Nell Stephenson's Blog, page 17

Strategic Eating: Finding the Balance

Because there’s got to be room for wine, coffee and chocolate!

You’ve got an important meeting coming up, so you spend whatever time is needed to research and prepare, in order to put your best foot forward and ensure you’ll nail that deal.

Or perhaps, it’s not a work situation you’ve got on the calendar today, but a busy day carting the kids around from school to soccer to piano, on top of fitting in your workout and getting the household errands taken care of.

In either case, you find at the end of the day that you’ve gotten an incredible amount of work done.

So why is it, then, with your proven ability to plan for anything, that you often find yourself in a circumstance in which you’re suddenly irritable, unfocused and feeling so hungry, anything and everything around you seems fair game to eat?

Why haven’t you taken the time to map out when, what and where you’re going to eat?

Too busy?

Not enough time in the day to actually plan, prep and pack?

You’re not alone;  less than 3% of Americans according to a recent study are living a healthy lifestyle (1), and are doing exactly the same thing, day in and day out. 

Let’s get real:   we can find the time.  We always do, for those activities we feel deserve to take precedence.

The key here is to find efficiency and go for quality over quantity.

The same principle applies in sport; train too much and run the risk of overdoing it an ending up with adrenal fatigue or a sports injury.   Train less, but more intelligently and find yourself fitter, faster and leaner than ever!

Whether it’s due to:

a misconception that we need far more time in the day to shop, prep, cook and pack than we actually do
confusion of just what foods are really good choices and which to avoid
the feeling that it’s got to be all or nothing and every last morsel of food that passes your lips must have been prepared at home

the end result is the same, finding yourself in the same situation over and over again: a sudden dip in energy due to blood sugar crashing, a feeling of desperation of not knowing what to eat or where to get it, followed by a far less than ideal food choice and consequentially paying the price for ingesting something that’s not really even food.

Here’s where strategy comes in.   

I’ve found over the years in my work with clients, that taking a proactive and strategic approach to eating is significantly more effective than attempting to tie oneself to a rigid plan that doesn’t apply to practical life situations.

From an important business lunch to a weekend getaway with your significant other, being conscious of what you plan to put in your body is key in keeping you on the path to achieve, or maintain optimal health.

So how do you do this, exactly?

Let’s make it simple.

Below are my top five steps, in order, of how to begin to create the template of your own strategic eating plan independently.

Record the Now    Eating is not one size fits all.   Thus, rather than suggest everyone reading this post do exactly the same thing, your first step to personalize your own plan is to keep tabs on what the current day to day looks like.    What are you eating?  When? How much?  How hungry are you?  How full?  How much are you moving?   Are you sleeping well?  Do this as diligently as you can, and as honestly as you can for one single week.  Stay in the now, reserve judgement and commit to doing this integral part of what will become the foundation of your customized plan.
Observe Trends   Now it’s time to circle back.   Grab a red pen and start making observations.   Perhaps you noticed that every day at 3pm, you’re looking for a vanilla latte and a muffin, and upon further investigation you notice that all you’d consumed in the morning was a fresh pressed juice (which you didn’t realize had 60 grams of sugar,  no protein and no fat).    Red flag to up the fat and overall calories earlier on in the day!   You may be surprised at what you discover all on your own.
Reduce Inflammation   Now is the time for the fun to begin.   For a mere 3 weeks, promise yourself to stick to a new way of eating.   We’ve all heard the statistic about how it takes 21 days to develop a new habit, so let’s do this!    Go full anti-inflammatory (call it Paleo if you wish, or plant – based (which an authentic Paleo approach is)) and nix the stuff that can be contributing to inflammation, gut dysfunction and every modern day sickness we’ve created as a result of the food industry.   Beans, grains, dairy and white sugar:   out the door.    At the same time, be mindful to replace those potential triggers with superior, more nutrient dense foods, primarily in season, organic veggies in abundance, mindfully sourced proteins in moderation, ample natural fats and raw, sprouted nuts + seeds (so long as thee are not AI issues at bay) in moderation.    Limitless possibilities and only a handful of foods to cut out temporarily.     Keep tabs on your macros, too, in order to be sure you’re not accidentally creating a low-fat / low calorie version of an eating regime which might otherwise have been healthy.    Remember – we need good fat, a lot more than we’ve been told we do, in order to promote optimal brain function, weight loss and a reduction in many modern day health concerns (2).
Select What to Reintroduce   After three weeks of eating in this manner, don’t be surprised if you’re feeling more focused during the day, pushing more weight at the gym and noticing your belt needs a new notch or two poked into it!   But still, there’s that little devil on your shoulder reminding you it’s been almost a month since that piece of cake, that beer or the imported cheese you love so much.   What to do?  Go for it!   With the exception of those who have a diagnosed illness precluding them from eating certain foods (ie – if you have Celiac, its never a good idea to reintroduce gluten), using your own body’s responses to help you decide what is or is not a good idea to include now and then is where the empowerment comes in.   For example, if, after this three week period, you opt for a scoop of ice cream after dinner and you wake the next morning after a night of restless sleep, pimples on your chin and a bloated belly, that’s your body telling you loud and clear that for you, dairy isn’t a great idea.  On the other hand, perhaps you reintroduce that neat mezcal you so love (or two) and experience no untoward sensations.  Here’s where the positive mindset is crucial:  this is not a doom and gloom about having a few things to avoid.  Rather, it’s the knowledge that you can proactively select foods that you know will make you thrive and avoid the ones you know will make you feel ill.  Why choose to make yourself feel anything less than vibrant?
Factor in that 10%   Finally, here is where the strategy comes in.   You know which foods work best for you, and which ones you’ve got to be sure to steer clear of.      Now, the last step is to get the wheels turning on your planning.     Learning when to add more starch versus fat (such as on a Friday evening when you’ve got a long bike ride the next morning compared to a long day in the office) or how to gracefully order off the menu when you’re at dinner with colleagues are just two of many examples of how thinking ahead can mean the difference between continuing along the path you’ve forged to achieve your health goals and taking several steps back, ending up feeling irritated, puffy and more likely to throw caution to the wind in the form of an ice cream sundae.

