Margaret Floyd eats Naked

Margaret Floyd is a certified Nutritional Therapy Practitioner & Holistic Health Counselor who wants to get you naked. She started with a handful of clients, and like yeast, her work has spread across the globe. Her new book, Eat Naked: Take it All Off is scheduled to create an eating revolution in Spring 2011, through New Harbinger Press. To get the skinny on Margaret's food philosophy go to EatNakedNow.com

Why do you want everyone to get Naked?

Over the years it has depressed me watching our health stats tank and looking at what goes into so many people’s shopping carts at the grocery stores – mostly what Michael Pollan calls (brilliantly) “edible food-like substances.”

To me the connection between what we eat and our health is absolutely fundamental. I love food – real, whole, fresh food. And I live a full, fast-paced life. I don’t think you need to choose one or the other. Eating naked is my solution to this – bringing it back to the basics in a way that’s simple, fast, healthy and really yummy.

How did you develop this passion for food?

I have always loved food and everything about it. I learned to cook at a really young age and I became really fascinated with “healthy” eating somewhere in high school when I decided to try vegetarianism.

I was a really bad vegetarian, though – what I now call a junk-food vegetarian or “carbivore”. I just ate loads of pasta (mostly white) with some veggies and cheese, and thought that was sufficient. By my mid-20s a skin condition I’d had for years flared up really badly. I went to a naturopath and had my first really powerful experience of what changing your diet can do. Within a couple of months we completely eradicated the skin problem that had been a constant hassle for years. I was hooked, although I didn’t decide to do this work professionally for several more years.

EAT NAKED - Brilliant name, how did you come up with it?

The way I come up with most things that are any good: by accident on a run. It started out as a topic for a blog, but I kept procrastinating when it came to writing it because it felt bigger than a blog posting. I realized that the concept sums up the fundamental principles I teach: eat simple, real, whole foods without all the extra junk we don’t need. And the name is provocative, which I like.

If you weren't teaching us how to eat like our grand-parents did, what would you be doing with your life?

It’s hard to imagine anything as exciting to me as what I’m doing right now. I think I’d be doing something to help people – probably I’d be a life coach or a business coach working with start-ups and new entrepreneurs. As long as I’m helping people live their dreams, I’m a happy girl.

What do you believe with every cell of your being?

That food is the essential building block of life. We are what we eat. It’s a cliché, but it’s true.

That eating can be one of the most profound acts of self-love and self-nourishment. Most of us eat at least three times a day – that’s three times daily we can love ourselves up through our food.

That our bodies never betray us and always tell us what they need – our job is to learn how to listen and respond appropriately.

When are you happiest?

When a client experiences success, no matter how small. Even if it’s learning how to make a new dish, or losing a few pounds, or resolving a digestive issue. Those moments absolutely delight me. I’m in my happy place on a nice long run, or doing yoga on the beach. Or sharing a really yummy home-cooked meal with my sweetie or a group of close friends. I’m really fortunate – I do these things all the time.

What keeps you up at night?

Aside from “How on earth will I get everything done that I want to do today?” Well, typically really irrational fears like spiders, earthquakes, and taxes. Okay some of those are rational, but there’s nothing I can do about it in the middle of the night.

Before writing your book you were approached by a publisher, got a deal, and an advance - don't people want to slap you?

I have definitely been accused of keeping horse-shoes in unsightly places. :) It actually was amazing the way it all worked out.

I took some time off last summer and while I was away it dawned on me that Eat Naked was more than a blog posting – it was a book and it was my whole brand. I got excited and put together the outline and a new business plan. Amazingly and with perfect serendipity, when I got home from my trip there was a package waiting at my office from a prominent publisher in this field asking if I’d consider writing with them. What a sign from the universe! Here we are, several months later, well en route to a finished book. No one has slapped me yet, but every so often I pinch myself to make sure this is real…

You push yourself pretty hard. Don't you ever want to be one of your cats, just lounging on the couch all day ... licking yourself?

Oh hell yeah. There are days when I seriously envy their sedentary life. In fact, that’s what I do when I go on holidays. I’m the most boring holiday companion ever. I need to sleep for hours on end and it’s a hard sell to get me out the door. Until you mention dinner… :J

What's your guilty pleasure comfort food?

