fbpx

Recent Posts by Natasha Uspensky, CHHC

3 Gut-Healing Recipes to Make Your Stomach Happy

SPONSORED POST: I’ve partnered with Milk & Eggs, an amazing farm direct grocery delivery service, to bring you guys some delicious, super seasonal, and always healthy recipes a few times a month.  I’m so excited to share some of my favorite dishes with you!

One of the most common health concerns I hear about from my clients is stomach troubles.. I’m not just talking about the serious, diagnosed kind, but rather just a feeling like something is off.  From bloating and gassiness, to occasional stomach pain or just feeling crappy after a big meal or a wild night, digestive issues are so commonplace that we almost kind of take them for granted.

Our digestive system is a barometer for the state of our whole body.  An out-of-balance digestive system can lead to emotional and psychological issues (heightened stress, anxiety, depression), nutrient malabsorption, headaches, skin problems, fatigue, and so, so, so much more.  It’s the first place I look when a client comes to me with a myriad of mysterious and seemingly unrelated issues.

Healing the gut leads to healing throughout our whole body, so getting our gut to a happy place should be our number one health priority!

Continue Reading…

How to Enjoy Stay-at-Home-Motherhood More

Enjoy Stay-at-Home Motherhood | The Organic BeautyFor the first year of motherhood, I was on cloud 9.  I loved this sh*t.  I felt like I was made for being a mama.  But life with a baby is verrrry different from life with a toddler.  I can’t just put little M into her carrier or stroller and spend the day out doing what I want to be doing anymore.  I don’t have the luxury of those two nice, long naps anymore, that afforded me to the opportunity to relax, get work done, and maintain some balance.

My little M is a full-fledged person now, with her own opinions and desires.  And though I still follow all of my 5 Secrets to Happier Motherhood, suddenly, as we approached a year and a half, they just weren’t enough.

Continue Reading…

5 Steps to Healthier Eating in the New Year

SPONSORED POST: I’ve partnered with Milk & Eggs, an amazing farm direct grocery delivery service, to bring you guys some delicious, super seasonal, and always healthy recipes a few times a month.  I’m so excited to share some of my favorite dishes with you!

5 Steps to Healthier Eating in the New Year | The Organic Beauty Blog

We all seem to start every new year with the best of intentions for eating healthier, losing weight, or getting more energy.  But so often that goal can feel so huge and nebulous.. where do I start? What is healthy eating? Should I start a cleanse or a new diet?  Oftentimes, our overcomplicating or overthinking of this relatively simple concept can suck the resolve right out of us.  And after a few well-intentioned weeks, we’re right back where we started… Tired, bloated, and squeezed into jeans that feel too tight.

What I always tell my nutrition clients is this: healthy eating is SO much easier than the media and diet industry make it out to be.  You don’t need a diet, or a detox, or a book to tell you the common sense food rules that govern great health.

Michael Pollan put it best:

Eat food, not too much, mostly plants.

There.  That’s IT.  Seriously.

But I know we need a little more guidance than that, so here are my 5 simple steps that you can start doing right now, that will make eating healthier and feeling better an immediate reality.

Continue Reading…

Best Natural Beauty Products of 2016

2016 was a banner year for natural and organic beauty.  With so many amazing brands and products to choose from, we naturally-minded organic beauties are no longer limited to choosing from insanely overpriced celebrity brands or crafted in someone’s basement hippie brands (not that we’re not obsessed with many of those).  Now we don’t have to sacrifice selection, effectiveness or budget to stock up our bathrooms and makeup bags with beautiful products that work wonders on our skin, hair and bodies, without harming your health or the environment.

Below are some of our favorite new (or new to us) products from the last year, all of which follow our strict criteria of natural beauty.

Continue Reading…

How to Winterize Your Smoothies

Winterize Your Smoothies | The Organic Beauty

I love green smoothie. I’m not going to go so far as to say I moved all the way across the country to California so that I could have green smoothies for breakfast every day without any consequences — but that isn’t as far from the truth as you would think.  I really LOVE my morning green smoothies.  They are my absolute favorite breakfast, and I find them to be the most wonderful vehicle for getting insane amounts of nutrients and superfoods into my body in a very efficient fashion.

But as great as green smoothies are, drinking them in the colder months actually messes with your health, digestion, energy, and immunity.  Eating and drinking cold foods, especially during periods of cold weather, forces your body to work harder to warm it up and digest it.  Cold foods can throw off the delicate balance of your stomach lining, can increase phlegm, decrease immunity and cause or exacerbate digestive issues like constipation and diarrhea.  No fun.

In both Traditional Chinese Medicine and Ayurveda, eating and drinking warm foods is a big part of keeping one’s body running smoothly and optimizing digestion.  I get chastised about my smoothie habit by my acupuncturist every time I see her, and I am in a constant heated back and forth with the Ayurvedic practitioner inside me every time I opt for a smoothie or salad in the middle of December.