Ultimately, in today’s world with a plethora of misinformation at our fingertips and confusing advice coming from sources with ulterior motives, it’s up to each and every one of us to do our homework and get back to basics.

Eat Food.  And Move.

 

(1) https://www.theatlantic.com/health/ar...

(2) http://www.artandscienceoflowcarb.com

What Does Bone Broth Do for My Gut, Exactly?

Bone broth is an anti-aging, energy boosting, gut healing exilir.

It’s something our grandparents, and every generation before that made, it’s good for the planet since using the bones illustrates the nose-to-tail concept to the fullest and it truly is a panacea that we can all benefit from, regardless of what type of eating regime we choose to implement in our day to day plan for healthy living.

We’ve all heard that collagen is helpful for boosting radiant skin, that keratin is something we might take to promote healthy nails and hair and that gelatin can help strengthen our connective tissue.

But what exactly does it do?

Below are five of the many gut health benefits to drinking bone broth on a regular basis:

Improvement of nutrient absorption  (1)

Suffering from leaky gut?   Most of us who have been subject to the standard American diet are, at least to some degree.   Collagen, being the main structural protein found within the human body that helps form connective tissue and “seals” the protective lining of the gastrointestinal tract, which is found in high concentration in properly produced bone broth, protects and seals the mucosal lining of the GI tract, improving nutrient absorption and keeping particles from leaching out where they shouldn’t be.

Increase in gut barrier protection (2)

Gelatin and glycine, both also found in bone broth, absorb water and maintain the layer of mucus that keeps gut microbes away from the intestinal barrier, reducing the severity of colitis by strengthening the mucus layer and altering gut microbiota composition.

Helps digestion (3)

Glycine also stimulates the production of stomach acid, essential for the proper digestion of food (3) as well as serves as an important component of bile acid, healing aid in digestion of fats, gut motility and healthy bowel movements.

Decreases inflammation (4)

Bone broth also boosts our digestive health by inhibiting cytokines, thereby decreasing inflammation in the gut lining. (4)

Helps reduce sugar cravings

If you’re constantly finding yourself wanting something sweet once 3pm rolls around, get ready to nip that fix in the bud.  By consuming nutrient dense bone broth earlier on in the day, you’ll improve your body’s ability to digest and assimilate micro nutrients in your veggie and good fat rich meals, thus stabilizing your blood sugar and putting an end to that awful roller coaster so many people find themselves on.

 

(1) https://draxe.com/the-healing-power-o...

(2) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/arti...

(3) https://chriskresser.com/the-bountifu...

(4) https://www.marksdailyapple.com/the-d...

 

Do We Really Need to Test Food = Medicine?

Apparently so.

According to a recent article in the NY Times (1), “a study will see if nutritious meals for the chronically ill can improve health and cut costs”.

Over the next three years, researchers from UCSF and Stanford will be assessing whether providing daily nutritious meals to chronically ill patients on Medi-Cal will affect their prognosis and treatment or cost of medical care.

Specifically, they’ll be looking at patients with diagnoses of congestive heart failure or Type 2 Diabetes who eat a healthier diet and nutrition information compared to the other group of similar Medi-Cal patients who do not receive the food and information.

