Eating Healthy is LAME! : Nutritional Series

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Nutrition, like exercise, is considered by many as a lifestyle, not a task to an end.  What’s great about, Lifestyle is it can shift, but only in small increments.  The human body craves nutritious and healthy food and good quality exercise.  Yet because the way we have evolved, it is easy to be self-destructive with the foods and activity patterns of modern society.  I would like you as the reader, not to be defensive towards the ideas listed here.  Read them, learn them, and even apply them if you wish.  

I have been living a low sugar/carb, natural diet for a few years now.  I stay away from most processed and high sugar foods.  Though last week I visited my Aunt’s house in long island and fell away from my normal diet.  She makes the Greatest chocolate chip cookies known to man and just like Crack-Cocaine, the high of getting one, is all about getting more.  After eating about 12 cookies, I became nauseous (like I usually do) and felt sluggish for the next 2 days.  It's easy to realize how un-healthy certain things are when you don’t have them often.  But how can you move to a healthier lifestyle?  It’s not as easy as a magical transformation or going cold turkey from all un-healthy foods… It’s about small lifestyle changes.  

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Below is a screen shot of a healthy lifestyle presentation I made for increasing athletic performance.  The graph stresses the importance of taking small steps to change your lifestyle.  While, you will notice you become stressed when your lifestyle shifts to an “un-healthier” state, you also become stressed (temporarily) when your lifestyle shifts to a healthier state.  Only when this new stress disappates and becomes part of your normal lifestyle should you include another healthy habit and stress the lifestyle again.  (Athletes, does this sound familiar?  Stress the body, rest, stress the body, rest)

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How to: Try using the following steps to make small lifestyle changes healthier and happier living!

The LAME Method

Limit – Every 2-3 weeks, Limit intakes of damaging nutrition.  Find one “un-healthy” staple of your diet and greatly limit your intake.  Some examples would be Soda, Fast-food, or other processed foods such as high added sugars, hydrogenated, or partially hydrogenated oils.  This goes for activity as well, possibly limit TV to two hours instead of three.

Add – Every 2-3 weeks, add intakes of healthy nutrition.  Find a healthier food to try to regularly add to your diet.  These can include fresh vegetables, fresh fruits, olive oil, eggs, or even daily goals.  Goals could be shown as “eating a fresh vegetable/fruit at every meal,” or eating a healthy non-sugar/carb breakfast every day.  You can devote to add a 15-30 minute slow walk around the neighborhood after meals.  These smalls decisions will add up over the weeks and months and slowly develop your lifestyle without stress.

Maintain – After 2-3 weeks ends and a new cycle begins, try to continue with the small lifestyle changes you had made recently and try to incorporate another cycles of changes with those.  If you haven’t become completely accustomed to the new changes that were made, don’t incorporate anything new but take another week or two and get used to what you changed.  It’s not perfect, but what lifestyle is? 

Enjoy – You may find that over time you can’t imagine how you lived without the new changes.  Your changes hopefully become routine and easy to remember over time.  Just remember, it’s just a series of small, slow steps to healthier living.  But the most important factor is to ENJOY what you are doing.  If you don’t like tofu, try eggs, if you don’t like zucchini, try a cucumber instead.  Tastes, preferences, and abilities all vary and there are endless possibilities to living healthy!  Eat, Exercise, Enjoy!

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The "Mainstream" Disagreement - Dr. Oz's Eggs - Nutritional Series

Recently Dr. Oz had an article in the June edition of  People's magazine on 15 things you should carry in your kitchen.  There were a few things that carried with them a certain "myth-busting" feeling.  For years, many of these foods have been seen as harmful to the human body and should be avoided at all costs.  It's incredible how slowly the mainstream view on diet changes and what really should be and not be included in our diets.  The following is an explanation of certain disagreements between Dr. Oz and mainstream thinking.

Vitamin Supplements
This debate goes back and forth on the truth about vitamin absorption rates in multivitamins and supplements.  Dr. Oz suggests a multivitamin and calcium be included in our diet, not as a substitute, but just as a way to make sure everything is there.  If you're worried about the mainstream thought that vitamins are a waste of money because the majority never gets absorbed into your bloodstream, try a liquid multivitamin like ReViva.  (I always like buying in Bulk from Sam's Club, saves me some money.)

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Milk

1-2% Milk is Great

What's suggested?  Give it a guess!  Whole milk? 2%? 1%? Skim?  Dr. Oz gives the go ahead to buy 2% milk (Organic).  But mainstream always suggests Skim to be healthiest, like blogs and articles like Skinny Chef tell us!  The human body works more efficiently when it has all the vitamins, minerals, structural macro-nutrients (protein and fat), and energy macro-nutrients (carbs) working together at once.  It is said by some experts that calcium is more readily absorbed in the body in higher fat milk than skim and that the higher saturated fat content isn't as bad for you as once thought.  Take your milk experience to the next level and look for Raw Milk (from grass fed cows) which includes higher packed and easily digestible nutrients.

On a side note: Milk is a great after workout recovery snack.  Take a glass and choose a workout from the Fitness Workout Database!

Do Not Avoid Eggs!

Eggs
Say it!  Go for it!  "Cholesterol in eggs is bad for you."  Well, Dr. Oz says you should keep Eggs (organic/free range) in your kitchen.  "Yes, even the yolk."  Unfortunately, studies from decades ago still rule mainstream thought that eggs lead to heart disease and other "wonderful" illnesses.  Eggs should be viewed as the start of life and therefore bursting with the building blocks for the human body.  Eat plentiful every morning, crack a few open for lunch, and maybe even throw in one with your steak for dinner.  (As an Elite athlete, I eat 4 eggs every morning. 2-3 a day is perfectly safe and healthy.)  While Free Range eggs cost a little more, they tend to be 10-20 times more nutrient packed than regular eggs.  A suggestion for the financial minded: Buy 2 packs, one regular pack, one organic pack, and use 1 of each for breakfast.  Another suggestion:  Use an Egg Slicer on Hardboiled eggs for convenient eating, and wonderful salad presentations.

Well there you have it, myths twisted in a knot.  Take your vitamins, eat your eggs, and drink your milk and you will grow to be strong and healthy!

Workout of the Week
The Brick of Death by Sue Rodgers in MCT Triathlon's Workout Website Wiki

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Fluffy Eggs Recipe

Fluffy Eggs Recipe

1. Take 3 eggs, crack, and put 1 full egg and 2 whites into Pam sprayed frying pan.
2. Keep flame Very Low
3. Put a large pinch of finely shredded mozzarella cheese into eggs.
4. Mix Cheese throughout egg whites WITHOUT breaking the yolk.
5. Continue to mix, break, and scramble the egg WHITES as they become cooked.
6. When whites still look wet but are cooked, break yolk and start to scramble into whites.
7. Continue to STIR, cook, and scramble until desired wetness and dryness (I like my eggs on the wet side)
8. Serve with multi-grain english muffin and mixed fruit.
9. So Nutritious! So Flavorful!

The following recipe was taken from the MCT Triathlon Workout Website Wiki.

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