This month: getting to the root of it all What do the following symptoms have in common? gas and bloating constipation allergies and/or sensitivities to certain foods or smells eczema or acne brain fog, anxiety and depression The commonality in all those symptoms is that they share a root cause. That's right. All those disparate manifestations, from your belly to your skin to your brain, stem from the same place. Do you know what it is?

Oftentimes clients will ask me how they know when they're there. Are we there yet? Have we reached our dietary goal? Is this the stopping point? Is it all better now? But for some of us, there is an elusive place that's as hard to reach as OZ during waking moments. It's not that we can't (and don't!) achieve our goal weight, energy and physical stride. It's that it can be challenging to stay there. . . forever. I'm not talking about the difficulty of Sticking With It!, of learning how to heed your prescribed dietary plan or known parameters for optimal health. Instead I'm referring to the changes that occur within our bodies themselves.

This past weekend I attended a conference in Philadelphia, the city of brotherly love, with hundreds of my holistic health sisters. We felt the love! Love for the work we do. Love for the powerful movement of healing and wellness that we're creating. Love for each other as we embrace all the possibilities of transformation both in our individualized missions and as a larger community. I especially appreciated that we sisters gathered not only in the city of love, but the city of liberty. Liberty is the right to behave according to our own free will and to take full responsibility for our actions. And this, above all else, is how I see my own relationship to the food I eat, the lifestyle choices I make and the ways in which I take care of myself each and every day. It's a freedom that I treasure. And it's this freedom that allows me to slow down each season, embrace the opportunity to take a deep breadth and take extra special care of my body. Taking a deep breadth is something we'll be doing quite a bit of this coming week in Retreat: A TrulyFood Autumn Cleanse. It's this time of year, before we embark on the indulgences of the holidays, that I really appreciate the occasion to pause. It's the perfect time to take an intermission from some of my usual eating patterns and find my way back to the capacity of my intentions and my accountability to my self. Fall is a time to pull your energy inward and to gather your reserves for the colder months ahead. It's a time to focus on family and home, to reflect inward and to prepare the body to release and welcome the changes that are on the horizon. Those changes are evident. The trees are golden and autumnal while the lurking gray sky suggests that winter is just around the corner.

It's been several months since I've written a Consumer's Report. Please don't let that fool you into believing that I'm not a consumer. Like you, I get caught out-and-about and also just appreciate being able to buy a pre-packaged thing or two that meets my exacting standards. I especially love to get my hands on a product that simultaneously passes the grade and is gratifying to the taste buds. That's what these pages are all about!