Archive for Food Cravings

Don’t Give In Just Because It’s December!

elf eating spaghettiI’ve heard this more than a few times in the past couple of weeks: “Forget trying to be good.  It’s the Holiday’s.  It’s impossible! Can you help me lose weight in January?”

My answer:  Sure I can help you in January, but, GET AHOLD OF YOURSELF.  Having a specific date when you’re going to be “good”… that’s crazy talk.  That’s kickin the can down the road, like our government does with the federal budget (which keeps our debt constantly growing. Make the analogy).

When we pacify ourselves with promises to compensate later for over-indulging today, we actually reinforce the habits and desires that got us either overweight or unhealthy or both.

Here’s some blasts from the past to help you stay committed to Real Whole Food, and making good choices, even in December.  It’s critical to change our thoughts about food; food is medicine, or food is poison.  Food brings us energy and healing and beautiful skin, or food brings cancer, fatigue, gut issues, headaches, diabetes, and heart disease.

Fill your mind with thoughts that make you powerful.  Be purposeful about what you allow your brain to dwell on.

Click on the highlighted link to read the whole post, or just read the displayed paragraphs. Santa-Paws-Christmas-card-holiday-dog-pet-funny-hilarious-saying-sayings-500x338

From December, 2013:

I’ve heard from more than a few people expressing sadness about weight gain, specifically, weight gain since Thanksgiving. You’ve got a choice here, you either go with the line, ” I’ve already blown it, New Years Day is right around the corner, I’ll start then.” or this line, “More vegetables, more fruit, more healthy fats and proteins; I’m going to plan the next few days well and get back on track because I don’t like feeling this way.”

Pick a line and go with it. If it’s the second line, MEDITATE ON IT. Choose your thoughts; quit letting a momentary whim lead to actions that make you feel horrible later. Do this for me: next time you want some food that’s not healthy, set a timer on your phone and see how long the desire lasts. Unless you’re genuinely starving, Hunger Is Temporary. Seriously. If you turn out to still be starving in 15 minutes, evaluate what you ate at your last meal. Was there enough fat, enough protein, enough vegetables, enough Real Whole Foods, or did you do the “diet” thing and now you’re hungry? Give your body the nutrients it needs, and that compulsive desire to eat will start to fade away. Weight loss (if you need it) is a side-effect of eating healthy.

Reasons to be scared of Flour and Sugar:

I’m going to blast some facts at you, because : All Behavior Is Belief Driven. Think it’s hard to walk past platters full of doughnuts, cookies, or bagels without eating any? It depends on your belief: do you believe that flour and sugar are literally toxic to your brain and body, or do you still look at food as calories that you can work-off or starve-off later?

Fact: flours that contain Gluten (a group of proteins that are in grains) have ADDICTIVE properties, they literally stimulate pleasure centers in your brain that make you want more.

Fact: no human being on earth has the digestive enzymes to break down glutens from wheat, barley, or rye. Think you don’t have a problem because you’re not a Celiac? Celiac disease is an AUTO IMMUNE reaction to the glutens. That happens to some people. For the rest of us, the damage accumulates over YEARS: the undigested proteins leak thru the gut wall, inappropriately; our immune system responds to the foreign objects, and wherever we’re most vulnerable (joints, brain, nervous system, thyroid, etc) gets attacked.

Fact: sugar has addictive properties. Studies show that it’s more addictive than Cocaine! In 1700, the average American ate 4 lbs of sugar a year; in 1800 it was 18 lbs; in 1900 it was 90 lbs, in 2009, it was 180 lbs.

Read the details of this Post for supplement and exercise tips; here’s the gist:

Three emails this weekend about Holiday Weight Gain are prompting a Post. Don’t Diet In December; don’t despair if you’ve gained a few pounds since Halloween; don’t “throw in the towel and restart in January”; and don’t kill yourself with extra hard workouts.

All that stuff would be SHORT TERM THINKING, and short term thinking never produces good Long Term Results.

What should you do instead? CHILL. Honestly. It’s the holidays and we’ve all got about 50 extra things on our to-do lists. Stressing about it = CORTISOL, which = WEIGHT GAIN and ILLNESS ( come January or sooner).

In addition to all our “extras”, is the assumption we’ll eat more just because it’s the holidays; constant indulgence = CORTISOL + INSULIN, which = WEIGHT GAIN AND ILLNESS ( come January, or sooner).

Blood sugar becomes a complete mess, and the impulse to soothe stress with food or alcohol feels irresistible. Here’s what to do instead-

And finally, from Holiday Eating Gone Bad, 8 Facts To Scare You Straight:

It’s the holiday season, you’re busy, you’re struggling, you want motivation, so I’ll be fast and effective.

I’ve had several emails and comments in the past two weeks full of regret and remorse over Eating Gone Bad. There’s definitely the sense of, ” I couldn’t help myself because…”

A client friend said to me yesterday, ” I want to become scared of flour and sugar, like you are.” I want ALL OF YOU TO BECOME SCARED OF FLOUR AND SUGAR, like I am! Let me scare you straight, quickly.

Simple carbs from Grains and Sugar cause high levels of sugar and insulin in your blood/arteries/veins. The negative health effects from this are PROFOUND:

1) Excess blood sugar ( from sugar and grains) is converted to Triglycerides and stored in our fat cells.

2) Excess blood sugar “GLYCATES” proteins and lipids in our blood and body. EXAMPLES OF GLYCATION ARE WRINKLES, AGE SPOTS, AND IMPOTENCE. Alzheimer’s is being called Diabetes Type 3 because of the plaques/glycation of the brain, which is composed of fats and proteins.

3) Alzheimer’s, Migraines, Dementia, and all sorts of Neurological Conditions, including ADD and Mood Disorders, are highly associated with high blood sugar and insulin.

4) Cancer cells are covered with Insulin Receptors. Cancer cells eat SUGAR. The insulin receptors that cover cancer cells make sure those cells get all the sugar they want and need to grow and thrive. APPLY THAT THOUGHT TO YOUR KIDS THE NEXT TIME YOU FEED THEM MAC N CHEESE WITH A SIDE OF BREAD. Seriously. That stuff is poison!

5) Heart disease is caused by several conditions initiated by sugar and insulin: excess sugar thickens the blood; excess sugar robs the heart of it’s favorite mineral – Magnesium, and it’s favorite vitamin – the Bs ( that’s because digesting/metabolizing sugar requires an enormous amount of Magnesium and B vitamins ); and excess sugar and insulin severely damage artery walls, in several ways.

6) Damage to the artery walls ( whether those arteries are near your heart, in your neck, or MEN: IN YOUR FAVORITE ORGAN THAT FILLS WITH BLOOD!!) means they need to be “fixed”. In an effort to mitigate the damage we do, the liver puts together PLAQUE patches, and sends them to the sites of the damage. This keeps us alive for years, but eventually, the high blood pressure, the thick blood, the extra stress on the heart, comes back to Bite Us In The Butt.

7) Excess sugars can completely change the Bacterial Composition of your entire gut: from the stomach, which needs to have just a tiny bit of H-Pylori and a TON of acid to be optimal, to the small intestine, which should be intact but more often then not is “LEAKY” or plagued with SIBO ( small intestinal bacterial overgrowth. If you bloat badly, ask me about this.), to the large intestine, which should house at least a few POUNDS of beneficial bacteria that perform literally THOUSANDS of jobs for our bodies. Constipation, Bloat, Reflux, Diarrhea: NOT NORMAL! It means you’re not breaking down and absorbing your nutrients which sets the stage for all sorts of disease and dysfunctions.

8) Excess sugar and insulin suppress your immune system, IMMEDIATELY, for up to 24 hours. This means if you let your kid eat a breakfast of pop tarts or crappy cereal, and then send them to school to sit by someone on the bus or in the classroom who’s coughing or sneezing, they’re an EASY TARGET for the germs to set up house and proliferate. Same for you: a quick muffin or sugar/chemical drink at Starbucks, then off to an office/gym filled with bad germs? You’re a sitting duck!

I could go on and on, but say this to yourself: Food Is Medicine, or Food Is Poison; for me, and for my kids.

Then, delete the ancient notion that eating well means Dieting; eating low fat/no fat chicken and steamed broccoli is a recipe for a Rebound Binge.

That’s why I love the Paleo Diet: Real Whole Food with plenty of good FAT, good meats and proteins, TONS of vegetables, some fruit, some nuts and seeds, and GOOD dairy if you can tolerate it. The Paleo Diet even includes Real Whole Food DESSERTS, what’s not to like? ( Christmas Paleo Party at my house, 12/12/14, from 12 -2. Everyone’s invited, and you’ll get to see just how good Real Whole Food is!)

