Wild about herbs

Here is my latest Substack blog, FB has limited link sharing, so I have copied and pasted it.
You are the boss of you!
I am frequently asked how I managed to lose over sixty pounds in my mid-sixties, usually this is in situations where there is no time for a complicated answer and the person is just expecting to hear about the “latest celebrity detox plan which was miraculous, the pounds just melted off”. The truth is there was no single secret method. I put together a plan and strategy which suited me and my lifestyle, rather than trying to follow anyone else’s rules. Here is how to make a weight loss plan your own, because that is the only way it is going to work and have long-lasting results.
Let’s take for example my decision to avoid nighttime snacking as part of my strategy. I had kept a food diary for a while and identified this as one of the habits causing weight gain. Eating almost in a trance, exhausted at the end of the day and decision fatigue had set in. It was red flag time for emotional eating too, once the busyness of the day was no longer a distraction. For me personally, the best strategy was the intermittent fasting concept of “closing the eating window” after my evening meal. I am not 100% strict with this, because I know myself well enough to understand this provokes the rebel in me who has to fight against excess restriction, but most days that is my eating window.
This particular eating window works well for me, but only if I nourish myself properly through the day and stay hydrated. If I have eaten well during the day, genuine hunger and thirst don’t get confused with craving something just because it is evening. The decision to close that nighttime eating window naturally resulted in other decisions, for example, that decision to eat three nutritious meals a day. It was and is a plan which suited me and my lifestyle. It also meant spending more time in the evening on self – care, learning how to relax without indulging in chocolate. It meant reducing screen time, because that was a danger zone for me, eating in front of a screen is known to result in excess mindless consumption of snacks. In other words, that one decision necessitated a whole string of decisions, a plan and strategy to make it easier to avoid those nighttime nibbles.
Now imagine if I were a very busy Mum, maybe eating more food at night would be the only possibility. Maybe I have a partner I hardly have time to see, and evenings are our special time to reconnect, share our day, enjoy time together and share a snack or two. Maybe I have blood sugar issues and can’t sleep properly if I don’t eat a bit of protein before bed. Possibly I am the type of person who can stop at one biscuit and enjoy it without mindlessly eating the whole packet. Maybe being too restrictive triggers former eating disordered behaviours. Following my plan would not make sense for any of these people, there could be completely different habits causing the weight gain, and it would be far better to address them instead.
My advice is to take time to figure out what will work for you and your life. Make it your own. Think long term, quick fixes only result in quick regain. Eat less, yes, but work out how to do this. Calorie counting? Checking portion sizes? Changing the composition of meals? Having fast days? Move more, but that doesn’t have to be the gym, especially if you hate it as I do. Find an activity you like and know you will stick to and make that part of a new habit and lifestyle.
What I would suggest to anyone serious about losing weight is to make sure the plan is holistic and realistic. Include things we don’t often talk about – quality sleep has been shown to be a big factor in successful weight loss. Working on improving gut health and digestion. Getting support from a coach or therapist. Stress management. Nature connection. Journaling. Finding ways to be creative, to find more joy in life in ways that don’t involve food. Planning for dealing with celebrations and social occasions. Visualisation. While, yes, it is about eating less and moving more there is so much else that is equally important and usually overlooked.
Be the boss of you, it is the most empowering choice to make. Take some time, sit down and reflect on your own life and what will realistically fit into it. Make a plan, but make it your own, and you will be far more likely to succeed.

Talk this morning for this amazing group, third year of getting to know them. They are totally inspirational. Engaging, interested, unafraid to ask questions and share personal experiences and great fun too. Just an honour to spend the time in their company.

Ray Peat's raw carrot salad

FB is limiting the number of links we are allowed to post, so I have copied and pasted my latest blog. I would add to it that Ray Peat recommended this on an empty stomach for best results, but I find it useful any time of day or evening.

When the snacking demons hit, around 9pm, there are two important questions I always need to ask myself:
Is this genuine hunger, did I eat enough today?
If not, what am I really craving or needing, or is this purely emotional hunger?

