Baby Portraits | Angela & Siena

From Surprise We're Expecting to Hello Baby! Welcome little Siena into the beautiful world!

Tweet

Bruvold Middleton Wedding | Teasers

The amount of rain we've had up North this Summer has been incredible. But rain or shine the show must go on, especially when it comes to Weddings!
Becky and Luke's ceremony was timed perfectly {photos to come!} there wasn't a drop of rain only until after the last member of the wedding party finished walking down the aisle.
One thing the stone coloured skies had going for them was how well they matched with the themed yellow and grey colours of the day.

Tweet

MacNeil Family Portraits

Love is to the heart what the Summer is to the farmer's year - 

it brings to harvest all the loveliest flowers of the soul.

- author unknown

Tweet

Jill & Roc First Birthday Portraits

wildflowers, sunshine and giant dandelion poofs, the perfect setting for an early evening shoot.

Tweet

Food Combining for Better Digestion

How healthy is your digestive system? Do you find yourself bloated, sluggish and heavy after eating? Maybe you're like me and have low HCL production that requires supplementing and a specialized diet. Maintaing a healthy digestive system is so important to ones health. It's not just about avoiding indigestion but about promoting optimal nutrient absorption and waste elimination.

Give these guidelines a go and see the difference proper food combining can make on your digestive system. If you're brand new to the rules, try following them for at least a week and see how you feel.

Fruit is the food that will go through you the quickest on an empty stomach. Your body can digest it with ease and benefit from its cleansing properties when eaten alone. If you eat fruit mixed with other slower digesting foods then it ends up sitting in your stomach and fermenting causing bloating, heaviness and gas! The exception to this rule is smoothies, everything's already all blended up and will digest well in the belly.

This may be really far from what you're used to but here's the deal: Proteins require an acidic environment in you stomach for optimal digestion, while starches require a more alkaline environment. Mixing these foods can effect your digestive system in a suboptimal way making digestion slower and less efficient. 

Eating a healthy dose of colourful and/or leafy vegetables will help your digestive system move along heavy or stagnant foods. Think of veggies as your freebie food when planning your meals - great to eat alone, with a starch or with a protein.

Staying hydrated is a key component to good digestion, but drinking a bucket of water with your meal can have the opposite effect. Water can dilute the strength of your digestive juices making it more difficult to break down your meal. Save your 8 glasses a day for between your meals.

There's just three more super easy and attainable good digestion tips I try to live by. 

The first being, drink peppermint tea. I LOVE this stuff! It's the only tea I like without sweetener or almond milk and I don't even mind it after it's cooled to room temperature. Peppermint tea is a natural digestion enhancer and can relieve gas, bloating, constipation, headaches, sinus problems and menstrual cramps {to name a few}. If by some chance you or someone you know suffers from benign migratory glossitis then peppermint tea will become their best friend.

My second tip is to practice yoga. Exercising and staying active is definitely a key component of good digestion but yoga takes it to another level. Yoga is extremely beneficial in stimulating, revitalizing and balancing the digestive system. It is detoxifying and cleansing and can relieve a multitude of digestive disorders both chronic and acute.

Lastly, a super duper supplement to add to your diet is a quality probiotic. Probiotics help to digest food, prevent gas and bloating, prevent bad bacteria from developing in the stomach and also aid in preventing constipation. This is an especially good supplement for those of you who are unable to digest dairy properly.

Tweet