Sleep is an important part of the Easy Exhaustion Cure. It’s a no-brainer really, isn’t it: you’re exhausted, you need to sleep. Everybody knows that. But how many people actually do it? I mean, I know we all do it, but how many of us do it enough, and do it right?

The EEC is easy – it says so in the title. But it does require some action, like clicking a button to buy it, then reading it, then gathering your resources, then actually following the advice. Not a great deal to do, and the gold, silver and bronze system makes it really simple, so if you’re too exhausted or too broke to do all of the steps, you can start small and work up from there. But to follow any health-improving programme, you do need motivation and you need to take some action.

Sleep, though... equals inaction. And if you’re like me you might feel a bit guilty about it. I thought sleeping a lot meant being lazy, which was kind of the opposite of what I wanted to be. And that was part of the cause of the exhaustion in the first place. Actually, for a long time I didn’t feel a bit guilty, I felt a lot guilty. A lot. My body had to almost completely shut down for me to finally get the message that it was okay to take lots of rest. Even then it took a while for the guilt to stop. And actually, feeling guilty is exhausting...

Don’t do that to yourself. You’re here to be, not to do. Yes, I know you’ve got a lot on and plans to do even more. Me too. But how are you going to do it all if you don’t give your body and your mind enough rest?

It’s the middle of the afternoon and I’ve just got out of bed. I did get up in the morning but I felt tired so I went back to bed and slept for an hour. Now I feel great. I’m ready to work and my afternoon and evening will be much more productive because I’ve given myself the chance to rejuvenate.

Maybe you can’t do that, at least not every day, because you’re at work. But you can get an earlier night. You can commit to going to bed an hour earlier than usual once or twice a week, and take it from there. Don’t worry about getting less done, because you’ll be able to get more done in less time if you’re getting the right amount of sleep.

And please – your bedroom is for sleeping in. It’s not a TV room or an office, so get that equipment out of there. Leave your phone and your laptop in another room. You don’t want the electromagnetic interference and you don’t want the mind chatter. Take time to relax before bed. Make sure the room is dark. Get yourself an earthing sheet and you’ll never want to get out of bed again...

I’ve been sleeping for ten hours plus most nights. How fantastic to be told that you have to sleep – I mean, that you must sleep, that it’s one of the most important things you can do. (Except you’re not doing, you’re being...) Elwin has told me to sleep, and Mr S has been telling me these past few years that it’s my job to get better. Getting better meant looking for people who could support and advise me, and one of those people was Elwin. So it’s my job to listen to Elwin’s advice. Just doing my job...

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But Elwin’s promise was pretty much spot on. I kept my promise and made the teas that the EEC recommends. And my health did transform, pretty much overnight.

We have a daytime tea and a nightcap tea: Rejuvenate during the day to strengthen the kidneys, and Serenity in the evenings to help us rest easy, overcome overwhelm and generally get things done without stress. There are other exciting Taoist herbal blends available, but these are the ones that the EEC suggests you take, so these are the ones we started with.

When I read about the benefits of Rejuvenate, I had to try it. I hadn’t had a cup of coffee for years, but I did have a persistent red wine habit that left me feeling rough, not to mention guilty in the mornings. My health had been improving steadily but I did feel that the booze was holding me back (I told myself it wasn’t much, and it wasn’t, but still...)

Elwin promised that strengthening my kidneys would eliminate my need for stimulants, and it does seem to have worked over time – I’m not saying I don’t still enjoy the occasional glass of vino, but it’s an occasional treat now and not part of my day-to-day routine. I enjoy it more when I do have it, I wake up feeling good every morning – and I can’t tell you how good that feels!

He also promised that Rejuvenate has anti-ageing effects. And all I can say about that is: I look back at photos taken just a few months ago and am shocked at how much older I looked back then. Or is it that I look so much younger now? I certainly feel it, and who knows, it might be the tea that’s done it...

Serenity helps you stay balanced, focused, confident and at peace. Elwin promises that too, and who doesn’t need that in their lives? It’s kind of hard to remember just how unbalanced, unconfident, unfocused and unpeaceful I was a few months ago, but yes, I can honestly say that these are all things that I’ve seen increasing over time. Can all of that happen – really – just from drinking tea?

So, if you’re going to have a hot drink – and you pretty much are going to have a hot drink – you might as well have one that makes you look better and feel better, right?

