Embracing My Health

Back in April, I found this recipes for Gluten Free Buckwheat Pancakes. In some shape or form of the recipe, they have been a staple in our home. Me being me though, I’m always messing with recipes. Recently, I’ve landed on a combination that, for us, has been perfect. One of my goals in tweaking this recipe was making it packed with nutrition because Amira loves to eat them cold out of the refrigerator. I typically double this recipe so I have extras on hand just for that purpose.

1/2 cup buckwheat flour
1/4 cup brown rice flour
1/4 cup sweet sorghum flour
2 tbsp tapioca flour
1 tbsp gluten-free baking powder
1 tbsp ground chia seeds (I buy mine online at Hildago Foods which is much cheaper than Salba brand)
1 scoop of Amazing Grass Kidz Superfood Chocolate Powder (optional)
1/4 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 cup non-dairy milk (I use vanilla hemp milk)
1/2 cup water
2 tbsp agave syrup
2 tbsp safflower oil
1/2 tsp vanilla extract

In a large mixing bowl, mix together all the dry ingredients. Create a well in the middle and add remaining ingredients. Use a whisk and mix gently for about a minute.  If the batter is too thick (chia soaks up liquid fast!), mix in more liquid (more water or hemp milk) to preferred consistency.  Let the batter rest while you preheat your griddle on medium-high heat. Grease griddle lightly with extra virgin coconut oil. Flip your pancakes when you see the air bubbles begin to disappear.

We serve them with maple syrup, fresh fruit, applesauce, peanut butter, or whatever else you love on your pancakes. I hope you enjoy them as much as we do! If you try them, let me know what you think.

Shopping the produce section can be disheartening these days. Paul & I LOVE avocados and we’ve been doing without more often because they cost $3 a piece! Grocery prices have gone up in every aisle. Most of us are looking for ways to stick to our commitment of eating healthier without eating through the cash in our wallets at the same time.

I’ve always preferred buying organic produce, and after Amira was born, it was even more important to me. But we’ve been on harder times financially in recent years and buying all organic produce just isn’t practical or possible. When lists came out giving me invaluable information on which produce items are most heavily sprayed and covered with pesticides and those that aren’t… now that’s some information I can use! So here’s a quick cheat sheet for you!

12 fruits and vegetables that you can BUY CONVENTIONAL if you can’t afford the organic:

• Broccoli
• Eggplant
• Cabbage
• Banana
• Kiwi
• Asparagus
• Sweet peas (frozen)
• Mango
• Pineapple
• Sweet corn (frozen)
• Avocado
• Onion

12 fruits and vegetables that you should try to always BUY ORGANIC:

• Peaches
• Apples
• Sweet bell peppers
• Celery
• Nectarines
• Strawberries
• Cherries
• Lettuce
• Grapes (imported)
• Pears
• Spinach
• Potatoes

Click here for a complete and printable list of 43 fruits and vegetables from the best to worst in terms of pesticides. And to read detailed information on pesticides, nutritional variations between organic and conventional produce and GMO produce, read this article on Dr. Mercola’s website.

Weight: 248
Height: 5′8″
BMI: 39

Measurements

Neck: 14.5
Bicep: 15.5
Forearm: 11.5
Chest: 48
Waist: 46.5 (-1/2″)
Hips: 49 (-1″)
Thigh: 28
Calf: 18.5

My camera battery is dead because a particular 3 year old played with my camera yesterday and left it on all night.  ;)  I’ll get a new photo up with the next check in.

I haven’t lost any additional weight yet - but there was some more inches lost around my midsection.

A little fun happening:  Dancing with Amira this morning, my pants shimmied their way down and literally off my hips.   Whee!

Goal for next check in - to have lost some weight in addition to inches!

I made my first “official” raw recipe yesterday. I found the original recipe here at Natural Living Cuisine. Here is how I prepared it:

3 cups fresh butternut squash, peeled, seeded, grated
1 large sweet apple, peeled, corded and grated
1 1/2 cups coconut milk, homemade or canned [13.5 oz.]
2 tablespoons agave or maple syrup, optional
1 tablespoon ground chia seeds
½ teaspoon coconut oil
¼ teaspoon cinnamon
¼ teaspoon nutmeg
¼ teaspoon Celtic Salt, optional

I blended all the ingredients together until creamy. I garnished it with unsweetened coconut and sunflower seeds. This is a super rich, satisfying soup. Sweet, nutty and good for you*, I’m really happy with how this turned out.