While it’s certainly a step in the right direction to see the government and accredited universities acknowledging that there could possibly, just maybe, be a even the slightest correlation between what one eats and what their overall health profile looks like as a result, the first thing that springs to my mind is what version of a healthy diet will they be using?

The one that we’ve been told is the way to eat for good health by the USDA?

Including recommendations to avoid eating too much fat, to go heavy on the grain-based carbs and that everything, including white sugar, is ok in moderation?

Food as an industry has made things so confusing, and taken is so far away from what it really is that we should be eating, that it’s become commonplace to not know what to eat, when to eat it, where to get it and, most importantly whether or not it truly is a healthy option.

How can one decipher which expert’s advice to listen to, whose podcast gives the most accurate information and what doctor is offering the most unbiased guidance, genuinely geared to your own best health in mind?

It’s difficult not to be skeptical when, as one of the associate professors in the study, Dr. Hilary K Seligman, cited in the article, puts it, “the medical profession accepts the most expensive procedures without batting an eyelash, but with food, we have to prove it’s inexpensive to be accepted.”

I’ve often said that there’s no money in health, but a fortune in sickness.

By suggesting that we rely on the highly processed diet so typical of what many Americans eat, which, in truth, sets us up for increased risk of insulin sensitivity, diabetes, obesity, heart disease and auto immune disease, as opposed to a more authentic, human way of eating (2), we are in turn set up to then have to rely on big pharma to address all the health issues we create unknowingly.

The biggest shame of all is that if we don’t know the right questions to ask, we don’t know the right questions to ask.

Being in that space myself for years, prior to having to turn into my own detective and discover the core reason for my own years of being ill (mainly eating gluten), I know first hand how it feels to be caught up in the messy maze of being misdiagnosed, offered prescriptions as band-aids and never being asked what I was eating.

I’ve found one piece of guidance to be the most useful, across the board, regardless of what health issue one might be dealing with:   think about what your grandparents (or, for those of you spring chickens out there, great-grandparents) ate.

They certainly were not eating packaged items called snack food, eating every two hours or having to decipher confusing labels.

They just ate food.  Food which grew in the area they lived in.  Or, food that swam in the seas or rivers nearby, or ran on the land outside their doorstep.

So, let’s mimic that.

Which produce is available to you in your own community?  Which proteins can you eat in moderation which came from nearby farms or waters?    Are you incorporating a nice variety of natural fats?

That’s it.

The simplest way to cut to the chase.

No need to feel confused about label reading if there are no labels to read.

And who we do eat in this manner, authentic to the very core of our physiology, our bodies function optimally, we become less inflamed and healing can begin, even for those who have become very, very ill.

So, yes, food certainly is medicine, and the more we can each do our own part in terms of leading by example and educating those around us as a natural by-product, the closer we can get to a pro-active approach to food truly being regarded as the medicine, without a doubt.

Maybe even, dare I suggest, more easily than the idea that going to the western doctor for a pill as our first line of defense!

Undoubtedly, Western Medicine has made tremendous strides and can save lives.

We must just remember that taking pills needn’t, and shouldn’t be step one.

Without a solid food story in place, taking pills can be nothing more than a way to address a symptom, and to not factor in what we’re eating, the root cause would never be addressed.

Food = Medicine.

(1) https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/11/he...

(2) https://thepaleodiet.com/fight-inflam...

 

Come Away with Me… to Desert Hot Springs!

Are you thriving, or just surviving?

Are you ready to get to the bottom of those mysterious stomach issues and address gut health, rip off the sugar band-aid and lose those last stubborn 10 pounds?

If so, this retreat is just what you’ve been looking for.

Amongst the gorgeous setting of Two Bunch Palms in Desert Hot Springs, You’ll be guided to go back to an authentic approach to eating and create your personalized eating blueprint.

We’ll share your own food and exercise story with others with similar experiences, challenges and goals. We’ll hike, walk and talk and cook together.

And we’ll bond over the food you create as a community.

This is for you if:

• You’re confused about what information to follow when it comes to what to eat

• You need help reading through the confusing labeling in the grocery stores

• You’re feeling overwhelmed about finding time to cook

• You had it up to your eyeballs with trying one diet after another and none of them leading to long term success

• You want to learn how to make exercise feel playful, not punitive.

• You’re ready to feel empowered in the kitchen and free and sexy in your body

• It’s finally time to reverse age yourself through completely revamping the way you think about eating.

Eat Food and Move. Learn how simple it really can be!

REGISTER NOW  and save $250 with coupon code nell250.

See you in September!

Meat Eater ?

“I am a meat eater”.

This label arose during a recent conversation with a friend who has toyed with different types of eating regimes after battling cancer.