There is just one problem though. Don’t tell Elwin, but I really, REALLY, don’t like the taste of the teas. Don’t let that put you off, though, because I seem to be in the minority there, and most people love them. But if you’re like me, don’t despair. I used to chill them and knock them back as quickly as possible, but then I started to get a bit more creative. You can put them in smoothies, soups, stews – in fact, in any recipe that calls for water, and you really don’t taste them. I’ve even been using them in the coating for my kale chips lately.

Here’s my latest breakfast smoothie recipe:

• 1 punnet strawberries
• 1 tablespoon mesquite or Lion Heart Super Smoothie Mix
• 1 tablespoon chia seeds, soaked for at least 15 minutes (you can soak them from the night before)
• 1 pint Rejuvenate tea from the fridge
• Ice cubes (optional)

Place all ingredients in a blender and whizz till smooth. Pour into a large wine glass and enjoy.

Pink Tea

Simple, quick, ridiculously good for you and it gets your tea into you without the cringe factor.

The teas are really easy to make – if you can boil water, you can brew a tonic tea. But if you really don’t want to do that, or if you’re travelling maybe, you can buy the blends in tablet form now. They’re slightly less potent, but you’ll get more benefit in the long run because there’s no excuse not to take a tablet, is there?

Promise yourself you’ll drink your tea every day. Read about the benefits here, and you better believe that they’ll keep their promises to deliver those benefits. I’m carrying on with Rejuvenate and I promise you I’ll be even younger this time next year...

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What long term activity would you say is the most unhealthy of all? Smoking? Drinking? Eating junk food? Working in a nuclear power plant?
Ultimately the most draining and therefore, unhealthy activity you can be involved in is to be at war with yourself. What does this mean? It’s a complex subject, but most commonly it’s where your head wants one thing and your emotions and instincts want something completely different.
Here’s an example that I see all too often, that can really tear people apart: being overweight. You tell yourself, in your head, that you want to lose the fat and be thin and attractive, and also fit and healthy. So you decide to eat less, eat better, and exercise more. Only problem is: you didn’t ask your body how it felt. Your body just wants to feel good. And, if you’re overweight, that probably means eating lots of food, preferably sweet, and exerting yourself as little as possible. So the war between the mind and the body begins!
Who wins? If the statistics on dieting are anything to go by, where 97% of people who go on a diet regain the weight within a year, the body wins almost every time. But then comes the worst bit. The guilt. The self-punishment. The feelings of apathy and worthlessness.
Is it true? Are you really as weak and pathetic as you tell yourself you are during your darkest moments? Or is it actually the case that the whole approach to losing weight is doomed to failure because it’s ineffective, built on false principles? Almost every overweight person I meet feels confident they know how to lose weight – eat less and exercise more. Yet it doesn’t ever work when they try it. Perhaps there is more to it?
Recently, even the very mainstream American Medical Association admitted that losing fat has almost nothing to do with eating fewer calories and burning more calories. It’s a great, very simple theory, but it doesn’t work in practice. So what does? It fundamentally comes down to three factors which, if overcome, guarantee success in this area. Often just tackling one or two causes weight to just fall off, but doing all three guarantees success. They are:

1 Stress.
What’s stress got to do with it? Stress leads to depletion and a build of acidity. When the body has excess acidity it has to keep some fat. It’s a life-saving mechanism. Nothing will shift it because your body’s primary goal is to stay alive. Dealing with this acidity, and the root of it, depletion of the kidneys, manifesting as exhaustion and stress, is essential to health and usually to lasting weight loss.
Lots of green juices are helpful short term, and my Rejuvenate blend is excellent for dealing with the root causes.
I created a program to talk you through every step of overcoming this issue, The Easy Exhaustion Cure, which I could just as easily have called the Easy Stress Cure.
An example of how depletion can cause weight gain: through stress and bad eating habits, among many other factors, you can easily become depleted in the mineral zinc. Zinc depletion has the curious effect of either turning off the appetite altogether (skinny people) or causing you to eat compulsively, while simultaneously never really feeling full-filled. Estimates are that over 60% of the population are zinc deficient, and it’s always low in a vegetarian diet.
Supplementing zinc can be excellent for this.

