Nell Stephenson's Blog, page 80
October 7, 2013
Harvest Your Health Bundle Sale Starts Today!
If you missed the last bundle sale I participated in, here’s your chance to make up for it.
For one week only, you can pay $37 and get a collective value of $1,037 worth of ebooks and Paleo or Primal information, including a code for your choice of any of my six week download plans, which is nearly a 50% savings on its own!
Here’s what the host of the sale, Todd, of Primal Toad, has to share in terms of description of the sale:
“The trees wear brilliant shades of yellow, orange, purple, and red. The air is crisp as it brushes our cheeks, and the scent of sweet apple, pumpkin, and cinnamon dance in our homes. Autumn has arrived in full force while the team at Primal Toad was busy harvesting the best collection of health and wellness eBooks to share with you all. Including 65 unique authors, the Harvest Your Health Bundle is sure to bring a bounty of inspirational wellness wisdom to you this fall season.
Your health is important to us, so we wanted this bundle to be affordable for everyone. For one week only, this incredible collection is available for 95% off retail value! You pay just $37!“
Click here to make your purchase; this is a steal of a deal!
October 6, 2013
Three Ingredient ‘Breaded’ Fish
Recipe type: Main
Author: Nell Stephenson
Prep time: 2 mins
Cook time: 15 mins
Total time: 17 mins
Serves: 2 – 3
It doesn’t get much simpler than this. Chose your favorite local, wild fish, the raw nuts you love best and a little coconut oil and you’ll have a lovely meal in no time flat!
Ingredients
One pound fillet of wild, local fish, skin on
2 tablespoons of raw nuts, such as walnuts, macadamia or pecan
1 tablespoon coconut oil
Instructions
Preheat oven to 450
Pat fish dry
Grind nuts
Press onto both sides of fish
Rub some of the coconut oil onto a glass or ceramic dish
Place fish, flesh side down on pan
Place remaining coconut oil on top of nuts, on skin
Cook for roughly 15 minutes or until internal temp = 160F (unless sashimi grade, in which case you can cook until your desired level of doneness)
While fish cooks, prepare your favorite steamed or raw greens
Serve fish on bed of greens
2.1.7
Sweating It Out…But With An Awful Odor?
It’s a rather delicate topic to cover, but let’s face it, we’ve either experienced it ourselves, or second-hand from a friend, family member or co-worker: an unpleasant body odor.
I’m not just talking about an unfavorable scent that emanates from one’s pores during a workout at the gym or a hard run on the trails, but a seemingly constant smell that’s really difficult to ignore.
It can be puzzling; perhaps the person with the issue has very good hygiene, bathes regularly, and all other outward appearances would make it inconsistent with the simple fact that they just don’t smell that great.
What’s going on?
Well, as with everything, we need to look inside.
Similar to when someone has an issue with a skin condition and doesn’t factor in their diet, addressing a body odor problem without thinking about what one eats is not taking a comprehensive approach.
Wearing a stronger deodorant/anti-perspirant or even more drastic, having surgery to control ‘over active sweat glands’ is not the answer.
What’s the person eating?
If someone follows the Standard American Diet, it’s quite likely that they’d have an acidic pH. Body odor, as well as chronic bad breath, can be a symptom of acidic conditions in the body because your skin and lungs are emitting excess acidity.
If someone were to follow the Paleo diet incorrectly, and not balance out their macro nutrients ratio to create a net alkaline diet, they, too, could show signs of another internal issue going on: ketoacidosis, which is a condition in which abnormal quantities of ketones are produced in an unregulated biochemical situation. In order to reach a state of ketoacidosis, the body has to be in a state of not producing enough insulin to regulate the flow of fatty acids and the creation of ketone bodies. (This is not to be confused with benign dietary ketosis is a controlled, insulin regulated process which results in a mild release of fatty acids and ketone body production in response to low carbohydrate intake, and higher fat consumption.) Either can result in a foul odor, almost ammonia-like as well as a metallic taste in one’s mouth.
Another issue that can factor largely into one’s body odor is whether or not they’re taking prescription medications which can also significantly alter blood chemistry and resulting body odor.
Also, we need to address average hours slept and anxiety levels, both of which can affect cortisol, which can make you sweat. While sweat alone isn’t stinky, sometimes, when added to the bacteria that lives on your skin, the resulting mix can be quite unpleasant.
Finally, hydration levels should be factored in.
