About my upcoming book

Many people on the course asked about my book. To make things more simple, here's a short preview of the book. The book will be published in Finnish. My dream is to publish it in English at some point. We'll see what happens. Below is the book's cover.

Kaisa Jaakkola: Hormone diet - individualized guide to spot reduction

Would you like your body to burn fat from the trouble spots, to speed up your metabolism, sleep better, look younger and more refreshed, gain strength and feel more energized? Hormonal balance is key to a better well-being!

Did you know that there's a reason for fat accumulation on different parts of the body?

Hormone Diet explains what your body's fat stores reveal about your hormonal balance and how you can change it for the better. The book includes easy to understand guidelines and scientific studies on the significance of hormonal balance in weight control. It is not a miracle diet, but a permanent lifestyle change.
The book teaches you...
-why love handles are the results of your dietary choices
-how weight training stimulates fat burning
-why sleep improves your carbohydrate tolerance
-how gut health and lower body fat deposits are linked to each other
-why stress derived umbilical fat may due to food intolerances

And much more!

Kaisa Jaakkola is the first Finnish BioSignature coach. Her special area of expertise is helping clients to burn fat through balancing their hormones naturally through nutrition, lifestyle and training. She has been trained in the U.S. and Europe for the BioSignature method, along with personal training and strength coach education, after working as an IT engineer. Her nutrition and hormone-related articles have been published in several journals. The BioSignature method reveals the body's hormonal balance through the stored fat in different parts of the body. It was developed by one of the most accomplished strength coaches in the world, Charles Poliquin.

So, there you go. The book will be published in August 2011. If you want to read it, you better start taking Finnish classes :)

Gratitude journal

I've found the cutest, most useful app for iPhone! Happy Tapper's Gratitude Journal. I fill mine many times per day as there's always something to be grateful for... right now it's only 9am and I've typed down many things already ;) The photo on the right is a screenshot of the app.

Gratitude is a powerful emotion. When you truly feel gratitude, you radiate positive energy. It's easier to accomplish anything you'd like in your life by feeling grateful beforehand... and by feeling grateful for all the things you already have. Someone wise once said; "Everything you need, you already have." In a world of always wanting and needing more, that sounds like a complete lie. I think it's not... it's just that our egos don't want to believe that sentence.

Filling out a gratitude journal decreases stress and makes you view the world as a more positive place. And of course you don't need an iPhone for it. Just buy a beautiful notepad and start writing. I got this one for my birthday a couple of years back: The Secret Gratitude Book. When I begun using it, magical things happened... and when I forgot about it, that's when things started to fall apart. I went through a very dark period in my life. I tried to get back to writing in my grateful journal but the feelings just weren't there. I had to make things up... eventually it got easier again and now I don't have to force it anymore. I truly FEEL grateful for so many things in my life.

Things that I've been truly grateful this morning are...
-being free of seasonal allergy symptoms => I've used Charles' seasonal allergy protocol and it's working as well as standard medication (I have spent all springs the past 20 years inside the house as my symptoms get as bad as asthma... this is the first time I actually have hope for enjoying the spring)
-my funny cats => you saw them in the last post... they are hilarious
-my great marriage => I'm grateful for our good connection and all the values we share
-my client Karita's success in her first figure competition => she placed 3rd last night :) I helped her with the supplements through BioSig (she's in the middle on the photo below)

-my motivation for studying => I believe I can achieve great things the more I know
-my home => our home renovation is finally done and I can enjoy our beautiful home
-my great health => actually I'm not there yet but I write this down every day because I know that if my mind can comprehend what it's like to be at my optimal health, it's more likely to happen :)
-my powerful body => I'm happy I can lift, run, jump and do whatever I like - I'm not at my optimal, but getting closer by every training session :)

When you save the day's notes on Happy Tapper's app, the app pops up a quote. Today it was this - love it!