2 Toxicity. The value of cleansing or detoxifying is already well known in the western health world. But, as with acidity, did you know that if you have a lot of toxicity, you body will, as a preference, store it in the fat cells? In fact, the body can store 100 times as much toxicity in a fat cell than it can in a blood cell.
What does this mean? It explains why you start to feel terrible whenever you purify your diet or start to exercise. Your body starts breaking down your fat cells, which is what you want right? Except...where do all the toxins go? Straight into your bloodstream, which can make you feel awful despite all those endorphins you can get from exercising.
This in turn can place a massive burden on your eliminative organs, which is even potentially dangerous. Then, despite all the best intentions in the world, you find yourself eating a box of doughnuts, or a Happy Meal. The body, in response, immediately stops releasing toxicity, as you’ve started poisoning yourself with junk food again, but... you feel better.
So what do you do? Give up? No. First, strengthen or tonify your organs so they can cope with the toxic deluge. See here for more information on what it means to tonify.
Then, do a cleansing regime that works for you. Many great systems are out there – my own detox program, with Philip McCluskey, is due out soon!

3 Sugar
The hardest thing of all to deal with, and not always necessary. Sometimes just step 1, or steps 1+2 are sufficient. But, often this is the most important step.
Ultimately it’s pretty simple. If you want your body to burn the spare fat on your body as fuel, you have to get it used to burning fat as fuel. If your body is used to burning carbohydrate as its main source of fuel, which is easier for it, what will happen when it runs out of fuel, say while you’re ‘dieting’? It will look for more carbohydrate to burn. And it will find very limited supplies in storage, mainly in the muscles and liver, in the form of glycogen, which it converts to glucose.
What happens when that runs out? You feel really, really bad. Possibly weak and faint, sometimes in a murderous rage. Then before you know it, you’ve eaten a whole pack of biscuits, and you wonder: how did that happen? Again I’ll reiterate: there’s nothing wrong with you. Your body just took over and potentially saved your life. It is actually possible to slip into a coma if your blood sugar drops low enough.
Fat is an immensely efficient fuel. Carbohydrate is not. If you can imagine a fire, carbohydrate is like feeding it with newspaper or kindling. Fat is like feeding it with logs and coal. Obviously kindling has its place. But most of your fuel needs to be fat if you want a constant steady fire. If you drown a fire with coal, that can put it out. But just feeding it twigs guarantees it can go out unless you feed it constantly.
To be honest, going from burning sugar as fuel to burning fat as fuel can be difficult. It’s made considerably easier by following the first two steps thoroughly first. Most people don’t manage it if they just try to cut out carbs in a haphazard way. I gained more health benefits from doing this than anything else I’ve ever done, including quitting all stimulants and going 100% raw. It was also harder than anything else I’d done, but, thoroughly worth it.
I was inspired by man named Stu Mittleman. He managed to break the marathon running world record by running 3 marathons a day for 10 days in a row, running 21 hours a day. The most extraordinary thing? He said he felt more energised than ever by the end, like he could have kept going and going. That level of endurance, he said, was only possible because he’d learnt to burn fat as his primary source of fuel.
I’m in the process now of creating a product to guide you through all three steps, in an easy, clear, realistic step by step way, as is the style I’m becoming known for. Small steps, done consistently over time, can lead to massive achievements that really last. It will be available next year.
For now if you’d to work with me on any or all of these steps I’m available for consultations. For more information see here.
What do I want you to take away from all this?

1 Stop beating yourself up. If you’re using an approach that doesn’t work, failure is inevitable. My favourite speaker, Anthony Robbins says: “No matter how fast or how long you run, you’ll never find a sunset by heading east”.

2 Realise: there is another way. When you follow an approach that works, health and fitness are inevitable. It’s just a matter of time.

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Hey ho. I know I haven’t blogged for a few days tsk tsk! We (as in raw weegie massive) had the gorge Elwin Robinson up in Glasgow last weekend giving a talk and consultations on how to boost your energy. So he kept me busy for a few days – not in that way obviously!

elywnium

The lovely and gorgeous and I’m secretly in love with her Gail Evans of Awaken to Health organised the event and made sure we had lots of yummy food with the help of equally sexy Cheryl and Pete. I do love Gail. If I wasn’t married and we were both lesbians then I’d probably propose to her this afternoon.

gail introducing elwinium

I really enjoyed spending time with Elwin and learned a lot about the Taoist way and how we need to clear the energy channels and systems within the body before we can achieve great energy. He also made a wicked tonic soup (you can make it too by accessing the video here) which, I’ll be honest, I thought I wasn’t going to like at all just cause I’m a bit weird like that…or prejudge, yes that’s it! He put about 4000 ingredients in it and used his tonic tea as the stock. This was the best soup I’ve ever tasted apart from my Gran’s soup of course – nothing beats your gran’s soup. Nobody knows what my gran put in her soup but I’m guessing heroin or something.