If you cannot make heads or tails of it, don’t just cover it up with a band aid in the form of an under arm guard or extra deodorant. Check with your naturopath or functional medicine doctor and get to the cause of it, rather than just treating the symptom.
Always better to get to the source!
October 5, 2013
Are You Avoiding Paleo Because ‘Cavemen Died Young’?
How many times have you heard the argument that The Paleo Diet is not all it’s chalked up to be because of a shorter life span of a ‘caveman’?
“Cavemen didn’t live very long, so I don’t really think what they ate was that healthy after all, if they died at age 30″, is one example of a statement I’ve been presented with many a time.
The latest article I came across was in Living Green Magazine which included statements such as:
“The experts found fault with the lack of dairy and grains, which puts dieters at risk of nutrient deficiencies“
and
“there are potential risks to heart health due to the high meat intake, and the fact that sample Paleo menus contain more calories from fat and significantly fewer carbs than the government recommends“.
Oddly, despite the title, there didn’t seem to be any references to how long cavemen actually lived, aside from this quick little mention, which is far from scientific:
“Critics of this diet argue that it is too restrictive and scoff at the whole concept that our bodies are built the same way as our hunter-gatherer ancestors. Plus, they add, our caveman ancestors didn’t live too long, did they?”
What was the average life span of a caveman?
I honestly do not know. I’ve read studies that suggest they lived only into their 30s while others suggest longer. How many cavemen died early because they themselves fell prey to the very animals they hunted? Or due to infections suffered from wounds they were ill equipped to treat?
What I do know, however, is that after nearly nine years of Paleo, I continue to feel the healthiest I’ve ever felt, sleep phenomenally, am rarely sick and all the gastric issues that plagued me for the first 25 or so years of my life are ancient history.
Further, given the strong correlation between following a modern day hunter gather diet and a much lower risk for so many of the diseases that plague our society together, I’m happy to continue being a Paleoista for as long as I can envision.
Giving up on Paleo and adding dairy, grains and legumes for fear of an early death if I chose not to add those (non) foods just doesn’t make sense to me.
October 4, 2013
Have A Little Lamb
Lamb kebabs, braised lamb shanks (as shown above with veg and cauliflower ‘rice) and coconut lamb curry are just a few of my favorite dishes to prepare using this healthy meat.
Did you know that grass fed lamb is packed with health benefits:
Great source of iron (twice as rich as pork, three times as rich as chicken and six times as rich as fish!)
Zinc
B and D vitamins
If you’ve had lamb before and felt it was less than enjoyable to eat, give it another try.
I, too, felt the same way; as a child, the only memories I had of eating lamb were not that great. An over broiled lamb chop with no seasonings that I had on a visit to a friend’s house left me with a very bad taste in my mouth…. pun intended.
Fortunately, my husband shared with me his love of a good curry ‘slap up’, including some of the tastiest lamb dishes I’ve still ever enjoyed to this day, prepared in several different Indian regional styles.
Try to source it locally; inquire at your farmer’s market or check out Eat Wild’s site, rather than going straight for the New Zealand imports. Unless, of course, you live in New Zealand!
October 3, 2013
Is Sprouted Garlic Safe to Eat?
The night before last, when I was teaching one of my Paleoista classes at The Gourmandise in Santa Monica, we were doing our mise en place when one of the students asked me a question I thought would be worthy of writing a post about.
Whilst chopping our garlic, she noticed one of her cloves had begun to sprout. She said that she’d heard that eating sprouted garlic might indicate that particular clove, or even the whole head should be discarded and wanted to know what the real deal was.
If you see a little bit of green in the center of garlic cloves, it simply means the garlic has begun to age and is about to sprout. It’s harmless, but it does have a bitter flavor, so you’re probably better off cutting out that little bit and using the rest.
What’s Cooking America has a great site devoted completely to all things garlic and offers great tips on selecting, storing and cooking with garlic.
Most importantly, buy it fresh, local and organic. Not only is it the most cost effective, it will also last far longer than the type you can purchase which is already peeled and ‘ready to use’.
With its many health benefits and wonderful taste, garlic is a must-eat part of True Paleo living!
October 2, 2013
Don’t Be Afraid of Fat
I can’t begin to count the number of clients that are fat-phobic. Not of becoming fat, but of eating it.
I was in the same boat for a long time, having lived through the glorious early 90′s low fat/ fat-free craze. ”Doesn’t fat make people fat?” is probably one of the most often asked questions.
