Three Easy Recipes to Get More (and different!) Veggies in Your Life

Your parents were right: you need to eat more vegetables. These proven disease fighters are packed with essential phytonutrients and antioxidants that will help improve the way you look, feel and function. Not only do they give you natural energy, vegetables also reduce your sugar cravings, help you lose weight, strengthen your bones, improve your eyesight, reduce your chances of heart disease and cancer and even add a healthy glow to your skin, hair and nails.

I know what you’re thinking. Wow, vegetables sound so great! How can I convince myself (and my family) to eat more of them? First start by trying out some new veggies. Because nutrient variety is the spice of a healthy life, challenge yourself to buy 5 different vegetables the next time you go to the grocery store or farmers’ market. Then try a new recipe (like the ones below) to heighten their natural flavors.

Stir-Fried Bok Choy with Garlic*: Did you know that bok choy is one of the most nutrient dense foods you can eat? It’s a great source of antioxidants and is extremely high in Vitamin C, making it an instant immune-booster.

Ingredients: 1 Bunch of Bok Choy, 3 Cloves of Garlic, Sea Salt, Freshly Ground Black Pepper

Directions: Separate and clean the bok choy and cut it into 2 inch sections. Finely mince the garlic. In a wok or frying pan, sauté the garlic in olive oil over medium heat. Once the garlic has softened, add the bok choy and toss until it is crisp-tender (about 1-2 minutes). Season with sea salt and pepper to taste.

Sautéed Swiss Chard with Lemon and Hot Pepper*: One of the world’s healthiest vegetables, Swiss chard has recently been proven to help regulate blood sugar and promote detoxification within the body.

Ingredients: Swiss Chard, 1 Lemon, Red Pepper Flakes, Sea Salt, Freshly Ground Black Pepper

Directions: Stem the chard, wash and drain the leaves and cut them into a rough chiffonade. Sauté them in olive oil for about five minutes, until the leaves are wilted and tender. Remove the cover and cook away the excess moisture. Season the chard at the last minute with a pinch of red pepper flakes, salt, pepper and a squeeze of lemon juice to taste.


Sautéed Broccoli and Anchovies*: This recipe is especially great for any of you who are looking to get a little extra anti-inflammatory omega-3 into your diet.

Ingredients: Olive oil, 1 Yellow Onion, 1 Clove of Garlic, 2 Olive Oil-Packed Anchovy Fillets (chopped and mashed), Broccoli, Sea Salt, Freshly Ground Black Pepper

Directions: In a large skillet, heat the olive oil over medium heat. Add the onion, garlic and anchovies and cook, stirring often, until the onion is soft and lightly browned. Add the broccoli and toss well to mix with the onion and oil. Cover and cook until the broccoli is tender. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

*Recipes taken from Alice Waters' Chez Panisse Vegetables and The San Francisco Ferry Plaza Farmers' Market Cookbook.

Holistic Fitness Featured in Woman's Day

How much cardio is really good for you? Check out my thoughts on the best way to burn body fat in Woman's Day.

http://www.womansday.com/Articles/Health-Fitness/9-Habits-That-Can-Do-More-Harm-Than-Good.html

Thomas Keller Goes Gluten-Free

Check out this article on the popularity of gluten-free requests turning even Thomas Keller into a gluten-free aficionado. Also, who knew that Tartine Bakery's leading lady was gluten intolerant? Check out the second link for her gluten-free pancake recipe.

If you're going to treat yourself, you might as well put a gluten-free Michelin star (or two) on it!

http://www.tastingtable.com/entry_detail/national/5242

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111904875404576531013046555754.html

Add This to Your Food to Burn More Fat

Cinnamon!

Studies show that cinnamon speeds up your metabolism and helps to lower your overall body fat. It’s pretty simple: if you eat too much sugar (even in the form of grains) your body will store it as fat. Cinnamon has been proven to slow down the rate at which your stomach empties after you eat, lessening the impact of the meal on your system and helping to regulate your blood sugar levels.