"To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment."
-Ralph Waldo Emerson

Biosignature 1, Day 5, Stockholm

Last day on the course was really good. The lectures covered vitamin D3, gut health & probiotics, estrogen metabolism (the need of L-5 MTHF which is the active form of folic acid - crucial for detoxing estrogens) and how to build a successful BioSignature business. We also practiced measuring, as every single day. I think accuracy was much better than on the courses I've taken before. Thanks to the checklist technique. I'm going to adopt some of that to our business as well and ordered a book Charles recommended, called The Checklist Manifesto: How To Get Things Right. I'm a nerd so I'm pretty sure the technique suits me well ;)

I went through my notebook today in the train on the way home and thought I'd make a little photo stream with tips I've learned on these BioSignature courses that I've taken. If you put each of these tips in practice, I guarantee your life quality will jump up big time. Enjoy :)

If your gut is not healthy, you're not healthy. You are what you digest - and also what you don't excrete (think: food chemicals, additives, pesticides, pathogens etc). Get your digestion together my doing the stomach acid test and using a proper probiotic supplement EVERY DAY. Don't be like me - telling yourself it's all good and finding out 1,5 years later it was everything else than good, realizing you just spent all that time spinning your wheels while you could have got awesome results. If those two tips don't do anything, get a functional medicine digestive analysis done. Quick.

Food quality is crucial! Eating "clean" isn't always clean. Above you can see two different salmon. First one (in the middle of the photo) is wild salmon: it's very light, almost greyish peach color. The second one is farm raised salmon - beautiful orange color. Wild salmon eat what they can catch, like plankton, other fish etc. Farm raised salmon eat what they're given: soy, grains and fish parts. Plus orange color to make them look nice in the fish aisle. Whenever possible, invest in your food. Same goes for meat, poultry, produce... buy organic and fresh.

"Farm-raised salmon are fed pellets of concentrated fish products. The fish used to make these pellets are usually gathered from the bottom of fishing nets and are of varieties that are not sold in your local fish market. All sorts of fish parts are included in the pellets, even the bones and skin. Unfortunately, the toxins that have built up in the fish’s body also become part of the mix."

Use an estrogen balancing product daily, like any of those above. Estrogenization is a global epidemic. How many people do you know who have problems with fertility? There are scarily many within the young couples I know. Guys should not have fat bums or saggy arms. Cover your basics by using good quality supplements, and ask your own BioSignature practitioner which of the following would suit your needs of estrogen detox the best. Not all of them work the same way.

Women's estrogen detox products

Men's estrogen detox products

Drink more water! Dehydration is one of the most underrated sources of stress (hello, bellyfat!). If you don't like the taste of plain water, add some frozen berries, lime, lemon or cucumber slices to your water. How much water do you need? Read here.

Get your biological signature revealed by contacting a BioSignature practitioner in your area. Make sure they educate themselves constantly and keep their BioSic certification updated by taking the course at least once a year. The norms change as the research progresses. They had new information now already, although I had taken my last course last fall. This time I learned a lot about how the BioSig profile can reveal what kind of risk for estrogen imbalance derived cancers the person might have. Read Nick Mitchell's excellent article on why all practitioners are not created equal.

Soak & roast your nuts and seeds. Soak them to get rid of enzyme inhibitors that might cause gastric distress and itchy throat and ears. Roast them to improve mineral absorption. These seeds have been roasted with coconut oil and cinnamon. 

Get a steel water bottle to avoid xenoestrogens that may leak from plastic bottles. My bottle is from SIGG, and Klean Kanteen makes great bottles as well. Make sure it says "BPA free" on the bottle. If you live in an area where tap water quality is bad (pretty much everywhere nowadays), get a water filter. According to Charles, Akai is the best. Or go get your water from a real spring :) Especially water in the UK is said to be horrendous - filled with estrogens from HRT and contraceptive pills, cocaine residual... uhhh!

Train with weights to improve your insulin sensitivity. Muscle mass is one of the most important determinants of great immunity, longevity and well functioning hormonal system. This photo was taken at a training school we held in Tampere. We are currently running a semi-online, semi-1-on-1 coaching program with 125 clients. All of them learn proper weight training during the three months and get their BioSig done regularly.

