Why you should be on a restrictive diet - and funny stories of them.

I have a tendency to ask a lot of questions when I eat outside of my home. I always ask what comes on a particular item. I ask if it has dairy, I always make sure I know if there is meat. Is it frozen, does it come with... have that... spread with what??? And the person that is helping me usually doesn't mind, but sometimes you can tell they really don't feel like answering my questions, and when I do get that gleaming eye or smirky tone from an employee about answering my questions, I tend to talk about it to my husband. 

The other day, apparently I was saying something and my 7 year old asks, "Mom, why don't a lot of people like you." I laughed and explained I ask a lot of questions and people don't always like my questions. To be honest, I'm really not that bad. If something seems complicated, I generally stay away from it to begin with, and for this reason I tend to frequent the same places on a very regular basis if we do go out to eat because I already know how to handle it. 

But I AM a picky eater. I eat a lot, and I do eat a lot of variety, and I eat some funky foods. But I also DON'T eat a lot of different kinds of foods (beef, pork, dairy, non-vegan fats,white starch... other stuff). I was a vegetarian about a decade before it became trendy to be a vegetarian. Back in the day before there were little V's and GF's and icons of plants all over the menu to tell if something was veggie friendly, so when I went out I developed a habit of asking a lot of questions to find out what was in the food. 

"Oh, well it just has bacon bits, that's not real meat."

Really?

So last winter we ended up in the middle of no-wheres-ville Texas in a cheap motel with a totaled car in the middle of apparently the only ice storm Texas has ever seen in their entire history. So when we left the next morning we had to get breakfast at one of 2 options, so we swung by Sonic with the mindset that they would have an egg wrap thing. Despite the fact that I eat meat now, there's no way I'll ever eat fast food meat. Fake meat... Faeat... feet....get it?

So when we pulled up I very politely said 

"Excuse me, do you have anything that doesn't have meat in it."

"What do you mean.?"

"Like, no meat. Like, an egg and cheese only type of thing."

"I don't understand. I mean, we have chicken? Is that what you mean?"

I said thank you and left. 

The point is, is that people don't know what the heck food is. We eat anything we want, and we do no research to what it comes with or how it's cooked, and then we get surprised when things happen. Like the number on the scale and the cholesterol charts going up. 

So my husband announced that he wanted to loose some weight. So me, as his totally supportive and nutritionally educated, yet completely NON pushy or demanding wife... gave him some gentle advice on how to do that. Specific things he should watch, especially fats because he has family history of high cholesterol. So we went out to eat one day after church at a breakfast place. We both love a good omelette so he glanced at the menu, told me what he wanted, and then went to use the restroom. So as I looked over his item I noticed that this particular omelette had avocado in it. And cheese... and sour cream.. and bacon.... My heart started to hurt just looking at it. 

So when the lady came I ordered what he wanted. Who am I to dictate what he eats! Except I got it with no cheese... or sour cream. And fruit on the side instead of bread...But I left the bacon on there, otherwise it would have been borderline a completely different omelette. When he came and sat down and I told him what I did he simply said, "Oh. I didn't even know. I just saw the avocado and thought it looked good."

The issue with my wonderful husband is that that man will eat anything. And because he has zero restrictions in his diet, he has never been trained to look at the details of what is in an menu item. He sees one or two ingredients that look good to him and goes for it. 

So I urge people to develop a restrictive diet. Heck, even a fad diet like Paleo or GF if you want. Give up SOMETHING. There are PLENTY of things in this world you should not be eating and frankly I'd advise people to give up quite a few things in their everyday diet, but if your new to this then you don't want to overwhelm yourself. Just start off with something. One COMMON thing, like cheese, or sour cream, or bacon, or red meat, or butter, or... you get the point. Something that causes you to say, Oh, I should investigate what is in my food to see if that one thing I can't eat is in there. 

There is no reason an omelette should include 4 types of fats, 3 of them high saturated fat. It's down right awful for you. By taking away even 2 of them you are reducing your calorie intake by hundreds of calories, just for that one meal. 

If you are trying to make a change for the better in your life you need to teach yourself to be disciplined. Be uncomfortable with your choices. Push yourself in ways that you wouldn't have before. 

People are trying to develop this freedom to say yes to everything, as if loosing your discipline in life is good for you or something. But I urge you to say NO when you don't want to. No to another cookie. No to sitting on the couch, NO to waking up feeling guilty every day. 

Become who you have always wanted to be. 

Dream Big. Inspire Others. Run Hard. 

Let thy food be thy medicine

"Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food."