If Food Addiction is your struggle, then all the common sense/information in the world doesn’t help too much. Read my last post. If you have trouble staying away from grains and sugar, know that they contain compounds that trigger addiction centers in your brain, and your child’s brain. That doesn’t happen with Real Whole Food.

Finally, in this stressful, busy season of the year, acknowledge that “eating for stress relief” doesn’t actually Relieve Your Stress, it makes you MORE STRESSED afterwards. Just the opposite of sitting down to a Real Whole Food meal, which actually satiates your mind and body.

Change today. Don’t wait til the season is over. We’re talking about your health, your mind, and the example you’re instilling in your kids. The food you put in your mouth matters. I’ll say it again: Food is Medicine, or Food is Poison.

Tom Brady calls Cocoa Cola and Frosted Flakes “Poison”, and he’s right!

Did you hear about the Tom Brady dust up recently?  Finally!  We have a prominent professional athlete speaking out against the Giants of Big Food instead of promoting them for money.  This is awesome!  Here’s a couple quotes,

“I think we’ve been lied to by a lot of food companies over the years, by a lot of beverage companies over the years. But we still [believe] it… We believe that Frosted Flakes is a food…”

Great point.  Food is food.  Frosted flakes, ( and Captain Crunch and Froot Loops and Raisin Bran etc etc etc) are processed pieces of flour, sugar, artificial color/flavors/scents, additives, and preservatives.

Read the ingredient list for Frosted Flakes:

Milled Corn, Sugar, Malt Flavoring, High Fructose Corn Syrup, Salt, Sodium Ascorbate, Ascorbic Acid, Niacinamide, Reduced Iron, Pyridoxine Hydrochloride, Riboflavin, Thiamine Hydrochloride, Vitamin A Palmitate, Folic Acid, BHT, Vitamin B12 and Vitamin D

That’s not food.  That’s crap.  In Tom Brady’s words, “And the fact that they can sell that to kids? I mean, that’s poison…”

Did you notice that Coke now sells their product in cans and bottles that have names on them??  Oh yeah.  They researched the 250 most popular TEEN names, and stuck them on their containers.  Wow.  So much for their promise not to market to kids.

Here’s the ingredient list for Coca Cola:

Carbonated water, high fructose corn syrup, caramel color, phosphoric acid, natural flavors, and caffeine.

I’ve become used to people telling me I’m either crazy/way too out there/or over-reacting.  That our government wouldn’t ever let our food supply become saturated with ingredients that absolutely cause cancer, heart disease, diabetes, mood disorders, auto-immune, and every single other disease out there.

Well, I’m happily wearing the crazy hat, because I believe that’s exactly what’s happened.  Want proof?

Recent studies show:

– 70% of all the calories Americans consume now come from processed foods ( breads, crackers, pasta, cereals, pizza, etc)

Multiple studies confirm that processed food is just as addictive as heroin and cocaine.  Moms, this means that your skinny, active kids actually shouldn’t get a pass to eat processed foods; their life long eating patterns are being created – by you, right now.  Bad patterns will eventually come back to bite them in the butt.

Multiple studies link artificial colors, flavors, preservatives, and additives to cancer, heart disease, diabetes, allergies, hyperactivity, Alzheimers, and literally every disease out there.  Not convinced?  Read here.

Let’s look at a few common ingredients.

BHA and BHT are synthetic preservatives that keep fat from going rancid. Look on cereals, breads, meats, microwave dinners, vegetables oils, margarine’s, chewing gum, any and all chips, cookies, cakes, skin lotions, face make-up,… the list is endless. Literally. If you buy and consume processed, refined foods (and lots of restaurants use processed refined foods), you’re consuming these chemicals.

Let’s follow the chem trail. In the 1970’s, the FDA reviewed BHA and BHT and gave then a “GRAS (generally recognized as safe) status, but acknowledged additional review was needed.

In 1986, they just repeated that dictum. No further review – by the FDA – has happened.

However, the Department of Health and Human Services, the Agency for Cancer Research, and The National Toxicology Program, have all declared BHA and BHT as Carcinogenic. There’s also very strong links between these products and hyperactivity in children; it’s highly suspected they cause liver damage; and it takes the average male adult TEN days to eliminate BHA from the system.

Our food system is loaded with cases like this!  Let’s look at pizza, which is pretty much a giant chemical, unless you’re making it at home (another recipe here).

The average American eats 46 slices of pizza a year. 25% of all boys ages 6 to 19 eat pizza every single day.  Our government has actually declared pizza a vegetable for school lunches, hospitals, jails, and social programs. (??)

Food Babe (an incredibly determined Activist) did a thorough investigation of the ingredient list in several pizzas, and the results were horrible. Did you know you can say “100% Real”, legally, and have it be loaded with crap??

Among the many chemicals is MSG, in all it’s FDA approved monikers. Think a little MSG can’t hurt? Oh my gosh, please think again. MSG, under ALL it’s names (yeast extract, autolyzed yeast extract,… there’s more than 40 approved names for it) is an EXCITO-TOXIN. It literally excites brain cells to death; MSG’s links to cancer and other disease states are profound. Unfortunately, like so much poison, it makes food taste good, and it has the effect of stimulating areas of the brain that make us want more. MSG is a Food Manufacturers Dream.

Take a look at some pizza ingredients that contain MSG:

dominos

YUCK!  Not. Real. Food. In Tom Brady’s words: Poison.  We have to wake-up, and unhook ourselves from the siren call of processed foods, because it’s killing us.  Slowly and quietly, but it’s killing us.

The answer?  Real Whole Foods.  Cooking at home.  Making food and meals and nutrition a priority for our health, and our kids health.  Letting go of the idea that skinny=healthy, because it doesn’t.  Healthy=Healthy.  I know lots of skinny people with cancer, heart disease, auto-immune conditions, neurological conditions, etc.

It’s the food.  Moms and dads, don’t push this advice away just because you’re overwhelmed and busy. Our kid’s futures depend on this.  We can make Real Whole Foods our norm, honest.

Want a great place to start? Read the links included in this Post.  The more you know about our food system, the easier it becomes to avoid processed foods through fear and disgust.

Don’t know how to cook/shop/prep/pack?  Get in touch with me.  It’s not hard, it’s just a skill to master; and a way of thinking.

Finally, I want to link to a great book I finished recently: French Kids Eat Everything.  This book is wonderful, and I wish I’d read it 25 years ago.  It details the differences in American and French food beliefs/culture/norms, and why and how French kids eat everything.  It’s a positive approach to food that we just don’t have here.  For example, we have “kid foods” galore in the US:  chicken nuggets, pasta, cereal, etc.  Kid foods in France are pureed vegetables and small bites of organ meats. They don’t snack, and they use utensils at 2. They really do eat everything over there, and consequently, France has the second lowest rate of heart disease in the industrial world, and no weight issues.

I hope you get 2 take-aways from today’s Post. (1) we’re literally creating and training our children for life long eating patterns and food preferences every single day we have them.  (2) We are what we eat.  We eat crap, we create a crap body.  We eat Real Whole Foods, and we give our body the nutrients it needs to rebuild, repair, and thrive.

Get in touch with me for help and changes.  We have so much potential!

Do You Ride The Diet Roller Coaster, Weekend Binge, or Punishment Exercise?

Two big steps to weight loss are at the end of this Post, but I want to start with a client email.

Most important lesson I have learned is I now have a more balanced life w/ exercise and eating. Always needed to have both diet and exercise to feel good.

Now, if I don’t make the gym, I don’t feel guilty, just make sure I am eating good food. And the scale is not topsy curvy on me. So used to gaining extra weight over the weekends. Now eating mostly at home, the scale is my friend on a Monday morning. Might be up very slightly, but due to maybe eating bigger portions on Sat and Sunday nights vs weeknights. Between hearing it from you, and also reading it in more than one article, I was able to put it into practice.

Beautiful weather yesterday, skipped the gym, we went for long walk around the neighborhood, then cooked burgers and hot dogs on the grill, w/ salad and tons of veggies. A nice relaxing night before another busy weekend.

Alan’s still amazed at all the good food we are eating, not hungry and he no longer has his sugar cravings.

So glad we decided to do this w/ you, and not doing it on our own. Well worth every penny. You make it so easy.

I’m a recovered Chronic Dieter-Weekend Binger-Punishment Exerciser; that whole “so used to gaining weight on the weekends/ balancing my eating and exercising”, spoke to me.

Can you relate?  Maybe you have a touch of my old diagnosis, here’s some clues:  The scale goes up and down, a lot.  You convince yourself you “need” a treat because you’ve been so “good”/you have major craving/ or after all, it’s the weekend.

