Nell Stephenson's Blog, page 62
March 30, 2014
Room Service, Please
You’re on vacation and taking advantage of the rare opportunity to sleep in a little. You love the idea of partaking of the decadence of room service for breakfast, but a quick glance at the menu quickly forces a change of heart.
Amongst all the offerings of pancakes, waffles, house made granola with milk and a continental breakfast with croissants and orange juice, it seems quite clear that there’s no way you’ll be able to stay true to your Paleo regime if you proceed down this path.
Or is there?
Yes, indeed.
Finding eggs on a the breakfast menu is extremely easy, as well as veggies which are often presented as an omelet. Tomato is typical as are sides of fresh fruit and sometimes even a steak and eggs option.
With just a little bit of asking questions and being creative, you can certainly dine in, Paleo style without having to take even a little step off your True Paleo path.
Who wants to start the day on vacation with a stomach ache or migraine after eating the wrong foods? No need! Now, enjoy that breakfast!
March 29, 2014
Cuban Cuisine in Miami…Paleoista Style
I love Latin food! And there’s no good reason not to partake of it simply because I happen to follow a Paleo regime.
Today, while on a weekend trip to Miami, for example, I had a lovely lunch outdoors in the balmy weather at a cute little tapas place.
My husband and I dined on ceviche on top of a mixed green salad with avocado and tomato, house made guacamole with carrot and jicama, mashed plantains and a Paleoized version of Ropa Vieja (shredded beef, sans the rice!).
Just one more example of how nicely Paleo can fit into all sorts of worldly cuisines!
March 28, 2014
A Very Highly Recommended Read- The Wahls Protocol
As the Paleo movement continues to evolve (pardon the pun), we see more and more books on the subjects. From cookbooks, some of which are Paleo and some of which are more focused on a particular author’s take on it, to the must-haves, such as the work of Dr. Loren Cordain and Robb Wolf as well as some written more from the perspective of how this healthy regime has changed lives.
One such book that I cannot possibly recommend highly enough is that of Dr. Terry Wahls, The Wahls Protocol.
By the way, if you haven’t heard about Dr. Terry Wahls, make her the subject of your very next google search and make that search now.
I first learned about her when I was doing some research about how the Paleo diet would fit in with the treatment of autoimmune conditions, specifically MS. After I began following Paleo in 2005 and learned about how positively it can affect this illness, it became particularly significant to me to understand as my own mom has the very same disease.
I met Dr. Wahls last year at PaleoFx and had the opportunity to listen to her speak in person, which is even more inspiring than her YouTube Video (also a must-watch).
She shares her history of her own challenges with MS, how it affected her both personally and professionally, how the Western approach to treatment failed to stop the progress and how she ultimately created her own natural protocol to reverse the damage of years of battling with this debilitating disease.
She outlines exactly what to eat, why, how much and includes recipes to boot! You won’t finish the book wondering how to do anything as it’s outlined there for the taking in its entirety.
Her new book, The Wahls Protocol, is an absolute must-read.
Whether you’re faced with a similar issue, or perhaps you know someone who is, or you simply need a little wake up call to put things in perspective, this book is one that stands out above and beyond and should serve as a foundation of anyone’s Paleo library (or library for health and wellbeing in general!)
What a perfect illustration of Hippocrates’ “Let Food Be Thy Medicine”!
March 27, 2014
Bored of Berries?
“You mean I can eat other fruit, aside from berries?”, asked a new client, after seeing the menu plan I’d designed for her?
Surprised, I replied that of course she could eat other fruits.
She explained that her Cross Fit instructor had told her, under no uncertain terms, that the only fruit she should ever eat, if she were to eat fruit at all, would be berries, due to their high fiber content and low ranking on glycemic index.
While these characteristics are certainly true, and while berries, when in season and hopefully organic are an excellent choice to include in our regime, to assume we should never eat any other fruit would be quite limiting.
I do feel most people tend to eat too much fruit and not enough veggies, thus my recommendation to ‘eat lots of veggies… and some fruit’, rather than the other way around, but when we do add some of nature’s tasty sweets to our regime, we should aim for as much variety as we do with our veggies and proteins.
Go for the lower glycemic fruits, like said berries, as part of meal, such as sprinkled on a salad, and save those fruits higher in sugar, like ripe banana, for use after a workout.
