Changing Your Destiny
Hopefully you gleaned some decent information from the last article and more hopefully this started you on the road to thinking and possibly even doing something to change your genetic destiny. I’m not being dramatic here folks. When you overhaul your lifestyle, you ACTUALLY make changes on the DNA (cellular) level. Listen up, because this is interesting stuff…
Fat cells acquired in childhood actually differ genetically from those acquired in adulthood. They are HARDER to lose because of this difference. I will refrain from my “childhood obesity is child abuse” rant but allow me to elaborate on this fact a little. Early nutrition is FORMATIVE and absolutely a time when parents need to pay attention and do the right thing by their sweet little humans. We are talking cellular groundwork here (remember the fat cells ^^). Unfortunately, after the first year of life, nutrition for most folks tends to continue on the downward spiral increasing inflammation and disease predisposition.
After our last discussion what do you think all of this poor nutrition (HFCS, sugar, gluten and other processed foods) served up daily year after year accomplishes on the cellular level? Think it causes some inflammation? Leaky gut? Allergies? Perhaps lays the groundwork for asthma and other autoimmune issues? What about insulin sensitivity? I bet if we were to organize a study, we would see most of these folks go on to develop many of the autoimmune diseases/conditions (thyroid disorder, autoimmune arthridities, lupus, multiple sclerosis, diabetes, non-alcoholic fatty liver, esophageal reflux (heartburn), irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), migraines, colitis, crohn’s, constipation, hemorrhoids, eczema, obesity, lung disease (asthma, scleroderma), rosacea, fertility issues and polycystic ovarian syndrome…the list is ENDLESS) discussed in the last article UNLESS they educate themselves and change their habits prior to disease onset.
Not that the aforementioned maladies aren’t enough to make life miserable but this fat, especially that centered around all the major organs (think Mr./Mrs. Potato head) also predisposes them to the dreaded Metabolic Sydrome or Syndrome X. This is the medical term to describe the patient suffering from high blood pressure, high cholesterol (low HDL or “good cholesterol” and high triglycerides or “sugar cholesterol”), obesity (specifically central obesity), and insulin sensitivity or full blown type 2 diabetes mellitus. I promise to follow up with an in depth discussion on this next time. For now, please understand if you are overweight or obese, you are in for a whole host of suffering if you don’t do something about it RIGHT NOW.
What is a major factor that finally pulls the trigger or flips that switch to start the cascade of events leading directly to the aforementioned Metabolic Syndrome, other autoimmune disease or worse? STRESS. That’s right friends, so please, stop reading now if you enjoy a stress free life, because you are lucky, blessed and without a disease triggering worry in the world. For the rest of you, listen up! Ask anyone with celiac, colitis, crohn’s, IBS, autoimmune disease, diabetes, psoriasis, any of the above… what happened prior to the obvious onset of their disease. Like what basically forced them to seek medical care for it. They’ll tell you STRESS, physical or emotional: Divorce, pneumonia, other illness, car accident, tough semester in college, death of a loved one, etc, etc, etc… Unfortunately, in the medical field, providers sometimes falsely blame said stress as the SOLE cause of the problem. And guess what, though I am CERTAIN you know it already, you’re NOT getting rid of the stress in your life. It’s always something. And if it’s enough to make you a sick mess at a young age (like prior to 50), you are in for a LONG, MISERABLE haul.
Again, listen closely, THE STRESS SIMPLY FLIPS THE SWITCH we discussed earlier. If the underlying inflammation, leaky gut, autoimmune response (BAD DIET!), whatever the heck you want to call it did NOT exist in the first place, then there would be no problem. PERIOD. Do SSRIs (antidepressants/anti anxiety meds) help people manage the stress component of their disease? Absolutely; we cannot argue the same neurotransmitters in the brain operate on the gut and other organ systems . But guess what? If it was JUST the stress, then when we treated it these medications, people would NEVER have another exacerbation of their illness and/or it would completely go away.