Because of this, cinnamon is very useful for people with type 2 diabetes. In a study published in the December 2003 issue of Diabetes Care, in humans with type 2 diabetes, consuming as little as 1 gram of cinnamon per day was found to reduce not only blood sugar but the levels of total cholesterol and triglycerides as well.

Additionally, cinnamon is highly anti-microbial and has been proven to stop the growth of bacteria and fungus (such as candida) in the gut. Why is this important? Because your health starts in your stomach! 70% of your immune system is in your gut so a healthier gut literally leads to a healthier you. Because candida thrives off of sugar, managing a candida overgrowth helps reduce sugar cravings, strengthens the immune system and decreases overall stress levels within the body. As we all know, less sugar and less stress equals less pounds on the scale.

So if you’re looking for an extra fat burning boost, add a little cinnamon into your diet. But, as we (hopefully) all realize, putting some cinnamon on a doughnut doesn’t make it a healthy snack. If you’re serious about managing your blood sugar levels and leaning down, weight train three times per week, make breakfast your biggest meal and eat real food when you’re hungry.

Three Superfoods That Burn Fat

With summer upon us, everyone wants to tone up and lean down for the beach. Unfortunately, most people looking to lose weight revert to eating less and/or skipping meals. According to Mary Enig in "Eat Fat, Lose Fat" and Debra Waterhouse in "Outsmarting the Female Fat Cell," depriving your body of healthy fats is the quickest way to pile on the pounds. So if you’re serious about decreasing your body fat, manage your stress, get to bed early, train smarter not harder, and keep your metabolism revved up with these three superfoods.

High Quality Beef Jerky: It’s pretty simple: the more muscle you have, the more calories you burn. And to create muscle, you need high quality protein in your diet. In addition to helping you lean out, Loren Cordaine, author of the Paleolithic Diet, says that “protein boosts your metabolism and causes you to lose weight more rapidly than the same caloric amounts of fat or carbohydrate.” In other words, when given proteins, carbohydrates and fats, the body expends the most energy to break down proteins. So just by eating high-quality proteins, you rev up your metabolism and burn through body fat. While most people think of chips or crackers (aka sugars) when they think of a snack, organic beef jerky is a nutrient-dense, easy and satiating food that not only burns fat but also increases mental acuity and overall energy levels.

Avocado: You need healthy fat in your diet in order to lose fat. All of you who are still eating egg whites, this one’s for you. When trying to shed a few extra pounds, remember that you need to create a feast, not a famine. So if you’re hungry an hour after you ate a meal, you most likely did not eat enough healthy fat in that meal. And if you starve yourself of fat, you inadvertently signal your body to create more fat. The solution? Add avocados into the mix. Avocados are loaded with heart-healthy monounsaturated fats, which have been proven to help people lose weight. And because avocado is such a versatile food, it’s easy to add to your eggs at breakfast and to your salads and proteins at lunch and dinner to create a more satiating meal.

Coca Chia Bars: I’m not a fan of most food bars, but the quickest way to start losing weight is to keep your blood sugar levels stable. If you’re going out for a day of golf or know you have a long flight ahead of you, pack a high-quality food bar to ensure that you don’t go too long without eating. When looking for a healthy bar, the less ingredients, the better. My favorite is the Coca Chia Bar (available through LivingFuel). It’s made of only whole foods, is gluten and dairy free, minimally processed, and contains coconut, which boosts your thyroid, supports your immune system and has been proven to promote weight loss. One bar fills you up and helps you power through between meals without crashing.

Remember: you don’t have to deprive yourself to lose weight. By eating high-quality proteins and fats (and eating them regularly) you’ll not only look better, but you’ll feel better in the process.

Three Easy Ways to Curb Your Sugar Cravings

We all know the feeling. It’s mid-afternoon and all you can think about is the batch of cupcakes your coworker brought in in an attempt to derail your recent gluten-free commitment (or okay, maybe she really did make them for someone’s birthday). Or you’ve just finished eating dinner and all you think about is that chocolate bar waiting for you in your cabinet. You know if you cave and eat the sugar, the wave of fatigue and lethargy will come over you. Your head will start to hurt, you’ll have no energy for your evening workout and even worse, you’ll feel that familiar regret that comes with veering off track. So what can you do the next time you crave sugar?

