Month: September 2019

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Shining Light Lemon Fluff (AIP Compliant)

This recipe is so easy, I hate to even call it a “recipe”. It’s more of a method you can use to make lots of different creations! That said, I needed a good recipe to help me represent “light” this week, and since this is a favorite of mine, I thought I’d share.

Fresh strawberries in lemon cream? This delightful little trick saved me several times over the summer!

Also, you’ll notice that this recipe is not low-fat, and does contain sugar in the form of honey. It is not compliant with a Keto diet unless you substitute the honey. It is definitely SWYPO for those of you on Whole 30. As always, don’t assume any recipe is healthy for your body’s needs unless all ingredients work for you 🙂

Ingredient Notes:

  • I’m not aware of a non-fat substitute for the coconut cream that I would be willing to endorse, so if you’d like to try a substitute, please let me know how it works out! I’m not able to try many of the products on the market, and its helpful for others whose bodies are better able to tolerate those things.
  • Coconut Cream is NOT the same thing as “Cream of Coconut”, which is a heavily sweetened product. You can buy coconut cream on its own, or chill a can of coconut milk and scoop off the solidified cream at the top. Coconut milk products from the refrigerator aisle, such as “Silk” brand, cannot be used here – they just won’t work at all.
  • Dried lemon zest is really not a great option here. There’s not enough water to rehydrate the zest, and you’ll wind up with little hard chunks of blah. Grab a fresh lemon, zest it first, then cut and squeeze fresh juice. It’s worth it!
  • The zest is only the yellow part of the lemon peel. You can remove it with a citrus zester, or just use a small grater to grate bits directly from the lemon.
Make it look fancy so you don’t feel like you’re missing out when dessert time comes around!

Here’s What You’ll Need:

  • 1 cup Coconut Cream, room temperature
  • 2 tsp honey, preferably raw and local
  • 1 tsp fresh lemon juice
  • zest from 1/2 of the lemon, finely grated or chopped

Here’s What You Do:

Put all of the ingredients into a mixing bowl, or the bowl of your stand mixer. Using the whisk attachment of your mixer, combine all ingredients and continue to whip until it gets fluffy. It won’t get like whipped dairy cream yet, so you’re looking for some added volume rather than any kind of “peaks” here. Now, grab a container, like a Mason jar, some Tupperware, or whatever you have. Pour in your lemon cream, and stick that puppy in the fridge. Wait an hour or so, and you’ll have delicious whipped lemon cream that’s way healthier than most of the flavored stuff out there.

After it has chilled, the whipped coconut cream holds up on its own, and can be used as a topping for almost anything you can think of!

You can eat a couple of bites straight out of the jar if you’re having an afternoon snack attack. Or, layer this with some berries for a lovely parfait. Use it as frosting on your healthy baked goods, or even freeze it for a few hours for a luscious, whole food ice cream replacement!

If you don’t love lemon, feel free to use this same method, adding cocoa powder, vanilla, orange peel, or maple syrup and cinnamon for a quick treat that won’t completely derail your attempts to eat better!

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Use Music to Modulate Negative Emotions

Most people have used music to modulate emotion. Specific songs or musical works may help you feel calm, evoke joy, or bring deep peace. Many people also listen to music that matches their negative emotion, hoping to let out the anger or find empathy in their despair. But does it work? Or can listening to angry music just make you more angry? Turns out, there’s more than one right answer!

How We Listen

When it comes to using music to modulate negative emotions, there are three types of listening. The way that you listen can make a big difference in how the listening impacts your emotions! Take a look at these three ways individuals use that sweet combination of melody, harmony, and rhythm as they attempt to work through sadness, anxiety, depression, and anger:

Solace

“Solace” is when you use music that matches your emotional state. This is listening to sad songs when you’re feeling sad, and “just need a good cry”. You may listen to songs about depression when you are depressed, so that you feel less alone or better understood. This type of listening may help you feel supported, accepted, and slightly more in control of your emotions.

Diversion

“Diversion” is what happens when you’re sad, but listen to happy music to help pull you out of a funk. Some people with anxiety successfully use this type of listening to assist in pulling themselves out of particularly bad moments or anxiety attacks. This type of listening may look a lot like playing your favorite song or songs over and over until you feel better.

Discharge

“Discharge” is listening to music that matches your emotion, in hopes of better letting go of that emotion. This may look like an angry person cranking up some Nine Inch Nails, Nirvana, or Linkin Park. It may look like a sad person drowning themselves in break-up songs, but wallowing rather than becoming empowered like one would if they were listening for Solace.

The Study

Frontiers in Human Neuroscience published a study called “Maladaptive and adaptive emotion regulation through music: a behavioral and neuroimaging study of males and females”. Based on research by a research team at the Center for Interdisciplinary Music Research at the University of Jyväskylä, the University of Helsinki, and Aalto University in Finland. The team sought to discover whether the effects of music on a person could be both positive and negative. More specifically, they wanted to know whether music could actually harm a person’s mental health.