If we do our best to keep our energy levels balanced throughout the day by eating meals that have an overall low glycemic load, we won’t spike our blood sugar and end up on that awful roller coaster of peaks and valleys all day long.
Cherries, anyone? Or some grapefruit? With rankings of 22 and 25, respectively, these fruits are just two examples of good, low glycemic food choices.
March 26, 2014
Magical Salts…Are They Paleo?
We all know salt is not part of the True Paleo regime. Yes, for athletes it may be indicated to add some to the diet, if only to replace what we sweat out during all those miles, but for the most part, we as a society don’t need to be dousing our food in the stuff.
The other day I wrote about using less salt in cooking, specifically when asking the chef at a restaurant to be a bit less heavy handed with it.
But what about Himalayan Salt? Black, Kona Salt? Fleur de Sel? Ancient Cyprus Salts?
The Filling Station in Chelsea Market offers more variety of salt than I’ve ever seen in one place!
But does the seemingly exotic nature of the salt mean we can go head and use it with reckless abandon, just like salt-free herbs and spices?
Not at all.
Salt is still salt.
By weight, both table salt and sea salt have 2,325 mg sodium/teaspoon.
And all salts contribute to:
Cardiovascular Disease The Harvard School of Health published a study showing that too much salt is linked to cardiovascular disease. Blood pressure rises with increasing amounts of sodium in the diet, which raises the risk for cardiovascular disease and death rates over the long term. They cite a recent study which found that “higher salt intake was associated with a 23 percent increase in stroke and a 14 percent increase in heart disease”.
Cancer The World Cancer Research Fund and American Institute for Cancer Research concluded that higher intakes of salt, sodium, or salty foods is linked to an increase in stomach cancer.
Osteoporosis The more salt you take in, the more calcium your body flushes out in the urine. If calcium is in short supply, it can be leached out of the bones. So a diet high in sodium could have an additional unwanted effect—the bone-thinning disease known as osteoporosis. (Important to note, too, that it is imperative that the calcium sources should be from foods which are alkaline in nature, like leafy greens, rather than dairy, which is so acid it has the same bone-leaching effect on our skeletons.)
Is a pinch of salt now and then going to kill you?
No. I’d rather have a client tell me that they used a little salt than that they ate a little bit of bread!
Just take it with a grain of salt (oh, dear, sorry about that) and remember it’s still salt, even if it is pink or ancient or from the bottom of a volcano.
March 25, 2014
SoHo is OhSo Paleo
SoHo House, that is! I was thrilled to see the brunch offered at Soho House New York the other day.
Sure, one could partake of the typical croissants, cheeses with dried fruits and the decadently, but not remotely Paleo, Nutella speed on toast, but in actuality, the majority of what was offered was really quite clean.
Mounds of freshly poached shrimp, oysters on the half shell, steamed broccoli, roasted zucchini, pan seared cauliflower, poached salmon, fresh fruit…. I’m not making this up and it’s nothing I special ordered!
This was refreshing, not only to the body, but to the mind as well!
Let’s hope this is something that’s only beginning to trend!
March 24, 2014
Easy on the Salt
One of the simplest modifications we can (try to) make when dining out, in order to keep on track with our Paleo regime is to ask for no salt during the cooking process.
It’s no surprise to anyone who has been Paleo for a while that once our taste buds have a chance to come back to life after years of being inundated with salt as the sole ‘seasoning’, we have a significantly heightened awareness to just how salty things really are.
The other night, I had what would have otherwise been an absolutely lovely meal… grass fed steak, sauteed broccoli and onions, except that the chef was so heavy handed on the prep, it was hard to eat it!
I’d been so caught up in conversation that I failed to add that one simple request, along with my usual ‘please make sure there is no gluten or soy in my steak’, and it cost me my meal!
Aside from that, I found it alarming to think about how more people than not are so accustomed to so much salt, they can’t even taste it anymore and have to keep adding it on as their palates lose the ability more and more to detect any other flavor.
Yikes!
Even if we ask for no salt, chances are it’s still going to get a little bit of a dousing, so we may as well be on the safe side and make this one additional request when we place our order.
Easier to add a pinch after the fact, if need be, versus trying to undo it. (If you’re on your way to Paleo and still using a little salt here and there, that is…) Not really possible, is it?!