Note: I tasted a sample of the soup immediately after making it.  I put the rest in the refrigerator overnight and pulled it out for lunch today.  I put in on the stovetop for just long enough for the coconut milk to liquify again.  It tasted even better today than yesterday.  The ingredients and seasonings melded together and were just perfect!

*This recipe is chock full of goodness: It has Vitamin A, C, B Vitamins, Riboflavin, Iron, Calcium, Magnesium, Phosphorus, Zinc, healthy Omega 3s, fiber and more!

Having a healthy metabolism is an important component of being optimally health and fit. Metabolism is the amount of energy the body uses to run. More specifically, it involves a complex network of hormones and enzymes that take the food we eat and then convert it into build blocks that we use for energy. That energy is used for everything from cellular reproduction (which affects how our bodies age) to muscle building and repair.

Metabolism is one of the many catch words in the weight loss industry. You’ll see metabolizers, metabolism boosters, metabola-this and metabola-that. And it’s true that having a healthy metabolism is important to being right weighted. However there are some myths to uncover too.

One of the largest myths: if you are overweight, your metabolism is slow. The opposite is actually true. If you are overweight, you have a higher metabolism than the right-weighted person next to you. The more weight the body has, the more energy the body has to use to keep it running. That’s why when many go on a diet they initially lose a lot of weight quickly and then plateau. The body is revving at a high level so even a modest reduction in calories brings weight loss. The plateaus begin when the body realizes there is less to “run” and it slows down the metabolism. To continue weight loss, understanding what in your lifestyle helps or hinders your metabolism is important. In addition, the things that slow down our metabolism are the very things that challenge our optimal health and fitness from A to Z. Our body is a whole and there isn’t one thing that doesn’t impact another.

That said, and considering how a healthy metabolism is critical to ideal health… let’s look at what we know that slows our metabolism:

1) Age. The first is one we can’t do a blessed thing about and that’s our age. As we age, our metabolism slows. However, the reasons for that, we can control. Typically, as we age, we slow down our physical activity which in turn reduces our muscle mass and fitness. That’s a one-two punch to the metabolism.

2) Eating too much OR too little. Life, in every facet, requires balance. The quantity of food we eat is no exception. If we eat too much food, we give our body more calories or “energy” than our body can use and it is forced to store it as fat. This includes how much you eat at each meal. Eating your calories in three large meals a day will slow your metabolism. On the other hand, eating those same calories in 5-6 smaller meals through the day will increase your metabolism.

Now eating too little - this is the first way most people want to lose weight. The adage is the less calories the more weight you lose. And while it is true that if you expend more energy than you consume, you will lose weight, there is once again a balance of approach to take into consideration. Eating too little is counterproductive to weight loss goals. This is true for a couple of reasons:

• The first is that the body, when not given enough food, will conserve its resources and slow down the metabolic process.
• When you do lose weight, it isn’t fat but instead lean muscle mass (the very last thing you want to lose if you want to have a high-charged metabolism).
• We deprive our bodies of critical nutrition.

3) Lack of sufficient sleep. Not getting enough sleep reduces the amount of Leptin in our bodies and increases Ghrelin. Leptin is created at night while we sleep. Leptin is responsible for telling the brain that whether there is fat in the body. When leptin isn’t produced, the brain doesn’t know there is fat in the body. In turn, the lack of leptin signals the body (i.e. the appetite) that more food is needed when it isn’t. Simultaneously, Ghrelin is increases. Ghrelin is hormone that both increases our appetite and suppresses use of fat as a source of energy for our bodies. It’s a double-whammy. Leptin isn’t there to tell our bodies that we have enough fat and to slow down our appetite and Ghrelin increases and intensifies the bodies cravings for more food. In addition, if we skimp on sleep, we put ourselves at increasing risk for diabetes. Ghrelin has been found in recent years to play a key role in balancing our insulin and glucose levels.

4) Skipping breakfast. Our bodies are literal in their translation. We skip food in the morning and it assumes we are starving. The metabolism slows to a crawl to make sure that we aren’t losing and begin storing energy. That energy storage… yeah, it’s fat. The other problem, when skipping breakfast, most people tend to overeat the rest of the day.