Macaroni and cheese from a box. Eaten out of the pot it was made in with a wooden spoon in front of the TV watching some crime show, drinking a nice big glass of red wine. As un-naked as you can get.

It's all about Balance, right? Good to know you're only 99% perfect. So what does BALANCE mean to you?

It means giving yourself space to work hard AND play hard. And sometimes sleeping the day away if that’s what feels right. It means eating really healthfully most of the time and still having treats on occasion – as long as you enjoy them (I don’t believe in guilt). It means doing your absolute best AND giving yourself permission to be human all at the same time.

What's the toughest thing you've ever been told that saved your ass?

I used to be wildly ambitious and driven (yes, even more than I am now), and gave myself absolutely no time for self-care or rest. I fueled myself on caffeine in the daytime and alcohol in the evenings. I was completely manic most days. After a particularly hectic day of travel, meetings, and social engagements, I came home exhausted but exhilarated and announced to my folks that I didn’t care if I died tomorrow, I had squeezed every last drop out of my life up to that moment.

My mother – who has suffered from a chronic and debilitating illness over the last 20 years – looked me square in the eyes and said very solemnly, “Or worse, you might not die but just get really sick like me, and have all that same ambition and drive, but no physical capacity to act on it.”

I felt like I’d been slapped in the face, but she was completely right. It took me several years, and it’s something I still struggle with at times, but I realized that with no time for self-care, I was doing myself a lot of harm.

If this was your last message to the world it would be...

Please treat your body as the incredible, magnificent, powerful, soulful being that it is, and give it the nourishment – on all levels – that it deserves. We will only ever have one body.

Feel inspired to Eat Naked? Need some help?

Contact Margaret for a FREE One-Hour Health Consultation by phone.

You can reach her at 310-562-1115 or margaret@eatnakednow.com

A Year to Live - A Stillness Keeps Calling Me.

A mysterious stillness is calling me. Within it lies deep ecstasy.

~ my journal, April 20

Chronic Fatigue is visiting me after having been away for some years now. Since my return from Hawaii I've spent more time asleep, or at least in bed, than I've spent out of it. In that time I've also experienced fevers, joint pain, and a rash that covered the bottom of my face and spread down my neck. I had to cancel a trip to Florida to visit my folks and a trip to Chicago to spend passover with my in-laws. All of this has made my personal experience of A Year to Live very real.

My intention for starting this experiment was to find out who I am when everything else is stripped away. (something I've only witnessed in loved ones who are close to death) I wanted to discover my priorities, my deepest values, to feel things more intensely and love completely before I got near to the end of my own life. I had plans (how I laugh at that now) of how the year might go: I would swim in the wild with dolphins, which I did. I would spend more time with the people I love, I would vacation for a month in Vancouver. I would continue on a path of health in spirit and body and feel vibrant and alive by embracing death.

If I had been given a real diagnosis of a year to live, it's quite likely I wouldn't be in any kind of shape to fulfill all the plans that I had. I might very well be at the mercy of a disease that would keep me close to home and perhaps in bed. Having fatigue that keeps me in this states is enabling me to get so much more out of this experiment than I even thought possible. While my energy and plans have been stripped away I am discovering who I am at a deeper level. I am wrapped in a mysterious grace as this experiment unfolds.

The irony is not lost on me that I spend hours a day lying in bed in savasana (corpse pose). There is a death that is underway. Just as the caterpillar becomes the butterfly, I am in the chrysalis of transformation. I am still, wrapped tight, unable to see what lies ahead. While I wouldn't have chosen this on a conscious level, I know that my soul's longings are being met in this process.

In this stillness of exhaustion I have become clear on my priorities. I have become aware of what I want to do,and how it differs from what I need to do for my own fulfillment in this life. I have learned to trust the divine even more and see life as ever abundant. I am practicing not just noticing my intuition, but acting on it. Mostly I am enjoying the deep connection I feel with the life that is teeming within me and around me.

