Sakara Life. - Eat Clean, Play Dirty

sakara (suh-KAR-uh), Sanskrit, adj.: With form. Or giving form to that which does not have form. n.: The action of turning thoughts to things and dreams into reality. What I think I create.

EDITOR : Holly Dolce

DESIGNER : Deb Wood

PRODUCTION MANAGER : Denise LaCongo

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

CONTROL NUMBER: 2018936278

ISBN: 978-1-4197-3473-1

B&N EDITION ISBN: 978-1-4197-4025-1

EISBN: 978-1-68335-502-1

TEXT AND PHOTOGRAPHS

COPYRIGHT 2019

SAKARA LIFE, INC.

JACKET AND COVER

2019 ABRAMS

PUBLISHED IN 2019 by Abrams, an imprint of ABRAMS. All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, mechanical, electronic, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the publisher.

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TO OUR MOMS
for inspiring us, and always believing in us.

TO OUR HUSBANDS
for being our rocks through all the ebbs and flows
of starting our own business.

TO OUR SAKARA TEAM
past and present, this all wouldnt exist without you.

TO OUR CLIENTS AND TO YOU
for taking this step for your own health
and letting us be part of your journey.

Food is one of the most powerful tools to help you manifest the things you want in life.

Food is medicine and pleasure, and an incredibly potent catalyst for change. Once you realize that what you put into your body shapes every aspect of your life, food becomes your most important ally in feeling strong, smart, successful, sexy, seductive, sensual, sacred, and spiritual. For manifesting your dream life... your Sakara life.

Sakara didnt originally start out as a business, it started out as a solution to our own needs. We grew up as best friends in the small hippie-spiritual town of Sedona, Arizona, meditating, doing tai chi, making nut milks from scratch, and snacking on chlorella tablets that left our teeth stained dark green. We were surrounded by people who had come from all over the world seeking the curative power of Sedonas energy vortexes, psychics, and healers. Our community was a beautiful blend of out-of-the-box thinkersNew Agers, Buddhists, people who channeled aliens, and people who believed they were the descendants of wolves.

We like to think that the seed for starting Sakara was planted when we were about twelve, when we met. Whitney was the new girl in school, and we became fast friends from the moment we shared our first math classas if our souls recognized each other. But, like all great journeys, it wasnt exactly a straight line from there to Sakara. After high school we parted ways for college, and while our paths eventually brought us back together in New York City, our relationships with health and healing had taken quite a detour.

I had to seek out the root cause of my symptomsand treat that.

WHITNEY TINGLE

I moved to New York to work on Wall Street at Merrill Lynch. I quickly fell into the typical corporate banker lifestyle of eighty-hour high-stress, low-sleep workweeks, punctuated by after-work drinks, quick, mindless meals, and bar food. Until, one morning, I woke up and realized I had gained fifteen pounds, and the cystic acne I had struggled with since high school was at an all-time worst. My face was covered in big painful cysts. It was affecting my career, my confidence, and my relationships.

By this point I had tried just about everything: all the miracle treatments I saw advertised on infomercials that promised perfect skin; crazy lights and laser treatments that peeled layers off my face and left me scabbed and scarred; different forms of hormone pills; and all the prescription treatments, from antibiotics (all the -cylines) to Z-Paks, the hard-core antibiotics given to obliterate pneumonia or bronchitis.

None of it worked. But I thought, Im in New York City, someone here has to be able to fix me! I went to all the dermatologists I read about in magazines; doctor after doctor prescribed the same solution: Accutane, again. It has always been touted as the miracle drug for acneand was, according to the doctors, my only option, even though Id already tried it, without success. Along with the Accutane, I took Prozac because suicide is a possible side effect; had my blood tested every other week to make sure the Accutane wasnt damaging my liver; was put on birth controland even signed a contract saying that if I got pregnant, I would have an abortion because of the high risk that the baby would come out with serious birth defects. I thought to myself, If my body isnt a safe place for a baby, how can it be a safe place for me? As I sat in the dermatologists chair contemplating if I should do it and put my body at risk once again, a voice inside of me shouted, DONT DO IT. Its not the answer. Look inside and find the root cause, and treat that.

When I was growing up, my mother was in and out of the hospital. Time and time again Id see doctors seem to miraculously save her life. I knew that I wanted to be a healer too. So I moved to New York City to study premed, with a major in biochemistry. As part of the program I interned in a local hospital, shadowing a renowned cardiologist. I saw him save lives every day, but I also saw something else. Many of the patients he treated were suffering from things like heart disease, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and diabetesdiseases that potentially could have been treated or prevented with the right lifestyle changes, if someone had intervened earlier and had given them recommendations for transforming their diets, exercise regimens, or mentalities. While I appreciated modern medicine and knew that it was helping to prolong these peoples lives, this wasnt exactly the kind of healing I had had in mind. I felt that we were missing a step in helping peoplewhat about the wellness before the illness? And how could I keep people well?

Meanwhile, I was in need of healing myself. I had been a chronic yo-yo dieter since I was nine years old. Food went from being something special that I shared with family and provided pleasure to being the enemy. I remember going to Costco with my mom and trying to sneak diet pills into the cart (I obviously got caught because Costco sells only about four thousand pills at a time, so they were pretty hard to hide). I tried every diet out thereAtkins, South Beach, even a diet where all I ate were fiber cookies I bought at the drugstore. I counted calories and carbs, perfectly portioned every meal, and got really good at saying no to food at the dinner table. I hid behind labels like vegetarian or vegan so I could tell people, I cant eat that. Things got even more extreme when I was living in New York because I was putting myself through school by modeling and acting. I saw all the beautiful, thin women I was up against for jobs, which made me that much more resolved to deprive myself of anything that would keep me from my goals. I found new ways to avoid food, with cleanses and detoxes, until I was essentially subsisting on liquids.