So why do they continue to suffer despite ‘all-knowing’ medical intervention (aka prescription medications and/or plain bad advice, as was mentioned last post!)? It is because they continue to ingest and expose themselves to the offending agent(s). And if they choose to stop, i.e. choose their quality of life over their love of whatever food they continue to poison themselves with? It resolves. Or at least it becomes asymptomatic; they enjoy fewer exacerbations thus making the condition more tolerable. Can you imagine being diagnosed with a terrible disease and the answer to controlling it or making it go away was as simple as avoiding certain foods or simply eating a little less of everything? In many cases, it is. Think about it, why do patients undergoing weight loss surgeries come off most if not all of their medications and REVERSE the disease processes (pretend for a second most of these patients 2-3 years post operatively do NOT go on to regain all of their weight plus 10 percent and return to status quo disease wise or worse)? It can be that easy. And even if changing your lifestyle doesn’t fix everything, it can certainly improve quality of life a TON. Why wouldn’t you? Is food REALLY more important than having more time with loved ones or enjoying good health?
I know it isn’t. Otherwise you wouldn’t be reading this. Stressors are always going to be present, even in a fantastic existence. I applaud you for opening your mind, doing your research and attempting to integrate these new ideas and suggestions that likely seem a little wacky to you. Speaking of implementing, more times than I can count members come to me frustrated because their “weight loss” is stalling. (As an aside, get off the EFFING scale! Repeat after me, body composition, general well being, clothes are fitting the same, symptoms are unchanged…tell us ANYTHING but PLEASE STOP referring to your scale.) Or they say they simply aren’t seeing any results despite their efforts. My response is always the same…have you changed your diet? Their response is also always with similar sentiment (EXCUSES), well…mostly, I have. I am almost completely paleo. I NEED my carbs! I’m STARVING! I only cheat a couple times a week. I just can’t drink my coffee without cream or splenda (insert favorite chemically concocted fake sugar which is worse for you than the real thing here.)
You get the picture. Not that we don’t want to help, but lawd, the coaches at CFR are some busy people. So if our eyes seem to glaze over and we tune out and attempt a quick exit stage left when you reply with aforementioned statements (ahem, EXCUSES), try not to be too offended. Because all of those “letting yourself off the hook words” like almost, mostly, only, can’t, but what about…?, don’t I need…?, I don’t have the time or money, do you know how hard that is…? Why yes, we really do. I had never tasted a green vegetable outside of green beans or ice berg lettuce before I was 26 years old (no offense mom, I LOVE YOU). So, I absolutely feel your pain. And as a mom of three young, vivacious boys (read kids that NEVER sleep), working part-time and owning a business, I cannot tell you how much easier our lives would be if we could pop in Marie Callendar lasagna in a box or mix up some Hamburger Helper for dinner (the non paleo kind. Fyi ask Jackie Englebrake for the paleo version of the world’s most DELICIOUS “hamburger helper”).
When Beau came home one day several years ago and suggested we try eating paleo, I fought him tooth and nail. I was seriously PISSED. I’m pretty sure I wept and there may have been some stomping and yelling involved. I PROMISE you I was as unwilling and unconvinced as a person could be in our situation. But begrudgingly, I did it. And I promise you, the more I cleaned up the food, the better I felt. (That pissed me off too!) Trust me; I wanted him to be so WRONG. But fortunately, he wasn’t. And I never would have dreamed how much food could affect how you feel and perform.
More surprisingly, I did it without PROOF. By this I mean, before my major overhaul, I didn’t run to the doctor and demand blood testing for autoimmune disorder, lactose or casein allergy or Celiac disease (obviously a sore point with me). Because remember how we discussed the allergies and intolerances as a SPECTRUM? The blood testing may only pick up only the most severe cases (far end of the spectrum). So what if you don’t have a full blown allergy, but simply sensitivity (as the majority of folks do)? You will test NEGATIVE.
Guess what else? Many of those tests, specifically the one for celiac disease and its accompanying auto-antibodies are VERY specific but not very sensitive. This means a positive result is definitely positive for the disease BUT (here’s the kicker), you could have the disease and it not be picked up because the test is only around 60-70% sensitive (missing THIRTY to FORTY percent of those who actually have the disease! Not to mention the whole host of others that falls elsewhere on the sensitivity spectrum.) These people get their missed diagnosis, and go back to their life of gluten, dairy, whatever else and chronic exposure to inflammation. So I beg you, stop with the doubt and need for medical evidence. The proof simply may not be in the laboratory finding OR intestinal/stomach biopsy which still doesn’t mean a damn thing for you. Do you really need to put yourself through the figurative and literal cost of someone sticking a scope in one or more of your orifices to convince you to put down the donuts and milk?