The researchers in this study didn’t just look at each participant’s mental health and music habits — they also looked at each participant’s neurological response to music. The researchers used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), a brain imaging technique that uses blood flow to determine which areas of the brain are active. During the brain scan, the participants listened to clips of happy, sad and fearful-sounding music. I’m not going to go into detail about what parts of the brain show which things – it is all available in the linked study. But the team found something surprising!

The Findings

What did they find? The answer is sometimes “yes”! Listening to music CAN be harmful to a person’s mental health. No, this doesn’t mean your nay saying relative was right, and that rock-n-roll music will lead to the downfall of society. It doesn’t even mean that specific music is always bad for all people.

What they found was that the way in which you listen is what really matters. There was also a clear deviation between male participants and female. According to the study, men (but not women) who used the “Discharge” method of listening had higher levels of anxiety and neuroticism than women, or than participants who listened differently. In other words, venting negative emotions through music doesn’t help modulate the negative emotions. Surprisingly, it may make them worse!

How to Listen

If you’re attempting to use music as a resolution for negative emotions, or to work through them, listen carefully. As you listen ask yourself how you’re feeling, and how you think you’ll feel after this song. Or the next one. Is this music helping you to express emotion, or to feel safe and grounded? Or is this music simply feeding your rage or anxiety? Only you can know, but listening appropriately may be vital as you use music to heal. Even if you don’t intentionally turn on the playlist, check in with yourself when a song comes on the radio or Sirius. If the goal is emotional wellness, you might choose to leave the Nine Inch Nails for when you’re feeling a little less open to negative emotions.

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5 Ways the Right Music Can Enhance Your Workout

You may never learn to love exercise, but you can hate it a little less or even begin to look forward to that “me time” with the help of the right music! What is the right music, and how can it help?

1. Music Makes You Feel Like Moving

Those days when you’d much rather just sit on the couch and eat brownies than put on athletic shoes or yoga pants? Music can help pull you out of that funk by making you want to move! Whether you get a few songs under your belt while you get dressed, or have something high-energy playing in your car on the way to class, by the time you begin your workout, your brain will be telling your body it’s time to get going. Continue this into your workout with an energetic track to keep you on the move.

Songs that tend to make you want to dance are best for this purpose. “Shut Up and Dance” by Walk the Moon, Capital Cities’ “Safe and Sound”, “Jump Around” by House of Pain, and “I Like it Like That” by Pete Rodriguez, are all great for dancing, but I’m sure you have your own songs you prefer as well.

2. Music Can Improve Your Mood

This 2013 Study shows that many people effectively use music choices to elevate and improve mood. For those days when you’re not inclined to exercise because you’re just feeling generally down, try using music to pick you back up!

Of course, the choice in music here is quite personal. Some prefer classical, some rock, others country or something entirely different. When using music to improve your mood, it’s more about how your listen than what you’re listening to. But all the same, if you’re choosing music with lyrics, you may want to stick to lyrics that are positive. Think something like “Best Day of My Life” by American Authors, “Perfect” by Pink, “I Gotta Feeling” by the Black Eyed Peas, and “Happy” by Pharrell Williams are great bits of positivity to add to your playlist!

3. Music is a Good Distraction

When you’re working out, the focus needs to stay on your body. Distraction can be unsafe at worst, and keep you from your most effective workout at best. But listening to music can help distract you from your exertion just enough to help you do just a little more, or push a tiny bit harder – up to 15% on average!

Keep in mind that songs with complex instrumentation and a faster, heavier beat may give our brains more to process, meaning a slightly greater distraction. This is a good thing! Unless you’re doing yoga, in which case the deeper, slower music helps to match the movements and bring your focus to the inner self as well as the physical.

4. Music Increases Your Effort

Most humans have a natural desire to move with music. You don’t have to have been a member of a marching band to observe people’s steps becoming quicker as the music in the mall changes to something happy and upbeat. This is because the rhythm of music stimulates the motor areas of the brain, and it feels slightly “off” to walk against that rhythm. The same goes for your workout! The faster the music, the quicker your pace.

For most workouts, including walking, jogging, running, aerobic classes, and other high-intensity training, the best workout music isn’t just guesswork. It’s science, folks! Check out songs with tempos between 120 and 140 beats per minute (that’s BPM is music speak.) Jog.fm has some great lists to help you sort out what might be best for your playlist.

5. Music Can Make Exercise More Effective

Speaking of listening to music with the right tempo or beat count for your workout, there’s more! In workouts with repetitive movements like HIIT, kickboxing, weight training, or TRX, that beat is even more important. When you are able to time your movements with the beat of the music, you are able to direct more of your focus to the movement itself. Whether you know how to count measures of music, or just keep up with the “one, two” hits of a snare drum, you control your movements. This helps you make better use of those muscles, rather than going too fast. In these types of classes, control of your body is a large part of building strength, and there’s almost nothing better than well-chosen music to help!

Try starting with music in the range of 130 BPM, like “Titanium” by David Guetta feat. Sia or “Hot Blooded” by Foreigner. If that’s not the best pace for you, it’s easy to choose something a little faster or slower as needed with the jog.fm lists.

So get some music, or some better music, into your workout! It just might be as important as those new shoes or fancy weights.