FUDGE BABIES

Ingredients:

• 1 c walnuts (120 grams)
• 1 and 1/3 cups pitted dates (230 grams) (If you want a sweeter result, up the proportion of dates.)
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 3-4 tablespoons cocoa powder, depending on how chocolatey you want the balls to be (I used 4T extra dark)

Directions:
1. Chop/blend all the ingredients, using a food processor, Magic Bullet, etc.  (No need to blend the dates first; I just blend everything all at once.)
2. Roll into cutey-pie little balls.  (Use plastic wrap if you need to.)

3. Refrigerate!

-Crossfit Big Island Recipe

From: http://paleochix.com/?p=1957

“Anybody who’s ever mattered, anybody who’s ever been happy, anybody who’s ever given any gift to the world has been a divinely selfish soul, living for his own best interest, no exceptions.” – Richard Bach

I can’t tell you the number of times I have been called selfish in the last year. I’ve heard it from my husband, my sister, and friends. God knows how many people have said it behind my back. So, when I read this quote – amusingly in an article in Sports Illustrated about Barry Zito – I laughed out loud. “That,” I thought, “is the story of the last year of my life.”

Rewind to March of 2009. I was miserable. Absolutely and completely miserable. It’s a hard feeling to describe to anyone who has never been truly depressed. Anxiety attacks. Crying spells. Hours of contemplating how awful my life was and how I didn’t think it was going to get any better. I think this is the part of the story that most people miss when I talk about how much things have changed since then. They see pictures of my abs. They hear about my WODs. They know that I’m eating bison and asparagus for dinner and not pizza and ice cream. If you knew me a year ago, then it’s impossible to ignore how much I’ve changed physically. But, the real change…the important change…has been mental.

Last spring, I was fortunate to reconnect with a close friend of 20 years, and he was the one who gave me the initial kick in the ass. “Just get back to the gym,” he said. “You’ve always been an athlete, and that is going to make you feel better.” I hemmed and hawed. Here he was, a single male without children, telling me to get back to the gym. “You don’t understand,” I told him. “I have a two year old and a four year old. I am a mother. I don’t have time!” I think I initially told him I could make it to the gym three times a week for 30 minutes. I suppose I was going to ride the elliptical rider or something productive like that. He also told me to take a picture of myself in a bra and underwear and assured me that I never had to show it to anyone. I can really laugh about that now knowing that thousands of people have seen that picture on the internet! However, that picture helped more than anything. I looked at it and thought, “No one would ever see this picture and think that I was an athlete. Nope. Never.”

April 1, 2009

And, I wasn’t an athlete last spring. After playing soccer for most of my life and always being the uber-competitive personality type who would challenge anyone in any sport any time, I was the queen of excuses. I’m not saying that exercising with young children is easy. I just had different priorities. I had a husband who often worked 80 hours a week as a urology resident, and I juggled working part time with play dates and holistic parenting meetings and nap times. I nursed two kids for a total of 4 years and 9 months. I never left my children for more than an hour with anyone other than my mother. That’s what moms do, isn’t it? We are selfless.

Well, let me tell you where selfless got me. It got me 20 lbs heavier than before I had kids. It got me so out of shape that I couldn’t even do one full pushup. It got me crying every day and hating life and not knowing how to fix things. Screw selfless.

My journey back to the gym led me to running, which led to patella femoral syndrome, which led to personal training, which led to CrossFit, which led to Paleo. It sounds simple when I write it like that. In a lot of ways, it has been. I loved CrossFit from day one. “Here is a barbell. Pick it up.” And, wow, I don’t think I had ever watched anyone deadlift before, and I was certain that I would never, ever be able to do it correctly. That is what got me to come back again because I sure as hell was not going to be bad at something. And, it worked! I was losing weight, and I felt great, and I loved it.

“So, why on earth would I go Paleo?” I clearly remember asking my coach that last August. His response was, “I don’t know. Why would you? You look great, and your lifts keep improving.” Fabulous! I didn’t need to go Paleo. I was awesome enough just the way I was.

And, then I tore my hamstring, which led to me sitting out of workouts for two months, which led to a lot of crying, which I was definitely trying to avoid. In desperation, I decided to do 30 days of Paleo because I had read that it was helpful for strength gains. My hamstring definitely needed more strength! To this day, I’m not sure how I flipped the switch in my head so completely and decided to go Paleo. I loved cheese, I drank alcohol almost daily, and I absolutely did not care what Paleolithic man ate. In that 30 day period, I was going to hit my daughter’s birthday, Halloween, and my birthday. No cake? No candy? No beer or wine? Impossible! My husband did not back me at all. There really isn’t any other way to put it. I didn’t cook. I mean, I really didn’t cook. In 2009, I had perhaps cooked dinner three or four times. He did all of the cooking. He said, “I think this is stupid. I am not going to change one thing that I cook because of you. You will have to learn to cook for yourself. I will absolutely not support you in this.” And, he didn’t.

But, I did it anyway. 30 days strict Paleo. No sugar, no grains, no dairy, no alcohol, no caffeine. I started cooking breakfast and lunch for myself every day. I made my own dinner if my husband was cooking something I wouldn’t eat. For the most part, things went smoothly. I think I set a paper towel on fire once. On day 31, I started drinking beer at 10:30 in the morning and ate pizza for dinner. But, it was too late. I planned to drink alcohol again, but food wise I was never going back.