March 23, 2014
OMG, OMilk is Omazing
Sorry. Too much alliteration, I know, but I can’t help it; I was so jazzed to find freshly made nut milks with no horrible additives for a change when I stopped into the Forager’s Market last week, I just had to share this with you!
Nearly every time I come across an almond ‘milk’ or coconut or whatever the ‘milk’ may be, it’s chock full of a whole host of unfavorable ingredients that I wouldn’t recommend touching with a ten foot pole.
According to their site, OMilk is “a scrumptious, healthful and totally natural way of getting your milk fix without the dairy.”
Check out the ingredients in all four varieties:
Cashew Classic made with Madagascar vanilla bean, unfiltered – enjoy this milkshake-like treat as an afternoon snack, meal replacement or even as dessert
Organic Almond this is our most versatile nut milk, scarily close to the real deal. Use this on or in anything or enjoy on its own
Cold-Brew Coffee Almond Milk We took our refreshing almond milk and mixed in a rockin’ cold-brew coffee extract for a delicious summer pick-me-up
Pumpkin Pie Cashew Milk A lightly sweetened cashew milk seasoned with a blend of cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, ginger and more — like Fall in a bottle!
That’s it!
No guar gum, no cane sugar, no nothing funky at all!
Now, do keep in mind that this would still be something to consider a special treat once in a while, or a good option for an endurance athlete to have after a long session, rather than something to chug down for breakfast each and every day.
We don’t want to lose focus on the mainstay of our diets being fresh, local veg, wild proteins and natural fats, but knowing this product exists for specific occasions is quite refreshing!
March 22, 2014
Hacking The Hacker’s Lifestyle
What a concept: imagine if what we ate played a role in our ability to perform at a high level in the workplace and tap into our creative potential much more so that if we try to do so under the influence (of loads of sugar, caffeine and nothing of any nutritional value!).
Hello?
While I’m being sarcastic, the unfortunate reality is that many a workplace environment is brimming with every last thing you could imagine in terms of highly refined, processed (non)food items, free for the taking in the break room and staff lounge.
One particular company based in Washington is known for its unlimited free soft drinks that all of its employees can help themselves to, night or day.
This is precisely why I was thrilled to read about Justin Mendelson, the creator of Hackfit, who is “ encouraging hackathon participants to embrace healthy habits”.
An article in SFGate.com explains:
“Hackfit – a hackathon Mendelson founded that encourages healthy eating, exercise and a decent amount of shuteye – made its debut in Boston last fall. This weekend, it’s coming to San Francisco.
The junk food-centric, caffeine-fueled culture is deeply embedded in the startup community, said Mendelson, but nowhere is it on display as prominently as the hackathon.
The goal of a hackathon is to create a prototype of an idea in record time – often over a single weekend. For the ambitious software developer, that usually means no rest (or leafy greens).
Considering that exercise, sleep and healthy eating are good for the brain, Mendelson wonders why coder culture so often revolves around late nights, glued to the desk, binging on pizza.”
What a nice change of pace. Let’s keep making steps in this direction, corporate America!
While I’m not pretending to believe we’re going to see companies turning Paleo overnight, at the very least, if we can start planting these seeds…it’s a start!
Get moving, get nourished and watch productivity and creativity reach an all time high!
March 21, 2014
No Fresh Coconuts?
I often list three fats as ‘go to’ sources that we should aim to include in our diets each and every day: raw avocado, cold pressed, extra virgin olive oil and coconut oil.
Organic coconut oil and coconut butter are relatively easy to come across at most health-food type grocery stores, but the question that arises time and time again is how one might go about finding a Paleo friendly source of coconut milk and coconut cream when there’s no access to the real deal.
Canned or sealed in a tetra pack is not usually an option as both tend to be full of stabilizers (like guar gum), sugars and other additives we simply don’t want to be putting in our bodies.
Let’s Do Organic has come to the rescue! I found it doing an online search to see if there was anything that could fit the bill and it turns out, there is!
They sell a number of coconut products, but this one is a winner in my book. The ingredient is coconut and it comes in a vacuum sealed pack of solid coconut cream. You can melt it and mix with whatever amount of water you deem appropriate based on whether you’re trying to create a thin broth, for example, or a thick, decadent dessert concoction using some raw cacao, and perhaps a light dusting with sumac or cayenne!
It’s really a staple for any Paleo pantry!
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