During a raw cleanse as part of her healing, she dove in to researching whether or not there really was a correlation between what she ate and how sick she became.

One site she visited suggested raw vegan was the only was to cure cancer, which opened the proverbial pandora’s box for more information, clues and ultimately, the decision to keep on her plant-based regime (which, by the way is the same way I eat, for reference).

Yes, I eat meat.

But I also eat a copious amount of local, in season vegetables and a high percentage of calories that I ingest each day come from a a variety of natural fats, several of which actually come from plants.

The amount of protein I consume is moderate and always, always, always mindfully sourced.  Only wild, local fish.  Only grass-fed, local beef. Only 100% pasture fed chicken and pork.

Another way of looking at it would be to say that I just eat food.

And to reiterate, it is plant-based.

Sure, the way I eat happens to be Paleo, and the macronutrients I choose to adhere to happen to be Keto, but I’ve come to find that broadcasting labels about how we all chose to eat can actually work against us.

Not just on a personal level, but also in terms of a societal level in terms being able to sift through so much of the misinformation that’s out there these days.

Recently, I’ve witnessed several interesting comments and conversations that I felt would make for excellent content on a blog post, such as:

“I’m vegan, but I do eat my mom’s homemade chicken soup and usually have steak on Sundays”.
“I’m vegetarian six days out of the week, but then I eat whatever I want on my cheat day”.
“I’m plant based, so a Paleo diet is out of the question for me”.

So what’s with the labeling?

When I was vegan, I was the angry type.

I wore a McVegan pin on my jacket.

I was ready to shout down anyone who fell into the category of being a ‘meat eater’ as bad, even evil.

I was all for animal rights, but I never stopped to think about how the message I was broadcasting and the label I gave myself was not actually doing anything for the very cause I wanted to support.

I was making one crucial mistake.

I was lumping all animal proteins in one category and judging them on all being bad, because an animal was killed, rather than educating myself on how vastly different the extremes are:  the grass-fed ranchers, the wild fisherman and the game hunters versus the conglomerate companies who truly view food as an industry and feel that the bottom dollar supersedes animal welfare.

Money talks.

If you compare price per pound of inhumanely sourced meat, fish, poultry and pork to properly sourced proteins, the former tends to be more ‘economical’ from a dollar perspective (leave out the price we pay in terms of health and environment for the moment).

Add that to the misinformation we’re often given about how ‘meat causes’ cancer (1) (sure, if we’re talking about meat that comes from improperly raised cattle) or how ‘pork should be avoided because it’s too high in cholesterol’ (2) (not pasture-raised pork) and we end up with a recipe for creating obesity, diabetes and a vast array of modern day sickness that is right in line with our modern day thinking of food as an industry.

Which is precisely why I’ve believed for a very long time that the easiest way to decipher what we really should and should not be eating is to go back to basics; and not even that far back.

There’s one simple question you can ask yourself that will cut right to the chase: “What did your great grand parents eat?”

They weren’t eating packaged snack items, they weren’t drinking high fructose corn syrup and they weren’t racking their brains trying to decipher tricky labels at the grocery store.

They just ate food.

They ate plants that grew close to where they lived, animals they hunted or fished locally and only what was available during any given time of the year.

They were humans, with the same digestive systems, the same brains and the same guts as us; and we can rest assured they weren’t spending time trying to figure out if something was organic or paleo or keto or vegan.

Whether or not there’s a psychological need which is being met by labeling ourselves with one particular style of eating or other may very well may be the case, is another discussion.

Science shows that humans eating animals was what led to the development of our brains as they are today (3) and in fact,  it’s entirely possible that without an early diet that included generous amounts of animal protein, we wouldn’t even have become human at least not the modern, verbal, intelligent humans we are.

Consider Micheal Pollan’s quote (4), “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.”, throw in a little Hippocrates, “Food is Medicine” and you’ve got yourself the simplest eating blueprint there is.

“Eat Food and Move” – Nell Stephenson, 2007

Just saying.

 

(1) https://www.drperlmutter.com/red-meat...

(2) https://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-...

(3) http://time.com/4252373/meat-eating-v...

(4) https://michaelpollan.com/reviews/how...

 

PMA: Are You Feeling It?

The philosophy that having an optimistic disposition in every situation in one’s life attracts positive changes and increases achievement is something often referred to as PMA (positive mental attitude); optimism and hope are vital to its development (1).

But how much of it is attitude… and how much is belief?

This all occurred to me yesterday during the seventh of nine VO2 max intervals on my bike trainer.

With Ironman Hawaii 70.3 just under a month away, game time is on, and fitting in key workouts strategically in a limited amount of time is essential.

The intervals were ‘only’ three minutes long, and during each one, I wanted to quit.

But I chose not to.