I realize the newer you are to the CFR family, the more hard-core weirdo we probably seem. But we are okay with that. Because even though you think we may be flippant about our recommendations or not so receptive to your excuses, we have been through the withdrawal and the meal planning and grocery shopping and all the other aggravation that goes with it ourselves. And we came out the other side better and healthier for it. Otherwise, we wouldn’t be so passionate about what we do and share with this community. We love what we do and we love our members. We would never give you untested advice (unsolicited but not untested, ha!). We say it with authority because we can’t imagine why anyone WOULDN’T try it if they felt less than perfect. We say it with such conviction, not because we are egomaniacs or think we are omniscient but because of what strength training and paleo lifestyle has done to change our lives, our DNA and hopefully our genetic destiny. We want nothing less than this for all of you as well.
Do yourself a favor and join the upcoming Paleo Challenge at CFR; change your destiny! As always, please share your thoughts (or recipes!) in the comments section.
Until next time, check out this link regarding gluten sensitivity we caught on Fox news Sunday morning…thanks so much for reading.
ShareGo Ahead! Ask the “Experts”
I hear this from time to time. It makes me a little crazy. Not that there aren’t “experts” out there but by this statement, especially medically speaking, an incredible amount of assumptions are being made by all parties involved. And you know what assume-ing does…We as medical providers assume you are telling us the entire story and the truth and you assume we are telling you the entire story and that we know all there is to know about prevention, treatment and management of the reason for your visit. I will warn you this may turn into a three part series, mostly because I want to share a lot of information while debunking some SERIOUS misinformation.
If I had a dollar for every time I looked a patient in the eye while trying to obtain a medical history in order to help him or her and they flat out LIE to my face, I could have retired years ago. Seriously; and I hardly work, so that is a bold statement for sure. For example: a person shows up with complaints of fatigue and weight gain thinking they need their thyroid tested due to “slow metabolism” (no such thing)! It’s all so astounding because they always say, “I have a really good diet”, “it runs in my family”, “when I was in my 20s, I could eat anything I wanted”, “having kids really put the weight on me and it never came off”, etc, etc… Very mysterious, right? Wrong. Lies, whether they mean to or not. Simply put, you do not obtain a state of morbid obesity OR acquire a myriad of other diseases with a “good diet”, a “slow metabolism” or any of those aforementioned EXCUSES, which puts the blame on anyone/anything but you. Slow metabolism simply means you will NEVER (write this down) outrun your fork. Just because mom and Aunt Susie are obese, have a thyroid issue, high blood pressure, high cholesterol , IBS, crohn’s disease or colitis, (insert any familial malady here), this DOES NOT make it a certainty for you. Just because you inherit the genetic switch does not mean you have to turn it on.
Mom (or Dad) has a thyroid disorder and you do or will have a thyroid disorder only if you are exposed (what I mean here is expose yourself) to the same autoimmune triggers as she or he did to turn on the switch and destroy the organ of choice. This could be gut, rectum, pancreas, liver, thyroid, skin, tympanic membrane (chronic ear infections from an allergy to food or environment, resulting in tube placement) and so on. The body expresses the inflammation in a million different ways. So whatever the issue, by consuming dairy, gluten, corn, eggs, wheat mold (gluten), chocolate (God forbid), to name a few of the most popular allergens/sensitivities, what basically happens is the person EATS themselves into autoimmunity and organ disruption/destruction by continuous exposure to whatever the body and gut do not like.
The CFR community is a completely different story, where members come with minds wide open (mostly) and are making the commitment to change their lives. If you don’t believe what can happen to reverse disease processes in a willing subject, have a discussion with Jim Krajick about his lifelong asthma, or with Mrs. Jane Chadwick about her decades’ long ordeal with eczema in the first month she followed our dietary advice. Unfortunately, the rest of the universe MUCH to my dismay and frustration, live in a world of blame. “And by golly, there’s nothing I can do about it, mom and dad both have it and so does Uncle Pete, and I’m too busy to plan and prepare meals like that, and I can’t afford it because the disease is my destiny, and anyway, my diet is REALLY good.” Last time I heard this at work I forgot myself for a second and called the lady out by saying, “sounds great, tell you what, write everything down you eat in a week and submit if for my review next week”. Guess what?! She didn’t, which is shocking I know.