5) Stress. Hormones are at the core of so much of our bodies function. Keeping them in balance and working correctly and all goes well. If they get out of whack, a domino effect begins and our health can deteriorate. An example of this is cortisol. Cortisol is a powerful hormone that is elevated when we are stressed. During times of stress, cortisol can overpower the rest of our hormones. At appropriate levels, cortisol is valuable and even provides a boost to our bodies. But when it periods of prolonged stress, overproduction of cortisol creates reduced mental clarity and ability, thyroid suppression, blood sugar imbalances, reduction in bone density, loss of muscle mass, lower immunity, increased abdominal fat, and of course, higher blood pressure.

Next post on metabolism: let’s get our bodies humming! We’ll cover what we can do to increase our metabolism.

———————————————————————–
Sources:
http://ezinearticles.com/?What-Slows-Down-Your-Metabolism&id=753095
http://worldfitnessnetwork.com/index.php/diet-slow-metabolism/
http://chronicle.uchicago.edu/991202/sleep.shtml
http://www.medterms.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=10875
http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-ghrelin.htm
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/05/060510091429.htm
http://www.alive.com/4320a12a2.php?subject_bread_cramb=150
http://stress.about.com/od/stresshealth/a/cortisol.htm
———————————————————————–

We are due for a shopping trip and I’m realizing the value of keeping food out of the house that doesn’t help you stick to your goals. We are out of a lot of my prime suspect snackable ingredients. It’s kept me out of trouble the last couple of days. One of my big snacking temptations is anything that is quick and easy to prepare.

Now if it’s vegetables or occasionally cut fruit (like last night’s yummy fruit bowl of blueberries and honeydew), that’s one thing… but have you noticed that most easily prepared foods are nearly nutritionless, processed, simple carbohydrates? Our bodies just don’t need those foods.

Okay, time for breakfast - more from me soon!

Weight: 248
Height: 5′8″
BMI: 39

Measurements

Neck: 14.5
Bicep: 15.5
Forearm: 11.5
Chest: 48 (-1″)
Waist: 47 (-2″)
Hips: 50 (-1″)
Thigh: 28 (-.5″)
Calf: 18.5 (-.5″)

This numbers check-in is a good example of why you can’t just trust your scale as a measure of your progress. The scale shows me at the same weight as my July 26th check-in. However, and it’s a big however! I’ve lost inches! An accumulated total of 5 inches! That’s some progress!

I need to remind and encourage myself of that because I want to see the scale numbers drop and I want my self-portrait updates to inspire me. And it doesn’t. I’ll be honest, it takes some discipline and determination to post these photos. I’m embarrassed of my size. But my embarrassment is outweighed by my commitment to have this be a journey to optimal health and fitness. Every day, every number, every picture is a part of that journey.

For years, I was a dietCoke drinker. And I don’t mean a social drinker. I drank dietCoke all day, every day for years! When I worked the renovation crew over the summer during my college days, we clocked in at 6am. While every one else nursed their morning grogginess with a hot cup of joe, I sipped my can of dietCoke. I drank cans, Super and Double Gulps of diet soda.

Six years ago, I began the Schwarzbein Principle program. One of the things you did on the program was drop artificial sweeteners. I quit my beloved dietCoke and figured I would go back to it after a time.

Several months later, I tried it again. To my surprise, it just didn’t taste good and worse it left me with a burning pit in my stomach after I drank it. And with that, I was off of diet sodas. No one was more surprised than me. Granted, at this point, after learning about the health concerns associated with Nutrasweet and Splenda — I was rather glad that I didn’t feel the desire to go back to my dietCoke swilling days.

The next two years, I drank water and only water. No joke. I was fine with it until somewhere in the third year when I wanted to drink something — anything — that was flavored and not plain water.

I discovered Pure Inventions and HerbaSway teas. The peach flavor is my favorite and I keep a bottle in my purse to add to my water any time we eat out.

And then a couple of weeks ago, I ran across an advertisement for a local Seattle company, Zevia, who is making a diet soda that is sans Nutrasweet, Splenda, saccharin or any other kind of artificial sweetener. I forgot about it until yesterday when I saw it in our local Central Market. They were almost completely wiped out. Apparently I wasn’t the only one interested in trying it! The root beer was gone, but I was able to snag a can of Twist, Orange and Cola.

