Flourish Fundamentals

Optimize your health AND your finances

Rosemary Fotheringham

Processed Meat and Factory Farming is Bad: But Is Going Vegetarian the Answer?

Myths, Nutrient-Dense Foods

Recently, a friend posted something online about the grossness of processed meat and how it made her “want to go vegetarian.”

It got me thinking about how many of us think that there are only two options:

Eat meat and support horrible, unethical factory-farming processes and grain-feeding (not the animal’s natural diet), OR
Abstain from meat altogether and be vegetarian.
What makes this more of a compelling argument is the common misconceptions that fat is bad for us, that cholesterol is bad for us, and red meat is bad for us. Doesn’t it seem like going vegetarian is a better answer?

Healthy Alternatives to Store-Bought Salad Dressing

Nutrient-Dense Foods

Most store-bought salad dressings have things like high fructose corn syrup (or even just sugar), thickeners, gums, preservatives, highly refined vegetable oils, and all kinds of other yucky, inflammatory ingredients. Luckily, there are options for making your own, and it doesn’t have to be difficult.

Recipe: Homemade Epic Bars (Low Sugar & Low Carb Meat Protein Bars)

Blood Sugar Regulation, Nutrient-Dense Foods

John and I love Epic bars, but at anywhere from $2-3 a pop―not to mention the plastic packaging that comes with each individually wrapped bar―I wanted a cheaper and more environmentally friendly alternative.

If you’re not familiar with Epic bars, they taste like jerky. They’re basically a bar made of ground meat mixed with spices and fruit, and they’re a super convenient protein-and-fat snack when you’re on the go. 

In the spirit of creating my own convenience, I decided to create these homemade low sugar protein bars that taste (in my humble opinion) even better than Epic bars. These are made with beef, but you could also probably do venison or bison. They are both keto and paleo friendly, and they’re excellent for anyone who eats low carb.

For New NTPs: How to Set up a WordPress Site & Make it Pretty

NTA

My boyfriend and fellow NTP, John Fotheringham, is a whiz at website design. He designed this very blog for me, our website for our practice together, Flourish Fundamentals, his own language-learning website, Language Mastery, and a ton others. If you’re a new NTP and you want to know some of the basic information you need to get a website started, here are the providers that he recommends.

5 Tips for Quitting Sugar

Blood Sugar Regulation, Fundamentals

Doing a sugar detox can sound like it will be hard, and scary, and you feel like you don’t really know what to expect. In the past, I’ve had varied successes with quitting sugar through doing a three-week sugar detox process. Some have been wildly successful, with great weight loss and better skin and mood, and others, well… I fell off the wagon a few days in. The ones that have been more successful are the ones that incorporated the following tips! Learn from my failures, and know that these are the things that will make quitting sugar easier for you!