Eat fat. The quickest way to curb a sugar craving the second it starts is to eat a food that’s rich in high-quality fats. So whether it’s organic goat cheese, walnut butter on green apple slices or Prather Ranch grass-fed beef jerky, eating a snack that’s high in good fats will instantly cut your body’s desire for sugar. In the same way, when you go out to eat, get in the habit of choosing cheese (goat and sheep are the easiest to digest) off the dessert menu instead of a dessert that’s filled with sugar. Not only will you feel more satiated (how many times have you gone home after a dinner out and still felt hungry?) but you will also sleep better than you would if you had selected a more traditional dessert.

Get to the gut of it. Are you having sugar cravings all of the time? Do you feel like after every meal you “need” something sweet? The problem might be in your gut. Because some of the most common parasites live on sugar, they commonly trick your body into thinking that you want something sweet to eat. By cleaning up your gut, you can make your body an undesirable environment for these pesky little creatures and help eliminate these cravings for good. Certain supplements, such as a high-quality probiotic (which restores gut balance) or the amino acid l-glutamine (which can help repair the gut wall) both have the long-term effect of reducing the body’s “need” for sugar.

Take a walk. Or if you can’t, give yourself a few minutes. Instead of eating impulsively, think about the consequences that come with eating something sugary. Is it really worth it? Is it going to hijack your energy if you cave in? Is there a healthy alternative that you could eat instead that would satiate the craving? Sometimes just taking a few minutes to think about a craving is enough to make it go away. I’m a huge fan of Whole 9’s Guide To Nutritional Off-Roading. As they point out, who doesn't love a good flowchart?

Remember, avoiding sugar is not just about staying lean. I know plenty of people in the fitness world who claim they can eat whatever they want because they workout so hard that it doesn’t matter. Don’t be fooled by the look good/feel terrible people out there. Exercise and diet trends will come and go. But if your goal is strength, health, mental acuity, avoiding cancer and diabetes and other larger endeavors, you won’t experience the highs and lows and aches and pains so many people out there endure. So think big (and stay small).

Are these well-disguised fast foods sabotaging your weight loss?

A few years ago the trend was organic. Everything from dog bones to shampoo to cookies sold at CostCo was certified organic. The term organic became so widespread, in fact, that it started to mean nothing. So what’s the trend in the food industry now? Slow. Slow food – the notion of understanding (and caring about) where your food comes from and the process by which it is made – has unfortunately become another concept taken over and used by the food industry to increase sales. The most recent Starbucks commercial, for example, traces the lifespan of a coffee bean. We watch as it passes through the farmers’ hands, making its inevitable journey to becoming a frappucino. In a similar vein, the smart guys at Tropicana recently decided to change their bottle from its usual bright orange plastic to a more transparent one, “so you can see that it’s real.” Meanwhile Olive Garden swears up and down that they send their chefs to Italy to learn from the artisan, authentic chefs in the small, rural villages. The allegedly persuasive idea here is transparency, knowing the real from the fake, seeing the source. It’s why we go to the farmers market. It’s why the Ferry Building in San Francisco is such a special place. And it’s being used as a marketing ploy – and this is where grocery shopping starts to get tricky.

So here you go – a list of a few “fast foods” parading as “slow foods”…Could one (or more) be to blame for your tight pants?

Protein Shake: Unless you made your protein shake yourself with coconut milk, a high-quality protein powder (optional), almond butter and seasonal, organic berries, your shake is definitely not going to bring all the boys to the yard. And if it’s like any of the shakes I saw on the menu at the Bay Club the other day, it’s full of sugar, juices that most likely contain high-fructose corn syrup, protein powders made of soy (aka estrogen), non-organic, cheap and hard to digest dairy products and whatever fruit they could get in bulk that day. So although a protein shake might seem like a healthy meal replacement, most protein shakes are the equivalent of drinking a big glass of sugar. If you’re going to drink your calories, make sure the foods you use are high-quality, high in healthy fats and as low-glycemic as possible.