My delayed point is, when you are less than completely honest with your health care professional or specialist, 15 minutes is not enough time to come up with a differential diagnosis, treatment plan, explain it all so you understand and get into an in-depth discussion of how you “really” eat. A good example of this (true story) is telling the gastroenterologist/provider you are totally paleo/primal/gluten free (but failing to mention your daily sandwich, bagel and six pack of Coors light. FYI this does NOT = a gluten free diet; we’ll cover cheating later). Moreover, people aren’t often receptive to discussions on dietary and lifestyle modifications because it makes more work in an already BUSY life. When trying to get you to follow our immediate advice regarding your problem, if we start in on what you eat and you feel it has nothing to do with said ailment, then you won’t trust or follow any of our advice and we lose the potential for any future breakthroughs to change your life. It’s maddening. This is the reason why, when you get your diagnosis of IBS, eczema, psoriasis, colitis, crohn’s, diabetes, hypothyroidism, constipation, GERD (heartburn), arthritis, chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia, ACNE, hemorrhoids , etc, etc, etc that for some crazy reason, the HCP (health care practitioner) failed to mention anything about what you are putting into your mouth. Specialists actually have even less time to broach the subject, yet people hang their hat on the fact they went to a specialist who told them to keep on doing what they’re doing and didn’t mention a thing about what they eat (remember, you said you were gluten and dairy FREE). Moreover, we as HCPs are conditioned by the experience that people refuse to believe it is dietary, simply because it makes life a little harder and it may cause them a little extra work and/or meal planning. Finally, you as the patient also have to understand your provider may differ philosophically from you. These are all part of the reason they simply hand you the pills.
For example, I believe in doing anything possible to change my diet and get appropriate physical activity to change my genetic destiny. In fact, the entire reason I eat the way I do and feel so passionate about our family’s lifestyle and training has zero to do with vanity and everything to do with a positive family history of pretty much every autoimmune disease imaginable on BOTH sides of our family. One ounce of prevention folks…Also, we want to live by example for our awesome kids. They have, unfortunately, been dealt the same genetic hand, but unlike us, they will have the information and education to make the choices to improve their health and hopefully prevent potential diseases life would otherwise have in store. This is where I base MY philosophy as a practitioner.
Alternatively, I work for one of the most brilliant physicians I have ever had the honor of meeting. He nearly scoffs at me when we discuss cholesterol, hypertension, bowel problems…his philosophy is, “Angie, life is short, eat what you like, take the pill, you have to die of something.” And trust me folks, I mean zero disrespect because I could only hope to one day be half the practitioner he is. But you see the disconnect, right? This is why I am bringing it up to this audience, because the fact is we who are willing to open our minds and change our food intake are in the vast minority. Most people feel much like my awesome boss. Therefore, it should be no surprise when you take your child to the pediatrician for that intractable diaper rash, “colic” or as a consult for recurrent /chronic ear infections and consider tube placement that they really don’t address whether your kiddo has a food allergy. They simply hand you the prescription. Because shockingly, for most folks, it is easier to get the tubes/surgery, use frequent antibiotics, treat the asthma, maintain chemotherapy for bowel problems or go ahead and get that bowel resection than it is to change a little ingredient in your diet! Right?!
I have seen many o’ baby with milk or other food allergy in my short time practicing and have probably had 2 moms out of 100 who actually get it. I used to be one of them who did not. Our Jagger didn’t sleep for the first 15 months of his life. And when I say this I am not exaggerating. His belly hurt, as did mine for the first 34 years of my life. I will spare you the functional details of the pain. But believe me when I say it was quality of life altering every.single.day. for a young, “healthy” woman. So when I switched him to lactaid and kept eating cheese, chocolate, low fat milk yogurts and foods with milk in the ingredients that transferred through my breast milk, I had no idea I was continuing the chronic inflammation and causing the poor guy so much discomfort. I thought the prescription acid reflux medicine was supposed to fix all that. It wasn’t until our third came along that I fully understood the extent of our issues with milk and probably gluten and began to feel what normal bowel and skin health were like, for all three of us. Our 4 and 2 year old are so smart about it now that they actually ask, “will this make my belly hurt” prior to eating something new or questionable. Are they paranoid or anxious? No, they are educated. Jagger draws the connection almost immediately. He’s FOUR. He’ll ask for a bite, we warn him it may hurt his belly and he chooses. Mostly he chooses not but occasionally he will go ahead and eat whatever it is and within hours, he will come to us and tell us how much his belly hurts and how he never wants to eat (insert the culprit here) again. Pretty simple huh? One would think, but people simply won’t swallow it.
