Eating Well in Santa Fe  - May 2015 - Santa Fe

 

Intentional Living: How to make fundamental changes for reaching optimum health and vitality!

 

By Valeria Alarcón

 

Intentional living offers the opportunity to create fundamental changes in our lives based on the desire and determination to take action. Living with intention means living from a place of commitment to self, accountability, and authenticity. At the core of intentional living is the ultimate journey toward self-love and self-care. Why is self-love critical to living an intentional life? you may ask. Because when choices are made from superficial motivations the effects will only be temporary, but when choices are rooted from a place of self-love then life unfolds into a journey toward discovering our self-worth and our true magnificence. Thus, choices based on self-love will create fundamental changes from within that will be life altering. 

 

How do we create fundamental changes in life? The answer is getting to the “why” factor. Why do you want to … fill in the blank. This is what will help you define the fundamental reason for say, getting healthier or living more intentionally. How you want to feel from the inside out is what will fuel your daily motivation to creating fundamental changes. So how do you want to feel? Energized, focused, strong, happy, healthy, and vibrant? Let’s choose one area in life you want to focus your intention on and create a fundamental change. What would that be? Think about how making this fundamental change will improve your health or enhance your quality of life. How will it support you in feeling more energized, full of life, healthier, and vibrant, increase longevity and vitality? Thus, identify fundamental changes you desire to make, based on how you want to feel about yourself from the inside out—this will help you define your “why” factor. Your why factor will then inform your intentions, which will lead you to taking action based on your commitment to self, your health, and your life. 

 

Living an intentional life means living in full-awareness of who you are, what’s important to you and your daily choices through deliberate, and conscious actions. Thus, living intentionally requires us to take 100% responsibility for our lives—it means accepting and forgiving ourselves, addressing self-limiting beliefs, and making choices that are self-honoring. Intentional living means recognizing that we are divine expressions of life, that we are true miracles. 

 

Vitality Vegetable Juice Recipes:

 

Here are two vitality vegetable juice recipes that will be sure to boost your energy, provide you with essential phyto-nutrients and vitamins. The rise and shine recipe is a great anti-inflammatory and iron boost juice, it aslo contains high levels of vitamin A. The green power recipe provides iron as well as chelating benefits through the cilantro; so if you are detoxing from heavy metals this will be an ideal recipe. Other chelating herbs that you can alternate with are parsley, dandelion, oregano, watercress and 

of course cilantro. These chelating herbs are potent so the approach is less is more, start with a few strands and see how you feel. I'd love to share with you how vegetable juicing saved my life. 

 

Rise & Shine:

1 zucchini

1 beet

4 carrots 

Small piece of ginger

Small piece of turmeric

 

Green Power:

1 green apple

2 cups of spinach

1/2 a green pepper

A few strands of cilantro 

1 lime (alternate with lemon or grapefruit)