-Hippocrates

I find it ironic that one of the greatest quotes that was ever said about food was said long before modern medicine was ever around. (However this was also long before a lot of health related research was around, so people lived mainly off of meat and potatoes and wine. Boo). But these days, despite that we do live longer then people did in Hippocrates day, we seemed to be more unhealthy, more overweight, and sick all the time. With the advances in modern medicine don't you think that we should be getting healthier, not sicker? So what are we doing wrong. 

We live in a world where we love our problems to be covered by band aids. Anytime my 5 year old does anything to harm himself he immediately wants a band aid, despite if he is bleeding and is in actual need of one. If he has any sort of bump or bruise or scrap, he insists on getting a band aid. Unfortunately for him, i'm always up for teaching a life lesson to my little baby, so he only gets one if he REALLY needs one. He always learns to deal with it, and the pain from the boo boo will go away weather he has been bandaged up or not. 

<- But it's so hard to resist this face sometimes!!

Modern medicine in the majority of ways that it is being used, is simply just a band aid to cover up a bad feeling that we don't want to deal with. But as a society that is what we want. If we get a cold, we pump ourselves with Tylenol. At the first sign of a headache we reach for the Aspirin. Any time we get a pain in our body we run to the Dr. demanding to find out what is wrong with us and insisting that there is some magic pill that can make it better. Does Tylenol make the cold go away? No, it just masks the pain that we feel so we can get by until it does. We don't realize that the cold is going to go away in the same amount of time, even if we don't pump ourselves with the medicine.  

Anytime that I feel the slight inkling of a cold, or if I am in a situation where I am more susceptible to get one, like on a plane or bus ride, I take a vitamin C pill (the all natural God given cold medicine), eat oranges, drink tea and wash my hands A LOT, but NEVER do I take medicine. And 95% of the time I have beaten it by the very next day. Our bodies are strong, amazingly resilient and will always be there for us and bounce back and fight, but we have to be there for them as well. We have to stop forgetting about quick fixes and magic pills and starting eating right, drinking right, and moving right.

So lets use the blueberry as a wonderful example of how to do this. According to /www.blueberrycouncil.org (a whole counsel just for blueberries!) blue berries contain tons of antioxidants  which 

"work to neutralize free radicals — unstable molecules linked to the development of cancer, cardiovascular disease and other age-related conditions such as Alzheimer’s" 

Cardiovascular disease and cancer, two of the leading causes of death in our nation. So with this information out there and with food being so accessible, why would you rather wait till you get cancer, and then pump your body full for painful hazardous life threatening chemotherapy instead of just giving blueberries a shot and eating a handful of them every day. No, of course it doesn't mean you WONT get cancer, but heck, i'll do everything in my power to prevent it if I can. Not to mention helping out against alzheimer's AND causing your skin to age much less quickly. It really sounds too good to be true. (But its not!)

Blueberries are just one of the MANY amazing foods that God has given us to protect ourselves and take care of ourselves on our own. Eating some of these in combination with many others that are out there IS. THE. KEY. to feeling better, weighing less, preventing headaches and colds, and so many other things that people just cant seem to find the answer too. It IS just that easy. 

So the next time your sitting on the couch eating chips and thinking about the "secret to all these skinny healthy happy people." Go for a walk and munch on some blueberries while you think. 

Night snacking and blueberry cinnamon oatmeal breakfast

It took me forever to take this picture of the dish. My husband has the worlds most complicated camera, so i'll work on the quality of the pictures of my dishes to come!

With that being said, let's talk about breakfast!

Breakfast seems to be a difficult subject for people, you either love it or you hate it. You either have all the time in the world for breakfast, or you have 5 screaming children and 10 minutes to feed them. If I could give magic guidance for all of that I would, but I'm not you so I wont. What I WILL do though, is provide you with a fantastic easy and super healthy breakfast option that would go great for just about anyone (and low cost!)

I will talk "briefly" about WHY you should eat breakfast. BREAK. FAST. Those two words describe what breakfast's purpose in life is very well. We all know by now that fasting is bad, and when you sleep for 7-9 hours at night you don't eat anything during all that time (hopefully) and your body wakes up set into a fasting mode. This results in us being low on nutrients and energy (calories) and our metabolism has slowed to a snails pace in order to conserve the calories we have stored, just in case the Apocalypse happens and we don't get to eat for a week. This also means that you are not burning calories efficiently enough. It's all a vicious cycle really. Picture one of those radios you would buy to use during that Apocalypse that is hand crank powered and it is still going, but has slowed down to some weird sound that you can't make sense of? Yeah, that's what you sound like. So all you need to do is give it a few good cranks and you'll be up and running in no time. That's breakfast.