Funnily enough, despite what I know dairy does to our boys and what it did to me my whole life, our pediatrician urges me to give it to both boys every time I take them for a well visit. She’s a brilliant mind, but imagine what would happen to their gut, skin and who knows what else if I followed that advice! The point I am trying to make is that you have to be your own advocate; moreover, you MUST be honest with yourself. It’s all about being proactive folks and becoming an avid label reader. It’s also about thinking outside the “box” and knowing even the “experts” are human and simply because they don’t address your diet does NOT mean it isn’t important or even possibly the SOLE cause of your problem or disease. It’s just easier to give you the pills. It’s sad, but so true. Am I saying 100% of diseases can be cured by changing your diet and lifestyle, absolutely not, but damn close. And really, what in the world could it hurt? There will be the high cholesterol or high blood pressure that comes along in adolescence or early 20s that will likely always need to be medicated. But chew on this…all these allergies and food sensitivities are a spectrum, much like autism. So if you have a serious sensitivity to a food or ingredient, your disease process may show up earlier in life, like Type I diabetes mellitus (DM) that presents in the first five years of life, or juvenile rheumatoid arthritis which comes on later in childhood, or this crazy new hybrid diabetes that is presenting in teens and early 20s.
I saw a real world example of how this applies the other day in Coop’s classroom. He has a sweet little classmate with Type I DM. It’s sad, she wears the pump, carries around a thermos of water, and the class can’t have treats for any occasion. Poor baby probably knows more about diabetes than I do. Coop’s teacher mentions the mom would like to talk to me because she knows I eat a gluten free diet. Amazingly, this little one was recently diagnosed with celiac disease. How about that? Do you think perhaps the gluten fried her pancreas before they figured it out? I would be willing to bet she is at the extreme end of the spectrum (of gluten sensitivity/allergy) and if she doesn’t get on the ball it will wreak some terrible havoc in the next decade. I wonder what would’ve happened if they had caught the celiac disease as an infant. Maybe it would’ve prevented her diabetes. I am anxious to speak with her mom because I would love to know her eating and sleeping habits as an infant, if she had skin issues, reflux, diaper rash, eczema, flatulence, “colic”. I’ll keep you posted. For the record, nothing drives me crazier than the word “colic” (except maybe people calling all headaches “migraines” but that’s a food allergy related story for another day). You’d scream your ass off and be miserable too if someone kept feeding you something that made you feel like you needed to poop and puke at the same time and felt like a chemical when it entered your stomach, when it left your body, and pretty much the entire time in the interim.
I am not trying to be condescending. I am not saying you’re weak or lesser of a person if you eat gluten or dairy or whatever else. All I want to do is help you and hopefully get you thinking. Because here is the deal, IF YOU HAVE A PROBLEM ANYWHERE FROM YOUR LIPS TO YOUR ANUS, IT IS SOMETHING YOU ARE PUTTING IN YOUR MOUTH. THE END. If you have no problems, drive on. And for those of you who have taken the plunge and went paleo or primal, I salute you. And I hope you’ll post to comments how it has changed your quality of life and reversed any long suffered maladies. I also mentioned a quick word about “cheat days”. I used to do this too until I realized it made me feel so crappy I was better off never to eat certain things. For me that hard rule is gluten and dairy. For you, it may be different. But my word of caution is this: one dose of whatever your nemesis is is enough to maintain the low level of inflammation and keep you screwed up. So if you cheat and still suffer, stop with the cheat day. If it’s really a problem for you, you might as well eat it all the time as eat it once a week.