Relax. Don't underestimate the power of doing nothing. I did that for a far too long time and suffered from mini burnouts many times during that period, until I gave myself real permission to just rest and take the time I need to heal. The adrenals work overwork themselves until one day they say, SAYONARA! and that's when you're in trouble. Ambitious, driven people are in the risk group of burning the candle from both ends. What I found out was that the more time I took off of work, the more productive I was when I really did work. Stress management and playtime is essential for everyone!

When suntanning, don't use a sunscreen. It will block 95% of vitamin D3 that your skin would make otherwise. Besides, they're loaded with estrogenic chemicals. Instead, get your D3 level up (ask for a labtest 25-OH D3 to see where you are) and use coconut oil when you're planning on staying in the sun for a longer time. Above is my kitty Eemeli tanning ;) Cornish Rex cats are very fond of sunlight.

Bump up your fiber by using several fiber supplements in addition to your paleo diet. We should get anywhere from 30 to 50 grams of fiber daily. It will balance your bloodsugar and help you get rid of used estrogens and other toxins. Use different kinds of gluten free fiber sources, like psyllium, ground flax seed, ground hemp seed (with shells on), apple fiber... I take my fiber upon waking and often also before going to bed. I've noticed that eating my last meal around 7pm, taking my fiber at 9pm (to keep me nice and satisfied) and then going to bed before 10pm makes me sleep better than eating late.

Have a meat and nuts breakfast. No cereal or soy milk or oatmeal or bagels. Why? Read here.

Also, if you're like me and you tend to fill up your plate no matter what size it is, use smaller plates if you need to control your food intake. My eyes always want to eat more than my body needs, therefore I use snack plates (about 7 inches diameter).

Switch to a salt that has a color. Celtic sea salt is a good option. This way you will supply your body with all the minerals that natural salt has, instead of depleting it and adding a little bit of aluminum, which is a neurotoxin, that the table salt has. Remember that the more protein you eat, the more salt you need. Read more here.

Use healthy, natural fats like virgin coconut oil every day. My cat Arska loves it - I busted him licking the glass jar the other day when I had forgot the lid open... He also chews omega 3 capsules if I forget them on the table. If you don't know what healthy fats are, maybe let your pet define. They don't seem to crave trans fats and other nasty man-made fat-pretending products (like margarine). Cream, butter, coconut oil, fish oil - those would be their choices. Wouldn't be that bad for us either :)

Switch to organic coffee and have it either black or with full fat cream. Coffee plants are amongst the most sprayed crops in the world. You should always have yours organic, and the same goes for butter (and obviously cream, as butter is made of cream). Coffee is pretty much the only bitter herb we use nowadays. Thousands of years ago people seeked for bitter herbs and chewed them. They're known to be very effective for detoxing the liver. Having your coffee with milk is not the best option. Milk is a very problematic food for most, as it's designed to be baby food. If you've given up sucking your thumb quite a long time ago, quit drinking milk too. Cream is a healthy fat and helps to diminish cravings for sweets :)

Ditch bread. Most people do better without (processed) grains.If you crave it, make your own - but use fiber. The top photo is a lingonberry-coconut pie that I made with a fibrous crust sweetened with stevia. The bottom photo is flat bread I made, and it is gluten, egg, dairy and yeast free. Both were made with the same kind of dough:

-1/3 cup hemp protein

-1/3 cup Primal Fiber 2 

-1/3 cup coconut flour

-water until you have a soft, pudding-like consistency

-if you want salty flat bread, add celtic sea salt

-if you want a sweet pie crust, add stevia (I like NuNaturals liquid vanilla stevia the best... using a code KOL145 you will get a $5 discount of your order)

Bake at 200 celcius until it's set and let it cool down. Yum :)

Remember your greens and eat them RAW! Aim to get five handfuls (PLUS five handfuls of colorful veggies) daily. Green veggies contain chlorophyll which is great for detoxification, and folate that I mentioned in the beginning of this post. Cooking your greens destroys many of the vital phytonutrients that raw foods are filled with. My cat Eemeli loves green leavy vegetables. He's quite peculiar, just like his owner.