So your "not a breakfast person". This is my theory behind people that say, "I'm just not hungry in the morning. I can't stomach food." Your crazy. Breakfast is the most delicious food of the day, and there is no scientific way you are not hungry if you haven't eaten since say, 8 pm the night before like you were SUPPOSED to. So what time did you eat, and what was on that menu? Did you nosh on a back of starchy salty crackers while sitting in front of the T.V. mere minutes before you headed off to bed?! Well, if your eating late at night, your stomach has been sitting on that food all night, cause there was no way to burn it while sleeping, and it is still sitting in your stomach when you wake up. So no, you probably are not hungry, but you did just pack on a little bit of weight, and set yourself up for an unhealthy day.

TRY: Not eating right before bed. If your desire to eat is strong, grab some gum, ice chips, or a cup of hot tea and ask yourself if you really ARE hungry. If you are absolutely insistent on eating something then eat something small and light. A handful of fruit or veggies (no dips), a half a bag of popcorn, a piece of cheese, and avoid anything starchy, salty, or high in calories. And remember BAD HABITS TAKE TIME AND EFFORT TO BREAK.

This breakfast is delicious, filling, way healthy and super simple to make.

Blueberry Cinnamon Oatmeal

1/2 - 3/4 cup quick cooking oats, not instant
1 - 1/2 cup milk (you can adjust according to desired thickness)
      ** To make recipe vegan use almond or soy, UNSWEETENED, milk
3/4 cups frozen blueberries
2 tbsp flax seeds
1 tbsp cinnamon (add more or less to taste)

Throw oats and milk in a pot, set on medium high. Add blueberries right away, you want the oats to absorb the flavor and blueberries to become nice and soft. Once milk boils (stir a few times while heating up), reduce to simmer and keep stirring. If you like liquidy oats, cook less time, if you like thick and creamy, cook till most of the milk is absorbed. Cook until desired texture, 3-5 minutes. Add flax and cinnamon, stir. Eat with spoon! (It's hot, beware.)

Super food ? Does that mean it has magical powers!

Every week it seems like there are new and improved foods coming out on the market. Kale, wheat grass, Quinoa... (Keen-wha!?!) What are all these foods and where the heck are they coming from! In a world where a healthy diet has been thought of as eating a pound of bacon in the morning, but skipping the fruits and veggies (they have carbohydrates. Oh no!) or that you can loose 10 pounds in a week by sucking down nothing but broth 3 times a day (10 lbs for water and muscle!) I am happy to say that the latest and greatest food trend of super foods has finally got it right! Unfortunately for my poor clients, every time someone asks me "Have you ever heard of, kale, I think its called?" my little healthy heart fills with joy and I talk way more about it then they probably wish to hear. It must be all that awesome energy I have from the kale I put in my morning smoothies.

So, what exactly is a super food and why is it so... Super!

The quality of a food can easily be described as how much bang you get for your buck. The bang being the nutrients it contains, and the buck being the calories you consume, or spend in a sense from your daily "budget" of calories.  Our bodies require a certain amount of nutrients to operate at their maximum capacity, and to make us healthy and keep us healthy. They more nutrients the better. (**Yes, there are some nutrients that you can "overload", but the chances of you doing that are slim, so let's focus on just getting them in for now**) 

However, the same concept does not apply for calories. We want to keep those babies moderate as to not gain weight as we age.  This is where our super foods come into play. 

The above images are the nutrition facts of 1 cup of iceberg lettuce vs. 1 cup of kale, also known as a super food. You will notice that while the lettuce has fewer calories, the kale, with only a slight amount more of calories has almost 200% more of vitamin a, as well as majorly elevated levels or vitamin c, calcium and iron as well as more protein and fiber (and sans the sugar!). If you do the research beyond the nutrition label, you will also find many added health benefits most super foods have. You would have to eat 4 cups of lettuce in order to get the same amount of vitamin a as you do for 1 cup of kale. And who really wants to eat 4 cups of lettuce?

This is one, among many, examples of a super food and why we call them that. 

So, in a few meals this week try swapping your regular fare for these super foods

Lettuce for Kale or Spinach

Regular potatoes for Sweet potatoes 

white for brown rice or quinoa

butter for olive oil

sour cream for greek yogurt 

soda and juice for home brewed tea

cereal for oatmeal

chips and crackers for almonds and walnuts

sweets for fresh fruit 

(to me, all fruit is super when its chosen instead of processed sugar!)

green beans for edamame 

creams and butters for fresh herbs

or try adding to any dish

fresh garlic

frozen spinach

flax seed

ginger

cinnamon 

spicy peppers

sunflower seeds

And make each meal as delicious and nutritious as possible!!