Health Food Bar: Oh the elusive health food bar. Overly-sweetened, made with cheap ingredients (many of which you simply can’t pronounce) and for the most part, not a healthy snack. Think Thin, for example, a very popular gluten-free bar, contains soy, whey protein, table salt, soya lecithin and even chocolate liquor. In other words, the last thing you should reach for when you’re hungry and in need of a healthy snack. If you’re in a pinch and need a bar, try a CocaChia bar (made with chia seeds, raw chocolate and coconut) or the Coconut LaraBar (the least sweet of the LaraBars in my opinion). But really, the less bars, the better.

Flavored Water: Hint waters, Gatorades, even some coconut water/juice blends – all junk foods parading as health foods. In fact, a bottle of Gatorade contains upwards of 50 grams of sugar – not what you want when you’re working out and trying to lean down! And for those of you who just like to add some flavor to your water, stay away from water flavoring products, such as the new MiO liquid water enhancer from Kraft. While it’s designed for consumers who want to add a little life and personality into their water, it sadly adds only sugar, artificial colors and various other toxic non-foods. The only thing you are designed to drink is water. Clear, clean water.

Baked (or popped) Chips: A potato is a very high-glycemic food that causes your insulin levels to sky-rocket, leading to increased body fat, overeating and bloating. Pop Chips for example, the current leaders in the “we’re healthy” chip campaign, have whey (a milk byproduct), vegetable oils (highly inflammatory) and “natural flavors” (which can mean anything from MSG to high fructose corn syrup) on their ingredient list. In other words, stay away. If you’re craving a crunch, try Mary’s Gone Crackers or apple slices. Regardless of what the food industry wants you to believe, chips - even when unfried - are not a healthy snack.

So remember, if it wasn’t here 10,000 years ago, required a focus group and/or has ingredients that you can’t pronounce on the label (or even if it needs a label), the chances are pretty high that it’s full of sugar, overly-processed and essentially, junk. As Paul Chek says, "If you eat anything that's less alive than you are, to the degree that it's less alive than you, you have to spend your own life force turning it into human tissue. The longer anything lasts on the shelf, the more dead it is. Remember, you're turning over 2 million blood cells per second....what did you make them out of? Doughnuts? Coca-cola?” Not me. So here’s to making smart food choices, supporting real slow foods, shopping at your local farmers markets and questioning the herd.

The four pieces of the weight loss puzzle. Which one needs a little more love in your life?

A very talented friend of mine, photographer (and occasional Hollywood trainer) Clay Enos created this graph illustrating the four pieces of the weight loss puzzle. Frustrated from eating right but not losing weight? Hitting the gym every week but not seeing results? Well, as this graph clearly illustrates, we are a system of systems. We function synergistically. Overly challenging workouts with no nutritional work doesn’t get results. Not sleeping and getting up too early to exercise doesn’t get results. Eating right but chronically stressing doesn’t get results. So what does?

As the graph says, it all starts with sleep. Some of you might be surprised to see sleep as the number one most important component when it comes to losing weight. But it’s a fact: getting enough sleep (and the right kind of sleep) is the most significant, the easiest and the cheapest thing you can do to lose weight, gain muscle and reverse the signs of aging. So get to bed as close to 10pm as possible and try to get no less than 8 hours of sleep per night. Remember, getting poor sleep for even just a few nights puts you into a prediabetic state. Your blood-sugar levels sky-rocket, your body creates less leptin (the hormone responsible for regulating appetite – leaving you craving carbs and sugar) and your body begins to pile on the pounds.

But in order to manage your sleep you have to manage your stress. Although they seem to be opposing conditions, chronic stress, which makes you fatigued throughout the day, is actually linked with the inability to fall asleep at night. The common link between the two is cortisol. Because one of the roles of cortisol is to make us more alert, any stress after roughly 8pm will negatively affect your sleep quality. So make sure you avoid email, television and even stressful conversations after 8pm to ensure not only that you can fall asleep, but also that your stress levels have a chance to dissipate while you are at rest.