Selfish. Fast forward to today. I spend hours at the gym doing CrossFit and taking private gymnastics lessons. I’m about to travel for a long weekend without my children for my fourth CrossFit competition. I now have a backyard gym with an 8’ pullup bar, a 10’ bar for my rings, and a platform for lifting and other exercises. The basement has a C2 rower, squat stands, a bar, bumper plates, and parallettes. In various spots there is an AbMat, kettlebells, a slam ball, dumbbells, and half a dozen jump ropes. Our refrigerator is stocked with coconut milk, fresh fruit, veggies from the farmers’ market, and literally pounds and pounds of meat. Our cabinets have coconut oil and coconut butter, an assortment of nuts, and bags of dried fruit. And, let’s not even talk about my collection of bikinis, board shorts, knee socks, and Chucks (I’m up to 10 pairs of Chucks, FYI). “Please eat a peanut butter and jelly sandwich,” says my husband. “It is so much cheaper than your organic, grass fed buffalo meat.” If it’s not that, it is, “Please get off the computer. You do not need to update your Facebook page with what happened in the WOD or write in your workout log or watch another CrossFit video or argue with someone on the CrossFit forums about saturated fat. And, no one needs to see another picture of your abs.”

April 1, 2010

Have I been selfish? Hell yes. Do I regret it? Not for one second. My brother came to visit after I’d been doing CrossFit for several months. He said, “For the last few years, you weren’t doing anything for yourself. I finally feel like you’re back to your old badass self.” Indeed. And, guess what? I am happy. Happy. “When mama ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy,” right? Being selfish has made everyone in my family happier. What fun is it to be around someone who hates life? And, surprise, surprise…my husband now does CrossFit. My daughter takes gymnastics lessons. My kids do pull-ups and fight over the gymnastics rings and eat kale. My son took a bite of cupcake at a birthday party recently and then announced, “Mama, this has too much sugar in it. Can I please have a plate of hummus?” And, as much as my husband hates to admit it, even my pictures of my abs serve a good purpose. People like abs. They want to know how you got your abs. They claim that they will do anything to have abs just like yours. “Okay,” I say. “Get off your ass. Stop eating crap. CrossFit and strict Paleo for 30 days.” And, guess what? A lot of them do. And, that makes me happy.

So, if being selfish leads to happiness, then so be it. Because I certainly don’t want to go back to how I felt a year ago, and I know my family doesn’t want me to do that either.

Your kids are screaming, the phone is ringing, someone is tailgating you and you’re 10 minutes late for where you have to be, and worst of all you have a headache that is right behind your eyes. Stressed? Thinking that this whole paleo thing is too hard and seriously right now all I want is a piece of chocolate (ice cream, peanut butter, insert evil food here)…Well, let’s think this thought through until the end.

If you grab that cookie, chocolate, whatever, is it going to make you feel better? Sure, at first you will possibly experience a euphoric buzz from the sugar because our brain secretes dopamine in response to extremely sweet things. It does this because it wants to reward you for finding some very calorically dense food and go after that again. However, our brain and body doesn’t know that this food, TODAY, is not rare…it’s everywhere these days. We are genetically built to put up with starvation to some degree so when we get a food that is PACKED with calories our body wants more and therefore rewards us with dopamine to make us feel good to keep going after that same food.

Ok so we grabbed the cookie put it in our mouth, consumed a hundred calories in less than 3 seconds…did any of your stresses go away? Is that dude still tailgating, phone ringing, kids screaming? Your headache didn’t go away either! The point is food does NOT make stress go away, it just numbs the stress temporarily. In the end this food will pack on weight and worst of all increases your cholesterol and sets you up for metabolic disaster that ends in medical bills the size of the national debt.

What you have to learn to do is to deal with the stress in a different way. The first step is realizing that, “Ok, I’m stressed out, what can I do about it?” This is all about being MINDFUL, know what’s going on inside and around you at all times. Don’t be REACTIVE; letting things affect you all day and then react to them by pounding cookies and cake. Anticipate the problem and identify the things that stress you out throughout the day. That way you can take steps to prevent them the next time. For example you have to pick up your kids at 3pm, sit in traffic, and deal with all the stresses that sometimes come with the territory that is children. Have a bite to eat at 2 or 2:30…Just eat something HEALTHY (nuts, seeds, fruit).

So when you get stressed identify the problem, eliminate if possible or try to deal with it before it arises in the first place. However, we can’t completely avoid stress, it’s a part of life so the next thing to do is learn to relax yourself. One of the best ways to relax is to practice BREATHING. Believe it or not most people do NOT know how to breath. Most people breath with their chest, a breath goes in their chest elevates and that’s it. That is not enough oxygen for your body, period. You have to take in a whole breath to where you are using your diaphragm. You can practice this by laying down on a flat surface and making your stomach rise and fall with each breath. This takes practice, try remembering to do this every time you walk over a threshold of some kind, even getting in and out of your car. Attend a yoga class, this is the same type of breathing they do for an hour or so; GREAT practice!

Don’t just use this when you are stressed though, breath like this all of the time! That is kind of preventive medicine for your brain so you’re not stressed and therefore will not eat evil foods. Remember food doesn’t make your problems throughout the day magically disappear. It only makes matters worse and one step further away from your goals of weight loss/good health and most importantly…from winning this challenge and a couple hundred bucks!

This will make enough for 2 people. We also added a side of scrambled eggs with sweet bell pepper sausage and pepper.