Why?

Because I knew that if I let my mind cop out when my body didn’t have to, I’d be selling myself short.

It’s something I’ve been practicing in sport for a quite a while and how I visualize every key workout and race in advance is absolutely crucial to being able to properly execute it.

It’s so much more than happily saying all is well and not really meaning it.

It’s one thing to say the outcome we want to see aloud, but if we don’t actually believe in our own ability to achieve whatever it is we’re trying to accomplish, how far can we really get?

Regardless of whether someone puts this question to the test in career, in sport or in life’s daily challenge, without actually feeling even the slightest spark of belief in achieving something which seems insurmountable, it’s so easy to let things slip.

Let’s use sport as case in point.

For me, this is where I first learned the importance of believing I was capable of doing something I’d never done before, and not letting what I had done in the past dictate what I may or may not do in the future.

If I’d chosen to let my past experiences in sport, I wouldn’t have gotten very far.

A prior marathon PR of barely under 5 hours and a first Ironman of over 15 aren’t exactly times representative of a highly competitive endurance athlete, yet something within me must have known on some intrinsic level that with focus, determination, the right eating regime, the right coach and the patience to stick with it for years to develop as an athlete… I could.

Could what?

Could anything.

I didn’t know it at the time, but in my early days of mentally rehearsing the race I wanted to see come to fruition, I was actually simultaneously starting my foray into meditation.

In fact, quite the opposite.

I must have tried sitting in meditation on and off hundreds of times over the course of twenty years, but inevitably, I’d last about a minute before feeling I’d failed because ‘my mind wasn’t empty’ or ‘I thought about something’, then conclude one more time that rather than try something I couldn’t do (meditate), I’d just go run.

In reality, however, my path toward mediation began with visualization.

Some experts (2) indicate that we can access the very same theta brain waves through visualization that we can tap into via mediation, the difference being that meditation is a state of deep concentration, bringing the mind to a focus, blocking out or quieting the typical mental chatter most people constantly carry around in their mind, while visualization is a specific kind of meditation.

Visualization is sometimes called mental imagery or mental rehearsal (3).

Using visualization first and foremost allowed me to choose my North Star, which, at the time was a very far away North Star, qualifying for Ironman World Championships, then work backward to create a path to get there.

Not necessarily being able to predict any obstacles that might have come my way, but at the same time, not worrying about them either.

Rather, just staying focused on where I was going was what was the core foundation of how I did that.

I find it fascinating to observe in others, as well as myself,  how we can accomplish such feats in one part of our lives, yet in other areas, sometimes feel we fall short.

Take the uber-successful executive who runs a global company, keeping hundreds of balls in the air, never letting one slip, yet doesn’t believe in her ability to make a commitment to her own health and fitness.

Or the world class athlete whose incredible strength and determination brings him to the top of his game year after year, but cannot manage his finances to save his life.

If we all wear different hats, particular to the roles we play in our lives, why not take on the mindset we naturally have in the areas in which we excel and apply it in those which need work?

The challenge I pose is this:  if we’re all so caught up in our mental chatter that it’s keeping us stuck and preventing us from going forward, why not find the time to begin a visualization and / or meditation practice, enabling us to tap into those beautiful theta waves, opening the doors to creativity?

Even as little as 12 minutes per day, according to some studies (4), can be enough to start the process of moving away from day to day (fight or flight) and into theta (the world of endless possibilities).

Once we can genuinely begin to get into a state of sheer focus, we can feel how we want to feel after a certain event has occurred.

It’s then, and only then, that the magic truly begins to happen.

 

 

 

 

 

(1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positiv...

(2) http://drjoedispenza.com

(3) https://www.livestrong.com/article/52...

(4) https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/21/we...

Clean Eating on Vacation

On the way to enjoy a weekend getaway and thinking in order to enjoy yourself, you’ve got to throw caution to the wind with your healthy eating habits?

Say goodbye to diet and deprivation and hello to enjoyable eating.

Even those of us who consider ourselves to be foodies ( and yes, I’m included in this group ) can take advantage of local cuisine when traveling, even internationally, if we just incorporate a tad of mindfulness into our choices.

Below are my top five tips to keep on point when you’re traveling to ensure you’re not missing out on anything while simultaneously not running the risk of returning home with any extra pounds.