By now my nighttime cravings are well reduced, thankfully, and it is not too much of a war between the part of me that wants to lose and maintain weight and the part that just wants a treat. And sometimes I do just have a treat, not often, but perfectionism is what led to me gaining a lot of weight, the occasional lapse really doesn’t matter, what counts is consistency.
If it is real hunger, or sometimes just the urge for something chewy and crunchy, I find Ray Peat’s carrot salad quite oddly satisfying. Maybe it is just the act of getting up off the sofa and making something. Maybe it is the bright orange colour that cheers me up. Whatever it is, I do often find it helps.

Here is the very simple recipe
Two medium sized carrots, washed
One teaspoon of apple c***r vinegar
One teaspoon of olive oil or coconut oil
Pinch of sea salt or Celtic salt
How to make: rough grate the carrot, or even better, use a vegetable peeler to cut off thin strips.
Add the rest of the ingredients and mix.
Enjoy.

Notes
If you can afford it, go for organic carrots and good quality cold pressed organic olive oil, and unfiltered apple c***r vinegar.

There is never a recipe I don’t want to tweak, I add a little garlic, sometimes a half teaspoon of turmeric or fresh ginger, maybe a few pumpkin...

What are the benefits besides being nutritious, crunchy and a little filling? Ray Peat (1936-2022) was an American Endocrinologist, this salad was part of his protocol for supporting hormonal health, especially reducing excess oestrogen and balancing thyroid hormones. The fibre in the carrots helps to encourage healthy gut bacteria to help with detoxification of hormones and toxins, and gut health in general. It is very easy and quick to make and most of us will have the ingredients in the house.