You wake up mornings determined to (1) barely consume a thing, and (2) burn thousands of calories via workouts.  You believe this will burn butt or belly fat.

You LIVE by the 80-20, rule, which only makes sense because since calories rule, and weight is a math issue; a 20% indulgence can easily be nullified by starving/excessive cardio.

I could go on and on, but you get it, right? It’s a miserable way to live, it’s ineffective – especially long term – and consuming.  Who wants to be consumed with their weight or their body?  Not me!  Thank goodness for wake up calls, of which I had many.

One of them was when Mark gave me Dr. Perricone’s book, The Wrinkle Cure, for my 40th birthday. (Don’t judge – that’s my kind of book and Mark knows it.) The book preached eating fats for good skin. That was a conundrum for me as I thought fat was the devil.  At 40, I was deep, deep into chronic dieting and excessive exercise. It seemed to be working, except for the constant bloat, stomach problems, asthma, blood clots, varicose veins, and total disgust I had with myself after the weekend binges.

Dr. Perricone had a lot of science in his book, and the whole “eat fat” message was being preached more and more.  It was getting hard to ignore.

Next wake-up: The “eat fat” paradigm was joined by the “eat Real Whole Food” paradigm.  Another shocker! And scary. I loved my Diet Foods.  I couldn’t imagine life without Diet Ice Cream, Diet Dr. Pepper, Diet Crackers, Diet Pizza, Diet Cereal, Diet Wraps, or Diet Desserts. (They’ve been gone for years now and I could care a less. Shows how wrong our thoughts can be.)

Further fueling my fire: I was a devout reader of all books and magazines Diet, like Oxygen/Muscle&Fitness Hers/Shape. All those women exercised like crazy, starved themselves for days, and had a cheat day.  They looked amazing and were definitely my role models.

I was brain washed.

I dropped all my subscriptions a few years ago. (Another thing I don’t miss – at all.)

Thank you God!

Thank You for the multiple wake up calls, because I’m someone who apparently only learns the hard way.

If you’re stuck in this vicious pattern, here’s a wake up call: Dieting doesn’t work.  Science and studies show that almost 99% of everyone who Diets gains their weight back.  99%!

Exercise – which is WONDERFUL – doesn’t take weight off.  Sucks, but true.  If it did, I’d weigh 50 pounds instead of 130.

Want to lose weight? Or at least get off the Roller Coaster of weight up and weight down?

Stop dieting, and stop the punishment exercise.  Eat Real Whole Foods, exercise smarter (not more), prioritize sleep, and put effort into managing your stress. Really.  But I said I’d give you 2 specific steps to weight loss.

1) Drop the grains.  White, whole wheat, quinoa, whatever.  If you have weight issues (and health issues) stop eating them.  You’ll live without your sandwich, your cereal, or your pasta.  Honest. I thought I’d die without those foods, but they’re not even a blip on my memory radar.  Try it for 3 weeks and see how you feel; watch your stomach flatten; access your energy levels/skin condition/immune function.

2) Quit the excessive exercise.  Studies have shown that it’s counter-productive for weight loss as excessive exercise (and punishment exercise) raises cortisol, and cortisol makes belly fat and prevents fat loss from fat cells. Besides, it’s impossible to out exercise a bad diet, impossible.

Lift, practice yoga, limit HITT workouts to a few a week, walk with a friend/dog/sister, or compete in your favorite sport because you love it.

Punishment exercise doesn’t work.

Two more tips:   Drop the unrealistic images -that we all hold- of what we should look like.  Magazines are photoshopped.  Actresses and models go through herculean efforts to be skinny because their living depends on it.  It’s not natural nor healthy.

Let’s be natural and healthy!

Finally, Action and Effort are necessary.  We’ve got to Plan, and then Stick To Our Plans.  Plan our shopping, cooking, packing, and workouts.

Got kids? Got a job?  Got a commute? Hormonal Issues?  Those are just details to be factored into your Plan, not excuses. They’re like the zombies on Walking Dead: we have to work around them.

That’s all for now.  If you want help, get in touch with me.  I LOVE this stuff!  You’re not doomed. You’re not destined to be overweight, or sick, or tired.  If you are, it’s just where you are right now, now where you have to be in a few months.

You could be a whole new you by Christmas!

Can You Eat Potatoes ( or other starchy Real Whole Foods) ? Test Your Blood Sugar!

4 girls after walking cere

( I love this pic of my girls! Raise healthy kids!  They’re depending on us!)

Potatoes, corn, carrots, plantains, bananas, beans,…wow, they sure do cause confusion.  Years ago, Dr. Atkins came out with his first book and completely demonized these foods by lumping them in with grains and sugars.

It was a great book, and he had a TON of research behind his initial recommendations, which were that if you’re overweight and want to lose, cut waaay down on the carbs, and consume lots of protein and fat.  He’s right.  Crappy carbs will not only put weight on us – and our kids – but they’re the perfect vehicle for:  inflammation, cancer, heart disease, diabetes, neurological conditions, ADD, ADHD, skin issues, and just about every disease out there.  Crappy carbs cause an Inflammatory Environment in our body – and our kids bodies.

Crappy Carbs are Evil.

But are those Real Whole Foods I listed above “Crappy Carbs”?  No. But that doesn’t mean you get to eat them.  Sorry.  The real answer is, “It depends.”  What do they do to your blood sugar after you eat them?  There’s an easy way to find out:  buy a blood sugar kit, aka, a Glucometer.

IT’S SO FUN – honest!  You might think Glucometers are just for diabetics, but they’re not.  Anyone can buy a kit in any drugstore or Walmart, or off Amazon, anywhere.

If you’re a weight loss client of mine, you probably already own one.  If you’re not a client, but a blog reader, buy one today.  Here’s why.

When blood sugar rises above “normal”, (normal is between 80 – 100, but some labs have lowered that value to 70 – 90), the pancreas releases the hormone INSULIN.  Insulin is an anabolic, building hormone.  Insulin takes the excess blood sugar, the amount that sends the value over “normal”, and stuffs a little in our muscle cells (the empty ones), a little in the liver-glycogen storage (if it’s low) and then…….turns all the rest of the excess into FAT/triglycerides, and stores them in the fat cells.

How does Blood Sugar get above normal?  EASY.  Every single carbohydrate we eat becomes blood sugar in our gut.  EVERY. SINGLE. CARB. Whether it’s from a grain, pure sugar, fruit, veggies, beans, nuts, whatever.  The carbohydrate in those foods is reduced to Glucose.  That’s the gut’s job:  break food down to chemical molecules so our cells can use it.  All carbs become glucose and fructose, 2 tiny, simple sugars that fit in cells easily.  (Today, we’re just talking about glucose; fructose is evil too! More on that later.)

How much blood sugar is too much?  If we weight 150 pounds, we have about 4.7 liters of blood.  “Normal” blood sugar – a measurement of 85 on the glucometer – equals 4 grams of sugar in the whole body.  4 Grams.  4 Grams. That’s 16 calories of carb (1 gram = 4 calories).  More than that, and the conversion of sugar/glucose to fat/triglycerides happen.

A medium French Fry has 47 g of sugar (all carbs break down to sugar).

A can of coke has 39 g of sugar.

Krave Jerky Lime Chile has 39 g of sugar per package.

1 cup of pasta has 43 g of sugar/carbs.

1 cup of orange juice 27 g of sugar.

Those are all obvious Crappy Carbs; the starches become sugar/glucose very very quickly and go from gut to blood stream fast.  But the real reason they’re Crappy is because they’re highly, highly processed and have no nutritional value at all.  None.  They’re so anti-good for us they’re poison!

Conventional wisdom tries to tell us that pasta has B vitamins, or french fries from McDonalds are vegetables.  Bull Crap. Those B vitamins – added/fortified – back into the pasta, were made in a factory in China from synthetic materials.   And those Mc D’s french fries?  19 ingredients!!  Gross! That’s not real!  Read their ingredient list, and several others, here.  Please, read it.  Our kids eat this stuff, and our kids are getting sicker and fatter and sadder than ever.

It’s. The. Food.

So what about YOU, and ME, and potatoes, or corn, or plantains, or all these other starchy fruits and veggies?  How does that affect our blood sugar since we know they’re carbohydrates?

I don’t know how they affect you; I know how they affect me because I’ve pricked my finger and tested a million times in the past 5 years.  Buy the glucometer and test yourself.  They’re cheap and they’re easy to use. Prick your finger 90 minutes after a meal (peak blood sugar), and look at the number.  See how your oatmeal or your pasta or your crackers affected you.