2 whole eggs
1/2 cup almond meal (I’ve found 3/4-1c actually makes better consistency)
1/2 cup coconut milk
1 apple, cored and chunked (alternatively use 1/2 cup natural applesauce, no sugar added!! OR crush up your own…)
2 tsp cinnamon (true ceylon is the best!)
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 pint fresh blueberries (optional – can also be used as topping)
coconut oil for cooking

Combine all ingredients, except blueberries, into a blender or food processor and blend until smooth. Pour into a bowl and add blueberries. Heat a large pan on medium heat; add coconut oil and cook small pancakes 2-3 minutes on each side (these are hard to flip, so when they are ready, jab the spatula underneath fast)

Alright so doing this whole paleo thing may not be the easiest thing for everyone at first. It takes a little bit of planning and practice on your part to get into this way of eating. Let’s think for a minute if you were living back then what your typical day might be like.

First of all, you probably wouldn’t have an alarm clock…you would’ve been awakened by that big ball of fire in the sky. You probably wouldn’t be thinking about coffee first thing but what you probably would be fairly hungry and thinking where your next meal is coming from. So you’d venture out, especially if you weren’t successful the night before, and either hunt something down or start gathering some plants to eat. This is your exercise for the day…so how can we apply this?

Go to bed in some workout clothes, have your sneakers/vibrams right next to your bed. Go out, take your trusty hunting partner (dog/cat/turtle) for a walk – after all how do you think the domesticated dog came about? Go for a quick 10 minute walk, get some sun – this turns off your body’s melatonin production (plus your daily dose of vitamin D) & wakes you up. Come back and THEN eat your breakfast.

Like I said, all of this stuff takes practice and a little bit of planning and work on your part but with time you can enjoy all of the modern conveniences and technological advances of today but have the health and body of paleolithic man.

Congratulations! You’ve started going “Paleo”….now what? How do you actually accomplish this when you’ve been eating so far away from how you’ve evolved to eat? Here are 10 tips to help you get there:

1. Enjoy eating paleo. Enjoy what you eat. If you are unhappy with what you are eating you are unlikely to continue to keep eating that way, and once the nutrition is gone, staying fit and healthy becomes much harder.

2. Pre-cook food. Spend a few hours at the beginning of the week and cook big batches of food. This will allow you to minimise the amount of time that you have to spend cooking during the week.

3. Cook more that you need. This is similar to the previous tip, the idea being that if you cook more than you need for one meal then you can eat it later, or the next day.

4. (THIS APPLIES FOR AFTER THIS CHALLENGE! :-0) Rather than cutting yourself off from all of those foods which you enjoy that aren’t 100% paleo friendly, simply eat smaller amounts and be moderate.

5. Do not keep junk/unhealthy food that you know you shouldn’t eat, in the house. For most people, if it is in the house they will eventually eat it.

6. Do not run out of food. This is horrible. Do not let it happen to you.

7. Try planning out your meals for a week. This comes easily to type one personalities, for the rest of us it can be a nuisance. Though this has the benefit of ensuring you know what you need in the house for the week, and eliminates that time wasting period during which you try and figure out what you should cook for dinner.

8. Keep a handy meal (apple, orange, nuts, can of tuna) in your car/office/desk/bag for a paleo friendly snack in case plans change.

9. Learn to use spices; this will do wonders for you and will offer variety and different flavors to your meals.

10. Eat lots of vegetables; try and eat a good variety with many different colors.

There you go, 10 tips that will probably help you stick to this, not just for the next 4 weeks but hopefully for the duration.

Paleo Challenge

Rules

Questions about Fish Oil…how much to take, which brand, etc.? No worries, read on. There are a number of Fish Oils on the market and they come in all kinds of forms from liquid to capsules and tablets. The form doesn’t necessarily matter too much. The first thing you will want to look for is the PURITY of the fish oil.

The purity of the fish oil depends on whether it was detoxified in the manufacturing process. This is fairly important because after all that is the reason for taking the Fish oil capsules rather than just eating more fish. The purification process takes out mercury, PCBs, and dioxins (to acceptable safe limits). The best way to choose a product based on purity is to find a product that has been USP (U.S. Pharmacopeia) certified.

Look for this on Fish Oil Products

According to my professional pharmacy resources I could find 15 brands that hold this certification. Here they are:

Berkley & Jensen Fish Oil 1000 mg with Omega 3 Fatty Acids by Pharmavite, LLC… 
Enteric Coated Omega 3 Fish Oil 1000 mg by Sunmark… 
Fish Oil 1000 mg with Omega 3 Fatty Acids by Berkley & Jensen… 
Fish Oil 1000 mg with Omega 3 Fatty Acids by Equaline… 
Fish Oil 1000 mg by Nutri Plus… 
Fish Oil 1200 mg by Nature Made… 
Fish Oil Concentrate 1000 mg by Kirkland Signature… 
Fish Oil Double Strength by Nature Made… 
Fish Oil Omega 3 Concentrate 1000 mg by Kirkland Signature
Fish Oil Omega 3 One Per Day by Kirkland Signature… 
Kirkland Signature Fish Oil Concentrate 1000 mg by Pharmavite, LLC… 
Kirkland Signature Fish Oil Omega 3 Concentrate 1000 mg by Pharmavite, LLC… 
Kirkland Signature Fish Oil Omega 3 One Per Day by Pharmavite, LLC… 
Natural Extra Strength Fish Oil 1200 mg by Berkley & Jensen… 
Nutri Plus Fish Oil 1000 mg by Pharmavite, LLC… 

Personally, I take nature made brand (I do NOT hold stock in this company nor am I affiliated with them in any way shape or form – just throwing that out there)

Next, the dose. So how do you figure out how much you should take? Well, courtesy of Robb Wolf and Whole 9 there is a handy dandy Fish Oil Calculator that can be found here. To give a quick rundown though, the dose really depends on what you are trying to achieve and how healthy you consider yourself at the present time. If you are not in tip-top shape and have high cholesterol levels, you’ll want to be taking a higher dose (up to 8 grams/day – divided with each meal) or if you are trying to maintain health and you’re in decent shape, you’ll be closer to 2 grams/day.