This brings us to the nutrition piece of the fat loss puzzle. When you sleep right and stress right, the chances are pretty darn high that you’re also going to eat right. Because lack of sleep and too much stress both cause insulin resistance and fat storage, when you’re well rested and managing your stress, you are much more likely to make smarter nutrition choices. And, because your hormones aren't all out of sync, you'll also be much better equipped to digest and process the food you choose to eat. Are you drinking ½ your body weight in clean ounces of water daily? Are you putting two hours between dinner and the time your head hits the pillow? Are you rotating different foods into your diet for nutrient diversity? Are you living by the 80/20 rule (eat right 80% of the time and your body can handle the other 20% when you’re less than ideal) or is it more like the 50/50 rule? All of these seemingly simple details hugely impact your sleep quality, your capacity to manage stress and your body’s ability to put on lean muscle mass and burn body fat.

Which leads us to the final piece of the weight loss puzzle: Exercise. Some of you might be shocked to see exercise listed as the least important (albeit most complicated) piece of the weight loss puzzle. While exercise is an incredibly important part of a healthy lifestyle, it’s almost irrelevant if the other three pieces (sleep, stress, nutrition) aren’t in line. Exercising is where most people start when they want to lose weight and unfortunately, it’s where 99% of them get stuck: putting in hour upon hour at the gym, not seeing results. Working out hard when you’re overly tired, overly stressed and eating crap will do nothing for your body. But the right exercises in the right doses can do amazing things for your body. In fact, adding just a single pound of new muscle to your body means that you will burn an extra 50 calories each day. Put that over the course of a year, and it’s the equivalent of burning five pounds of body fat every year. So in that way, if you add just five pounds of new muscle to your body, you’re looking at an incredible 25 pounds of fat loss. But in order to be able to create lean muscle mass, you have to be getting good sleep, managing your cortisol and eating clean.

Remember: you can’t lose weight to get healthy. You have to get healthy to lose weight. Start today by getting a good night’s sleep…and set the stage for the other puzzle pieces to fall into place.

Eliminate This Food and Lose Weight Fast

Open up any health and fitness magazine or diet book du jour (is Oprah on the cover? Then it’s the one du jour) and you’ll most likely be told that you should eliminate fatty foods if you want to lose weight. Most of you already know that low fat foods are actually responsible for rapid weight gain and that eating healthy fat makes you burn through your existing body fat at a fast rate. But what can you give up if you want to lean down and drop a few pounds in a fast and effective way?

The answer is grains. Why?

1. To your body, grains are just sugar. Whether you’re eating rice or granola or a slice of bread, your body’s hormonal response is the same: You’re eating sugar.

2. Grains make you sick by irritating the lining in your gut. Over time, this irritation leads to a leaky gut, which does exactly what it sounds like – it causes things that belong in your stomach to leak out into your system. As a result, it throws your hormones out of whack, causes you to develop allergies to almost everything you eat (as the body tries to attack these leaking food particles as foreign invaders) and severely compromises your immune system (as 75% of your immune system is in your gut).

3. Grains throw off your omega 6 to omega 3 ratio, causing inflammation rates in your body to skyrocket and making you a prime candidate for high cholesterol, heart disease, auto-immune disorders, infertility and various cancers.

But I just went off gluten and have been eating oats, corn thingys and quinoa to fill me up. Now I gotta get off those too?

The bottom line is that grains don’t want to be eaten. As a result, they have developed a defense mechanism that makes them hard to digest. If they are hard to digest, over time (they hope) we’ll be smart enough to just stop eating them! So even though oats and corn are gluten-free grains, they have proteins similar to gluten that are hard to digest, cause gut irritation and increased inflammation throughout the body. And as Robb Wolf says, even though “quinoa is not botanically a grain…it has similar properties to grains, including chemical defense systems that irritate the gut.” Whereas gluten burns the lining of the gut, quinoa contains saponins that punch holes in the membranes of the microvilli cells. Over time, these puncture wounds not only make it hard to digest food, they also make it hard to absorb the nutrition from whatever food you eat. Foods that burn and punch – not sounding like a part of an appetizing meal to me.

But I don’t need to lose weight:

Even if your goal isn’t weight loss, by cutting the grains out of your diet you can reverse the signs of aging, improve workout performance, increase energy levels and kick other addictions (such as to desserts and that second glass of wine) to the curb.