And see how a meal of corn or potatoes or bananas or beans, or any high carb fruit or veggie, affects you.

Five years ago, I had pretty fluctuating blood sugar.  I considered myself “low carb” because I ate a lot of “low carb” foods:  Kashi Go Lean, Low Carb Tortillas, Low Carb Bread, Low Carb Ice Cream, Low Carb Cookies…..  then I bought the glucometer.  Wow.  Did I get a wake up call.  My blood sugars were way too high, and it scared me into action.

No more Low Carb Crap, just Real Whole Foods.  Of course, I worried about the high carb fruits and veggies, and the glucometer showed that yes, they did raise my blood sugar too much.  So I cut way back on them.

In the past 5 years I’ve changed and refined my diet – a lot.   I eat more herbs and spices than ever – every day.  I use essential oils.  I’ve added more fat than I ever thought possible.  I’ve managed to completely delete “cheat days” from my life (thank you God), I’ve become scared of processed foods to the degree that I’m literally afraid of them.  I’ve joined several food co-ops, I go to a couple different farmers markets.

Last summer I went totally ketogenic for a few months.

In other words, I’ve taken several actions, consistently, for several years now, and guess what?  Now when I take my blood sugar ( which I still do all the time – and I take my kids and Mark’s often also), it’s always good.

A few mornings a week I throw a banana into my smoothie – blood sugar stays low.

I eat potatoes or plantains for dinner at least 4 or 5 nights a week.  The other night I measured before dinner, I was 78.  After a dinner of roasted potatoes coated w butter, squash coated with olive oil and parm, a steak, and a piece of dark chocolate, I was 98.

I’VE BECOME SO DARN NORMAL.  It’s awesome!

I believe you can become normal too, with persistence and consistence.

What’s normal?  Normal is when you eat a real whole food, in normal amounts, in a normal diet full of nutrient dense foods loaded with good fats, some protein, and a ton of vegetables, and your body processes it just fine.

Your muscle and liver cells are open to the carbs and the fat both, you sleep well, you don’t feel sick, bloated or brain foggy – ever, and your energy and immune system hum.

By the way, as good as they look, 6 pack abs aren’t totally normal, especially for most women. Having some body fat – is normal.  Being ripped, lean, and shredded, goes against most body types, and the actions needed to get there usually lower thyroid function, lower body fat to unhealthy levels, and mess up our sex and adrenal hormones.

Not normal.

How can you become normal?  There’s only one way: change how your brain things about about your body and food.  No more diet and weight loss focus, it doesn’t work. Focus on your health instead.  Pledge that at least a few times a week you’re going to read something from Dr. Mercola or Suzy Cohen or Dr. Davis/Wheat Belly or if you’re interested in the science behind the Ketogenic Diet (because I really do believe it heals cells and the liver and reverses insulin resistance) check out Dr. Nally here.

Here’s my Cigarette Analogy:  would you ever pick up a cigarette butt off the sidewalk and put it in your mouth? No! That would be disgusting, and there’d be no effort at all in resisting that urge.  I want you to look at a slurpee or a box of cookies or a fast food burger and think:  “I’d never put that in my mouth, that’s disgusting!”.

Here’s something that’s not disgusting, and it’s delicious!  2 Recipes, each I’ve had on here before, but they’re worth repeating.   The first is my Sweet Potato Pizza – Oh My Gosh is it delicious!!

Chipotle Sweet Potato-Zucchini Pizza

20150627_145925

1 large sweet potato
1 large green zuc, ring out water by 20150627_172301twisting in a towel
1 heaping tbsp chipotle powder
3 eggs, beaten
5 tbsp coconut flour
1 tsp salt
Mix all ingredients in a bowl, and pat onto a pizza pan. Bake at 425 for 40 minutes. Top with tomato sauce and cheese ( and whatever else you want, I’ve done corn, cilantro, and peppers). Bake at 425 for 10-15 minutes.

Roasted Potatoes – kids love this and it’s so much better than french fries-

roasted potatoesScrub and dice potatoes
Pour a couple tbsp of melted KerryGold butter and coat them w it
Salt & Pepper
Bake at 425  50-55 minutes, flip w a spatula half way through.

By the way, these things freeze and reheat beautifully, they’re a great Power Cooking food.

Part 3 Summer Shape Up: Change Your Thoughts About Food to Change Your Body

change aristotleYes!  to constantly working to have better thought patterns!  Yes to not accepting that we’re stuck with where we are, because we’re not amoebas – we’re humans, and our brain is literally capable of changing and growing until we die.  Or not.  It’s up to us.  Taking control of our thoughts by focusing and being intentional is exercise for the brain.

Deliberate, studied, conscious thinking keeps our brain young and vital!  This is how we grow new neurons and thought patterns, this is how we determine whether positive chemicals or negative chemicals flow through our brain.

So what are our thoughts about food?  My aim for these last few Posts is to convince you that our thoughts are more important than a particular food plan when it comes to our weight and our health.

Counting calories, tracking food, weighing, measuring, diet meals, diet this could be the daydesserts, diet pills, diet plans… their long term success rate is an abysmal 1-5%.  This stat shows that the desire to lose weight isn’t a strong enough force to change our habits permanently, and temporary changes are useless.

Unfortunately, the HABIT and PATTERN of thinking of our body as the end result of how much we diet and exercise is fairly fixed in most of our brains.

It’s so untrue.  Let’s change that!

Our body’s not a Math Equation, it’s a Chemistry Set.  Start THINKING about our body that way, start looking at food as chemicals that send signals and have consequences as to how we function and feel and perform, and we can change our body, forever.  Losing weight, getting fit, becoming healthy, that happens when we care about every bite that goes into our mouth because we understand that food’s consequences.

My last Post was on stressing about our food, and how counter-productive stress is to our weight and health.  So I’m not suggesting hours of research, or logging everything we eat on to FitDay.

I’m talking about sitting with the thought – the fact – that our food becomes us. Not just our weight, but our mood, our skin, our hair, our energy, and every cell in our body.

Our thought patterns and habits dictate what we eat.  When we believe that certain foods give us energy or heal our body or give us pretty skin, it makes us more likely to seek it out and eat it.

When we believe that certain foods cause cancer, heart disease, migraines, fatigue, diabetes, and allergies, it’s easier to avoid them.

Put “consequence facts” in your mind that allow you to make good choices:    howlongdoyouwantotcontin

– White flour raises blood sugar, insulin and triglycerides; it’s also been sprayed with chlorine gas. The EPA sites this gas as a dangerous irritant that can be lethal.  It also has gluten, which damages the gut and the brain.

– Sugar is cancer cells favorite food.  The same with High Fructose Corn syrup.  They’re both very, very easy for cancer cells to metabolize.

Garlic reduces plaque build up in the arteries.

– Sugar is pathogenic bacteria, virus, and fungi’s favorite food. So sugar feeds the bugs that make us sick.

– Avocados have fats which are great for our skin and vitamins which are good for our eyes.

– Sugar and processed grains cause high blood sugar which causes “glycation”, which damages our skin by causing age spots and wrinkles.  Alcohol – even wine! – causes glycation.

– Leafy greens are loaded with nutrients that make our skin and arteries healthy.  Beets have ingredients that help our liver do all it’s many jobs.  Cruciferous vegetables prevent cancer.

– Sugar suppresses the ability of white blood cells to kill pathogens. Sugar and our immune system are highly connected.

– Saturated fat and cholesterol make up our glands, our hormones, and 60% of our brain.

– Proteins make up our muscles, hair, skin, nails, ligaments, and organs. Proteins become the connections between the fatty parts of our brain that allow messages to jump from one neuron to neuron to another.  They also build our chemical messengers, neurotransmitters:  dopamine, serotonin, GABA, etc.

When we eat sugar and flour and hydrogenated fats and toxic chemicals, we damage our heart, our brain, our liver, our kidneys, our skin, etc etc etc.  Damage.  It’s slow, it’s subtle, it might be mistaken for “aging”, or a bad mood, or fatigue, but it’s damage, and it’s inevitable.

Damage is also revealed in an inability to lose weight.  Our bodies should be masters at burning fat for fuel,  and using nutrients to rebuild our cells.  When illness, chronic fatigue, and resistant weight loss happens, there’s our proof that Damage is Done.

habittilobserve then choiceThank God it’s possible to reverse the damage by changing our habits. Here’s an Action Plan:

– Set aside time every week for planning, as in write down your schedule.  Your work, your kids schedule, your errands, your workouts, everything, including Food.  Schedule your grocery store, keep a running list all week, make time to chop and prep, power cook a few meals and put them in the freezer.

