Tag Archive for Cooking

Tough Love: Ditch The Grains & Excuses Or You’ll Never Lose Weight.

January 17, 2016 / / Comments Off on Tough Love: Ditch The Grains & Excuses Or You’ll Never Lose Weight.

It’s January, 2016.  How different is your body from January, 2015?  Better, worse, or….  the same?

If you’re better – GOOD FOR YOU!!! WOO HOO!   If you’re worse, or the same, make 2016 your year for improvement; actual, real, permanent improvement: weight loss, muscle gain, energy, less inflammation, better hair/skin/pooping.  You get the picture.

Ask yourself, what’s been holding you back? Why have previous efforts failed?

Here’s a few educated guesses:

1) You’re eating grains/wheat/gluten free grains. This just won’t work, especially as you age, or if you’re already fighting a weight or health issue.  Grains just have to go.

They’re poison; if you’re unconvinced, listen to cardiologist Dr. William Davis on the subject.  Or read this Post on how grains are killing you and your family. Fill your mind with the latest facts and science, not Big Food’s appealing advertising.

Here’s an idea: try a 7 day “100% grain-free” experiment on yourself.  Watch your stomach shrink and your energy sky-rocket.  7 days,… it’s a blip on the time line.  Keep feeding your family whatever your normally feed them and just focus on you for 7 days.

Grains lead to inflammation, weight gain/bloat, foggy thinking, bad sleep, bad skin, constipation, leaky gut, headaches, autoimmune conditions, diabetes, heart disease, etc etc.

What to eat instead of pasta,cereal, and bread:  clean meats, plenty of healthy fats (coconut oil, extra virgin olive oil, grass fed butters, raw dairy), a TON OF VEGETABLES, some fruit, nuts/seeds/avocados, maybe some beans.  That depends on your blood sugar.

It’s not hard, but I have to admit, eating real whole food does involve time and energy. Eating real whole food means shopping, chopping, prepping, cooking, and packing.

And that brings me to my second guess as to why you haven’t lost weight or improved your health.

2)  You think cooking is either too hard or too time consuming.

You’re right!  Cooking does take a little learning and practice; maybe your mom never taught you, or you can’t figure out how to follow a cookbook.  Cooking’s definitely a lost skill in America.

Develop that skill! We’re humans, we learn things all the time.  Learn how to make cooking, and eating real whole food, a normal part of your life.  Pass that skill on to your kids. ( Or pass on the opposite skill: teach your kids how to live on convenient processed foods and watch them become fat, sick, and depressed.)

All it takes is a little coaching.  It’s just Real Whole Food;  it’s not rocket science.  Honest.  Get in touch with me and we can work together on this part.  I’ve done Power Cooking classes with dozens of clients now.  It’s empowering to learn how to make 4 or 5 full meals in a couple of hours.

One more reason you’re not healthier in 2016:

3) You can’t stick to your plan for more than a few days.  This is a biggie. Most plans involve starvation and excessive exercise, which make excuses to jump off the wagon easy. ( “I’m busy”, “I deserve this”, “I’ll start again on Monday.”)

Low calorie diets are DOOMED TO FAIL.  Statistically, almost 100% of everyone who goes on a “diet” gains their weight back.  50% gain back more than they lost.  

Stop the guaranteed cycle!  Compliance and change happen when your brain really, really cares about what you’re putting in your body.  You don’t sit down and devour a bag of Cheetos or a box of ice cream if you genuinely think they’ll cause cancer or stomach distress for a day or a terrible night’s sleep.

This is where coaching comes in again.  Step doing the same old thing and getting the same old results,..   Call me.

Start now, and when 2017 gets here, you can be a different person.  Health is everything!  The health of your kids and your family – it’s everything.

We create our health and our weight.  80% of all illness is designated as “life style disease”.  Our weight is the result of our food choices and habits.

Make health a priority in 2016.  We aren’t doomed to be fat, sick, sore, and tired just because we’re getting older or busy or both.  We are the result of how we take care of ourselves, so ditch the excuses along with the grains.

Back to my lead-in;  it’s January, 2016.  How are you different from January 2015?  What do you want to be in January 2017?  Take ahold of your power and your choices and your actions, and create the you God made you capable of being.

Category: Carbs, Cooking, RWF / Tags: , , ,

How To Avoid Fatigue Induced Food Cravings; and more Food Pics

September 10, 2014 / / Comments Off on How To Avoid Fatigue Induced Food Cravings; and more Food Pics

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERALast night I had a very rare bad night’s sleep.  Normally, I’m the type that when my head hits the pillow, I don’t slowly drift off, I plummet into oblivion.  I don’t even move very much and some mornings my hair’s perfect 🙂

Anyway, something went wrong last night, and I couldn’t get to sleep until around 3:30.  I get up at 5, so clearly, I been “off” today.