For anyone that is interested I do have a handout that goes into a little bit more detailed explanation of everything I presented here; contact me and I can email that to you.

Would you like to find out your cholesterol levels (Total Cholesterol, HDL, LDL, Triglycerides)? There’s not an app (yet) for that BUT I can test them for you…schedule an appointment today! OR click BOOK NOW to the right. (Scroll down to Complete Lipid Profile)

WHAT ROB WOLF SAYS ABOUT FAT:

FATS:

Fat is good for you.  Fat is essential to your well being and happiness.  (This is not hyperbolic writing. Having the proper fat profile makes a huge difference to your mental outlook and moods).  Fat is a great source of energy.  Fat triggers our sense of being full. Fat is an essential part of many of your cellular and hormonal processes.  We sicken and die fairly quickly without adequate intake of essential fats.

However….there are many bad fats in our food supply.

Fat from healthy animals is good for you! Chicken, duck, goose, lamb, beef and pork fat can all be eaten and is an excellent choice for cooking because of heat stability.  Lard is internal fat from around the kidneys.  Lard from naturally (not grain) fed pork and beef is a very good choice.  Lard from grass fed animals is hard to find though, so butter can be used instead.

Coconut oil is good for you and a good choice for cooking.  Choose organic, cold processed coconut oil.

Olive oil is very healthy.  Go for the extra virgin, cold pressed and use liberally. Olive oil does not have great heat stability so use something else for high heat frying.

Flaxseed oil is very good but…it should not be heated at all and oxidizes rapidly.  Store flaxseed oil in the refrigerator and use quickly.

Fats to Avoid:

Trans Fats – fats damaged by heat.  Trans fats can be extremely destructive to our health. Trans fats can be made at home!!  Start with a healthy, unrefined oil, naturally high in beneficial omega-3 fatty acids – apply excessive heat and presto! Health wrecking trans fats. Easy!

Hydrogenated and/or partially hydrogenated oils. Terrible!  Reread the last paragraph.

Canola – should be avoided.  Canola has a very good omega 6/ Omega 3 ratio.  However, to be used commercially it has been genetically modified, highly refined, partially hydrogenated and deodorized.  Yikes!

Margarine – see trans fats.

Peanut, cottonseed, soybean and wheat germ oils…Not good!

Coconut oil sounds so good but how do I use it?

Put a tablespoon in your pan just like you would butter or olive oil. Try scrambling your eggs in the pan with veggies…sooo good, probably the best eggs  I’ve ever, ever, ever had and you will be full for a lot longer in the day -Kelli

It calls for 2/3C shredded coconut and 1/3C coconut flour;  i still havent tried it with the coconut flour but when i make it I just use 1C shredded coconut and its delicious.  The author says not to skip the coconut flour so im gonna try it next time.  I also now use honey instead of agave.

-Andrew

Paleo Cacao Nib Cookies

1 C Almond Flour (grind 1cup of almonds real fine into a blender to make 1 cup of almond flour)
2/3 C Shredded Coconut (Good Foods co-op has real cheap shredded coconut)
1 1/2 Tablespoons coconut oil (In the olive oil section of kroger, white container)
1/2 Cup Almond Butter
1 C Coco Nibs
1/3 Coconut Flour
1 Tablespoon vanilla
1 Egg
2 Tablespoon Cocoa Powder
1/2 Cup Honey or Agave
* Note – you may be tempted to skip the coconut flour. Don’t. It really does something for them. U can buy it at Whole Foods. U can skip the cocoa powder for a less chocolately taste. Either way, the nibs give them a crunchy chocolately taste that’s awesome.

Spoon more or less round blobs onto a cookie sheet – round is better than flat cuz the inside stays a little chewy.
Cook for about 9 minutes at 350. Makes about 24 -each with 10gm C, 9 gm F, and 4 gm P. Enjoy!

**Thanks Andrew, I think I can speak for all the coaches these were AMAZING, thanks for bringing them in for us!

There have been a couple journal articles concerning sugar and salt and their role in cardiovascular disease that have come out in the past week. They have sparked government concern and now debates are emerging on the possible intervention by the government in order to reduce health care spending. Would government regulation and restriction of these 2 culprits actually do anything, what do you think?

-SethRx…enjoy!

Originally from: http://health.yahoo.com/experts/joybauernutrition/29699/the-dangerous-side-of-sugar/

By Joy Bauer, M.S., R.D., C.D.N. – Posted on Tue, Apr 20, 2010, 12:57 pm PDT

As if you needed another good reason to kick your soda habit, a new study from the Journal of the American Medical Association reveals that a diet heavy in added sugar is linked to elevated triglyceride levels and may increase your risk for a heart attack. 

Added sugars such as cane sugar, beet sugar, high-fructose corn syrup, glucose, fructose, evaporated cane juice, fruit juice concentrate, and honey are used to sweeten packaged foods like sodas and fruit drinks, cereal, candy, cookies, and baked goods.  In the study published this week, researchers at Emory University found that individuals who consume large amounts of added sugar have lower HDL (“good”) cholesterol levels and higher triglyceride levels than individuals who eat less of the sweet stuff.  Among women only, high added sugar intake was also linked to increased LDL (“bad”) cholesterol levels.  All of these red-flag numbers-low HDL, high triglycerides, high LDL-are independent risk factors for heart disease, which means that guzzling sugary coffee drinks and chomping down cookies may be putting your ticker in harm’s way.