Add seaweed to your diet. Many of us don't get enough iodine from our diet and thus have a less than optimal thyroid function. Sprinkle seaweed flakes on your salad or make seaweed soup. Thyroid runs your body's metabolism. When thyroid slows down, everything slows down - from brain function to pooping, and thermogenesis to energy expenditure. Slow thyroid = fat gain all over the body but especially in the middle. 

Pinch yourself on the side of your ribs, that's the midaxillary point of BioSignature modulation. It represents thyroid function. Can you grab more than skin? Maybe you could use some seaweed (and protein - as thyroid hormones are built from iodine and the amino acid tyrosine) :)

Read more - at least a hour every day. Charles reads 16 hours per week and so does Mark Houston. They're in the top of their field of operation. Reading gives your body a rest from the go-go-go mentality and lowers cortisol. I carry a book almost everywhere I go, as I've always been a bookworm. I grew up in a house with tens of thousands of books. Personal trainers should dedicate WEDNESDAYS for studying. It helps them relax, update their knowledge and get leaner. Stress inhibits fat burning and raises blood sugar, whether you eat carbs or not.

Surround yourself with likeminded people - you're the average of the five people you spend most time with. This photo was taken in Stockholm on Thursday as Joni and I met a fellow coach, Jenni Levävaara, who flew there to participate her first PICP course. Jenni is such a wonder woman! She recently educated herself more on mental training of athletes through sports performance coaching with NLP. She loves educating herself just like I do, and on top of that has the most adorable personality. I'd get her to kick my butt anytime. She knows her stuff and I'm happy to be her friend.

"Life without dreams is unbearable, and dreams without everyday life are self-betrayal." -Jenni

Have a little red wine every now and then. This is a new skill I'm learning. I used to hate the taste of wine but recently I've been practicing this a little... as I've heard I should take life more lightly. Plus it's proven to be a good way to get some antioxidants. It's been said you have to taste a food or drink ten times to get accustomed to the taste. I'm not quite there but getting close ;)

"Angels can fly because they take themselves lightly."
-GK Chesterton

I used to be too serious, too detail-oriented and too "but tomorrow I need to do this and that" (missing out THE NOW), so I'm practicing having a little more of Fun & Friends in my life. I suck at relaxing but I've noticed that having a glass of wine suddenly turns me to a Very Relaxed Person. 

If you're a coach, this might be your best tip for menopausal and stressed women: permission to have a glass of red wine with dinner. All wines aren't created equal, so read more what to choose from here. And if you don't know how to coach females, read CP's best tips here.

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Okay, that's MORE than plenty of tips... I'm known for doing too much, writing too much, talking too much and kind of wanting to be too much, but bear with me - at least I'm conscious about it ;) 

Hope you've enjoyed these BioSig course updates and maybe we'll meet on a course in the future! Check out the upcoming courses here and secure your spot now, as they fill up quickly. I know which one I will attend next already!

Biosignature 1, Day 4, Stockholm

What a day. Actually this is the first day when I really have to go back to my notes to see what we covered, because my brains are mush. Not because there's so much new information, but because  something happened to my body on day 3. We talked about cortisol today and that's the culprit here - because I'm talking about food sensitivities. They are a major source of cortisol overproduction problems.

When you eat foods that the body is intolerant to, it tends to screw up pretty much everything. Cortisol production increases, tissues and joints may get inflammed, head feels strange (cravings, foggy thinking etc), strength level drops, sleep quality drops, you might feel it in the respiratory system, get gut problems... and so on. You could add almost any symptom you can think of here. If you eat foods the body doesn't agree with, it can cause a leaky gut. Foreign proteins enter the bloodstream through disrupted intestinal lining and you're in trouble!

I've had problems with my body (and mind... they're connected as we all know) for some years now, and it's been very difficult to get leaner. Not being lean is a sign of an imbalance in the body. A healthy body should be lean: females 16-20% bodyfat and males below 10%. So right now I'm trying my best to dig deeper to find out the things that are holding me back. I could have just done like I used to: exercise too much and cut down eating to as little as possible, but that most likely won't cut it in the long run. So it has meant putting quite a lot of money to functional medicine tests and also calming down my life that used to be quite stressful. The tests have been such a good investment that I can happily say I'd do it again if I needed to. I won't put my own health to the backseat of my life ever again.