I tried the Twist flavor first. Lime flavored, the first thing I thought was, “This would be tasty in mixed drinks!” I thought it was very sweet, but Paul tried the other half of the can and thought the sweet was milder than what you get from Nutrasweet or Splenda. Having not had any of those in years, I’ll have to take his word for it. Next up, Orange. Right away I noticed that it wasn’t that intense orange color you get in say Orange Crush. It is almost clear at the edges of the drink. But since they don’t have any artificial coloring either, that makes sense. There isn’t that “pow- I’m-orange-pop” flavor that I remember from orange drinks. It’s milder but definitely orange. Again, it strikes me as dessert sweet. Fun for, I decide to compare ingredients between Zevia Orange and Orange Crush:

Orange Crush: Carbonated Water, High Fructose Corn Syrup And/Or Sugar, Tartaric Acid, Citric Acid, Sodium Benzoate (Preservative), Gum Acacia, Natural Flavors, Glycerol Ester Of Wood Rosin,Yellow 6, Salt, Brominated Vegetable Oil, Red 40.

Zevia Orange: Triple Filtered Carbonated Water, Natural Erythritol, Citric Acid, Natural Flavors (Orange Oil), Stevia (Leaf) and Annato

I definitely know which one I’d rather give Amira or myself for that matter…

Last, Cola flavor. Honestly, I was the most hesitant to try this flavor. To me, it seems if a soda is going to taste strange or even awful, it’s going to be the cola flavor. I popped open the can and smelled that familiar cola smell. Also pale in color, you can definitely see through this cola. Hmm. first taste. Not instantly delicious to me. Not bad though either. It reminds me of something I’ve had in the past. Maybe RC Cola? I don’t know for sure. Not bad at all, but not amazing either.

Final Thoughts: These are mild flavors and according to my husband, mildly sweet. I liked the Twist flavor the best, followed by Orange and Cola. My stomach feels the impact (I think I’m just not used to carbonation anymore), although it’s not that burning pit of doom I felt after drinking dietCoke. Zevia isn’t going to replace my water and iced tea as my main drinks - but I might include them now and again to switch up my beverage repetoire.

Want to try it? Zevia will send you a mixed flavors 6-pack for free. You only pay shipping. Or you can check their store finder and see if you can find it near you.

Related Links:

Zevia on Amazon.com (plus customer reviews)
User reviews of Zevia on BevNet.com - Orange, Cola
Zevia review on metaVitae, the Health Weblog

So, I was spoiled by a very good breakfast this morning. Quinoa flakes with ground chia seeds, fresh blueberries, bananas, sprinkle of cinnamon and a drizzle of agave syrup and vanilla hempmilk. Sounds complicated as I type it out… but it was easy and yummy. Double bonus! - Amira loved hers too.

In all my reading, raw foods is something I haven’t delved into much. I’m just beginning to learn more about it’s benefits now. One of my breakfast recipes is perfect for raw diets though:

=============================

• 4 cups rolled grains - my current blend has been 1 cup oats, 1 cup triticale, 1 cup wheat, and 1 cup rye. You can also use spelt, hulled buckwheat, hulled barley, etc. as well.
• 2 cups oat bran
• 1 cup sunflower seeds - I grind them, but you can put them in whole if desired
• 1 cup raw, unsalted nuts - I use raw almonds. I use slivered almonds and chop them up a little further.
• 1 cup lecithin granules
• 1/2 cup flax seed - I grind them, again, you could use them whole
• 1/2-3/4 cup chia seeds, ground
• 1 cup milk thistle seeds - ground
• 1-2 cups dried fruit, I’ve used goji berries (whole or ground), dried cherries, apples, apricots, raisins, etc. - You can use whatever dried fruit appeals.

Mix, then store in the refrigerator.

TO SERVE: Soak in milk* for 15-30 minutes before eating. Sprinkle with cinnamon and drizzle with maple syrup, honey, or agave nectar.

(*You can use milk, soymilk, nutmilk, or water. We use hempmilk (a mixture of chocolate and vanilla flavors.)

=============================

Paul & I both like this breakfast - it’s filling and leaves you feeling energized through the day. I need to come up with a grain combination that is gluten/wheat-free for Amira. I’ll have to experiment with that.

All in all, good day.

Hi everyone!  Wow, keeping up my dailies has been more of a challenge than I expected. I blinked and missed 3 days. My body has felt a little rugged the last few days. Not in a sick with a bug kind of a way… but in manner that I would guess is getting rid of toxins. This morning is the first morning that I started to feel that my body was clearing the crud and starting with a fresher, cleaner slate. I have to say, it does feel good.

So far, I haven’t worked any sort of focused exercise into my daily routine. That’s coming right up.

Here’s to moving forward step by step.