Crunchy With Or Without A Side Of Baby

I’m like 30% crunchy for a Californian but to my family from the East Coast, I’m totally a smoothie drinking, yoga doing, hummus eating hippie. Crunchy alludes to granola, as in health-nut, as in…vaccine dodging, coconut oil rubbing, home-birthing kinda people. Now that I’m pregnant, I’m getting crunchier. Here’s a clever Crunchy Scale that makes sense of all this. 

Here are some ways to be crunchy, whether or not you’re having a baby:

• Look up your beauty products on the EWG Skin Deep Database (Thanks, Jackie!). Look up some easy homemade beauty products…Pinterest town. BE that girl who used coconut oil to re-attach her left leg after a chainsaw accident. Yes, people really believe in the stuff. It’s good.
• Drink out of stainless steel or other refillable BPA free water containers.
• I even gave up antiperspirant and deodorant (for like the fifth try) for powder I put under my arms. Be strong. If you want to do this, you can, it just takes patience. You just may want to position your yoga mat 5-7 spaces away from mine. No, seriously I smell ok somehow.
• Add fun things where you can like spinach and ground chia seeds to your smoothies or ground/chopped nuts to your salads.
• Totally obvi, but eat organic, reduce/elminate artificial ANYTHING from your diet and regimen where you can. Check into your labels. Here are some easy healthy food ideas.
• See an acupuncturist for stress relief, pain relief, lifestyle modification.
• See a chiropractor to alleviate nerve interfereance and structural imbalance.
• Get massages to…c’mon you know why. Here in LA there are foot reflexology places where you can get a massage for $20/hr.
• Find mediative exercise (this could be sitting on your floor and zoning, jogging, church or yoga).

**If you ARE pregnant, aside from the popular avoidances: alcohol, coffee, sushi etc, look up soft unpastuerized cheeses which I didn’t know where potentially harmful.

When I was practicing acupuncture, I recommended that my patients get some form of treatment weekly. One week, it could be a chiropractic appointment and another it could be a pedicure. I have to take my own advice, right?

I’m still shaving under my arms and eating donuts so no, I’m no Earth Momma. Have you SEEN my grandmother’s recipe for Seven Layer Bars? Yeah, and I’m sure I didn’t go all the way to Paris, to this cafe, to NOT eat a chocolate croissant and whole milk cappuccino. Keep it as crunchy as you can!