Research has already shown that regular consumption of foods high in added sugars is associated with weight gain, type 2 diabetes, and cavities, but this is the first study of its kind to link sugar intake to cholesterol levels in humans.  And that’s bad news for Americans, who now consume about 16% of their daily total calories as added sugar.  Soda is the number one source of added sugar, contributing about a third of all added sugar in the American diet.

Unfortunately, guidelines for added sugar intake are all over the map and hardly user-friendly.  Last year, the American Heart Association released new recommendations advising that women consume fewer than 100 calories from added sugar daily and men consume fewer than 150 calories.  While I’m glad the organization called attention to our population’s growing sugar problem, these guidelines are very difficult to put into practice, especially since “added sugars” aren’t specifically listed on nutrition labels.  (The Nutrition Facts Panel lists “Sugars” under “Total Carbohydrate”, but this refers to total sugar in the product.  Total sugar is a combination of added sugars and naturally-occurring sugars found primarily in fruit and dairy products.  While added sugars don’t provide anything but empty calories, the natural sugars in fruit and dairy products come packaged with healthful nutrients like fiber, vitamins, and minerals and don’t need to be strictly limited.)

Plus, in order to see if you’re staying below the American Heart Association calorie cutoffs, you need to know that every gram of added sugar contributes 4 calories, and then do a little arithmetic.  Complete hassle!

If you don’t feel like tabulating your exact added sugar intake each day, follow my 4 guidelines and you’ll automatically cut back on the added sugar in your diet.

1. Eliminate soda and sugary drinks (including sports drinks, sweetened waters, juice drinks, and caloric cocktails).  Choose plain water or naturally flavored seltzer instead.
2. Use sugar (and other sweeteners like honey, maple syrup, agave, and molasses) sparingly.  Add no more than 1 to 2 teaspoons in coffee, tea, or oatmeal.
3. Choose packaged foods with minimal added sugar.  For example, cereals should have no more than 8 grams of sugar per serving.
4. Be selective with sweet splurges.  Either allow yourself a daily sweet treat around 150 calories, or indulge in a more decadent dessert no more than once or twice a week. My favorite sweet treats are foods that balance sugar with something healthy, such as a scoop of ice cream or pudding-both high in calcium; 1 oz dark chocolate-has tons of antioxidants; or a dollop of whipped cream with berries-loaded with fiber and vitamin C.

For further reading specifically on sugar and the danger that is sucrose…if you can find the book: Pure, White, and Deadly By John Yudkin

Pure, White and Deadly was originally written in 1972 and is as close to a prophecy as it gets, considering the time in which it was written (around the time when all of the research on fat in the diet and the lipid hypothesis was being researched). Yudkin was one of the few (with Atkin) that was researching and writing about the dangers of sugar back THEN.

Frugal Challenge

If you’re like me, you may not consider using an ingredient in a recipe because it costs more than you’re willing to pay. But, if we learn how to make some of the foods we consider a “luxury”, we can possibly save enough money to give it a try!

One of the food items I have been really interested in using is almond flour. Many folks are using almond flour or almond meal as a substitute for wheat flour when possible. There are two reasons why I wanted to try this. One reason is that almonds naturally are rich in nutrients. The other reason is that almond flour is a low-glycemic food, as opposed to flour. These both were reasons enough for me to investigate making my own almond flour. Nutritious, delicious, and low glycemic. So, what is almond flour or almond meal?

Probably the most popular use for almond flour is in coatings for baked and fried fish and chicken. Think of it as cornmeal, basically. Almond flour can also be used like bread crumbs as a filler/binder in meatballs, and the like. Also, consider using almond flour or almond meal as a topping for your casseroles instead of the traditional breadcrumb and butter mix. Almond flour can be used to replace regular flour in quick breads and muffins, but not in a dough-type bread.

Now, if you go to a health food store or specialty shop, you can find almond flour and almond meal, but the price is a bit high, especially if you’re comparing it to wheat flour.

Almond flour or almond meal is made very simply by pulverizing almonds. The product produced by grinding up blanched almonds (the white kind) is almond flour. The product produced by grinding up raw almonds (the brown kind) is almond meal. Either way, the consistency is not powdery like regular white flour; it is similar to cornmeal but has a somewhat moister feeling due to the natural oil in almonds.

With that said, my friend and I experimented with creating our own almond meal. Once again, the trusty Magic Bullet was put to work.

Using raw almonds to produce almond meal, we started out filling the larger container of the Magic Bullet about 3/4 full, and quickly realized that was a mistake! The instruction booklet (which we read after starting, of course) clearly states that you should not try to grind more than 1/2 a cup of nuts at a time.

As you can see, once we dumped out the almonds that exceeded the 1/2 cup limit, the grinding worked fairly well. The fact is, a food processor or full-sized blender might have worked a little faster, but the convenience of the Magic Bullet was worth a try. It did make a racket as the blades tried hard to crunch up those almonds. Maybe a little pre-chopping would have helped, but in the end, the Magic Bullet did the job and the almonds were pulverized in 1/2 cup increments quite successfully.

One note, however, don’t blend the almonds too long or you’ll eventually end up with something like almond butter, which isn’t bad either, except if it’s not what you wanted.

Now, can you actually save money on almond flour or almond meal if you grind your own?

