5 Minutes With Therese Kerr

Today's blog post is an interview I did not too long ago with Therese Kerr. Therese is a proud mother, business owner, author, speaker & an active health advocate for holistic family health. With one recipe ibook, Lunchbox Solutions, under her belt and another on the way, Therese is a wealth of knowledge for living a certified organic lifestyle. Today she is sharing some tips on time management, healthy alternatives and why 'certified organic' is the right choice.

In 2002 I had tumors on my spleen & thats when I really looked at what I was putting both into and on my body and what nutrition and lack of nutrition I was giving my body. So that was the real reason I started looking into health and nutrition and making sure I filled my body with nutrients. In relation to food there so much produce that is sprayed consistently & with certified organic ingredients or certified organic products theres no chemicals as such used on them. The nutrient value is much richer as well. In relation to putting certified organic products on your body, most women put on average 200 chemicals a day on their skin just in skin care alone. That doesn't include foundations and make up or perfume. And some perfumes for example can have up to 1000 chemicals in them alone. 

Yes, most definitely. We try to eat as much certified organic produce & ingredients that we can, also low GI. The only oil we use for example is coconut oil, because it is the only safe oil to use when cooking. It is a medium chain fatty acid that converts to energy in your body as opposed to converting to fat, so it is really the only oil you should use. Instead of sugar or raw sugar we use agave as an alternative, or coconut sugar. Coconut sugar is a high protein sugar, so you need about a third of what you use instead of normal sugar. In relation to other ingredients or recipes in the book, its food like quinoa which is a seed not a grain, and is high protein & can be used as an alternative to rice. I make porridge out of quinoa, but I also make porridge out of a lot of other grains but I ferment the grains first & then its like a brush for your intestines & thats why you go to the toilet regularly when you have things like that for your body!

Basically Miranda created Kora, she wanted to create a skin care that contained everything that she personally wanted in a skin care line. One of the key ingredients is noni, and noni in itself in our skin care has a 177 vitamins and minerals, and that is just one ingredient. And basically 60-70% of what you put on your skin soaks in so if you put good, high nutritious recipe formulation on your skin a lot of that will soak into your body and into to your blood stream. Most skin care contains TEAs, DEAs, glycols, ethoxylated ingredients, parabans, sulphates, synthetic everything, artificial everything, formaldehyde - people are embalmed in formaldehyde yet we put it in our skin care. All sorts of things are in skin care  and people don't realise that. Miranda wanted to create a range that didn't contain all the nasties and that also contained everything she personally wanted. And we're getting amazing results with the (Kora) skin care, and all it is when you give your body the nutrition it needs then it has the ability to heal itself. We're finding that people with eczema, psoriasis, dermatitis, rosacea, acne & cystic acne are getting amazing results.

Hmm, that is a challenging one! What I do is I take time out, at morning tea Johnny & I will go out and have a cup of tea together so I'm actually getting away from the office. Or a couple of times a week we will try and go out and have lunch together. And another thing that we're planning on is once every six weeks to take the Friday & the Monday off so we have a four day break so we're actually getting away from work. Ultimately its a choice that we make, and a lot of the times we get so overwhelmed and its all about how we're being in that overwhelm as well that we can be stressed, or we can choose to be okay. I'm an O blood type, so my goal is to get absolutely everything finished and coming to the realisation that there really isn't a 'finish' has been a big challenge for me as I like to start and then I like to finish something and feel that something is completed. It has been a big lesson for me that there is always work there, every minute of every day I could work for basically a month straight and not sleep if I wanted to, and if my body could handle that. But ultimately I have to decide or I have to choose "you know what, I can't do that, I can only do what is possible", then choosing how I'm going to be around that and choosing that there has to be a balance with having time out. We always try and have a Sunday dinner with Matty, and when Miranda is home I only work when Flynn's asleep so I can spend time with them while they're here. Its all about us choosing that even though there may be overwhelm, and it seems like everything is on top of you, it is choosing how you're going to be about it and choosing to take time out.

Theres a couple, always take a spare pair of undies, thats a good one because you never know when you're going to need them! And always follow your gut instinct, very rarely is your gut wrong. When you know something and when you feel something is right, follow it. When you go against your gut ultimately you're going against what I believe is really instinctively right for you.

For more information on Therese & her holistic health check out her website theresekerr.com Searching through articles on organic lifestyles can be quite overwhelming and Therese's website provides a welcoming and supportive forum for those seeking more information from a friendly and approachable source. You can also find find her on the following:

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