LEARN THE CUISINE

If you don’t know what’s on the menu, it’s pretty hard to order.   Even more so when you’re in a foreign country with flavors that may be completely new to you.   Taking a mere thirty minutes before you take off to learn a little about what authentic dishes you’ll be privy to, once you arrive at your destination is all you need to be able to determine what your personal best options will be.   If you’re like me and gluten-free is a must do, it’s easy to learn which items on a typical menu at the country you’re visiting are going to be no-gos.   Why risk GI discomfort and a migraine after getting accidentally glutened because you didn’t realize that fattoush was a salad made from bread?  Do your homework and go for the dishes that are naturally free of inflammatory foods.   Psst- it’s easier than you might think in many places; sadly, here in the US, we have a lot more to dig into in terms of finding hidden junk in our foods versus countries who are still eating real, fresh food as their mainstay!

LOOK FOR VEGGIES, FATS + PROTEINS

Once you’ve learned a little about the cuisine you’re about to enjoy, dig a little deeper and see what some of the signature dishes are that you can plan to sink your teeth into.    You’d be surprised at how easy it is to eat a meal comprised of local, in season veggies, fats and proteins when traveling.    How about grilled wild branzino with sautéed, garlicky spinach when you’re traveling in Sicily?  Or one of my favorites, ceviche prepared with locally caught whitefish in coastal Mexico?  Doesn’t sound like a diet to me!

CHOOSE YOUR SPLURGES

One of the things I find most helpful when working with clients is to encourage them to test out what foods they may want to enjoy on occasion which will not cause undue stress in the aftermath.    Then, simply balance it into your macro nutrients for a failsafe plan allowing you to enjoy without repercussion.    If you already know that dairy makes you feel congested and causes a break out, why choose hand churned ice cream?   Go for sorbet instead.    After a meal rich in nutrient dense veggies and fat, the sugar from the sorbet will have a far less impact on the glycemic load.  Simply omit fruit earlier in the day to factor into the sugar you would have gotten and you’ll be right on point.  Better yet, add a piece of 100% chocolate, rich in antioxidants  and voila – you’ve got a decadent dessert planned.

GET LOCAL

Even if you’re staying at an all inclusive, it’s sometimes worth the trek to head into the surrounding local villages to try out some seriously authentic meals, prepared by the locals.   One client mentioned his favorite meal of all during his trip to Mexico was one prepared in an ad-hoc food stand on a farm he visited, using a wheelbarrow as a fire, preparing grilled veggies and pork from that very farm.   Talk about a low carbon footprint! 

BALANCE OUT THE BOOZE

There’s room for coffee, there’s room for chocolate and yes, there is room for alcohol.   While it might not rank on the top five list of things to consume each day, having a drink can be a part of a ritual, a ceremony or simply the compliment to a meal to end a long day.  The key is to choose wisely.  While a glass of wine may be the choice for some, a neat spirit can also be the way to go.   For years, I enjoyed a glass of Cab with dinner several nights per week, but over the past few years, have grown to enjoy a neat, grain free vodka or mezcal in its proxy.   Just remember what your mom told you; two glasses of water for every drink.  That, plus a delicious meal with ample fat and veg will create a lovely meal without worry of waking with a college-type hangover.

One must-have item to take with you for just in case: activated charcoal.   It could save the day if you accidentally ingest a mouthful of tap water when brushing your teeth, if you’re staying in an area where drinking local water isn’t recommended!

A small amount of planning in advance can be all it takes to have a fully immersed vacation without coming back from vacation feeling like you need a detox.

If you don’t add inflammatory, gut-busters into the mix in the first place, there’s nothing to detox!

Inspiration Grows Everywhere

What inspires you?

The nurse who just won the Boston Marathon after she decided to do it, just for fun (1)?

The world class athlete who, despite suffering a broken neck just days before the Ironman World Championships last year, rallied and toed the line at the very same race and executed a screaming fast time of 2:49 (2)?

The entrepreneur who decided to create an online bookstore and ended up as the world’s wealthiest person (3)?

All of the above?

Undoubtedly, inspiration is all around us, in the papers, in social media and certainly in the ether that surrounds us in these times of hyper focus on technology.

And while all can serve as motivation, there’s something lost if we skip over the human connection within our own communities and find a catalyst to do anything, right in our own neighborhoods.

For me, one person stands out with his innate ability to inspire… and he’s not even trying to do so; he’s just living his life.

John, the service advisor who helps me every time I take my car in for its check-ups, is pleasant, professional and the perfect example of approaching life with a healthy mindset in the simplest manner possible.

So simple, in fact, that it’s not remotely a big deal for him to prioritize eating a balanced diet, sourcing his food locally (as in, from the garden in his own backyard), preparing it each and every day (by taking a mere 10 minutes to walk outside and pick whatever looks good) for himself and his family to eat and subsequently, maintaining a lean body, a high level of mental focus and performance across the board in the workplace.

Are you thinking he must have loads of free time on his hands to grow a garden and cook for his family every night?

Nope.

He works 70 – 80 hours each week at the dealership.

And he is happily married with two kids.