What wasn’t off?  MY EATING.  Honestly, a few years ago a bad night like that would of had me snacking or binging on and off throughout the day.  I would have gone from feeling bad to feeling miserable.

These past few years of eating more fat, and these past several months eating GOBS of fat, and …. nothing.  No desire, no cravings, no inkling of an idea that eating might make me feel better.  What a relief!  I wish I had known about this when all my kids were little and I had over a decade of interrupted sleep, but better late than never.

Food cravings strike for many reasons; and food cravings can strike for absolutely NO REASON AT ALL.  You just want the food,.. because.  I think the science is pretty clear that CRAVINGS are a symptom of a high carb diet.  Here’s a line from a study published by the NIH, comparing Low CARB diets (LCD)  with Low FAT diets (LFD): Compared to the LFD, the LCD had significantly larger decreases in cravings for carbohydrates/starches and preferences for high-carbohydrate and high-sugar foods. The LCD group reported being less bothered by hunger compared to the LFD group.

Exactly!  Our body is made out of Water, Fat, and Protein; a little bit of mineral, even less vitamins, and just a teeny, tiny bit of Carbohydrate. ( Most carb is converted to fat and stored.) For the past several decades, during the Low Fat push, our dietary fat’s decreased and our carb consumption has increased, greatly.  What’s been the result?  Obesity and disease, with the CDC predicting NO END IN SITE TO THE RISE OF EITHER.

(When they talk about statistics in 2030 or 2040, they’re talking about what OUR KIDS will be facing.)

Eating disorders, food compulsions, they’re also on the rise.

A day of cereal or toast for breakfast, sandwiches for lunch, pasta for dinner, and carby snacks in between are a recipe for exactly the health and weight situation we’ve got.  It’s also a perfect way to create food addiction.  Substances in grains and sugar trigger the addictive pleasure centers in our brain.  The glucose nature of grains and sugars causes them to quickly be digested and absorbed into the blood, sending blood sugar HIGH, along with the Insulin necessary to lower it.  High Blood Sugar and High Insulin lead to:  Inflammation, Heart Disease, Diabetes, Cancer, Auto-Immune, Migraines, and I could go on and on.

It matters what we eat; stay away from the Cereal, the Bread, the Pasta, The cookies/cake/croissants/muffins/pretzels/crackers/waffles.  Load up on good meats and eggs, healthy fats, TONS of vegetables, some fruit, some nuts and seeds, and some full fat dairy if you tolerate it.  You’ll say good by to health issues, good by to excess body weight, and good bye to cravings, I promise.

Meals for the past two days:

Smoothie Tuesday: water w/flax and chia/Jay Robb protein/2 raw eggs/MCT oil/frozen spinach/frozen banana/cinnamon/ginger/coconut flakes/pumpkin seeds

lunch 9:10Lunch Tuesday:  sardines/basil/tomatoes/S&P/balsalmic   and a coconut oil fat bomb.  It doesn’t look very good but it tastes fine – honest.

 

dinner 9:10

 

 

 

Dinner Tuesday:  ground sausage and liver fried in butter topped with a little cheese;  roasted potatoes;  and in the bowl:  cauliflower, tomatoes, mushrooms in butter, w/ thyme and oregano.

Today / Wednesday:

Smoothie: I KNEW I NEEDED TO EAT VERY HIGH FAT TO GET THRU THE DAY:  a cup of full fat coconut milk ( can, not box), flax, 2 raw eggs, vanilla and stevia, MCT oil, raw greens powder, coconut flakes, blueberries, nutmeg, and mace.

Lunch:  out to eat:  a big cobb salad with salmon, olive oil and vinegar.

And that’s it so far.  Oh, Tip For The Day:  Plan.  Did you think each day would be a different tip? Planning is EVERYTHING.  Plan your lists, plan your meals, plan around your schedule, plan when you’re going to chop and cook and pack.  The busiest people in the world get the most done because they Plan.  Eat well!

Category: Carbs, Cooking, Fats, No Recipe Paleo Meals, Paleo Diet, Paleo Recipe, Smoothie of Day, Sugar, Weight Loss / Tags: , , ,

How To Get Healthy and Lean With NO RECIPE PALEO MEALS. Food Pics!

September 8, 2014 / / Comments Off on How To Get Healthy and Lean With NO RECIPE PALEO MEALS. Food Pics!