One of the tests I recently got done was a MRT food intolerance test. Since then I've been pretty careful with my food choices. It seems I ate something on on day 3 here that caused a bad reaction, as my energy level hit rock bottom. Below is a part of my MRT test. If you want to see all of the results, you can check out the photos in my Finnish blog. You won't understand the blog text but the MRT test is in English.

 When I woke up this morning, I looked like a tarsier except the bags under my eyes were the size of a gymbag...

In addition to that, my cheeks were the size of an overstuffed chipmunk...

So to answer your question, "is it that critical to stay away from the foods you're intolerant to", what do you think? :)

When I eat a food I'm intolerant to, my whole body just doesn't feel right. I was exhausted the whole day and even walking to the subway made me sweat and left me trying to catch my breath! Could be anything... eggs... some meat I had at breakfast... our dinner last night... I don't know. I've found out that the more conscious I'm about how different foods affect my energy levels, mood etc. the better I'm in tune with my body. One of the most precious things is having a crystal clear, creative mind. Today I've been nowhere near that! Carb cravings, moodiness and mental fatigue, certainly symptoms of eating foods I'm intolerant to.

If you think you might have some intolerances (pretty much all of us do, whether you "feel" them or not), start learning more here. If you have belly fat, it can be a sign of too much cortisol over time. Gluten is the most evil of all, it causes lots of problems. It makes my body feel like a wet spaghetti, plus if I eat it, I crave carbs and sugary junk for a week after a single exposure. It doesn't matter if it's 1mg or 1g or 100g because the effect can be seen in the blood for months. Gluten isn't showing in my MRT test (I hadn't had it in a very very long time) but I know this for a fact, as I've been muscle tested for it several times on Biosig CE courses. The body doesn't lie.

"Gluten has been isolated as a risk factor is so many diseases, that is almost impossible to count them all. At the time of writing this blog, the functional medicine circle has isolated at least 55 diseases linked to it."

So anyhow, it was a good day at the course. We practiced taking quad, ham and pec readings. I think hamstring and pec are the hardest to measure and I can honestly say my skills for measuring them right is still not quite there (sorry, clients). For example, I used to measure pec completely wrong on many people still some time ago (sorry again, clients, my little lab rats :D) until I learned a trick one fellow coach gave me. I might not be the best coach but at least I have initiative! If I had been too critical on myself and been afraid of making mistakes, our business wouldn't be where it is today.

One of my mentors, Krista Schaus whom I first learned about BioSig from, told me: when you're done with the course, begin measuring people as soon as you get home and do it as much as possible. I called some PT's I knew and told them I'd do BioSig for free just to show them what it's like. I did it for them, they started sending their clients in. Their clients got better results, the PT's got better reputation and I got to practice and get new clients. I'm not very fond with doing PT myself so I was able to do what I wanted most, BioSig consults. Win-win situation for everyone.

There was much more stuff but my marshmallow brain can't produce any more wise thoughts right now. So I'll better stop here.

One more thing - today my hubby and I had lunch with Charles & his tech guy, Larry. Some exciting things to come in the near future, I hope. Here's a photo... Joni's comment on his FB status, "when I have my cup of coffee, I have it with Charles Poliquin." ;)

Biosignature 1, Day 3, Stockholm

Third day is gone and we're approaching the end of the course. The material goes deeper and deeper, and the next two days will be the most interesting for sure. I've got some gems scribbled in my notebook already but I'm so hungry for more :)

Day 3 begun with John & Derek taking measurements of the course attendants. It's quite amazing how the profiles have changed in only these TWO years I've gone to BS courses. I'm quite fanatic about taking notes - I wrote down all the profiles from my first course I took in London (May 2009). That time the class was a mixture of insulin, cortisol and estrogen profiles. But today... so far we haven't seen a single person on this course whose profile wouldn't be estrogen. Last week CP and his team taught in UK and 77 out of 78 attendants had an estrogen profile. It's an epidemic, and we see this in Finland as well.