And he takes care of everything else any homeowner and provider to the family needs to do on a regular basis.

So what’s the secret?

There is none.

It just comes down to first making what you eat a top priority and then mindfully planning your schedule to accommodate a very small amount of each day to follow the simple steps to nourish your body as well as your family’s.

We can all come up with excuses.

“There’s not enough time to cook.”

“I don’t know how to sift through all the confusing labels when I go grocery shopping.”

“It’s too expensive to eat healthfully.”

One, we can make time for whatever we feel is worthy.

If your health, and your family’s is important, whether or not we make time to source our food and prepare it isn’t even a conversation, any more than whether or not to take the time to drink water or sleep.

By the way, in the time it might take to add water to a boxed mix of mac and cheese and microwave it, to use an example John shared, he walks out to his garden, picks whichever leaves he feels like eating that night, sautéed them while he grills some pasture fed chicken. And his little kids eat it.

Two, yes, it is quite confusing to sift through confusing grocery labeling, but guess what? If we rely primarily on eating real food, we don’t have to worry about reading labels because there are none! Real food is just what it is. Organic broccoli and olive oil, grass fed steak and avocado with lime. Five ingredients, all of which are food. Boom. Doesn’t get simpler than that.

Three, sure, it can be pricy. But what costs more? Buying real, clean food that nourishes your body while supporting the community and the planet, or buying cheap food which makes us fat and sick, poisons the planet and leaves animal welfare at the bottom of the list of priorities?

Perhaps the best approach is what John summed up in one sentence: “I just do what my mom taught us growing up.”

He had the gift of a mom who made eating well so easy and inherently simple that it just never needed to be addressed.

We’ve made it tricky, complicated and expensive when it doesn’t need to be any of those.

Just eat food.

And move.

And don’t fuss about it. It doesn’t need to be a thing.

Need a little extra incentive?

See who you can find in your neighborhood that is your version of John.

They’re all around us; we just need to open our eyes and look around.

 

(1) https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/17/sp...

(2) https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/12/sp...

(3) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Bezos

Gut Health, Food… and Non Food

If I were writing this about twenty years ago, and I were to discuss the idea of diet cola and one’s gut, a diatribe about how diet cola is a great way to prevent you from developing a one might have been par for the course.

As a 16-year-old girl interested in health, fitness and nutrition in the early 1990s, I honestly believed that a low calorie (and certainly low-fat) approach to diet was the way to go.

In fact, even well into next decade when I learned about an authentic Paleo approach to eating and living in the early 2000s, it still took me a while to shift away from the mentality that low-fat, even if it meant including foods and ingredients that may not really even be food (hello, aspartame) in my day to day regime.

Fortunately, in my journey from the depths of deplorable gut issues which ultimately landed me in a manner of eating which I still advocate (Paleo + Keto), I was able to tune in quite specifically to what works and what must be avoided for my own body to feel its best.

Sadly, however, so many of us are still relying on sugar in all its forms to sustain us.

Whether it is that reliance on stopping at the local juice bar for an all natural smoothie, a diet cola or, for the athletes out there eating this, a heavy reliance on maltodextrin based sports nutrition, depending on sweet isn’t only bad for how we feel in terms of energy and focus, it’s actually toxic to the health of our gut.

In a great article in the Sunday times last weekend (1), the correlation between ingesting not just diet soda, but highly processed, packaged food in general, and the germs that our guts subsequently attract as a result adds one more reason to the long list of why we should be going back to basics and eating a real, whole food based diet.

On top of the sugar and salt, the additives in these products too extend shelf life are directly affecting our gut microbiome, which consists of trillions of bacteria living in our guts.

For example, Clostridium Difficile (C.Diff) is on the rise (2); one of the reasons for which is the ingestion of a sugar called Trehalose, which, as of the late 90’s was found to be a cheap to make stabilizer to keep packaged items on the shelves of the grocery store last longer.

Side effects? A compromised ability to ward off bacterial infections we may have otherwise been able to handle without issue.

Other food additives lead to a weakened mucus barrier, cause inflammation and pave a clear path to obesity and diabetes (3).

Yet other manufactured products, such as the food thickener maltodextrin (4), which, as an endurance athlete, I used to consume under the guise that ‘at least it was gluten free’, are being shown to thin the mucus barrier and nourish strains of e. coli.

In addition, the artificial sweeteners found in all too many products in cans and boxes also created negative shifts in benevolent gut microbes and actually lead to glucose intolerance.

Yet all of the above are not only completely legal, legitimate products to add to our “food”, in many cases we are counseled that eating these items can all be part of a healthy, balanced diet.

All are FDA approved.

And they’re not addressed this issue which, one might say, is perhaps just slightly something we all need to be concerned with.