One day last week I was so exhausted that after showering and eating breakfast I went back to bed. I couldn't sleep, but neither could I stand nor walk. I lay in bed with my eyes closed and enjoyed the sounds of the world outside as I often do. But this day everything struck me in a different way. In an instant I was engulfed in a state of ecstasy, in which I not only heard the birds singing, I was the birdsong. I didn't just feel the breeze, I was the air touching my skin. This intensity of alertness, attention and stillness lead me to this experience that was so overwhelming I cried tears of joy. I even became the tears. It lasted a long long time.

People reach this state without experiencing months of fatigue, but right now, fatigue is my path and my body is my guru. The journey to what I really want and who I really am, is the purpose of this year for me.

Living and Dying with A Year To Live

One of the blessings of hosting A Year to Live is that many of the participants share intimate details of their experience with me. Laura sent me this email describing how her year has been since she first became aware of A Year to Live, and has allowed me to share it with you. She beautifully describes the very intent of this experiment, and the larger goals of Bcelebrated.

In November I received a call that my mother's cancer had spread and that she had been given three months to live. I settled things here and drove up north to visit. I intended to stay a week, I instead stayed 4 months.

My mother had been on chemo for 6-1/2 years for reoccurring breast cancer. She had initially been diagnosed in her 50s was treated, in remission. Seven years ago, the cancer returned.

In the kindest of moves, mom's doctor suggested hospice, and once my sister and I arrived, my mom signed on. And then we lived. Daily. With my mom fading a little bit each day. I'd like to say we were better people, I'd like to say that my mom was able to enjoy those last few months. But I don't know if any of that is true. We talked, we laughed, we got irritated, we got over it.

I have never been more aware of mortality, of my mother's ability to fight, of her love, and of her final acceptance of death.

My mother had a "good death," she faded away, never complaining of pain though her body was ravaged by cancer. She never needed the morphine the hospice workers provided, and though a slip of a thing, until two days before her passing she got up daily, dressed and came to the table for meals and to be with the family.

Because life is never about just one thing, and is instead a series of threads running in and out, in December my father fell and cracked his hip, and just about the entire time I was staying there, my doctor's were running tests to determine if I might have cancer as well. So, during the time of my mother's dying, a time of some peace actually, there were other dramas afoot as well.

Mom died in mid-January, just six days short of her 74th birthday. We held a memorial at the end of the month. In February I had surgery and it was finally determined that I did not have cancer. We scattered mom's ashes at the end of the month and I headed home once I'd fully recovered from surgery in March.

Coming home has been odd, unsettling. Though my boyfriend made it possible for me to be away, he was angry that I hadn't been here for him and he wanted me to be able to pick up where I left off, but that's not possible when you've lost someone, it changes who you are and you can't explain that to someone else.

Throughout, I have been keenly aware that life is fleeting, that we have no guarantees of a sunny tomorrow, that we need to wring all the life out of each day that we can. It isn't easy in these busy days — but we have to remember and make time for that — it is important.

We run from place to place always aware that there is much more to do before we sleep. Then not sleeping well for there is too much we need do still and we cannot quiet our minds.

I am trying to take a break every day to just be, to marvel at the world around us. To not take the people and places I love for granted. To make a practice of giving love and respect in every conversation of honoring the people who come into my life.

~ Laura Q.

Caterpillars to Butterflies

Do you know why a caterpillar becomes a butterfly? It's not due to the caterpillar's hard work, good education or social standing. It's who she was meant to be.

When the time for transformation in a caterpillar's life arrives it hangs upside down from a branch, wrapped in a cocoon. Once safely inside, tiny cells called imaginal cells begin to form. These cells are wholly different from caterpillar cells. The vibrate at a higher frequency. They are so different that the caterpillar's immune system attacks and kills them, but the imaginal cells of the butterfly multiply so quickly that the immune system cannot keep up. These little cells start clumping together, sending high frequency messages to one another. Soon there are more butterfly cells than caterpillar cells. This continues until at just the right time a butterfly will emerge where a caterpillar once was.

Do you feel that you're living a caterpillar's life, but there's a butterfly inside you waiting to be born? Many of us long to be the Pheonix, experience the Resurrected Life, but if we're unwilling to face the death that comes before it we miss out on the greater life that is calling us. The Pheonix had to burn to the ground before it could rise from the ashes.

Is there a life you dream of living, a person you long to become, but you fear giving up the life you have now, and the person you are in order to have it? Sure, we'd all like to know exactly how are dreams will come about, but it doesn't work that way my friend. True transformation feels like death at times. Like the caterpillar - life often turns upside down and you can't see a damned thing.