So what’s a smoothie and salad loving girl to do?

Continue Reading…

Greens, Greens, Greens: Wintery Kale Beet Salad and Green Toddler Muffins!

SPONSORED POST: I’ve partnered with Milk & Eggs, an amazing farm direct grocery delivery service, to bring you guys some delicious, super seasonal, and always healthy recipes a few times a month.  I’m so excited to share some of my favorite dishes with you!

fullsizeoutput_4639

In this installment of our collaboration seasonal cooking with Milk & Eggs farm direct grocery delivery, I am really excited to talk about more wintery seasonal eating, particularly of greens.  Dark leafy greens are one of the most nutrient-rich and delicious foods that come out of winter, and this is the perfect time of year to increase our intake of these blood-purifying, immunity-boosting foods.

To get the most out of the season’s local produce, specifically greens, nothing beats the Milk & Eggs Organic Farm Sampler Bag (pictured below), which is the most budget friendly way I’ve found to get a load of delicious, local, seasonal cooking going on in my kitchen and onto my family’s plates.  At the insanely reasonable price of $29.99, you get SO MUCH ORGANIC PRODUCE, it’s kind of crazy.  This week, I received a big bunch of kale, a bag of spinach, two heads of green leaf lettuce, celery, beets, a bell pepper, 3 heads of broccoli, a few bananas, an assortment of citrus fruits and a carton of strawberries.  WHAT?!  This usually costs me $50 or more at Whole Foods or my neighborhood natural foods store.

Seasonal Cooking with Milk & Eggs | The Organic Beauty Blog

In addition to being super budget friendly, the organic farm sampler is a great way to get all the fruits and veggies you need for the week!  This one bag has yielded countless salads, smoothies, soups, and toddler meals this week, and with the addition with a few other items in our standing order (organic greek yogurt, sprouted whole grain bread, wild-caught salmon), I’m able to feed our family of three delicious, healthy meals that come straight from our local California farms.  Boom!

My two favorite seasonal cooking recipes this week are lovely little showcases of winter’s bounty that made perfect use of my Organic Farm Sampler Bag!

Continue Reading…

Motivation To Keep Breastfeeding, Even When It Sucks

Motivation to Keep Breastfeeding Even When It Sucks  |  The Organic Beauty Blog

Breastfeeding is one of those aspects of motherhood that you just expect to come naturally.  We’re mammals after all, right?  Do mama bears and lions really struggle with low supply, sore nipples, and mastitis? Obviously our animal counterparts are spared the emotional and lifestyle dramas and sacrifices that come with choosing to breastfeed their young — the stigma of feeding in public or breastfeeding a toddler, the limits on alcohol and potential dietary restrictions, the feeling of being totally tethered to your baby at all times (especially if, like mine, they have no interest in drinking pumped milk from any receptacle).  Even with those particularly human challenges aside, it just seems like it should be easier to do something our bodies were built to do.  But it isn’t.  At least not for many of us mamas.

Continue Reading…

Natural Anti-Aging Treatment for Eyes

GUEST POST

Natural Anti-Aging Treatment for Eyes | The Organic Beauty Blog

The skin around our eyes is delicate, and therefore, must be treated differently than other areas of our face. The skin here is thin and prone to fine lines – it is often the first place we see the signs of aging (ah winkles!). In this article, I will teach you the best natural anti-aging treatment for eyes to delay the aging process and keep the skin around your eyes looking younger for longer (you can’t stop aging, but thankfully, you can slow it down).

Continue Reading…

5 Minutes to Looking Put Together (even when you have no time)

5 Minutes to Looking Put Together | The Organic Beauty Blog

A mama recently posted in one of the many FB groups I’m in that she feels like it’s impossible to look and feel put together with a baby and a toddler around.  Though I only have one of those to contend with, I sometimes feel like little M is both a sweet, needy little baby and a willful, naysaying toddler all rolled into one — so I can relate.  As moms or otherwise busy ladies strapped for time in the morning (or EVER, for that matter), it can be super hard to make time for seemingly meaningless rituals like hair and makeup.  BUT, feeling schlumpy is a big cause of the lowered self-esteem, motivation and sex drive that can come with motherhood (or super mega busy ladyhood).

To that, I say “No way!”

Feeling put together can mean the difference between a confident, radiant, and joyful day-to-day, and one that is, well.. not.  The effects of this one seemingly meaningless act of self-care reverberate across all areas of your life.

But fear not! I am certainly not of the camp of women who always look polished and manicured, and I definitely don’t want you to feel that pressure (unless you’re one of those women, in which case, kudos to you!).  So I have perfected a super quick, low maintenance approach to looking more or less put together that leaves me feeling like a sexy lady and not a frumpy mom who may or may not still be in yesterday’s undies.

Continue Reading…