Hopefully I haven’t gone on too much and more hopefully I have given you some serious ‘food for thought’. If this helps even one person reading enjoy a healthier, happier life, then it was completely worth it. Not sure where to start your change? This is the information age, get to researching. Read Mallory’s invaluable blog posts. Check out the Westin A. Price foundation. Buy Robb Wolfe’s book on Amazon or borrow one from one of your awesome CFR friends. We are incredibly fortunate to have an amazing community of folks who are open and receptive and would be more than happy to discuss this with you if you have questions or simply want to share. And it is such a learning process. Each week, even years into it, I learn something new and try to either integrate it or delete it from our lifestyle in hopes to feel better still. Finally, don’t be surprised if your doctor or hcp doesn’t entertain a conversation about it. Don’t hold it against them. But when they give you a stellar blood work review, be sure to tell them what you have done to change it, lower your blood pressure, control your IBS or colitis, or maintain better blood sugar control. There is nothing better than spreading the good word. You never know when this may start the ball rolling in the right direction and translate into them helping the next patient who comes after you, a win-win for all of us.
Please stay tuned for an upcoming article regarding how stress impacts all of this. Thanks for reading and don’t forget to share your thoughts. Until next time…
Seeing is Believing
Definition of: Seeing is believing.
I have been thinking a lot about the things that we are subjected to day in and day out. In the context of nutrition and CFR, of course. Daily, we are bombarded with messages. Whether we are trying to pay attention to them or we are not, I bet that if you stopped to count the number of times you were subjected to information that was put out there for you to believe in one day, you would lose track. We just see and hear so damn much.
“Believing what one reads seems so easy and so natural that people must take pains to guard against it.¹”
That link there is to a pretty amazing journal article that hammered home some of my hypotheses about how what we see effects us. You Can’t Not Believe Everything You Read. Check it out.
This article explores the Spinozan idea that information (i.e. advertising) is automatically believed during comprehension…hence, seeing is believing.
Think, for example, about a simple trip to the grocery store. You have the radio on in the car (unless you are Raphe and you are riding your bike places in 15 degree weather. Bike as in cycle, not motor.) First, count the commercials you hear on the 10+ minute drive that are related to either the way you look or what you put in your pie hole. Ok, now at the grocery store, take note of the catchy phrases and posters about why something is GOOD or NOW BETTER (be it lettuce, BOTTLED WATER, starburst, or doritos!) Now the checkout line…dun-dun-duuuunnnn. There are 5700 magazine, tabloid, newspaper, and cookbook titles, bombarding you from every angle…toes to nose…even in the candy free line. Drive home (listening to more commercials. Probably literally the same commercials…) and lastly, decide to flip on the TV while putting the groceries away. MORE ‘information‘ flyin’ at ya!
“The Spinozan hypothesis suggests that if a bad idea is allowed to reach its destination, the
person whom it reaches may not have the logical capacity, correct information, or cognitive resources to reject it¹”
Check it...at LEAST five messages related to your 'health' on ONE cover.
Alright. Here come the take home points…summary, Clif Note version, hashtag, abstract, synopsis….whatever YOU call it. ( Don’t roll your eyes, you just experienced 5700 points in one grocery trip. Deal with my two, for craps’ sake!)
“People do have the power to assent, to reject, and to suspend their judgement, but only after they have believed the information to which they have been exposed .”¹
You are, and have been- since the time you could read the school lunch menu- bombarded with information that goes against many (most…all?) of the things you have been told since finding CrossFit Retribution and paleo (or primal or even gluten free). Time to realize two things:
1. YOU DO NOT HAVE TO CONTINUE TO BELIEVE WHAT YOU READ. Now you know that you should, in fact, question the things that you see and/or read. Your brain isn’t just going to do it for you.
2. YOU CAN BE YOUR OWN EXPERT. Explore, learn, question, experiment…EXPERIENCE RESULTS…then decide for yourself. (It’s not like we are talking about drugs here, people!)
“being skeptical meant taking a second step backward (unbelieving) to correct for the uncontrollable tendency to take a first step forward (believing).[..] achieving true beliefs required that one subvert the natural inclinations of one’s own mind”¹
Time to reconsider everything you thought you knew.
Like cupcakes for breakfast….
Read it and Believe it: Breakfast Cupcake Edition
1/3 sausage and 1/2 C chopped yellow onion, sautéed together until cooked
2C chopped baby spinach
1/3C Cilantro
8 Eggs
1tsp Adobo (mix of salt, garlic, oregano, pepper, and turmeric)
1. Preheat oven to 375. Brown onion and sausage until cooked. While browning, chop spinach and cilantro
2. Whisk eggs and adobo
3. Remove sausage and onions from heat. Add chopped spinach and mix.
4. Combine egg mixture with spinach mixture.
5. Add cilantro and mix well.
6. Pour into greased muffin pan.
7. Bake for 18-22 minutes
Believe.