Does planning sound stressful? Studies show that organizing and scheduling REDUCE stress.  Living by the Seat of the Pants increases stress.

– Don’t buy your trigger foods. This is a no-brainer!  Keep foods that tempt you far, far away.  Convenience of trigger foods makes resisting really tough, so don’t let them be convenient. Worried your family will object to no chips or cookies in the house?  Junk food is Poison food.  No one in our families needs that crap.  No one.  All those above listed facts on sugar and grains and their links to cancer and immune function, they apply to children too.

There’s a great study on Flight Attendants who smoke, and the desire they feel for their cigarettes while they’re on their flights. The study revealed that it didn’t matter how long the duration of the flight was, whether it was short or long, their desire for their cigarette rose as they got closer and closer to the end of the flight.  Smoking was about to go from “Not Allowed”, to Convenient, and the craving appeared.

– If shopping is your albatross, take advantage of shopping on line, or having your groceries delivered, or buying the precut vegetables or prepared meats at most grocery stores now.  At least have a list ready!

bo bennett quote– Commit to 5 minutes a day of reading information that trains the brain to think of Food as Medicine or Food as Poison.  Please.  To beat the drum again: wishing for weight loss isn’t enough to inspire permanent habit changes.  Believing our food can make usfeelgood healthy and vibrant or sick and old, can.

One of my favorite sites, based solely on studies but written for succinct, easy reads:  Green Med Info.

Need help with your habits and thoughts? Get in touch with me! I have skill set of tricks to change behavior. Imagine yourself a year from now; you could be a whole new you, you could be the same, or you could be worse. Make the choice, take the action.

 

 

Part 2 of Summer Shape Up: Stressing About Our Body Fat Just Makes Us Fatter – Really.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERALet me say that again:  Stressing about our body fat just makes us fatter. It’s true; and as woo-woo as that may sound, it’s very grounded in science.

Remember in my last Post  I said that when it comes to weight and our health, our thoughts are more important than a food plan?  If a good food plan was all it took, no one would be fat and sick.

One of my favorite quotes is:  “Our body isn’t a math equation, it’s a chemistry set.”  This is why low calorie, low fat diets don’t work in the long run.  We upset our chemistry when we eat that way.

I’m continuing my series on taking control of our thoughts to get control of our body.  Many of us constantly bemoan our butts, our stomach’s, our thighs, and our batwings. Constantly.

How’s that negative thinking working?

A favorite quote, “What we think about, we bring about.”   More science, more chemistry; our brain LISTENS to our words and creates chemicals and structures in response to those words.  Seriously.

Constantly bemoaning our weight and our shape and our health is called STRESS.  “Stress” is a chemical state in our body that’s really only good if we need to run away from a bad guy or perform a heroic feat.  Other than that, it works against us. (Actually, there’s more to the stress story.  “Temporary” stress can help us solve problems and get out of jams. It’s “Chronic” stress that hurts us – and makes us fat.)

A stressed-out state, for ANY reason (mental, physical, emotional, REAL OR FAKE), causes the same chemical response: an increase in hormones that dump lots of SUGAR into the blood stream.  Nothing is easier and faster for our cells to use in an emergency than sugar.  Not fat, not protein, but SUGAR.

When we feel stressed from a kid or a spouse or a co-worker or traffic or from agonizing over our weight or stressing about food or exercise, our glands squirt FIGHT AND FLIGHT HORMONES (chemicals) into our blood stream.

These hormones do a number on us:

– they inhibit fat burning in cells (never good for healthy body weight!)

– they dump loads of sugar/glucose from the liver into the blood

– they break down muscle tissue to convert to glucose (fitness friends, take note – we want that muscle!)

– they make us hungry and crave more sugar – just in case the stress is chronic (“stress eating”)

– they slow down the thyroid (not a priority), slow down digestion (not a priority), slow down sex hormone production (not a priority)

– they suppress the immune system (not a priority, and this is why stress is associated with being sick more often)

And that’s just the starter list!  The gist:  Stress Makes Us Fat and Sick, not lean and healthy.

I know I already said this, but I’m saying it again:  stressing over our weight or our food or our workouts is EXACTLY the same as stressing over a bad guy or money or a fight.  Stress is stress is stress is stress.  The same chemicals are released into the body.

Action Plan to Combat Stressing About Our Fat:

1) Quit comparing ourselves to any woman on a magazine cover.  I quit buying women’s magazines 15 years ago.  I didn’t want my 4 daughters influenced by those faked and unrealistic images. Woo-hoo! FREEDOM.  Seriously, have you ever googled what they do to those cover images to make them look so perfect?

Having those images around is like having our favorite trigger food in the pantry.  Bad stuff happens.  Set yourself up for success and control your surroundings as much as possible.

Temptations CAUSE stress.  Get rid of them.

2) Quit comparing ourselves to anyone at the gym, or in our circles, who has a better body than us.  STOP IT.  What a waste of a brain space!  And it’s stressful!  We have friends and family who need our help and our prayers.  We have a home and jobs and people who need our attention. There’s turmoil and starvation and war going on, and we’re stressing about our butt and our weight?  Let’s focus on important issues.

The Bible says to focus on Love, Joy, Appreciation, and Gratitude.  Meditation books say the same thing.  What we focus on has a CHEMICAL CONSEQUENCE.  (Hey!  Food also has chemical consequences!)

3) DEEP BREATHING.  Humming.  Singing. Breath Patterns.  Yep, really. For weight loss!  These actions stimulate our Vagus Nerve, the nerve that runs from the brain stem to every organ in our body.  When we stimulate it with deep breath, humming, and singing, it releases Happy Chemicals.

This is the polar opposite of our Fight and Flight/Sympathetic nervous system, which is the system that releases cortisol, adrenalin, and more.

The Vagus Nerve releases chemicals that actually benefit our DNA, and make our brain more creative, problem solving, and powerful.   Fight/flight chemicals (chronically produced) damage our DNA and inhibit problem solving and creativeness.

Fight/fight chemicals also deplete our willpower.

The Vagus Nerve meanders all the way into the belly; spreading fibers to the tongue, pharynx, vocal chords, lungs, heart, stomach, intestines and glands that produce the anti-stress enzymes and hormones: Acetylcholine, Prolactin, Vasopressin, and Oxytocin. These chemicals make digestion, metabolism and relaxation BETTER.

They even make us poop better!

4) Gratitude, appreciation, love for your body. Yes, you need these for weight loss.  Honestly, even a year ago, I wouldn’t have written that.  I’ve read this, been taught this, for years, but it never sunk in.  I’m wired pretty happy, so I never thought I needed this advice.  I was wrong.  We all need this advice.

Again, stressing over our body, picking apart it’s “defects”, is just “stress”.  Stress is a chemical state that inhibits fat loss, and encourages fat deposition.

I really believe this explains the strict diet and exercisers, who are just doing it for weight loss – not health, who never seem to lose weight.  

When we eat for health, our thought patterns are something like this:  “I haven’t had any fish in a few days and I really need that Omega 3.”  Or, “My throat hurts, I need some garlic.”  Or, “If I eat that, I’ll have bloat and foggy brain the rest of the day. Better stay away.” Eating for health means looking at food as Medicine, and it’s empowering!

Counting calories, measuring, white-knuckling up some willpower – NOT empowering.  At all.  It’s draining.

Try this: next time negative beliefs about your body consume your thoughts, stop them, and replace them with 5 different gratitudes about your body.

If you have difficulty thinking of 5 gratitudes, you’ve got a bigger problem than your weight!

Resource for improving your mind:  Battlefield of the Mind, by Joyce Meyers.

Learn more about the Vagus Nerve here.

Reinforce Food is Medicine here.

Go think about what you’re thinking about!

Ditch The Starchy Carbs and Paleo Indulgences to Get Rid of Winter Fluff

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAI’ve had several questions on “safe starches” and paleo indulgences. Here’s a Post with the 411 on both, and advice at the end for making it easier to get rid of winter weight gain.

If our starch is coming from a grain, as opposed to vegetables or fruit, I don’t think it’s safe – for most people.

If the grains contain the protein “gluten”, we’re ingesting one of the most common allergens out there. If we don’t see typical symptoms, like stomach ache or stuffy nose, that’s because food allergies, or food sensitivities, often manifest in sore joints, headaches, skin problems, fatigue, and auto-immune conditions.

The gluten protein is incredibly difficult to digest; humans don’t even have enzymes for gluten. Gluten goes thru the small intestine IN-completely digested, perforates the intestine wall, and leaks into the blood stream as a large protein. When our immune system sees the big proteins in the blood, it mounts an Immune Attack, and this can manifest as joint pain or an attack on different organs or systems. Pretty serious stuff.

