luck. MAJOR luck. The tahini flavor shines bright and in it’s prominence it’s complimented so perfectly by the decadent, rich super dark chocolate. Don’t skimp here, quality is of key. Better yet, use homemade dark chocolate if you’ve got some. You guys already know how I feel about dark chocolate, a square or two a day of this magical superfood and that’s about all this lady needs to be satisfied. It doesn’t take much. Curious on why dark chocolate is a great option for a daily treat? Read more about the many benefits of dark chocolate.
But here’s the best part, this is so much more than your usual treat, in true Tasty Yummies style, I boosted this fudge to bring an added layer of healing benefits. Vital Proteins’ Vanilla and Coconut Water Collagen Peptides is one of the latest and greatest from my pals over at Vital Proteins. You guys have already heard me sing the praises of collagen peptides as part of a healing diet and lifestyle. But since I have started incorporating Vital Proteins in my life, daily, they have continued to expand their product and introduce more and more incredible collagen based products. The new Vanilla and Coconut Water Collagen Peptides is no exception, this has been a wonderful addition to smoothies, as well as baked goods and now this amazing boosted fudge.
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Grain-free Carrot Cake Coconut Panna Cotta {Dairy-free and Paleo-friendly }
Subtly spiced dairy-free coconut milk panna cotta topped with chunks of grain-free spiced carrot cake and a little whipped coconut cream, makes for the perfect Spring-inspired treat without the sugar, grains or nuts.
I kinda love that carrot cake has become synonymous with Easter, simply because of the Easter Bunny. Rabbits eat carrots, Easter invites a sweet bunny that leaves baskets and eggs and chocolate for us. Hmmm. It’s a stretch, but I’ll take it – cuz carrot cake rules.
While I have been experimenting with the ketgenic diet since the start of this year and have slowly transitioned toward a fat fueled lifestyle over the last year and a half, my interest and taste for sweets has admittedly all but disappeared. Beyond a solid, super duper dark chocolate, I honestly can’t really be bothered. Not so great as a food blogger, but I make it work.
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Grain-free Boosted Brownies {Paleo-Friendly}
There are many remedies, supplements, foods and other varying antidotes and therapies over the years of my healing journey that I have experimented with and included in my protocols. As with all things, I am always tweaking and tinkering with my daily routines, based on new discoveries, what my body needs at the time and where I am at in my healing journey. Often I take supplements temporarily for acute symptoms or issues, some supplements I have experimented with and can’t see any remarkable response and of course, like anyone else, there are others that my body has responded negatively to. This is the nature of examining your own health and always exploring new methods of support. Over the years, I have a few protocols and supplements that I have implemented at a time when I needed them and they have actually stuck around for the long haul. They become part of my daily routine. Among them are cod liver oil, turmeric, beef liver capsules, and of course, my daily collagen peptides. Of these, my daily ritual-based supplements, I would say the collagen is one that I noticed the greatest outward benefits from, the quickest and I see major, noticeable differences when I forget to take it. The health of my hair, skin and nails are the most notable.
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Get a More Restful Night’s Sleep with Bedtime Yoga and a Boosted Sleepy Time Tea
Get a More Restful Night’s Sleep with Bedtime Yoga and a Boosted Sleepy Time Tea
My yoga practice, while ever evolving, has played a role in my health and healing for about 10 years now. The beauty of the practice, whether it’s a powerful 90 minute vinyasa flow or a 30 minute restorative session of just a few long-holding poses – yoga has the power to refresh, to heal and to replenish the body.
I have shifted from the more powerful, long, morning vinyasa practices of my past to instead beginning my days with strength training sessions at the gym in the morning, with light yoga asana weaved throughout and these days I try to always finish my day with a little restorative yoga before bed. I have a new found appreciation for yoga’s power to ease me into a restful and quality sleep, through deep breathing and the physical release of tension.
No matter what poses you include and no matter the reason you were brought to your mat in the first place, yoga always places an emphasis on the combination and synchronization of breath and movement. This combination activates your parasympathetic nervous system which helps to alleviate stress and calm the body, together these can make a regular bedtime yoga practice a very effective sleep remedy.
Sleep is such an important and often neglected part of our lives, but this is when our body repairs on a cellular level, it digests and detoxifies, removing toxins, so it’s vital that we be getting 6-8 hours every single night. Maybe you can’t shut your brain off or maybe you toss and turn all night struggling to get comfortable. Whatever the reason, there are studies galore that prove the increased health risks associated with sleeplessness.