It’s ok to believe what you are about to read…Breakfast has never been so awesome sauce. (Or easy!)
Enjoy!
Until next time…
Mallory
¹You Can’t NOT Believe What You Read (Worth the Read!!!)
Turns out, there is bad bacon.(HORRORS!)
My lil’ sis is super sweet. She bought me bacon-flavored chocolate when she was in NYC. Awesome sauce, right?
Wrong. It was gross. (We both thought so!)
This is a test. It’s SAT or ACT worthy. Read the first line again. Now, tell me why BACON+CHOCOLATE=G.R.O.S.S.
Derovalf. That is the answer. (That is the answer backward. Take that, cheaters.)
Flavored…even to a bacon lover, thinking about the process that must occur to develop bacon flavor makes me tilt my head to the side. The almost biochemistry side of me thinks this is pretty cool…(for the record, I like chemistry but it doesn’t like me.) The nutrition side of me thinks I smell a rat.
So, like a good little blogger, I looked into this ‘flavor’ deal for you. (Anything that can make bacon gross is worth the research.) The results were fascinating, and pretty horrifying. The Flavor industry is a HUGE, super-secretive, multinational money maker. There are scientists and chefs holed-up in laboratories all over the world, tasting recipes and foraging through orchards, then mixing millions of chemicals together to mimic real food.
For a quick tutorial, watch this YouTube video:
For a more in depth look at how the flavor industry flavors the jars, bags, and boxes of ‘psuedo-food’ to make it essentially addictive (tastes so good-I have to go back for more!), take 15 minutes out of your day to watch the following excerpt from 60 Minutes:
Take-home point from both?
“Much of what we are eating, with all of these flavors, you have to ask yourself; Is this really food?“, Dr. David Kessler, former FDA Commissioner.
Now that we have gotten into the new year (does that make it just the year?), take a step back, and take note of what kind of food you are eating. Ask yourself honestly…’Where does this come from?’. If you don’t like, or even worse, if you don’t know the answer, it is time to start making some changes. Next time you see natural and artificial flavoring on the back of your organic canned tomatoes, or favorite sausage, or WHATEVER it may be, at least think about what those short little words actually mean…
Oh yes, and as for the bacon-flavored chocolate? Lil sis and I decided that chocolate covered bacon can be salty, savory, and delicious. Funny how changing one little word can do that.
Lets keep ‘flavor’ the experiential portion of placing delicious, real food into your mouth…not a chemical additive that is scientifically derived and placed on an ingredient label.
Eat.Real.Food.
And try this recipe…flavored the real way, no lab coat required.
Orange-Garlic Slow-Cooker Pork
THIS is how you add flavor.
Kiddos and non-paleo guests gobbled it up!
Serves 4-6, (with leftovers if you have light-eaters!)
- 2-3lb Pork Roast
- Trader Joe’s 21 Spice Seasoning (just use your favorite spices if you don’t have this!)
- Sea Salt
- 1 Sweet Onion, sliced
- 1 Cup Cherry tomatoes (I used yellow)
- 5 Cloves of Garlic, peeled
- 1 Navel Orange, Sliced Thinly
- 1/3 Cup water or crockity stockity (broth)
- Pat pork roast dry. Liberally season with 21-spice and a dash of sea salt. Brown the each side of the roast in a hot skillet, about 2 minutes per side.
- Add the sliced onion and tomatoes to slow-cooker. Pour in your choice of water or stock.
- Once roast is browned, use a sharp knife to cut 5 evenly spaced slits into the roast. Insert one clove of garlic into each slit.
Place roast on top of onions and tomatoes.- Cover roast with the thinly sliced orange. I added a sprinkle of chili powder to top mine off.
- Cook on low for 8-10 hours, or high for 4-5.
- Once roast is fully cooked, remove roast and oranges. Dicard orange slices and pull or slice roast, whichever you prefer.
- Add juices from slow-cooker, onions, and tomatoes to a blender or food processor. Puree until smooth. Add additional stock and seasonings if you desire. You can pour this over your finished roast, or serve on the side.