What about gluten-free grains, such as kamult or spelt? They still contain “gliadins”. Gliadins, once digested, become “exorphins”, which are morphine-like compounds that bind to opiate receptors in the brain. Their effect is to cause Addictive Behavior, and Appetite Stimulation. This explains binges and eating way past full.

What about “healthy whole grains”, like buckwheat, quinoa, or millet? Look at their carb counts:

1/2 c oatmeal 29g carb

1/4 c wild rice 34g carb

2 oz wheat pilaf w orzo 40g carb

1/4c barley 32g carb

1/4c quinoa 30g carb

2oz whole wheat pasta 44g

Note that these serving are really, really, small; I mean, who eats a quarter cup?  Have you ever measured 2 oz of pasta?  I have.  It’s miniscule.

4 grams of carbs = 1 tsp of sugar.  2 ounces of pasta is 10 teaspoons of sugar.  Think about that.

Excess blood sugar is ALWAYS repackaged as triglycerides, always.  I know I’m beating a dead horse here, but high blood sugar is tied to every disease out there through the inflammation and glycatation it causes.  It’s also a big cause of Weight Gain.

Next, Paleo Indulgences.  I’m talking treats made with almond or coconut flour, plantains, honey, molasses, Swerve, chocolate, cream, nut butters, etc.  I’m going to call them P.I. for short, and if you need recipes, search Pintrest.

P.I.s are wonderful for kids. They’re practically a necessity when transitioning from a SAD ( standard american diet) to RWF (real whole food).  I LOVE a good paleo cookie or homemade ice cream. But unfortunately, and this is where I am right now, for weight loss, or just leaning out the Junk In The Trunk after a long winter, they need to either go, or be strictly limited.  Sad.

But summer clothes just don’t have the “hide the poochy stomach” ability that winter clothes do!

What to do? Set up your house/office so that temptations don’t trigger you.  Don’t buy anything that tempts you, because tempting food calls to us, loudly.  No lying that we’re buying something “for the kids”.  If it’s a temptation, it’s banned.  Treats need to be “treats”, and the definition of treat is: “an event or item that is out of the ordinary and gives great pleasure.”  Once or twice a week is an out of ordinary event.  EVERY DAY IS NOT OUT OF THE ORDINARY.

Girlfriends, thanks to estrogen, a propensity for slow thyroid, very little testosterone, and high cortisol, we just don’t have tons of leeway for jumping off the path of a RWF, fairly low carb diet, if we want to be a healthy weight and feel great.  It’s the price of being a woman.

It doesn’t mean we have to starve or exercise a ton – as a matter of fact, that plan slows down thyroid hormones and raises cortisol – exactly what we don’t want.  But we do need to pay attention to the details:  TONS of vegetables, plenty of good meats and eggs, healthy fats, some fruit, some nuts and seeds, and some real dairy if we tolerate it.

Hours need to go by between meals so that Sugar Burning stops and Fat Burning happens.  Avoidance of foods that cause headaches, stomachaches, and skin problems is important; those symptoms are signs of inflammation, which raises cortisol, which inhibits fat burning.

So there’s my Sunday take on grainy carbs and paleo treats.  Have a wonderful Mother’s Day, and eat smart!

 

Want To Lose Weight? Ditch the Dumb Mini Meal!

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAIt’s Spring and I have several clients who want to lose weight by summer.  Many of them have been eating 5 to 6 times a day, as suggested by their doctor, their weight loss center, or some book they’ve read.

I hate the Mini Meal Plan! If you want to lose weight, the constant grazing just has to stop.

Years of Diet and Supplement companies advising us to eat 5 or 6 times a day to “speed up our metabolism” has been disproven -scientifically – over and over.  Unfortunately, the “eat all day long” idea has taken hold; that’s an exciting thought for Foodies! But how’s that working out for health and weight loss? Not so well, and no wonder.

Mini meals don’t speed up metabolism. If you eat 2000 calories in a day, divided by 3 meals or 6, it takes the same amount of energy (thermogenesis) to digest that food. Sadly, thermogenesis doesn’t actually account for much of our calorie burn at all, so as a weight loss tool, it’s ineffectual. As a weight GAIN tool, multiple meals are perfect! The habit of eating all day is pleasurable for our brain to establish. For everyone who’s tried this form of eating, you know that dependency and excitement about the next meal becomes a happy mental focal point.

Mini-meals cause eating to happen whether there’s hunger or not. Eating happens because “it’s time to eat”.

I recently heard an interesting study on Flight Attendants who smoked.  They were questioned as to when their desire for a cigarette started to well up while on their flights.  The answer:  the duration of the flight had nothing to do with wanting a cigarette, but how close they were to landing, and actually being able to smoke, was what triggered the wanting.

Apply that to food, and constant mini-meals:  the schedule, or thought that your next meal is right around the corner, produces a desire and excitement for eating.  So does plummeting blood sugar.  Join mini-meals with high carb “snacks” ( like most diet bars or shakes ), and you’ve got a problem: constant glucose/sugar in the blood stream, going up up up, and then crashing down down down.

By the way, who does benefit from Mini Meals?  The Diet, Supplement, and Food Industry.  Snacking is a multi-BILLION dollar business.

Snacking was pretty much unheard of for Adult Americans until the early 1970s.  Hmm, that’s about the same time Weight Gain started to ramp up!  Until then, snacking was considered something only for young and growing children.

Quick Review:  Carbs are digested to blood sugar/glucose.  When glucose is present in amounts over 100mg/dcl, that’s considered TOO MUCH GLUCOSE in the blood (remember: excess glucose is TOXIC to the body). Your pancreas releases the hormone Insulin, which takes the excess glucose and (1) puts it in needy muscle cells, or (2) puts in empty liver cells, or (3) takes all the leftovers and remakes the glucose into TRIGLYCERIDES.  Triglycerides are FATTY ACIDS.

Say out loud to yourself:  “Excess sugar and carbs are turned into body fat.”

Wonder if this is happening to you? Look down at your stomach. The body deposits most of these homemade triglycerides in the abdominal area. In addition to belly fat, excess glucose and excess insulin dramatically create/cause inflammation in the body. Inflammation is linked to absolutely every single chronic disease and condition out there, including weight gain.

Here’s my approach: we only eat 3 meals a day; we eat mostly healthy fats and proteins, tons of vegetables, some fruits, some nuts and seeds, some whole fat dairy, our blood sugar/glucose stays under 100, we go hours WITHOUT insulin in our blood.

****Then our pancreas releases the hormone GLUCAGON. Glucagon “taps” the fat cells holding those triglycerides, takes them to the liver, which remakes them into glucose for the body to burn. Now we’ve literally “burned fat”.

What about “crashing”?  Please don’t worry that you’ll “crash your metabolism” if you don’t eat every couple of hours. That’s ridiculous. Your metabolism is at the mercy of your HORMONES; the hormone Insulin BUILDS, the hormone glucagon TEARS DOWN. Anabolic and Catabolic. ( We’re a Chemistry Set, not a math equation. )

Worried because you can’t seem to go more than a few hours without STARVING?

Two reasons.  1) You’re a sugar burner. Sugar burners have created systems for digesting and storing sugar/glucose, and because that system runs so fast, you’re genuinely hungry all the time. Fat Burners can go HOURS without feeling hungry, even through hard workouts. IT FEELS GREAT TO BE A FAT BURNER. Honestly! For years I was a 5/6 mini-meal a dayer. What a pain in the butt.

2) You’re addicted to either food or eating, or both.  🙁

Either way, get in touch with me.

Anyone and everyone can break the patterns and habits that have led to weight gain, fatigue, and inflammation.  Everyone.  It’s Mid April, you could be a rock star in a few months if you start now.  You could be a whole new person by Christmas!  

Food is Medicine or Food Is Poison.  Let me teach you how to make Food your Friend.

I’m 50! Here’s my Diet and Body Image Story, See If You Relate.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERATomorrow I turn 50, woo-hoo!  Big day, and I thank God for all my blessings.  One of those blessings is that I’m healthier at 50 than I was at 40, and even 35.  Are my abs leaner? No. But that’s about the only health marker that hasn’t improved in the past several years since I gave up Dieting and switched to Real Whole Food.

Confession:  I used to be a food addict; and I had an obsession with wanting to be thinner and leaner. Now, after 28 years in the fitness and nutrition business, I can definitely say that way too many women feel the same way, and those thoughts rule the mind, and ruin the body.

It doesn’t have to be like that!

Here’s my story of dieting and negative body image, see if you relate.