Yes, indeed. The yield was 1 to 1 – in other words, we started out with 1 1/2 cups of almonds and ended up with 1 1/2 cups of almond meal.  Since you will find that  1lb of Red Mill  Almond Flour in the organic section of Kroger is about $11-$15,  and you can buy a 1 lb bag of raw almonds for $4-$5…seems to me I’m saving a lot of money! Sometimes,  I’ve found 1lb of almonds for $2.99 at Kroger.  Just gotta look for the deals!

This is my challenge for you today – if you’re interested in cooking with almond flour or almond meal, give this method of producing your own a try. The price is right, the flavor is wonderful, and the nutritional value is worth the trouble!

This is a clip of the movie Fat Head. It is an excellent rebuttal to the movie Super Size Me, which places a lot of the blame for the obesity epidemic on corporate America and McDonalds. As McDonalds may be a contributing factor, in my opinion, Thomas Naughton’s contention is that McDonalds does not force anyone to eat there.

He also addresses the Lipid Hypothesis, the role of insulin in obesity, and the calories in/calories out approach to weight loss. He too goes on a 28 day diet of mostly McDonalds (fast food in general) and ends up…well, I’ll let you watch the movie to see what happens. Wouldn’t want to spoil the ending for anyone.

Fat Head Movie

The truth about Agave!

Agave nectar has been sold to consumers as a ‘natural’, ‘healthy’ alternative to sugar. It is commercially produced from several varities of the Agave plant and is 1.4 – 1.6 times sweeter than sugar. Agave is marketed as a low-glycemic sweetener, meaning that it illicits a lower spike in blood sugar than other sweeteners. But does that make it better? Let’s look at the true compostion of agave nectar.

Agave nectar, like table sugar, is a mixture of fructose and glucose. Sucrose (table sugar) and high fructose corn syrup have a fructose to glucose ratio of about 1:1. Agave, on the other hand, has a fructose to glucose ratio ranging between 7 and 9:1 making it considerably higher in fructose than glucose. What does that mean? Fructose has been shown to increase insulin resistance leading to fructose malabsorption, metabolic syndrome, an unfavorable blood lipid profile, diabetes, etc. So, more fructose, in a concentrated form, is NOT what anyone needs!

Agave nectar is like high fructose corn syrup on steroids – it’s got even more fructose. Another con to ingesting too much fructose is that unlike glucose, which can be metabolized by nearly every cell in the body, fructose can only be metabolized in the liver. This creates a high risk for the development of fatty liver disease (that’s not a good thing…).

The arguement will be that fructose is the sugar found in fruit, so if fructose is bad then fruit is bad. This is not the case. The concentration of fructose in fruit is much lower than that in sweeteners and fruit also delivers fiber, nutrients and water that the body needs.

That’s the not so ‘sweet’ truth about agave nectar.

I read this article today, A More Fulfilling Life: Learning From Elite Athletes from the Huffington Post. It really made me think about when I used to work out at __________ (fill in the blank with any other gym that I’ve worked out at in the past: YMCA, Snap Fitness, Gold’s, Urban Active…yes, I’ve worked out at all of those places). There are so many people every day going into the gym they belong to, looking to just drop 10-20 pounds. They’ve been attempting this for the last year or so. Maybe they have dropped a considerable amount of weight but those last 10-20 just aren’t coming off. Possibly, that isn’t their goal. Some people are just looking to gain mass and put on a boatload of muscle and they’re crazy skinny.

Whatever your aim, the first thing to do is start with a goal. A true, measurable, realistic, time-sensitive goal. When I started working out again after gaining about 30 pounds a few years ago, my goal was to lose some weight. What they heck is “some weight?” If I said I wanted to lose 20 pounds of fat by 6 months from now, I would have been on the right track. Anyone can say they want to lose some weight. Have a place you want to go to before you head out on your way, if not you’re just wandering aimlessly and can lose sight of what you were trying to acheive in the first place.

Next, write that down. Commit to that goal by putting it on paper and hanging it on the fridge or your bathroom mirror. Put it next to your bed so every night you go to bed and every morning you wake up you are reminded of it. Put it in your car where your speedometer is so even when you’re driving you are cognizant of it.

Have a baseline. Write down where you are starting out. When you are plotting a course on google maps (or mapquest) you have a green marker (starting point) and a red marker (end point). It is always nice to see where you are starting from so that when you get to your destination you can say, “hey, I was there and now I’m all the way over here.”

Take in the scenery along the way. Take pictures of yourself every few months. Plot out your weight loss/gain so that you have photographic and numerical evidence that you are achieving what you are setting out to accomplish. Everyone needs to see progress or we just feel like a rat on a wheel. This simple task will keep you motivated for the duration.

Not working? If you have tried to achieve something in the past and it just doesn’t work, maybe you’re doing something wrong. Seek out someone that has been where you are trying to get to and ask them how they got there. For me, I tried and failed about 8 times over the course of 4 years to lose weight and successfully keep it off. It took only a couple of changes in my diet that got me going in the right direction in the end (Honestly, my wife told me continually over four years sort of what I had to do but I chose to ignore it until I found scientifically why it was so). This may be the same thing that’s going on with you. It’s not a bad thing to get outside help if you need it. Failure isn’t the worst possible outcome, it’s quitting that is the real bugger.