Femininization of the whole population of this Earth is VERY scary. All kinds of lotions and cosmetics with parabens (for example... go to a pharmacy and read the INCI list of some lotions - 99% of them have parabens - and they're sold in a PHARMACY which most people consider a trusted source of cosmetics), eating foods with high concentrations of pesticides, showering in and drinking estrogenic water, eating fish that have been exposed to synthetic estrogens in the waste water and so on.

Some of the most estrogenic lotions you can find in Finnish pharmacies - these contain FIVE different parabens... hello, breast cancer!

Guys are losing their fertility step by step if we keep going this... packing on fat like females... and females are hurting themselves as well. Why does this happen? Because of the toxicity and our attitudes - wanting everything the easy way and shrugging to the responsibility to take charge of our health. A diet of TV dinners and fizzy drink won't give the body the antioxidants it needs to detoxify harmful chemicals we breathe, eat and put on our skins daily, nor the building blocks we'd need to build a healthy body. Another important issue is gut health. In our client base I would say 70% have compromised gut health. Bad gut health leads to estrogens circulating in the body, doing more harm than good.

Estrogen is one of the most interesting subjects to me, of all that I've learned in BioSignature classes. I most likely have a very high risk of obtaining breast cancer, as nearly everyone from my mother's side has had that. Females on my mom's side of the family are curvy with wide hips, and pretty much all of us carry our fat mostly on the lower half of the body. For me, BioSig is not only finding the tools to get lean, but the tools to "change my fate" so to say. I will most likely have to stay on some form of estrogen supplement for the rest of my life? Although... it's been said on the course many times now that everyone of us should do that. The environmental burden of estrogens has become huge. According to Charles, it's been only five years since there was basically no such thing as breast cancer in males. Now it's getting more and more common. 

Charles also gave a lecture on how to use botanicals for insulin modulation. Insulinomics is a really interesting and great product for that and it should be always combined with another insulin balancing product, like Fenuplex, Glucose Disposal or Yin Hance. Here's a great article about how one of the products, Fenuplex works.

"Five hormones raise blood sugar, but only one lowers sugar: insulin. That is because we are designed to consume a natural diet – not the typical American diet that is disguised as food. One of the basic tenets of the Biosignature system is that modulating insulin will always improve your body composition scores, whether the problem is due to problems in androgen, estrogen or growth hormone."

Simply put: Insulinomics acts like the Fedex guy who rings your doorbell, and the other products play the role of the little delivery boy who drags your package in the house (=puts the glucose in the cell).

If the person has insulin resistance, which is also more and more common, he or she will have very hard time "letting the delivery boy in" - meaning that glucose can't enter the cells. It will rather be stored as fat. Fat cells will happily take all the packages possible in the condition of insulin resistance - actually 80-85% of the glucose that is circulating in the bloodstream (only 5% goes to the muscle cells). In an insulin sensitive person, this would be only 5% while 80-85% would go to the muscle cells. The rest goes to the liver. Soooo... if your score of the subscap is over 10, you might want to think of this the next time you're thinking of eating a carb rich meal :)

It is possible, of course, to improve insulin sensitivity through diet and training. The more muscle mass you have, the more insulin receptors you have and therefore the cells may be able to take in more glucose. According to Mark Houston, whom I had a chance to interview in New York last fall, one of the biggest reasons for insulin resistance is low muscle mass. Heavy weight training and a protein rich diet (with an effective digestion) is the way to go. Raisins and granola bars for snacks won't do it!

We spent quite a lot of time practicing caliper measurements. I'm glad to see that my consistency in measurements is pretty good, the number difference on most of the people I measured was mostly about 0,1 - 0,3mm per site. I have probably done a total of 2000 (or so) BioSig measurements to about 400-500 people. Some are clients who come in continuously and some have only come in for a demo measurement (I used to do those in gyms just to spread the word about the system - that's a good way to get new clients). Our company's girls (four BioSig practitioners) have measured nearly 1000 Finns so far - and we have 5 million people in the country... still some potential clientele there ;) If accuracy is reached after you've taken at least 4000 measurements, I'm still not quite there! Every course makes me better though as I always learn new tricks how to be more consistent.