Give yourself 10 minutes before bedtime to include this simple sequence of gentle poses paired with this boosted sleepy time tea featuring Vital Proteins‘ Collagen, to let go of your day and prepare for a lovely night’s rest. You can even get yourself set up right on the bed, so you can stretch it out and roll right under the covers for your savasana.
Before your start your bedtime yoga ritual…
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Grain-free No Bake Chocolate Chip Protein Bars
As I go deeper into learning about nutrition and food, while in school to become a Nutritional Therapist, at times feeding my husband reminds me a lot of what my friends who are mothers, go through with their children. Don’t get me wrong, my husband is no man-child, he can take care of himself, he’ll cook when I am not around, he eats his veggies and he can grill like it’s no one’s business – clearly my hubby is > a toddler. But, the man loves his sweets. If he had it his way he would eat a doughnut or a slice of cake for breakfast every single day, he will however on the average day simply settle for toast with jelly or a bowl of cereal. Of course, no matter what is selected this would all be accompanied by the largest cup of coffee. Ever. Sigh.
Recently I have been working with him not to change his diet in some drastic way, I don’t need him resenting me and my schooling, but more to understand how starting his day in this manner definitely contributes to, if not exclusively causes, those mid-day crashes he was constantly struggling with and not only that, how it also leads to additional cravings and the need and urge for more sugar and carbs to be satiated. The vicious, never-ending, sugar-burning cycle.
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Grain-free S’mores Tart
Every once in a while your friends really surprise you. During the holidays we had the pleasure of having our friends Sean and Ruth, visiting from the U.K., while traveling California celebrating their honeymoon. I learned while they were staying with us that they had never had S’mores before. How is that possible? I guess with our freedom comes amazing treats like s’mores.
So, I did what any good American foodie friend would do, I promptly went to Whole Foods, got some organic graham crackers for all them, the best dark chocolate I could buy and the best marshmallows I could get my hands on. I started a fire in the fireplace and I treated them. Their minds were blown! Since I skipped out on buying store bought processed gluten-free graham crackers for me, I have since been craving some sort of homemade S’mores concoction, to get my fix.
S’mores to me conjure up emotions of childhood, fun and summertime. They bring back family and spending time around the campfire on our big group camping trips. The marshmallows of our childhood, they are scary things. Loaded with corn syrup and chemicals, we always packed the milk chocolate hershey bars, today my foodie snobbery has gotten so intense that as a self-professed chocoholic, if that was the only chocolate in a 50 mile radius, I would pass. What’s a girl to do, but remedy that situation with the best version of a S’mores you ever did see.
The idea for this tart came to me and I instantly thought it would be such a perfect Valentine’s Day Sweet, but to be fair, I just couldn’t wait that long. So here we are. A slightly sweetened spiced graham-inspired grain-free crust, a luscious, rich, super duper dark chocolate layer (I’m talking 85% dark, people) and a lightly toasted, fluffy marshmallow topping! It’s perfection.
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The Benefits of Collagen
By now you have probably heard from myself and other bloggers about collagen and gelatin and of course, the fanfare around bone broth, etc. Some of you may already know the many benefits of collagen, but even I didn’t know it’s full potential until earlier this year. Collagen is vital for our body and is the basic building block of skin, hair, nails, bones and joints and it plays a very important role in gut healing protocols.
Our ancestors utilized sustainable whole animal nutrition, which provided an abundant amount of collagen. Over the past century however, modern food processing has removed this natural and healthy protein from our diets.
This superfood supplement has provided much healing for me over this last year as it has become part of my daily gut healing protocol, so I am excited to share with you some of the research surrounding it. Beyond finding healing for my gut, the marked benefits in my skin, hair and nails have been the wonderful icing on the cake!
What is Collagen?
Collagen is an important structural protein that makes up one third of the protein in the body and up to 70% of the protein that makes up skin. Collagen is the basic matrix of the connective tissues, skin, cartilage and bone where it comes together to form scaffolding to provide strength and structure.
As a protein, collagen contains significant amounts of amino acids proline and glycine, which are harder to find in other protein sources and serve as a protector of your gut.
The Benefits of Collagen