FB won't allow posting with links more than twice a month, it seems, so I have copied and pasted my latest article from my Substack platform. Hope you enjoy reading it.
Mind the head – mental health and weight loss
Imagine for a moment living in a body which is obese. Feeling uncomfortable in your own skin. The constant inner turmoil, the guilt, shame, sense of failure, lack of self-trust. Maybe this is you right now, it was how I lived for decades. Years of failed diets, trapped in a vicious cycle of over restriction and overeating. Not understanding that the one extreme is the biggest driver of the pendulum swing to other extreme.
Finding IFS
Now imagine finally, after decades at war with your own body, finding a therapy that teaches you that you are not bad, that we all have a true Self (with a capital “S”) who is confident, calm, creative, clear, courageous, curious, compassionate and connected. That these wonderful qualities are clouded by those voices in our head most of us are familiar with, the inner critics that tell us we are terrible people, we have no self-discipline, are lazy, weak, a failure.
Imagine finding a therapy that enables you to see that those voices which appear so negative are parts of us, and they are not bad parts. The voices in our head are trying to protect us from harm, at some stage in life, usually when we were children, they stepped in to try to keep us safe when we were vulnerable. Problem is that, while the intention was good, once they were no longer needed, they could not relinquish their protective roles.
No bad parts
This is a clumsy attempt to briefly describe what Internal Family Systems is and how the therapy was life changing for me, there are numerous videos online that are easy to understand, and lots of books and podcasts. I put a few into the resources at the end of this article.
Developed by Dr Richard Swartz, IFS puts us in touch with those inner voices and teaches us that these are perfectly normal, our mind is not just linear but has many “parts”. One helpful analogy is to think our minds like a school bus, with lots of children along for the ride. The question at any time is, “who is driving the bus”? Is it our Self, that calm curious person described in the introduction. Or is it one of our protector parts? We don’t want to fight against our protectors, after all, they have been working very hard to help us.
There are other therapies which recognise these inner voices but instruct us on how to “reframe them” or get rid of them by mocking them, ignoring them or chasing them away. IFS teaches us to befriend them. Dialogue with them. Keep them on the bus, but not in the driver's seat.
IFS and my personal weight loss journey
How does this work for weight loss? One of my coaches along the weight loss journey loved to say, “if you take care of your head your arse will take care of itself”. Rude but true. Every other failed attempt at weight loss was focused on the latest miracle diet being peddled by some expert or celebrity. This time the biggest difference was focusing on mental health, attitude, and habits. And IFS was central to the mental health aspect.
When we drastically restrict calories, we underestimate just how scary it is for our bodies and brain. Our hungry stomach sends the message to the brain, “we are starving, we are going to die” and the primitive brain responds with a powerful overwhelming urge to eat. Preferably fast acting carbohydrates for instant energy. To save our lives. To lose unwanted weight we need to reassure our minds/psyche that we are safe. This is what drives the binge-restrict cycle
The binge-restrict cycle
Have you ever restricted all day with fantastic self-discipline? All day, or all week, or even all month. Then comes the sugar binge and we have no idea what happened? This is something called polarization. When we over restrict, we have a desperate urge to overeat. It is often a voice in our head which takes over and says something like, “just one small chocolate won’t make a difference”, and then the whole bar is somehow gone. The two parts most triggered in me were those that IFS therapist, Everett Considine, calls “the rebel” or “the food indulger”. The rebel is like a feisty teenager who is not going to do what you say anymore, even if the “you” she is targeting is yourself. The food indulger is the soft kind voice that tells you that you have had such a tough day, you spent the whole day caring for everyone else and now you are too exhausted to care for yourself, so truly deserve a little treat. Or two. Or three. A lovely lady on my recent IFS course decided it was like the voice of the snake in the Disney Jungle Book film!
There are many versions of these voices or parts, you will know your own particular one. Another part is the one that says that you can always start again tomorrow, or better still, on Monday. This is the “last supper” voice. Problem is, that voice urges us to eat everything “bad” in the house, so we can be super perfect from Monday until forever. The Monday that never comes. The perfect that no one ever is.
Be curious
IFS takes time and a lot of curiosity, inner exploration, learning to listen to ourselves and to trust.
With patience and curiosity, trust is built and our “parts” can be befriended, become our greatest allies not our enemies.
There are lots of books, journals and meditations to be found online, but working with an IFS accredited therapist is always the best way. This is especially important if you have suffered significant trauma, as this work allows us to get in touch with and work with the wounded inner child, Richard Swartz calls this our “exiles”.
A somatic approach
IFS is a somatic or body orientated approach, so it is hard to even describe it accurately because it is experiential. It is about learning to be present, because much of our overindulging happens almost in a state of trance, we suddenly wake up and realise we have yet again “blown it”.
To use an obvious pun, when it comes to weight loss there is no “one size fits all” but I truly believe that the key to finally managing to reduce the size of my arse was undoubtedly looking after my head.
A few resources
Everett Considine.com – I found Everett’s course to be life-changing.
IFS Directory | IFS Institute for qualified IFS therapists
Richard Swartz “Introduction to Internal Family Systems pub Penguin Random House
Youtube – there are numerous videos, these are a few:
Dr. Richard Schwartz explains Internal Family Systems (IFS)
Internal Family Systems: Healing Trauma & Restoring Wholeness - Dr Richard Schwartz, PhD
Margaret is a naturopath, herbalist and health and wellness coach living in Ireland. In her mid-sixties she finally managed to shed over sixty pounds of unwanted weight and keep it off. Her passion is to help and inspire others to do the same.
This article is purely for the purposes of information. If you suffer from an eating disorder or feel triggered by anything in the content of the article, please seek help from a qualified therapist.

My latest blog, don't ignore just how much a simple tool like daily journaling can help with weight loss and personal transformation.

How journaling helps with nighttime snacking habits Like many teenagers I was an avid fan of journaling, I think it was how I got through those tumultuous emotional rollercoaster years.

Fully booked workshop, we hope to get funding for a 6 week course in the spring

https://elderblossoming791.substack.com/p/the-climb?r=qyp5a&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true

The climb There’s always gonna be another mountain

Flagmont wild gardens, in County Clare, one of my favourite places. A place of peace and beauty. Magical little surprises. People who are connected to simplicity, nature. The owner told me this morning in his quiet reading time he discovered the origin of the word "theos", and discovered it means, "flow". So God can be found in the state of flow. He brought over some paints for the children to paint rocks to place in the garden, because creativity equals flow

This taster workshop is booking fast! Greenans Cross school. Our theme for the morning will be making home remedies for winter wellness. We will make elderberry syrup and cold and flu tea. Possibly might fit in a fire c***r and learn a little about Hawthorn as the haws are so beautiful this year. Send me a rext 0872024066 to book.

Taster workshop in Greenans Cross school, (fab location) free of charge. To book message me at 0872024066 or Mary at 08637955403. Very limited places available