Practice makes perfect, right? :)

Biosignature 1, Day 2, Stockholm

Another day of BioSig course is gone. A quick update on what's going on!

I really enjoy the new teaching method: 40 minutes of lecture and 5-15 minutes of break. This give the brain time to retain all the information much better than the previous way of having 2 hour lectures. Good job PSI! Plus, the dirty jokes make learning more fun ;) Charles' courses are not for the thin-skinned. I'm glad he's very nice to women though, but guys get to hear about calves of a parrot and other humorous sayings ;)

On day 2 we learned about these topics, amongst others... 

How the body never lies - this girl had suffered from chronic stress. Charles stimulated some trigger points on her legs to find out how the body is dealing with the stress - it hurt so bad the girl jumped on the table! After that Charles told her to chew one tablet of Holy Basil Supreme, an adaptogenic herb supplement that balances the body's stress response. He stimulated the trigger point and the pain was completely gone. You should have seen this girl's face :) I've seen the trick on many courses and used Holy Basil Supreme during stressful times successfully. I think it's one of the things that's keeping me sane now that my book deadline is only two weeks away.  

Brain nutrition - how you can supercharge your brain with CP's new products called Focused Response Px and Ultra Brain Force Px. This is a topic I'm very fond of - it's thrilling to see the benefits of good nutrition to my ability to focus. I haven't tried out the products yet but I'm a strong believer of the meat & nuts breakfast, which gives my body the building blocks for balanced neurotransmitter production.

Above is a photo from a magazine kiosk in Tampere, where three magazines that published my articles or cited my nutrition coaching were funnily set next to each other. I recently wrote an article about brain nutrition for MMA fighters for Finland's most sold sports magazine, Fightsport. At the same time one of Finland's biggest magazines for middle aged women begun publishing my three part series on hormones & spot reduction. Very glad for this - my goal is to become a full time writer eventually :)

Detox - and how cosmetics are putting HUGE pressure on the liver. An average man detoxifies about 500 chemicals daily. That's a big burden on the body. Wonder how many chemicals the caveman detoxified daily? Probably nothing compared to what our bodies deal with today. Above is a photo from my own "cosmetics detox" - I threw out all the bottles with very long ingredient lists and any parabens. Parabens wreak a havoc on the hormonal system. They can be found in most lotions, shampoos etc. Check safety of the brand you use from the free Skin Deep Cosmetics Database.

Continued on balancing insulin. Paleo food is the way to go. This was my dinner after the course - shrimp salad with acovado, egg and lemon juice sprinkled on top. My genetic carb tolerance is bad and I've made it even worse with bad stress management and gut problems in the past. Taking baby steps to make it better again. Lemon juice helps to control blood sugar :)

Spring has arrived to Stockholm! The city is BEAUTIFUL :)

Biosignature 1, Day 1, Stockholm

Hiyas! It's course time and this is the closest Biosig course for Finnish people so far. And how many of us are there? Pathetic two! That's me and Anu, a zesty young woman who was one of the first people I ever coached. C'mon people, I can't believe it! Charles is SO close to Finland now, where is everyone? What I hear the most at home is "I'm interested, when is he coming to Finland?" Charles mentioned today that Finns produce most hits on his website per capita. That's HUGE. It seems that the information he is sharing is something Finns are very hungry for. But since studying is free in Finland so many people don't want to pay a cent for education. I think that's limited thinking.

My husband Joni & I on the ferry boat - Joni came to Stockholm to meet Charles as well, even though he's not taking the course

 I know it's the same everywhere in the world - people wait for Charles to come to where they live. Don't wait! When you attend a course, you get to travel, widen your world view and see places. Learning in a new environment is good for you. It keeps your brain fresh when there are no disctractions from your "normal life" around. What we need now is a positive movement of TAKING CHARGE. Education is an investment and every cent will be paid back at least twice for what you've put into it.