But when I eat grains I feel just fine:

Really? I have yet to work with a person who can handle grains without any side effects. So even if you think you’re “fine” eating grains, I encourage each of you to go grain-free for 30 days and notice all of the improvements in your workout performance, mental acuity, body fat percentages, digestion and overall appearance.

But I run marathons and need grains for endurance:

Nope. Numerous studies show that eating pastas and other overly-processed carbohydrates actually decreases endurance sport performance. Instead, stick to high-quality proteins and organic vegetables (and increase your vegetable intake by 10% during training/race season).

So if your goal is weight loss, throw out your low-fat yogurt and instead take the grain-free challenge. Your "gut" will thank you.

Burn Fat Fast with This Simple Workout

January is without a doubt the most crowded time of the year at the gym. With recently firmed up new year’s resolutions, many people flock to the gym for their hit-it-hard, quick-fix, no-pain-no-gain workout plans only to be left discouraged, disappointed and dipping into the Ben and Jerry’s come February. Because we are inundated with messages about the benefits of cardio in regards to working out and feeling great, when it comes time to drop a few holiday pounds, most people do what they’ve been told: cardio. You know, long runs, hour-long spinning classes and high-intensity aerobics classes. Logically, this makes sense. The longer and harder the workout, the better it is for me, right? Well according to our biology, no - it’s not. Many people who use long cardio workouts to lose weight and tone up become increasingly frustrated: they don’t see the results they want, they are highly susceptible to plateaus (meaning that they need to workout the same or more every day to just maintain their level of fitness) and some even report gaining weight.

Cardio Can Make Me Fat? What Are You Talking About?

Because extended cardio increases cortisol, those looking to lose weight and lower their stress should stay away from excessive cardio exercise. As Strength and Conditioning expert Charles Poliquin stated in an article on cardio exercise in IronMan Magazine, “I'm utterly convinced that if gym rats cut down on cardio, they'd be leaner. Humans aren't aerobic animals. We're designed to throw a rock or spear at the prey; not run six miles to get the food. Aerobics works only for about six weeks. Once the enzymatic response is maximal, you're wasting your time. It's a myth that cardio burns body fat only. That's based on antiquated studies that couldn't measure all fuels contributing to exercise. Amino acids have been underestimated for the longest time as fuel sources for cardiovascular exercise, [meaning that] cardio burns not only fat but muscle as well” (IronMan magazine, July 2008). So over time, excessive cardio starts to decrease your lean muscle mass. And as many of you know, lean muscle mass is what’s largely responsible for a toned physique, low body fat and a very fast metabolism. Poliquin further addresses this cardio/weight gain phenomenon in a study called “The Chunky Aerobic Instructor Syndrome” wherein he found that women who did excessive duration cyclical exercise (such as in an aerobics class, on an elliptical machine or in a spinning class) tended to store fat in their thighs, buttocks and calves commensurate with the amount of long duration cardio that they performed.

Okay, I Think I’m With You Now. I’ve Seen That Chunky Aerobics Teacher At My Gym. What’s The Solution?

The bottom line is that you will burn more calories doing interval training - which is performed at a higher intensity for a shorter period of time - rather than extended cardio training. So if you want to use cardio exercise as a supplement to your strength training workouts for fat loss, switch to an interval-training program instead:

High-Intensity Cardio Workout Plan:

Warm Up: 5 minutes (during the warm up, you should be working but able to carry on a conversation).

Burst: 30 seconds at a perceived exertion level of between roughly 75-90%. This is high intensity, meaning that conversation is no longer possible.

Recovery: 1 minute at a perceived exertion of roughly 50-60%.

Work up to 10 bursts with recovery in between each burst. In other words, your max cardio for this burst/recovery plan is 15 minutes total.

Cool Down: 3-5 minutes at the same pace as the warm up.

Easy to fit in before work or on your lunch break, over before you know it and when paired with smart strength training workouts, delivers a lean, mean, cardio-enlightened machine. Good luck and keep up the hard work for a healthy and happy 2011!