Here’s the thing: real, healthy, unrefined fat eaten in balance with wild proteins and plenty of fresh, local, seasonal veggies is not only not going to make anyone fat, it will actually do just the opposite and help one lose weight.
If you’re partly there, and having just a little olive oil on your veggies or a meager slice of avocado on your salad, try upping it, just a little, if even for a short term experiment.
One client reported using a scant teaspoon of olive oil on her salad with the juice of an entire lemon; another said she often relied on seven almonds and an apple as a snack.
It’s not enough, not by a long shot.
Don’t misinterpret this as a suggestion to chug down a bottle of Greece’s finest, but rather to add just a little more than you normally would and see if you don’t feel more satiated after every single meal with a more balanced blood sugar level as a result. Try it for one week and note you results. I’ll bet you won’t go back!
Remember to use extra virgin olive oil, raw avocado along with coconut oil as your go-to fats…not nuts. Nuts are still high in Omega 6′s and meant to be eaten as the occasional garnish, not on large quantities like handfuls upon handfuls consumed at the office because they’re ‘easy’.
Now, drizzle on that oil!
October 1, 2013
The Best Training Partner
Good old Daisy. Our Weimaraner had her 14th birthday back in June and now, after September has passed, my husband and I calculated she’s got to be about 100 in human years now, and she’s still going strong.
Sure, she’s got her tweaks and twinges; a little arthritis here, a little muscle stiffness there but she’s sharp as a tack and one of the best training partners I could ever have asked for. (The other being her brother, Graham, same age, whom we lost last February).
The other day while I was out for run, I noticed several others out for their morning exercise with their canines. Every run I do still feels a little empty without the two (Daisy’s workouts are now three 5 – 10 ‘ walks, whereas the two dogs used to run with us for hours in the trails), but seeing the others with their pets reminded me to remind you, my readers of how fantastic a training partner in the form of a dog can be.
Of course, if you’re not a dog person, this post is null and void, but if you are, read on.
Choosing a dog that suits you and your home life (please don’t get a Weim if you’re in a small apartment and don’t like to run), and your family sets the stage for a lasting, daily reason to get up and run. The bond you and your dog develop, I think, grows even stronger through sport.
Don’t have room for a dog? Volunteer at your local shelter to walk some of the beautiful animals in need. Let their need to get out and walk and your need to move be suited in one small gesture.
September 30, 2013
Better Than Wild Salmon?
We all know that wild salmon is an excellent source of anti inflammatory Omega 3s. That, along with the fact that the taste is absolutely phenomenal, whether eaten raw, cooked on a cedar plank or simply grilled, makes it a great choice to eat as part of a True Paleo Diet.
Could there be anything better?
Actually…yes.
Did you know that there are actually other sea creatures that provide even more of this healthy fat?
In particular, per four ounce serving:
Anchovies: 2,300-2,400 mg.
Tuna: 1,700 mg.
Sardines: 1,100-1,600 mg.
Trout: 1,000-1,100 mg.
Of course, we also need to factor in Mercury content and tuna, of course, is ranked from high to highest Mercury content, depending on the type.
If you’re pregnant, or trying to become pregnant, or breast feeding, current recommendations are not to eat more than 12 oz of low mercury fish should be consumed weekly and high mercury fish should be kept to only three 6-oz servings per month.
Fortunately, of the list above, trout, anchovies and sardines are all ranked as ‘low mercury fish’, so pile them on and be sure to include them as part of your weekly regime!
September 29, 2013
Yoga at The Airport? Brilliant!
I saw the coolest thing this morning just before boarding a flight at the San Francisco Airport- a Yoga Room!
Regardless of whether you’re on traveling in First heading to an important meeting, or riding in a squished seat in economy, the bottom line is that flying and being seated and still for hours on end is simply not the healthiest thing for our bodies.
Of course, many travelers would likely be so pressed for time they wouldn’t have an opportunity to use such a facility; however, the mere fact that it exists speaks volumes for whomever it was that designed the airport.
Providing a space for even a quick ten minute stretch or a mini meditation session has the potential to change the mindset of the most harried passenger from stressed out and uncomfortable to calm, relaxed and centered…at least until he or she boards their connecting flight!
Plus, knowing the facility is there could perhaps create a situation whereby the passenger can allocate the time to spend the next time they find themselves at the same airport.
It’s the thought that counts!
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