Moving on YES the soup was just amazing. I had three bowls and the husband had a bowl and loved it too! Practically fell off my seat when Rod said he’d try some :)

elwin's tonic soup

Elwin also made my absolute favourite superfood chocolate from his recipe using his supersmoothie mix. I’ve made his recipe before but for some reason his turned out totally different and err, way better than my attempt. It could be because he crammed in more superfoods than you can shake a very big superfood stick at AND a good scoop of Sunwarrior Protein Powder which turned it really milky. It was amazing!

It was fabby having him and I know he’s coming back in June or July so if you missed him this time around there’s another chance to hear from the expert in energy.

me and elwin ootside

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From Dissatisfied Workaholic…

So you’re a workaholic. And that’s fine. In fact, it’s great: you do a good job, your efforts are appreciated, it’s important to you and you take pride in your work.

But a lot of the time, workaholics end up exhausted, stressed and unhealthy. Because you’re a giver. You put everything into your work, your family, your friendships – and you forget to take care of yourself. In fact, if you thought about it – which you almost never do – you’d wonder whether you really know how to take care of yourself.

Does that sound like you? You feel there must be a better way of living – you’re at the top of your game and you should be feeling great, but you feel strangely dissatisfied and you just know that you could feel so much better.

I know because I used to be a workaholic too. I loved my job and I put everything into it, working ridiculously long hours. I was also on a postgraduate program that I would’ve been really enjoying if I’d had the energy to do it justice, and of course, my family was pretty high on my list of priorities too.

…To Reluctant Couch Potato…

Till my body said ‘no – enough of this’ – and it gave up. I ignored the signs for months, years even. Weight gain, sluggishness, irritability, the feeling that life was passing me by despite all the ‘doing’ (I was definitely a doer)... if I hadn’t been turning a blind eye to all of this, I wouldn’t have been able to cope. In the end, I didn’t.

It’s a long story, but all I’ll say here is that I ended up in hospital – twice – with chronic fatigue syndrome and several other diagnoses. By the time I’d got the message to stop trying to run on empty, I was barely able to feed myself most days and the medical people had no idea of how to help me.

I really don’t want that to happen to you. That’s why I’m writing this. I want you to know that you can continue to have a busy and fulfilling life without compromising your health like I did. It’s easier than I knew, and it’s easier than you’d think. But you need to make a commitment to caring for yourself. Keep an eye on your stress levels and make sure you have the energy to do everything that fulfils you and makes you happy.

I admit I was doing it wrong – but then I found out how to do it right. Here’s what happened:

A year after being officially retired (‘permanent ill-health’ – hah!), I’d made huge progress and it looked like I was getting my life back. I’d gone raw – again, but properly this time because my health depended on it. I was seeing an acupuncturist and a nutrition therapist and I was looking after myself like never before. All of this stuff helped, and as I got stronger I began to consider what to do with my life next.

Things were certainly looking brighter and I finally saw a future for myself as something other than a reluctant couch potato. But things still weren’t right with me. Oh no. Not by a long way.

…To Frustrated Workaholic…

I couldn’t figure out where I was going to get the energy from to do all the things I wanted to now that I was free of the illness. My plans for a better life left me feeling overwhelmed and panicky. I had some very bad habits – even though I no longer needed to wind down after a hard day at work, I still craved a glass of wine or three in the evenings. And I looked pretty rough –overweight, saggy and old.

My husband Mr S was no better. He was stressed, overworked and exhausted. We’d both been trying to dig ourselves out of the ditch of depression and despair, but somehow seemed to be digging ourselves further in. We knew that things like regular meditation and a fresher, cleaner diet would help, but we just weren’t doing these things and we couldn’t understand why they were so hard...