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAI’m about to embark on a whole week of posting What I Eat, the How To’s of making it, and the Why’s of what I’m cooking.  Frequent complaints I hear are “I don’t know how to cook, I don’t have time to cook, I get confused in the grocery store, I don’t know what’s healthy, I’m too busy to cook, No one likes my cooking and I feel like it was a waste of time and effort.”

These negative thoughts pony on the back of massive amounts of advertising convincing us that frozen food, processed food, and fast food are PERFECT for each of these situations, and look:  everyone in the ad is slim and beautiful!  What could go wrong??

A lot:  a nation that’s 70% overweight, tired, sick, and stressed, and kids who take more drugs to control their behavior and moods than ever imagined.  Its time to take back out health, and that only happens by eating Real Whole Food.  

To all of you who are either intimidated by cooking or always looking for ideas, this week will be for you.  If you check out my What I Eat page, you’ve noticed that most of our dinners are just meat, vegetables, fats, herbs, and spices, thrown together without a recipe.   Honestly, I rarely even get out a measuring spoon; most of the time I either pour spices into my hand, or chop and throw herbs right into my pot, depending on my mood.

If you’ve been obsessed with the Food Network, or Food magazines, you’ve been convinced that Cooking Is A Science for the Gifted In Cooking.  I’m here to tell you, it’s not.  Honestly.  Throw a bunch of Real Whole foods together, and it ALWAYS comes out good.  But food, food is a science;  Food is Medicine, and it’s important to learn the benefits of particular foods, and then use that knowledge to lose weight, stay lean, get healthy, boost energy, recover, repair, and sleep well.

Food can also be Poison; feeding your kids Pasta and Chicken Nuggets is a really bad idea.   True it’s fast and easy, and they’ll LOVE it, but the Simple Carbs, the Gluten, the Chemicals, and the total LACK of any nutrients, will set your kids up for a life of poor health, weight issues, foggy thinking, fatigue, and learning problems.

All week I’ll be giving tips that are tailored to you overcoming all those typical excuses for why cooking just isn’t possible.  Today’s tip:  Plan.

Get out your day timer, look at your schedule and your kid’s schedule.  When are you home? when are you working/driving/working out/activities/sports etc?  Write it down.  If you’re in the car from 3 to 7, you need to either pack dinner, or have something ready in a warm over (175*) for when you get home.  You might have to make dinner in the morning or early afternoon, if that’s when you have time.  Dinner doesn’t have to be prepared right before you eat, dinner needs to be prepared WHEN YOU HAVE TIME TO MAKE IT.   If you leave for work early in the morning and don’t get home til late, you need to have food already prepared in a crock pot, or refrigerator via Power Cooking. ( I’ll do a Power Cook this week, for now, read this post for an explanations/how-to’s.  )

Really, there’s very few surprises in life, and I’m saying that as a working mom of 4, one of whom’s epileptic.  Life is pretty routine;  if you want to accomplish much, plan around your routine.  This takes attention, effort, and practice if you’re used to winging life by the seat of your pants.  If you’re a parent, choose what you want to teach your children:  planning or winging.  Which do you think will be more helpful to them?

On to Today’s Meals:

I always start the day with Intenzyme ( anti-inflammatory enzymes), Bromelein ( enzymes for my sticky blood), and Tyrosine ( amino acids for energy).  I take digestive enzymes with my meals, and a good fish oil,  and a vit B complex after breakfast, along with HCl ( stomach acid).    Shelby takes Primrose oil ( good for fluctuating hormones), Fermented Cod Liver Oil ( all my girls are on this, it’s good for the immune system), and B complex.

FYI, all my water has Braggs Apple Cider Vinegar added, I love the taste, and all those live enzymes are good for me.

Breakfast for Shelby ( she’s my only kid home right now. )

banana & egg pancake

 

This is a big pancake made out of a mashed ripe banana, 2 eggs, cinnamon, mace, and ginger, then cooked in coconut oil.  She tops it with butter.  This has been her breakfast for the past 8 days.  I’m expecting it to change soon, but we’ll see.

 

9:8:14 smoothie

 

 

 

 

To the right is my breakfast:  a Smoothie.  In the glass:  water with chia/flax/hemp seeds, a scoop of Jay Robb protein, and my newest find:  Amazing Grass Raw Reserve.  Then I added some of the frozen collard greens ( from last nights dinner), a few chunks of frozen avocado ( baggy ), a raw egg, some frozen blueberries, a little MCT oil, and ice.  Also: cinnamon, mace, and cloves.  I measured NOTHING, and there’s no recipe, but there are reasons for choosing my ingredients.

