Whether you are traveling on a plane, walking your pups out in the cold weather, not getting enough sunshine or your friends or kids are sneezing in your face, there’s always something getting passed around in winter. I see it in the entries of the grocery store and the aisles of the checkout stands and all my cancelled meeting lately. It’s out there.

In fact, as I write this, I myself just kicked my own brief stint with a cold. Yup, even nutritionist and holistic practitioners aren’t immune (pun intended, hehe)!

But I’ve got some good news! I’v got some tricks and tips, I personally use to stay healthy and also beat that cold or flu! So, rather than having it hang around for 2-4 weeks (or more like I have heard from some) like a lot of my friends and family out there, this is exactly what I do to get quicker faster, so, I was only feeling down a couple of days instead of weeks.

I’ve been having amazing conversations lately! I think whenever you are doing something extraordinary or out of the norm, people are intrigued and that’s when real conversations start to happen, none of that small-talk BS. For awhile after I stopped drinking, I was hesitant or fearful of telling those I was out with that I wasn’t drinking because I didn’t what to make other feel uncomfortable or I wasn’t quite sure what to say. But lately, I have been feeling strong in what I’m doing and welcoming the tough, thoughtful conversations around it. And I’m even getting more positive responses than I once used to. I also I get a lot of people saying that they’ve never gone more than a few days to a month without alcohol, but are curious about living alcohol free. I know it’s a challenge, anytime we change our habits it is uncomfortable. But getting uncomfortable is always where change starts and happens. Jason Reynolds says it best, “Be not afraid of discomfort. If you can't put yourself in a situation where you are uncomfortable, then you will never grow. You will never change. You'll never learn.”