That was six months ago. Then we read about Elwin and his Easy Exhaustion Cure in Get Fresh magazine. Elwin asked: ‘Have you tried – and failed – to implement a new healthy habit?’ Check. ‘... but then, inexplicably, you didn’t follow through. Your old habits and routines were just too compelling...’ Oh yes. By the time I’d reached the second paragraph I had decided that this was the program for us. Especially as Elwin urged us to ‘stop punishing yourself, feeling guilty, telling yourself that you’re no good...’ He was talking to us all right.

…To (Finally) Getting The Balance Right…

So we bought the program, read it through and started to follow the advice. And it was easy to stick to. Because although Elwin gives it to you straight, he doesn’t ask you to give anything up.

He just encourages you to take simple steps towards increasing your energy, then storing it and spending it wisely. (Energy is like money – once you’ve got some, you want to keep your levels up and you don’t want to squander it.) And he keeps it very simple. You don’t have to worry about getting rid of the bad habits – they get nudged out by the good ones quite naturally, so you begin to feel so much better about yourself.

You fill out a questionnaire before you start to determine how exhausted you are, so that when you’ve been going a few weeks you can check your progress. In six months, I’ve gone from a pretty high score of 46 to under 30 – still a way to go, but not bad going for somebody who was so severely depleted.

When you’re exhausted and stressed, you don’t want to have any extra work to do, so Elwin has taken care of that. He’s provided a shopping list and a daily schedule to minimise effort on your part and to make sure you can’t go wrong. In fact, Lion Heart Herbs has become a one-stop shop for just about everything you need to follow the program, so you don’t need to waste your precious energy on sourcing your products.

After talking to lots of his clients who are following the program, Elwin has revised and added to it and we now have the New Easy Exhaustion Cure. He’s added in new elements, like proper breathing, refined his advice on taking the right minerals and really thought about the psychology of applying his advice so that it’s virtually effortless. He’s also extended the audio form of the program, including lots of real-life examples of his clients’ progress. If they can do it, you can, right?

And Getting Better All The Time…

We can. We’re getting real results so we’re carrying on with the new version. We’re seeing the difference already – man, those breathing exercises are powerful. Who’d have thought you’d get so much benefit from taking ten minutes out in the mornings?

From 46 to 29... and counting. Elwin’s score is well under 10 and I’m on a mission to catch up with him...

Meantime, the stress has gone. I get more done because I sleep less and I have more energy. The cravings have disappeared and I’ve lost weight. People I haven’t seen for a while tell me I look ten years younger. And I have a new man in my life – well, a better version of the old one at least. He’s fitter, brighter, happier – and because we’re both feeling lighter and less grumpy, our relationship has never been better.

So you better believe we’re carrying on with this! I’ll be back here soon with updates and reports on what products we’re using and how they’re working, and on how our health is transforming – easily!

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At the moment I generally go to one of two places: detox your world for angstrom minerals and superfoods, and Aggressive Health for even more exotic items like a grounding sheet, zapper or magnesium oil.

I've already talked about the amazing Shazzie, who oversees Detox Your World in a previous blog, but last weekend, whilst speaking at the Weekend in the Raw event, I had the pleasure of meeting Mike Nash, who runs Aggressive Health. You could tell the man really walks his talk, his energy was electrifying, an obvious testament to the fact that he actually uses a lot of the products he stocks. Mike is also the author of the great book 'Aggressive Health' which I highly recommend to anyone interested in fitness as well as health.

If you're like me and you wish that you could get absolutely everything I recommend all from the same place, I have some great news for you:

My initial vision for Lion Heart Herbs was for it to a one stop shop for all your health needs. Now, thanks to the support of many wonderful people that vision is actually happening, and Lion Heart Herbs will soon have over a hundred of the finest and most relevant health products available by the end of this year, and many more next year.

Rest assured I will only be stocking products I know are of the highest quality, and that actually benefit your health. If I wouldn't recommend it to a client and take it myself, then it won't be on the site, no matter how profitable it may be. I always have and always will, see my health and integrity, which I believe are strongly connected, as a greater priority then wealth.

Please do contact me if you have any suggestions for items you'd like me to stock. I know it's a lot easier if everything you need is one place, that's why we all use supermarkets, and that's what Lion Heart Herbs will be very soon. Help it be the best by letting me know what you'd like.

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