I guess that’s the beauty that is CrossFit Maximus. You have a whole community of people that range from elite level athletes to people that are just starting out and also everyone in between. Learn from them. There are a whole bunch of people to get ideas from because they have either been there are are trying to get there too. Use the resources in the gym. That is what sets CFM apart and makes it that much better than any where else. There are professionals that know how to get you to the goal you want to achieve. We know the mistakes that most people make and know what people should avoid doing so that they can take the easiest, most successful path to attaining whatever goals. That is not to say that this road won’t be difficult for you personally. There may be pain. Anything worth doing is going to be difficult. Embrace the pain. Share the pain…then have Kelli massage out the pain.

The take home: Want to achieve something? Set a goal, write it down, keep track along the way (listen to your wife…sometimes). Lost? Get some help, ask for direction, reassess and get on your way. Don’t give up, don’t quit! Embrace the pain.

Need help with your nutrition? Head to one of our nutrition seminars…need more help? Ask about one on one consultations with pharmacist Seth DePasquale.

Here is what Robb Wolf (robbwolf.com) has on this topic:

There are two things that need to be tackled here, the first is PWO food recommendations, the second is the strength issue.

PWO Meal

The idea of a PWO meal containing carbs (and protein) is to take advantage of a period of time in which the muscles are particularly insulin sensitiveve. We can fly nutrients into the muscle “under the radar” via a mechanism called “non insulin mediated glucose transport”. Amino acids are also taken in during this time and may play a synergistic role in both glycogen repletion but also decreasing inflammation that accompanies hard training. Said another way, you recover from exertion faster. So, what should ya eat? We actually want a starchy carb as our primary carb. Yams and sweet potatoes are great options as they are also highly nutritious. Fruit should be used sparingly in this meal if one is focused on optimized glycogen repletion as fructose refills liver glycogen first, and once liver glycogen is full we up-regulate the lipogenic activity of the liver and start down the road towards fat gain and insulin resistance.

I know James Fitzgerald (OPT) has used a mixture of mashed sweet potato and apple sauce for PWO meal…getting just a bit of hepatic (liver) glycogen repletion with the lions share going to the muscles. Sprinkle some cinnamon on top to enhance insulin sensitivity and you are set. Why do the mixture? Perhaps James will chime in on this but for me a simple answer would be palatability and taste. If you just received an ass-kicking, stuffing food down your pie-hole may not be that appealing. Something yummy could certainly make that easier.

Why not shakes? I’ve not found them to be superior to solid food, I have noticed they make people fat. A new paper just came out comparing milk & cereal (shitty food) to a PWO shake (also shitty food) and the milk+cereal beat the shake with regards to glycogen repletion. Go figure. I’d wager salmon and sweet potatoes would be even better…not likely to see that study!

The PWO window is most potent immediately after a WO and drops off to about 50% efficacy by 30 min, and pretty much back to baseline by an hour. If you train at night, just try to get that meal in immediately after training and keep an eye out for fat gain around the mid-section. If thyis happens, dial back your carbs.

Strength

There is a reality that getting really lean will decrease your absolute strength. We loose a bit of intramuscular fat that improves leverage and it just tends to take  a little off the top end of things like squats and DL’s. You can still have great absolute strength and your relative strength will greatly improve…but if you are leanign out you almost inevitabley will see those top-end numbers come dwon a bit as compared to running just a bit heavier. Also, I’m assuming you are ramped up to a 5x fat, athlete’s Zone diet.

So there you go!

I’m 41 and have dropped approximately 40 pounds in the last year and a half, but am struggling to drop that final 20-25. The question I’ve always struggled with is how many calories should I be eating per day in order to see that final weight loss? Should I focus on just total calories in or net calories in/out?

To answer your question about calories, I had my co-author of our upcoming book “Ultimate You” (Rodale, May 11, 2010), naturopathic doctor and fat loss specialist Brooke Kalanick, weigh in:

Simply focusing on calories in/calories out is never the answer– although in the end we have to burn more than we take in, in order to lose weight. That said, how we get there is not just simple math. First, know that all calories are not created equal. For example, a calorie from a carbohydrate sends a message of storage to your body via the hormone insulin. A calorie from protein for example sends a smaller message of storage, via insulin, and a big message of “burn more calories” to your body via glucagon.

The next mindset we have to change is from the idea of mere “weight loss” to “fat loss” — that’s what we’re really all after, right? To encourage fat loss – which will lean you up, show some nice definition and overall make you ‘smaller” without sacrificing lean muscle tissue (which is what burns your calories by the way, so hang on to it!) — you have to send the right messages to your body, through your hormones.

Ensure you diet is full of plant based veggie fiber – meaning at least one cup of non-starchy veggies at every meal (i.e. leafy greens, cucumber, asparagus, kale, mushrooms, broccoli, etc). Next, ensure you are eating a full size of protein at every meal and a smaller serving at every snack, try four ounces per meal and two ounces per snack to start. Have a bit of healthy fat at each meal, such as 1 tablespoon of olive oil, one-quarter cup nuts or half an avocado. Next, keep your carbs in check. If you have a lot of fat to lose stick to one-third cup, or four bites per meal, and skip at your snacks.

If you do not have as much fat to lose, you can play with half a cup or six bites of carbs per meal. Choose optimal carbs as often as you can, meaning non grain based, high fiber startches such as sweet potato, pumpkin, winter squashes or legumes. Other allowable choices include sprouted grain bread, oat brain or steel cut oats, or high fiber crackers such as WASA, GG Crispbread or FiberRich. If you are still not losing, cut the carb serving and from breakfast, add a bit more healthy fat to that meal and see how that goes.