- Enjoy!
Until Next Time…
Mallory
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Top Ten from ‘Twelve
This is what you need to remember from the nutrition side of 2012. How awesome sauce is that?!
The leg work is done, and the information has been chiseled down into bit size chunks (yum). If you are new to CFR or Westminster Strength and Conditioning, take a few extra minutes and check out the links found within the Top Ten for further info and explanation.
# 1 It all boils down to…Inflammation.
Back away from the grains. Those poisonous little bastards are trying to kill you slowly, without you noticing. Remember when we first spoke about this, almost a year ago?! Here is the gist:
“Grains like wheat, rye, and barley are leeching these toxic properties into your digestive track (and beyond). Here, they rub like sandpaper, poke holes that remain there and begin to catch particles like little dish drains, cause inflammation, block absorption of essential nutrients, and more. The consumption of grains and this damage to your (one and only) body is being scientifically connected to devastating health issues that you wouldn’t even begin to imagine: obesity, diabetes, heart disease, diverticulitis, rheumatoid arthritis, infertility, dementia, sleep disorders, and depression…to name a few.”
#2 The USDA is trying to kill you.
We won’t call it first degree murder, but if you follow the USDA Food Pyramid, you have a great chance of ending up obese & diabetic, with a hurting heart (and we aren’t talking about love, here!). Follow the myplate example, and you may find yourself in a word of trouble. Try this on for size, instead:
#3 Fat is not a four-letter word.
Clearly, it is only three letters. Which means it CANNOT be bad or scary, because everyone knows that bad words have four or more letters. I’m not saying you should jump spoon-first into a jar of coconut oil or bacon grease (mmm, bacon grease), but if you aren’t yet convinced that fat is NOT a first class ticket to a heart attack, you need to reassess and re-read...Like, yesterday.
#4 When it comes to body composition, working out is only part of the equation.
There is no such thing as ‘spot reduction’. If you want confirmation, ask Beau, who may turn a holiday-shade of red as he tries to explain this to you calmly. What you lovingly (or mindlessly) place in your pie-hole is directly correlated to what you see in the mirror. (Unless you are one of those perfect-bodied-freaks, and even then it is still directly correlated to your health.)
#5 SLEEP.
And don’t stress. Certainly don’t stress about not sleeping. Just try and sleep more. In the DARK. As in no lights. No ipads. No tv. Goal:wake without the alarm. Oh, and stress less. And watch the mirror for your body’s response. (Never in the history of the blogosphere was there a more stressful paragraph. Which was not my anti-point. Crap. I am digging myself into a stressing over not-stressing hole here.)
#6 Paleo is so easy, even a caveman could do it.
Meat, seafood, veggies, nuts, seeds, berries. Repeat. (Yes, at breakfast, too!)
#7 An apple a day can make you fat.
Exaggerating here. But fruit consumption could be the thing keeping you from achieving the results you were hoping for. Remember…natural sugar is still sugar. And sugar could be the bad guy keeping you from achieving your nutritional goals.
#8 Skipping out on dairy≠Missing out on calcium
Milk mustaches may look cool in the ads, but come on…photoshop, anyone? With a paleo diet, you are more than hitting your calcium mark. And since you are paleo+heavy lifting?!? Your bones are happy, healthy campers…sans dairy.
#9 All cupcakes are created equal.
Fine, the ones with gluten are the WORST of the worst, but a gluten-free cupcake is a paleo cupcake is a friggin’ cupcake. If you have anything that resembles a cupcake/muffin/bread in your diet and you think ‘paleo’ just isn’t working for you, you are probably right. Eat real food for 30 days and report back.
#10 Food is Fuel.
Food is not comfort or consolation. Food does not miraculously solve math problems or provide late-night details to work reports. Yes, we gather with friends and family around bountiful tables to celebrate or remember life’s many events, but this doesn’t change the fact that food is what your body needs to run, and uses to stay healthy. Too much of a good thing is still too much. Robb Wolf likes to make sure people who struggle with body composition-related issues are able to recognize the difference between a mouth and a vacuum cleaner. Good visual, huh?
And one for good luck….
#11 Set A Goal.
Because without a goal…what are you working toward?
May 2013 bring you many Personal Records and RX wod times at CFR!
Until Next Year…
Mallory
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