My first Biosignature course was fully paid back in two days after I got home from the course. I had three clients signing up for a 12 week coaching program. And today, nearly two years after my first course, we just broke a record how the number of Biosignature clients going through our calipers in the past two weeks. Nearly TWO HUNDRED people were measured by our three Biosignature girls during these past two weeks in our two offices, Tampere and Helsinki. I'm so proud for our Biosignature coaches and also happy for our clients, who are getting excellent results. Two years ago I would have never believed I will be a business owner and an employer, who helps others achieve their dreams through facilitating them with a job they love. That's big and although I'm very hard on myself most of the time, this is something I'm truly proud and grateful for.

Anyhow, it's fun to be studying again. Charles has changed the structure of the course again so I'm enjoying myself very much. I love to see how the courses improve. This is my 3rd Biosignature 1 course and my 12th course with Charles. There are always new JEWELS of information. Today I learned very important stuff about androgens and got lots of tiny tidbits of facts about nutrition.

 Charles teaching what the relations between different sites may reveal about your health

On the first day Charles covered history of BioSignature method. We also went over bodyfat caliper measurement checklist, which was very helpful and I believe this will help new students learn all this stuff easier. This, and how Charles and his team teach the sites and measuring them, has improved by leaps and bounds since I last took BioSig in New York last fall. We begun learning how to take the measurements by measuring knee site, which is the easiest of all. After that Charles lectured about insulin site modification and the relationship between insulin and cortisol. These are the most important hormones any BS practitioner should learn to balance, as they can wreck pretty much everything in the body. If insulin is high, for example, it can affect every single hormone in the body. And we have 100% control over insulin through our diet (hmm, except for the fact that chronic high cortisol can elevate insulin as well - but that's another story).

So that's what happened on Day 1 - I'll be back later this week with more stories :) Have a energetic week, where every you are!

Rebirth of the Broccoli Princess

Yesterday I found out my blog is ranked on place 8 within the most popular Finnish health blogs. In honor of that, I decided to begin posting again! I guess there's some information here that people come to read despite my recent silence. It's been quite a winter. Maybe I'll tell about that later.

My Finnish blog can be found on my company's website, Optimal Performance. I will keep on writing this one in English as I just love the language. Weird, but sometimes it fits in my mouth better than Finnish. I'm happy to travel soon again so I can speak English with my fellow Biosignature colleagues. I'm recertifying my Biosignature license again in Stockholm, Sweden in the middle of April.

I'm still writing my book - less than one month until I need to send it to my publisher. I'm enthusiastic to learn how my readers will find it. It will be published in the fall. I sure hope I can write a book that I can recommend with joy, as right now there are basically no books that would explain the stuff in Finnish that I would like my clients and readers to learn. I also hope I can inspire others to find the reasons between their current state of health and their optimal health - whatever it means to them. Through my own struggles I've learned that health is not something we should take for granted. And health doesn't mean the same as "no medication". It's so much more.

Recently I've kind of fallen in love with raw plant foods. I think they're great as long as you add some extra protein ;) I've eaten loads of veggies for the longest time but now I've focused more and more on switching cooked veggies to raw. I can feel it in my energy levels - like today, it's Sunday and I got up at 6am without an alarm clock. I'm very interested in the physical, mental and emotional changes that the food we eat may bring. Food can act as a powerful vehicle to better health and opening up on the "energy level", so to say. 

Below are some photos of my recent meals. The first meal is a raw salad that I ate at a wonderful organic "smootila" Shasa - it's a smoothie & salad bar that sells only raw foods. This salad contains dark green lettuce, tomato, avocado, dulse, hemp seeds, brazilian nuts, almonds, sun dried tomatoes and omega oil. And maybe something else I can't remember :) I also had a glass of raw milk and a whole bottle's worth of spring water. These guys are really passionate about what they do. They go get the water they serve from a spring nearby. Quite a high standard for customer service!

This salad is one I made at home. The base is baby spinach and romaine lettuce. Cherry tomatoes, dry roasted almonds, walnuts, incan berries, goji berries, mulberries, avocado and coconut oil make great toppings. Yum! <3 I had a protein drink of organic whey with this one.