This diet above will keep you sending less of a store fat message, and more of a fat burning one. Be sure to stick to your nutrition plan 90 percent of the time to lose weight, giving yourself one meal per week to indulge. In our upcoming book, “Ultimate You,” you’ll learn how to how to send these fat burning versus fat storing messages to your body and how to customize your diet as well as how to implement a wide variety of recovery techniques for easier and quicker fat loss.

As for your training program, I would say that you may want to consider cutting back on your training volume and perhaps only perform a Crossfit style workout three days a week. If you are performing total body resistance training five days a week (i.e. Cross Fit), you are not giving your body any time to recover. It is during the recovery process that your body’s musculoskeletal, nervous and hormonal systems are able to regenerate. Also, try adding in some recovery techniques such as massage therapy, foam rolling and/or sauna therapy to enhance this process.

-Joe Dowdell

Thatsfit.com

http://www.usnews.com/health/diet-fitness/fitness/articles/2010/04/05/exercise-helps-teens-overcome-obesity-gene.html

I came across this article while perusing through google news this evening and thought that it might be worth sharing with everyone. While most people may know that someone whose family has a predisposition to being addicted to say alcohol for instance, what does that family tend to do? Well, hopefully if they’re at all concerned about their health they avoid alcohol. What about someone that has an allergy to peanuts; what would they avoid? The answer is hopefully is fairly obvious. So when relating this to the disease of obesity and type 2 diabetes how is this any different?

What this comes down to is that everyone is genetically a little bit different from one another. Essentially, there are three types of people when it comes to what they can eat and how it will affect them. First, you have the person that is extremely sensitive to refined carbohydrates; these people would be terribly sensitive to the effects of insulin in that if they look at a carb they gain 10 pounds. These people probably make up about a quarter of the population.

Next, you have the person that is not very sensitive to insulin at all. These people tend to be able to eat whatever they want and don’t gain a pound. This portion of the population makes the other portion of the population want to beat them for having drawn the genetic winning lottery ticket. Well, honestly they can have other issues if they don’t eat correctly like high cholesterol levels and elevated blood pressure, the silent killers. These people make up another 25 percent of the population.

The third subset of people are the rest of the population that are in between these two groups and could really go either way, depending on what they eat and how they live. This is where most of the population falls. Unfortunately, most of the population is choosing to follow the “perfect storm” diet for metabolic disaster. A combination of eating highly refined carbohydrates (giant insulin spikes) and refined vegetable oils (Omega-6 Fatty Acids). This essentially puts almost everyone at risk of having the “genes” for becoming obese and unhealthy. Really, a lot of diseases are honestly preventable, that is if you avoid the behavior that forces our body to express those bad genes. In this case, for most people, it is avoiding highly processed foods.

To comment a little more on the article, where does exercise come into play? For the people that are already obese they have become resistant to the effects of insulin because they have way too much insulin being secreted into their bloodstream. This is due to a number of reasons but most notably the amount of refined carbs they are eating. Exercise for these people makes their muscles more sensitive to the effects of insulin and gets their body working like it should again. But there is also the diet. Exercise will only get you so far. You can’t have one without the other. It is not as simply a matter of exercising more and eating less.

I guess when it comes down to it, most people (75% or so) probably have this so called “obesity gene” really. It is a natural phenomenon that occurs when we are eating the wrong things, that’s what our body is trying to tell us. Don’t listen to me; listen to your body. Eat the right things that will keep you healthy. If we use our evolutionary history as a guide this would include a diet of mostly fruits, vegetables, nuts and seeds. Eat plenty of protein as well; in the form of fish, lean meat (chicken and turkey), and eggs. Eat these things with every meal. For the most part (indulge maybe once a week) try to avoid things that don’t naturally occur in our environment; this includes but is not limited to: pizza, ice cream, cookies, soda, and sugar. This will allow virtually everyone on the planet to have the health they are genetically programmed to have.

Even the longest journey begins with a single step. But sometimes it’s the first step that’s the hardest to take. Need a little guidance or help along the way? Inquire about our one on one nutritional consultations with Pharmacist Seth DePasquale beginning in April. sethrx@crossfitmaximus.com

Who doesn’t want cupcakes for breakfast?  Really, if you had the option and you knew you wouldn’t end up on a sugar rushed carb crashed stomach turned bathroom fest, wouldn’t you go for it?

Well, now you can have cupcakes for breakfast or at least little mini crust-less quiches that are shaped like cupcakes and like my good friend Natalie said,  (amazing athlete, trainer, and paleo cook extraordinaire who came up with these tasty breakfast treats) ”With a name like Egg Cupcakes, your kids will LOVE these for breakfast!”

I suggest making these on the weekend so you have breakfast ready for at least the first few mornings of your busy week.  The ingredients are versatile so get creative but here’s one of my favorite combos.

Egg Cupcakes

10 -12 eggs whisked well

1 green onion

2 zucchini

3 big handfuls of spinach

1/2 a jar of roasted red and yellow peppers

6-8 slices of COOKED bacon

sea salt and black pepper to taste

Preheat oven to 350 and grease with olive oil two muffin pans. Whisk all your eggs in a big bowl. In a food processor throw in the green onion, zucchini, bacon, and peppers and process until finely chopped but NOT smooth (yuck…).  Add  this mixture to your eggs.  Throw your spinach into the processor and finely chop and also add to your eggs. Mix the egg mixture well and using a 1/4 measuring cup, fill the muffin pans (you’ll be able to make 18-20 cupcakes).  Bake for 20-25 minutes or until the eggs are set in the middle.  These are great to take on the go and I like mine with some sliced avocado and green salsa.

Enjoy!

www.Everydaypaleo.com