The seeds are high in Omega 3 and phyto nutrients, and great for pooping.  Flax seed is also good for eliminating old estrogen from the body. The Grass, well, check out how many nutrients are in there. Jay Robb:  easy, clean, quick digesting whey protein; I’m lifting in less than 2 hours and I want amino acids in my blood, ready to be used by muscle cells.  Collards: greens are Nutrient Bombs, and I had leftovers.  Avocado:  great source of mono-unsaturated fat.  Raw eggs:  where do I start?  MCT oil: great for producing Ketones.  Cinnamon/Mace/Cloves:  spices are NUTRIENT BOMBS.  Check out Worlds Healthiest Foods to learn about these spices, and why you should incorporate them.  Blueberries:  vein health, heart health, antioxidants, anti-inflammatory, phyto-nutrients.

Lunch for me:  Sardines w/ tomatoes, basil, S&P, olive oil and vinegar.  Shelby took a Cliff Bar, a big apple, and some nuts.

Dinner:  Pictures tomorrow, but cod, and spaghetti squash loaded with a vegetable tomato sauce, topped with cheese.

Start making your plan now, and let me know what you come up with.  Cooking is NOT rocket science, you can do this!

 

 

Category: Cooking, Fats, No Recipe Paleo Meals, Smoothie of Day, Weight Loss / Tags: , , , , ,

Success Story! Use It to Motivate and Inspire You

April 24, 2014 / / Comments Off on Success Story! Use It to Motivate and Inspire You

Terry’s Success Story is going to sound awfully familiar to many of you.  So many men and women today feel doomed to a negative, self-destructive relationship with food, regardless of weight or age.

You can be free from “Diet Prison“, I promise.  When you’re finally free, it’s amazing.  It’s like angels singing on high – LAAAAAAHHH!  The guilt, the burden, the self-recriminations, the anxiety driven eating, it’ll all go away.  You are not sentenced to an entire life of Misery By Food,  YOU CAN JUST BE NORMAL, I promise, I swear.  But you have to take action steps, because deeply engrained habits and addictions don’t just change spontaneously; it takes a plan, and a different belief system.  Enjoy Terry’s story and let me know what you think.

When Debbie asked me to share my “success story”, I told her that I just didn’t feel all that successful when it comes to eating. It is difficult to look back on my life and see it as a success story. I think back on all the bad choices I have made, all the damage I have done and all the years I’ve focused on my weight in a negative way. Where was the success in my story?

My terrible habits began at the young age of 14. I was only in 8th grade when I was recruited to run track and field at a high school level. I was a good runner, I loved the competition and I especially loved winning. I was tall (5’9) and skinny which was an asset to my sport, but my coaches feared that I would gain weight. That negative attention towards my body made me very self-conscious and I began to hate my height and, more importantly, my weight. I was never overweight but any negative feedback during such a delicate developmental age was taken to heart. My fear of becoming fat made me crazy. I obsessed about it and started to search for anything and everything that claimed to be “fat-free”. I read labels, I counted fat grams and I watched the scale like a hawk. Bagels, pasta, bread, candy, yogurt were all “fat free”.  I became addicted to carbohydrates and sugar but the self-imposed diet seemed to be working because I never gained a pound. Maybe it was because I was so young or maybe because I worked out at such a high intensity. It doesn’t really matter why I didn’t gain weight; to me it was proof my diet was working.

Sadly, weight fluctuations aren’t the only negative side effect of a bad diet.  Looking back, I suffered from many side effects. I had terrible acne, I was depressed, I experienced moods swings, compulsive behavior, low self-esteem and body dysmorphia. I slowly began turning to food to eradicate all my irrational feelings. When I was tired, I’d eat. When I was sad, I’d eat. When I was happy, I’d eat. Eating was an outlet that brought me relief and eventually, like with any addiction, things progressed. Binging soon followed. After I binged, I would panic and need to get rid of it. These irrational feelings grew into an uncontrollable eating disorder that followed me through high school and into college. It wasn’t until my early 20’s, when I started a job as a nanny for three small children that my eyes were opened to the impact of my disorder. I was watching two little girls and a baby boy and I feared that I would pass my problems onto to them. I never wanted those sweet kids to do what I was doing. They saved me from self-destructing and I never did it again.

Writing about my past is weird. I rarely think about what I went through much less talk about it. It is not who I am anymore but it is an important part of my story. I abused my body for over 10 years – binging, purging, yo-yo dieting, excessively working out and eating chemically enhanced “fat-free” foods. I suffered through years of sadness, anger, low self-esteem and self-loathing. Changing my past behavior took time, healing my mind and body took more time but forgiving myself has taken the most time. The lesson I have taken from my journey is that you have to forgive the past you for the mistakes you’ve made. I cannot change what I did but I can forgive myself so that I can move forward and take better care of myself now.

