Healthy Adventures (Bay Area)

Are you planning on getting healthy by changing some of your life-style habits that you know sabotage your well-being?

Have you ever considered more of a plant-based lifestyle or are you interested in learning more?

Are you a vegan (plant-based) person or environmentalist, and are you looking for your “tribe”?

Or maybe all of the above? Then Healthy Adventures is the group for you. I encourage you to fill your calendar with health-based activities to stimulate your wellness journey and connect with a health-focused tribe.

Join the fast growing movement of like-minded people seeking a hands-on approach by implementing positive healthy lifestyle habits and routines that have a tremendous positive effect on long-term health immediately. While lifestyle modification does take effort, it is the only way to achieve optimal, lifelong health, weight control, and ongoing wellness.

What you do right now in terms of healthy actions every day, every week, and every month, will have a huge impact on your health later. You probably have heard and known that prevention of chronic disease is so much more fun than dealing with a full-blown illness. If you don’t know where to start then Healthy Adventures and our events may be just the right fit for you. I will include activities and strategies to help you begin living a healthier life today. My goal is that you will be inspired to make immediate lifestyle changes to prevent future chronic diseases and immense health costs. Don’t wait until you have the time, because then it will never happen! Just as with a “wealth account”, you have to plan for your “health account” and make small deposits of daily, weekly, and monthly healthy actions into your account. As we all know, in the end, there are no magic pills or quick fixes.

There is so much conflicting health information out there, but for the most part, it just boils down to some basic facts (or common sense) - move more often, eat and sleep well, and surround yourself with positive like-minded people. (Or like Dr. Dean Ornish says: Eat well, Love More, Stress Less, Move more.). Most people who want to achieve a different health outcome need to give up some unhealthy habits and have to implement some healthier habits. Sounds familiar?

Healthy Adventures will meet for a wide variety of events, over weekends and during the week, during different times of the day, to accommodate people in different stages and times of their work and private lives.

Our Healthy Adventures kickoff event for 2020 was an outing to Santa Cruz with a vegan dinner at “The Real Thai Kitchen” followed by a lecture by Dr. Michael Greger’s (author of the bestselling book “How Not To Die”). Topic of the lecture was “The role of diet in preventing, arresting, and reversing our top 15 killers.” We look forward to other future lectures, workshops, cooking classes and more.

Call it a clan, call it a network, call it a tribe, call it a family: Whatever you call it, whoever you are, you need one. (Jane Howard, Margaret Mead )

Future Healthy Adventures events include, but are not limited to:

+ Healthy plant-based potlucks in parks and at members’ homes

+ Fun hikes around the Bay Area, including picnics and potlucks

+ Fun bike rides around the Bay Area, with picnic or destinations for healthy food

+ Cooking demos, plant based cooking classes (we might travel around for these), visiting both old and new plant-based restaurants around the Bay Area

+ Visits to talks by Food Activists like Michael Pollan, Michael Greger, Ocean Robbins (we will kick off this group with a trip to hear Dr. Michael Greger speak on January 14th, 2020, in Santa Cruz).

+ Movie nights with documentaries such as “Forks over Knives”, “The Game Changers”, “Cowspiracy” etc.

+ Group discussions of books such as “Why we Sleep” by Matthew Walker, “The Food Revolution” by Ocean Robbins, “How not to Die” by Dr. Michael Greger etc.

+ Visits to the farmers markets, trips to the grocery store

+ Gardening sessions, at Constance’s home and other places, exchange ideas about growing food, intro into vegetable gardening

+ Gardening classes, for example at Love Apple Farms or Yamagami’s

+ Trips to farm sanctuaries like “The Sweet Farm” in Half Moon Bay

+ Trips to Vegan and Vegetarian Festivals, Summits, and Conferences (Like the Santa Cruz VegFest in the spring)

+ Visit to the Environmental Working Group’s annual summit in the fall

+ Check off some of the items on your bucket list: hike up Mission Peak, run a Turkey Trot or Santa Run, bike the Golden Gate Bridge, do a Beach Clean-up etc.

Some of Constance’s favorite sayings are:

+ You can either pay the farmer now, or the pharmacy later.

+ The Greatest Wealth is Health.

+ Let food be thy medicine, and medicine be thy food (Hippocrates)

+ Food is the problem, and food is the solution!

+ Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants. (Michael Pollan)

+ Those who think they have no time for healthy eating, will sooner or later have to find time for illness.

+ Gardening is cheaper than therapy and you get tomatoes.

+ Food is the most abused anxiety drug. Exercise is the most underutilized antidepressant.

+ Failing to plan is planning to fail.

Meet Constance: Constance, a native from Germany, has been living in the Bay Area for 19 years. Besides being an ordinary mom of two teenagers, she is also a former physical therapist with more than 10 years of work experience in Germany, a group exercise instructor, a certified personal trainer, and a holistic health coach and nutritionist. Earlier in 2019, Constance launched an eBook, “Better Health for Busy People” (www.betterhealthforbusypeople.com) about healthy living, with a great emphasis on the Food Industry and “Real Food”. Additionally, she is a hobby gardener with a full vegetable garden in the Silicon Valley, a self help book lover, traveler, exercise fan, healthy sleep enthusiast, and a community builder, too. One of Constance’s favorite things to do is bring people together to learn from each other, thrive, become healthier, and grow. And she loves to cook and to eat. Constance’s favorite meals are potlucks (“you bring a dish and get a meal”).

While Constance has always led an active lifestyle, over the last 10 years, while feeding two growing children, her interest and passions shifted more towards food, the food industry (aka BIG FOOD), and how everything we take in affects our health and the environment. She has done a deep dive study of the systems of the food and medical industries, and she has learned so much that inspired her to share what she knows. Constance wants to build a larger caring community of people with a purpose and a goal, a passion and a drive, for ourselves, our communities, our environment, and the future of our children. There are so many things we can do in our daily life that create a ripple effect and that lead us into a healthier direction. Let’s get started.