Why?

Because “their focus is not on addressing diseases that might stem from long term tweaking of our microbes and chronic inflammation, but rather, on acute toxicity.

So how is one to navigate through the aisles of the store, the confusing labeling and the vast array of advice given from experts in varying fields of every type of eating imaginable?

Ask yourself if your grandparents would have eaten it.

Ask yourself how many steps it took for the item to get from where it grew, ran or swam to get to your plate.

Ask how far it’s traveled.

Ask if it’s seasonally appropriate.

While we do ultimately have to self educate, the simple act of becoming aware of what we’re eating, and the result it has on how we feel is a huge first step in the right direction.

Once we begin to become cognizant of one simple thing (is what we’re putting in our mouths really food?), we set the way to developing a better understanding of the food industry in general.

That food is an industry in and of itself says quite a bit; the most surefire way to ensure you’re eating food that is really food is to make most of what you eat come from local, reliable, mindful providers.

If what you put on your plate didn’t come in a package and it didn’t come from far away, you’re already leaps and bounds ahead of the game.

Eat Food And Move.

(1) https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/06/op...

(2) https://www.nature.com/articles/natur...

(3) https://www.nature.com/articles/natur...

(4) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2...

My Favorite Recovery Drink: Bone Broth!

What you’re looking at is not a commercially prepared workout recovery drink, nor is it what I personally what I drank for years and years.

You’re looking at bone broth. Iced and blended.  And maybe sometimes with just a touch (a touch only inasmuch as not to inundate the body with sugar) of fresh beet juice added for that extra boost of naturally occurring nitrates that increase nitric oxide.

While the 4:1 Carb:Pro ratio I relied upon for such a long time, even in a real-food version (think coconut water, banana, egg), may have been straight forward and more cost effective than many of the commercially prepared recovery drinks, the one I love most now isn’t even sweet at all.

Think about it: if you’re out on the saddle or on the trails for a hard training session, do you really want something sugary sweet when you get back?

I don’t.

And in all truth, I didn’t even want it back when I was using gels to fuel my training and racing. But I forced it down, thinking it was the only way to recover, rebuild and restore.

Now, having been following a fasted / fat-adaption protocol not only for training, but for day to day living for over three years, the last thing I want is sugar…ever, including after a workout.

I want salt.

And so I have it.

Not doing so would be foolish; restricting salt is an issue for endurance athletes (1).

By the way, it’s not just me reciting anecdotally; research now supports this.

Elite endurance athletes who eat very few carbohydrates burned more than twice as much fat as high-carb athletes during maximum exertion and prolonged exercise in a new study — the highest fat-burning rates under these conditions ever seen by researchers. (2)

The athletes in the study ate a diet similar to mine; 10 percent carbs, 19 percent protein and 70 percent fat.

Yes, 70% fat.

Those who are open minded are beginning to fiddle with this, if even just a little, which is long overdue, yet in my experience, the approach is still met more often than not with doubt and judgment.

I, along with a growing number of athletes, are able to train and compete at a high level using fat as their fuel, stay lean, healthy and avoid numerous health issues.

Even Kobe Bryant is said to rely on this elixir of gold as his ticket to keeping lean, fit and focused! (3)

Yet still, the common response is disbelief.

I am never quite sure how to reply to that; we each can choose to open our minds to something new if and when it’s the right time.  If we continue to rely on sugar as our fuel and experience more and more declines in health and performance, there has got to come a time when we call a spade a spade and acknowledge that the common advice we’ve received for the last few decades is simply not working.

Here’s another way to spin it.  What do you actually want after a long or intense workout?

When I get back from a training session, especially a longer, intense session and even more so, one which occurs in the heat (again- all my sessions are all in a fasted state, regardless on duration) I want water and I want savory!

I focus first on rehydrating, and one thing that fits perfectly not only into what my body needs, but what I want, is bone broth.

Chilled on ice with salt on top… beyond delicious and just what my body tells me it needs.

Check out my recipe for bone broth, make up a batch while you sleep (read the recipe and you’ll see what I mean), keep some in the freezer and arm yourself to recover, rebuild and repair the way nature really intended.

After all, this is what food really is!

(1) Rosner, And Mitchell H. “Mitchell H. Rosner.” Exercise-Associated Hyponatremia. N.p., 01 Jan. 2007. Web. 26 Sept. 2016

(2) “Elite Performance on a Diet with Minimal Carbs Represents a Paradigm Shift in Sports Nutrition.” ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, n.d. Web. 26 Sept. 2016.

(3) Holmes, Baxter. “Chicken Soup for the Aging Star’s Soul.” ESPN, ESPN Internet Ventures, 15 Jan. 2015, www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/12168515/....