Moving forward has been really exciting. I have been cooking real whole food meals for my family and friends for two years now. I have been writing for a blog, 11 Magnolia Lane, and I share many of my recipes there. I’ve also started cooking for friends who either work outside of their home, don’t like to cook or just need help with eating healthier. Cooking for my friends has turned into a huge blessing for me. It has helped me through a very difficult year and it gives me purpose. I feel like I was meant to help people reach their healthy goals. Debbie has been a huge part of my success. She has mentored me through this whole process and I have learned so much from her over the past two years. She has been generously sharing her knowledge through her blog and nutrition classes with me. She simplifies the physiology of digestion, she explains why certain foods are toxic and she provides healthy recipes and alternatives to processed eating. Debbie has opened my eyes and my heart to this real whole food movement. She inspires me on a daily basis to take better care of my family through education and nutrition. She has challenged the way I shop and she has encouraged me to prepare and cook nutritious food for my family and for others. Debbie has inspired me to take something that I was interested in for myself and turn it into something that I share with others. That 14-year-old girl who used to view food as the enemy now sees it as an ally – – something that will improve her life and the lives of the people around her and that is what makes this, in my mind, a success story.

Category: Cooking, Success Story / Tags: , , ,

Food Wisdom and Pictures!

February 5, 2014 / / Comments Off on Food Wisdom and Pictures!

Ready for a little piece of Food Wisdom and some more pictures this week?  Here’s the wisdom:  Real Food is so good, that you don’t even need recipes.  You can just throw a bunch of your favorite foods together in a pan or a pot, and end up with something delicious.  It’s honestly not hard.

I’ve said before that the Food Channel, the cooking shows, the food magazines, and the food blogs – as much as I love them – give the FALSE impression that making meals must be complicated;  something to be undertaken only if you’ve got formal training or years of experience. Not True. Not True!

Think I’m wrong because you feel uncomfortable in the kitchen?  That’s just mental.  Your kids feel uncomfortable when they first start learning math, or how to read, but anything done daily becomes very normal.  You should be cooking daily if you want to see improvements to your health, your weight, and your moods ( and your kids health, weight, and mood).  Real Whole Food has the power to change you for the better; crappy processed food does not.  Think you’re too busy to cook daily?  Then plan your schedule (write it down) to accommodate a few hours of Power Cooking when you do have time.  Let there be a flow to the process:  slow cook a roast and a bunch of chicken over night on 200, or the crock pot, shred, mix with broth and vegetables, cool, then freeze it.  Chop and roast a bunch of sweet or white potatoes, then freeze them.  Make sure you have plenty of good frozen vegetables in your fridge, they’re often much more nutrient dense than fresh since they get flash frozen in the fields now.   Make sure you always make extra so you have enough for lunches;  baggie-up appropriately!  Listen to a great podcast or bring a TV into the kitchen and watch a series.  Over Christmas vacation we had some big, group Power Cooking sessions where we binge watched Walking Dead – it was Heaven!

brussels, carrotsHere’s a recent dinner:  broth, sausage, brussels, tomatoes, sweet potatoes, onion, bunch of spices and herbs.

 

eggs brusselsAnd here’s what I did the next with it for lunch:  added a hard boiled egg ( heavy lifting day plus I taught classes and worked out with a couple clients – I knew I’d be starving)

 

And last, that potato thing:  I put a big glass pan in the hot roasted potatoesoven with a few tablespoons of kerry gold butter (in it) for a few minutes til the butter melts.  Then I chop a BUNCH of potatoes, put them in the butter, add salt and herbs (sometimes rosemary, sometimes italian), toss,  and roast at 425 for 45 to an hour.  I let them cool, then put them in a giant ziploc, and then freeze them as “flat” as possible.  There’s a few servings in the bag and I want to be able to “crack” off a chunk, then I reheat them in the oven for a few minutes ( after they’ve thawed).

Honestly, you don’t have to serve pasta and bread every night to make your meals.  There are other foods out there ( I often get asked, “what else do you feed your kids?”).  Fats, like good butter, olive oil, and coconut oil, make food delicious.  Salt, pepper, spices and herbs, make food delicious.  Hard cheeses grated over vegetables, make food delicious.  These things are loaded with nutrients that both add to and enhance the nutrients you’d already be serving when you serve Real Whole Food.  Be determined to become a Real Whole Foodie!

Category: Cooking, Fats, No Recipe Paleo Meals, RWF / Tags: , , ,
 
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