I was a typical female teenager. I’d read Teen Magazine and Seventeen, stare at the models, and dream of looking like them. My first diet started when I was 15. I’d busted through the 114 pound weight limit I set for myself in 9th grade, which compelled me to sneak home a pack of Dexatrim – it worked, for a while. Til it didn’t. Next, I tried the Fruit Only diet; which worked less well than Dexatrim. In 12th grade I bought a pair of special pants that – for real here – attached to our vacuum cleaner, and I had to wear them while exercising – while the vacuum was running. I believed in those pants, but they didn’t work either. I still just looked like me.

Reality Check: at 5’6 and 128 pounds, I wasn’t overweight; I just didn’t look like the girls in the magazines, or on TV. And it bugged me.

Fast forward to 1987, I’d graduated from college and married Mark. My 4 years of college had me totally committed to the world of fitness,  I loved exercising!  Not only did I get a serious endorphin rush from workouts, (and still do) but I fully, deeply believed that exercise would keep me slim; the whole “calories in – calories out” theory. I took a full time job managing the Aerobics Department at a local gym, and my career was born. Through the rest of the 80’s, and the 90’s, my desire to be fit – and weigh less – never waned.

Well, actually, after my first baby, Megan, in 1990, between heavy nursing and working out, I got down to 114, my 9th grade goal weight! Let me tell you all: Happy. Days. But then she quit nursing and I got pregnant again (Amanda), and again (Macy), and again (Shelby).

Through constant diet efforts, I managed to stay around 128, but I never looked like Cindy Crawford. It bugged me. I wanted that thigh gap.

Sometime in the mid 90s, I switched from reading regular women’s magazines, to body builder women’s magazine. This did so much for my self esteem! Now my dream shape wasn’t just thin; it was ripped, lean, and muscular. (Strong is the new skinny.) Since I was a group ex instructor, and personal trainer, I had the opportunity to workout hours a day. I fueled myself with frozen diet meals, diet desserts, diet drinks, cereals that had more fiber than hay, and (thank you mom! ) vegetables. Meat was a rarity, and fat was an absolute no-way. I ate 5 to 6 “mini-meals” a day, carried my protein bars with me everywhere (I was scared I’d get hungry), and counted the hours to the recommended “cheat meals”, which sometimes consisted of a whole pizza and a pint of ice cream. No, actually, and honestly, that was just starter food; because I was never full from crap like that; I was just triggered to eat more.

Anyway, I thought it was such a great Diet Plan! Just like the women in the magazines! Except for when I fell off the wagon, which happened all the time. And not for a meal, but for a day, or two, or more. I lived on what I call the Diet Roller Coaster: Starve – Feast – Starve – Feast, for years. My weight actually averaged out, but it was all so consuming that I started to worry about myself. I didn’t want my 4 daughters disliking their body, or obsessing about food, like me.

I began to see the insanity of this cycle, but I couldn’t stop. I wanted to stop, badly, but I literally couldn’t. I went to a counselor sometime in my late 30s to describe what I guessed was bulimia, or food addiction. He told me I was probably either depressed or anxious, and did I want a prescription. I was neither, and I was pissed he’d even suggested that.

(Ever notice how often a doctors default with a woman’s health issues is, “do you want an anti-depressant?” )

This is when my health started to take a nose dive. Really, it started to go downhill at 30, when I developed asthma, but it took 10 years for me to see what was happening. (Inflammation from the crap I ate) The asthma came on quick and strong, and I was put on 3 separate daily drugs to “manage” it.

Then, after my 4th baby at 31, severe IBS began. Severe. Like, sometime starting in my mid 30s, my stomach would bloat every afternoon to the point of me looking 5 months pregnant.  And.. I had bad gas. It was awful. I thought it was a side effect of eating so healthfully….

Right around then my period stopped, for the first of many times. My GYN ran a blood test which determined I was so low in estrogen that the lab listed me as “post-menopausal”. I was 34. The solution? Put me on The Pill to force a period, and make me “normal” again. I did it, but it kept happening, for years. (Today I know that low estrogen isn’t normal, and it’s fixable.)

At 36, fatigue and low energy set in; a test showed my thyroid hormones were low, which meant daily thyroid meds. At this point, our medicine cabinet was loaded with drugs to deal with all the symptoms I considered completely normal: Gas X, Beano, Tums, Seravent, Advar, Fast Acting Inhalers, Armor, the Pill, Midol, and Advil. I popped these things in my mouth every day without a thought. I carried them in my car…. Now I carry systemic enzymes and “bitters”.

The final straw, my Ah-Ha moment, came at 40. I got my second blood clot. My doctor told me that since this was my second one, I needed to go on Coumadin, a blood thinner. OMG. Grandmas take that stuff! Thank you God for the clot, because THAT was my wake up call. Instead of Coumadin, I went to a Functional MD, and was put on systemic enzymes and big doses of fish oil, (actually, those were my starter supplements). Every blood test I’ve had since then has shown zero “sticky blood”, just normal blood.

For the first time, I started to look and connect what I ate, with the health problems I was having. Up til then, I’d just Dieted, which I thought was supposed to make me healthy, but it hadn’t. The big shocker: I realized that the majority of what I put in my mouth wasn’t actual food, it was Pretend Food that looked real and tasted great, or at least I thought it did at the time. But except for pretty big daily serving of vegetables, I lived on processed foods high in carbs, chemicals, and bad oils; in other words, pure crap.

I served COMPANY frozen diet dinners with vegetables added, topped with slices of fat free cheese! I thought I was a smart Gourmet! I wasn’t.  Those “foods” slowly made me sick, and kept me constantly hungry.

Over the next few years, I morphed from a “Diet” based paradigm, to a Real Whole Foods paradigm, eating (seriously) copious amounts of healthy fats, healthy meats, and absolute loads of vegetables.

I quit eating grains, then sugar. That was hard because I was addicted, but I preserved, and thank goodness! Today I use ZERO effort or will power to stay away from that stuff.

The “no grain/no sugar” scares people, but consider this. Imagine what it’s like to never have gas, bloat, or constipation. I said my stomach’s not as lean, but it’s flattish! Or to not constantly think about food.  Or to have more energy at 50 than at 40? My asthma’s gone. My thyroid labs are normal. My estrogen’s still low, but I made it through menopause, fully, without one hot flash or night sweat.

Best part? My weight’s not an issue. Not because I weigh 114 or 128, but because the obsession is over. The Diet Roller Coaster, which was caused by dieting, is over. I don’t gain every weekend and lose every week. I don’t promise myself every Monday morning that “this will be the week I lose weight.” I’m just…. stable, and normal. There’s still no thigh gap. I don’t for a moment look 20, but, I look fine.

I’ve stopped being so ridiculously hard on myself.

I feel like I used to live “Under The Dome”, but now I see how I was manipulated into wanting someone else’s unattainable ideal body image. Those images are just Temptations, trying to entice us to spend our money on products!

This brings me to the point of my piece: Women, I think many (most?) of us are the victims of slick marketing created to make us feel bad about our looks.

I think said marketing conspires to convince us that we’re too fat, too busy, too depressed, too stressed, and too inadequate to handle life with out special diet food, diet pills, diet aids and diet groups. Science Daily reports a study that says 75% of American women surveyed report unhealthy thoughts, feelings or behaviors related to food or their bodies.

Really? 75% of us feel badly about ourselves and/or food? Is this what we’re teaching our daughters? Talking about with girlfriends? We’re being duped into wasting most of our lives stressing and obsessing about our weight! This is criminal, and the efforts aren’t just making companies money (billions!) while we continue to gain weight; they’re making us sick, which leads to pharmaceutical drugs, which have side effects, which leads to more drugs.

Yes, I’m a conspiracy theorist. Here’s a few statistics that I base my conspiracy theories on: In 1960, about 10% of Americans were obese and an overweight child was a rarity. Today, we have 68% of our adult population either overweight or obese, and 1 out of 3 kids. In the 1970s, new Federal policy stated that Americans needed to lower their intake of fat and cholesterol from animal or tropical sources, which they did. Butter decreased and margarine and vegetable oils increased. Weight, Heart Disease, and Cancer rose.

In the 1970s, the same policy recommended that Grains comprise a majority of our diet, up to 12 servings a day, which we did; consumption of grains – and sugar – skyrocketed. Weight, Heart Disease, and Cancer rose. As weight and heart disease and cancer continued to rise, our doctors medicated us for the ills, and told us to eat less and exercise more. We have. Weight and disease continue to rise.

In the 1980s, weight loss centers, diet foods, and diet drugs, as a business, were booming. Today, Dieting is a multi billion dollar industry. We’re all dieting, and yet weight and disease continue to rise. This makes us feel pretty badly about ourselves.