If, like many others, you feel that your life is crumbling around you and you can't make sense of it, trust that you will rise like the pheonix or the butterfly. Soon you will fly.

Celebrating Lives - Sage Bennet, PhD

For the past 25 years Rev. Sage Bennet has been a leader in lifelong learning for the soul. She has taught courses in philosophy, world religions, ethics, multicultural diversity, women's studies, and spiritual development in universities across the country. She performs sacred ceremonies such as weddings, memorials and transition rituals. She is the author of Wisdom Walk: Nine Practices for Creating Peace and Balance from the World's Spiritual Traditions.

Did you have some sort of "awakening" as a child that lead you to be the spiritual teacher that you are today?

That's an interesting question! I had a difficult childhood--my mother was often ill and I was left to be on my own alot. You could call it an early childhood dark night of the soul! While I experienced difficulties with feeling abandoned and neglected, I also reached into a spiritual dimension for support -- like any dark night of the soul provides. I talked to angels, flowers, and "imaginary" guides as if this was completely natural. Now I'm grateful for what I had once thought was a difficulty. I learned to be comfortable in (and love) solitude, which became essential later on in life for my creative, spiritual path.

Have you had a "long dark night of the soul" since your childhood?

I've had several "dark nights of the soul." I've come to recognize them as the opportunites for spiritual growth that they really are. However, it takes courage to ride the waves. I've experienced suffering. I've dispelled illusions and realized greater truths about myself and life . I used to push the darkness away, judge it as undesirable, or less than light. Now I can embrace the darkness more as an essential part of life, an example of the inevitable cycle of change, even a great teacher.

I love how you embrace the dark night Sage. What has helped you get through?

I've stumbled through my dark nights of the soul with support from my friends, myself, and spirit. The nine wisdom practices I talk about inWisdom Walk helped greatly. Through meditation, I contacted a deeper level of peace within myself. Through visioning I glimpsed my destiny.

I'm so excited that you're offering this teleseminar on the visioning process.

Wisdom Walk gives the reader a deep appreciation for different cultures. Was diversity sensitivity training a "subversive plot" for this book?

Sort of! It's a funny thing with writing a book -- at least this was so for me. The intention to invite people into appreciating spiritual diversity--in what Martin Luther King, Jr. called "the beloved community" happened along the way. Rather than having this intention before I started, I discovered this aspect in the process of writing. That's the exciting part of the creative process. The book tells you what it's about even though you, the author, are supposedly the one creating it!

You really disclosed yourself in this book, sharing your struggles with us. Was that an important process for you?

Actually, this focus of telling my story, also came as a surprise. I didn't intend to share this in the beginning. Since I was asking readers to relate to the wisdom practices -- forgiveness, creating an altar, meditation -- I thought I'd try it myself. When I was preparing the manuscript to be considered by publishers, my agent suggested I rework the structure and put my story first. This gave my struggle a much more prominent place in the book than I had originally wanted. So I had to work through my vulnerability about exposing my foibles, which was good, though challenging for me. Surprisingly, readers tell me they most appreciate my writing about difficult times--my trouble with forgiveness, my getting sick because I was living too fast.

Now, when you think about the future you feel...

Awed by the mystery and prayerful that I can greet fully whatever comes.

You, your partner, and your dog live on a boat, how do you maintain peace in such a small space?

Actually, the boat is quite conducive to peace. I find living on the water, watching it now as I write this, enjoying ducks, pelicans, seagulls, and occasional sailboats go by, is a great gift to my peace of mind. Although it is a small space, that is not the predominant feature for me. Being so close to the ocean and open sky every day, feels expansive rather than limiting.

What do you absolutely know to be true?

That we are here to love and to learn.

What is sacred in your life?

My relationship with my partner, myself, others, nature, and the mystery that is everywhere.

Though you've resided over many rituals celebrating other people's transitions, how has the process of creating your ownBcelebrated site been for you?

It is a profound process to consider one's inevitable death. Paradoxically, I find it amplifying my experience of living! Hurray for Bcelebrated! I highly recommend everyone's involvement in this wonderful offering.