Meanwhile, in 2015, 1 out of 4 American women are on a psychiatric drug. Read that sentence again. It doesn’t have to be like this. Women, we don’t have to be fat, bloated, tired, and unhappy. We’ve fallen prey to companies and foods that cause addictive behavior, that lead to weight ups and downs which cause depression, and Moms, if we don’t stop the cycle, our kids won’t just be on the same boat we are, they’ll be on a worse boat.

The Surgeon General says that there’s a strong possibility that todays children might be there first generation of American children to have a shorter life span than their parents.

I started by opening up to you about a decades long body issue and food battle. I put myself through some crazy crap, which I know from my work with other women is not unique. I don’t do crazy anymore, I changed. You can change. Anyone can change. Everyone can break cycles and habits.

If you’re ready to change, evaluate what you’ve been doing. Get in touch with me. The definition of insanity is doing the same old thing and expecting a different outcome, right? Change your belief system from Calories In Calories Out, Low Fat blah blah blah, to Food Is Medicine, or Food Is Poison.

Understand that good fat is good for us; starving ourselves backfires; our hormones always rule; and small plates and baby forks for weight control are Dumb. Come on! We can be positive examples for our kids; we can be the one in our circle to stop the cycle and start a trend; and let’s not waste another minute lamenting our stomach, thighs, butt, or weight. There’s so much more to life than that.

Bullet Proof Coffee, Hormones, and Weight Loss

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAIf you haven’t heard of Bullet Proof Coffee (BPC) yet, you will soon.  It gets a lot of press, and the creator of BPC opened his first brick and mortar shop in California this winter.

Many of you have heard of it though, because I get asked about it all the time. I’ve been Bullet Proofing for a couple months now, but this Post isn’t an endorsement, it’s just information. (By the way, I haven’t given up my raw cream totally, I’m only BPing half the time.)  Here’s why, here’s what it is, here’s how you may need to tweak it, and here’s why it could totally, completely backfire on you.

BPC isn’t Dave Asprey’s brain child, he discovered it while climbing mountains in Tibet; apparently the Sherpas drink something similar (with yak dairy), eat very little, do strenuous work, and have great energy.  Dave had similar results and then brought the idea back to the US.  Wow, has that ever worked for him! (He’s built a pretty profitable empire)

What is BPC?  The general recipe is 2 cups of clean (mold free) coffee, blended with 2 tbsp of grass fed butter and 2 tbsp of MCT oil.  Other ingredients could be added, such as vanilla powder, coconut oil, or stevia, or even collagen, which I’ll cover later.  Oh, it’s supposed to be blended as opposed to just stirred; I use a little milk frother, but you could use a smoothie maker.

Will BPC work for you?  There’s a bunch of pro’s and cons here, and don’t for a second think that Bullet Proof Coffee is a Magic Bullet for any weight issues you’re having.  We’re a chemistry set, and there’s way more to our weight than a few good, or bad, choices.

Here’s some facts:

If you’re NOT adrenally fatigued, coffee’s good for you!  Antioxidants and polyphenols in coffee lower the risk for different cancers (prostate, liver, and colorectal).  Coffee drinkers have a much lower risk of developing diabetes T2.  Coffee’s nutrients and caffeine lowers the risk of Alzheimer’s by about 60%, and gives protective qualities against other neurological disorders, like Parkinson’s and dementia.  Coffee’s nutrients have liver protecting qualities.  And we all know about caffeine’s effects on energy, performance, and brain recall: good, good, and good.

What’s not to like?  Well, if you’ve been burning the candle at both ends so much that you use coffee all day long, and barely feel it’s effects, you’ve set up a hormonal situation that negates any benefit coffee could provide.  You probably need to go on a coffee detox, and abstain for a while until your adrenals hormones, thyroid hormones, sex hormones, leptin, and all your other hormones can normalize.  Sad news, I know.

More bad news on coffee?  It’s grown in tropical climates; mold and bugs are a big problem.  Fungicides, pesticides and herbicides are all sprayed very very heavily, so go organic.  The Bullet Proof brand is created with this in mind, and is clean and free of any of those poisons, but I’m sure many other brands are also.  BP’s a little pricy for me, but I do buy their decaf, which is done without chemicals as opposed to the highly chemical-ized typical way of separating the caffeine out of coffee.

My biggest Con – and it’s important and has to do with your weight – will be at the end.  Let me go over why BPC could be good for you first.

When we wake up in the morning, if we’re normal, we’ve been in a hormonal state that’s triggered our cells to use FATTY ACIDS for fuel instead of glucose (sugar).  If we’re normal, we haven’t eaten for several hours, our blood sugar is low, and our insulin levels are low.  This is why we’re using fatty acids for fuel:  low insulin.  Remember, when insulin’s in the blood – fat is never ever ever used for fuel.  Only sugar is.  Low insulin=fat burning.

How do you know if you’re not normal?  Lot’s of ways:  high fasting morning blood sugar, belly fat, and labs that show a high level of hsCRP.  High levels of hsCRP mean Leptin Resistance, which means ABNORMAL.  Pay attention here, because typical BPC protocols aren’t for you if these are your body signs.

BPC can be used two ways.  1) you can have a cup or 2 in the morning before your breakfast.    2) you can drink it all morning long until it’s been about 16 – 18 hours since you’ve had dinner, and then start eating.  It’s complicated and if you’re interested in the Bullet Proof Fasting, read up on it.  Links at the end of Post.

Benefits of BPC besides the benefits inherent in coffee?  If we avoid carbs in the morning, and just have the BPC, which is very high in FAT, we keep insulin low, blood sugar low, and Fat Burning Up.  As long as we don’t eat carbs, the Fat Burning Continues.  This is a good thing, and effective – if you’re normal.  High fat diets provide a lot of nutrients and have a great effect on our hormones; plus, our cells become good at burning fat/using fat for fuel when fat is a normal and substantial part of our diet.

BPC really does make you feel very alert, and it does have an effect on cravings via fat’s positive effects on satiety hormones.  Additionally, the nutrients in grass fed butter and MCT oil are very good for our brain, heart, and gut.

There’s plenty of antidotal evidence that BPC can help you lose weight and become mentally sharper. If you visit the site, you’ll see testimony’s by actors, doctors, and athletes singing it’s praises.

Still, it’s not for everyone, and like I said before, it’s not a Magic Weight Loss Bullet.  Here’s why.

First, BPC is based on the principle that a high fat or ketogenic diet is good for you, which I believe in and use myself.  I don’t eat sugar or grains and I haven’t for years.  No problem.  If you do eat sugar and grains and think you’re going to get away with BPC, you’re wrong.  Lots of carbs + lots of fat = Lots of Body Fat.

Who else shouldn’t rely on BPC as a meal, or try that 16/18 hour fast I mentioned above?  Food Addicts and Chronic Dieters.  BP fasts or efforts will most likely throw you into a food binge rebound, just like all your other diet attempts.  Don’t do it!  Addicts and Dieters need to practice normal meals with Real Whole Food, and no snacking.  Baby steps.

One more caveat:  we women, with all our wonderful, fluctuating hormones, may need to add some collagen to the coffee.  Remember collagen?  Lots of amino acids that are very different from the amino acids in muscle meats like burger, or dairy, like whey.  Again, it’s a long explanation, and there’s a lot of science behind it.  Check out the links if you want to explore farther.

What if you’re interested in BPing, but don’t like coffee?  There’s other ways.  You can use green tea, black tea, ground cocoa, or even vanilla powder.  Again, check out the links.

There you have it!  Bullet Proof explained.  And just to really nail it home:  Bullet Proof doesn’t equal Magic Bullet.  You still need to Sleep, Manage your Stress, Exercise, and eat Real Whole Food. Have a good week!

http://www.rocksolidnutritionandwellness.com/weight-loss-food-cravings-leptin-resistance-insulin-resistance-what-applies-to-you/

http://www.rocksolidnutritionandwellness.com/working-man-parts-weight-loss-youthful-skin-joint-pain-what-do-they-have-in-common-they-all-benefit-from-bone-broth-and-gelatin/

http://dailycoffeenews.com/2015/01/15/a-branded-bulletproof-coffee-shop-is-coming-to-santa-monica/

http://authoritynutrition.com/top-13-evidence-based-health-benefits-of-coffee/

https://www.bulletproofexec.com/bulletproof-coffee-mistakes-butter-coffee-fatty-coffee-and-more/

http://www.amazon.com/The-Bulletproof-Diet-Reclaim-Upgrade/dp/162336518X