Winter Playlist

Holistic Fitness Winter Playlist 

1. Vacationer - Good as New
2. The Knocks - Dancing with the DJ
3. Green Day - Let Yourself Go
4. Bag Raiders - Turbo Love
5. Jaydiohead - Fall in Step
6. Hot Chip - Motion Sickness 
7. Crystal Fighters - Xtatic Truth 
8. Grum - Heartbeats
9. Miami Horror - I Look to You
10. Jaydiohead - Reckoner's Encore 

Is A Juice Cleanse Right for You?

It's the week after Thanksgiving and many of you might still be feeling weighed down from the dessert, alcohol, grains and other foods that potentially crept into your diet (thanks a lot, Aunt Betty).  Perhaps you feel a little bloated and heavy, or maybe just a bit lethargic....could a juice cleanse make you feel better?

There's a lot of confusion about juice cleanses, as juice shops are popping up on every corner, mixing concoctions that claim to target everything from your mental acuity to your immune system. But what few people understand is that a diet composed only of juice, even for a few days, actually does more harm than good. So here you have it, the most common myths surrounding juice cleanses, and some truths to clear up the confusion behind those cute labels.

Myth: Juice cleanses make you lose weight!

Fact: Juice cleanses cause weight gain. Remember, the scale temporarily going down does not mean that it won't jump back up! When you go on a juice cleanse, you put less calories into your body than it takes to merely survive. Did you know that the average woman needs 1500 calories just to function for one day? When a body gets less calories than it requires to live, it starts to think it's going to die, which leads to increased adrenaline and cortisol, also known as going into "fight or flight" mode. So that feeling of lightness and mental clarity is more likely brought to you by an excess of adrenaline than a cup of beet juice. Similar to the runner's high, this state could easily be called the starver's high. And any weight that you lose in starvation mode you will very quickly put back on (and then some) as soon as the "cleanse" is over. 

Myth: I feel great when I'm juicing! It must be working for me.

Fact: Ask most people who claim to feel better on a juice cleanse what they were eating before the cleanse started. Protein bars? Tofu? Oatmeal? Candy? Most people who claim to feel better on a juice cleanse are really reacting to the lack of gluten, sugar, soy, dairy and other gut-irritating foods they usually eat. Or they are catching a buzz off of the short-lived starver's high.

Myth: Juice cleanses help you detox!

Fact: Amino acids, such as glutamine, glycine, taurine, etc. (also known as the building blocks of protein) are absolutely vital in the detoxification process within the body. Without ample supplies of these amino acids, your body cannot complete the detoxification/elimination process effectively. We store our toxins in body fat. Anyone  looking to lose body fat should want a highly efficient detoxification process. On a juice cleanse, because you aren't getting enough calories, you start to mobilize some body fat, re-introducing stored toxins into your system. But with only fruit and vegetable juice coming in, you lack the proper nutrients to eliminate these toxins, which puts the body under even more stress.

If you're really interested in detoxing, only eat organic foods, cut grains out of your diet, limit your exposure to plastic containers, switch out your toxic home products to green ones, limit your alcohol consumption, increase your saturated fat intake (via healthy animal fat or coconut oil, for example) and exercise to get things moving.

Myth: Of course my cleanse is healthy, it's only fruit and vegetable juice!

Fact: Most of the nutrients in fruits and vegetables are in the skin and pulp, which is discarded in most juices. Juice is a more sugary, less nutritious version of the real thing. Did you know that fresh apple juice has four times more sugar than one apple?

So when and how can you incorporate juices into your diet?

Use a VitaMix and juice greens: VitaMix is a high quality juicer that does not remove the fiber from fruits and vegetables. I also suggest making your juices mostly vegetables (and adding some lemon, ginger and herbs such as parsley) to keep the glycemic index down. If you must add fruit, try a green apple, which is relatively low in sugar.

Add fat and/or bone broth: I like to add coconut oil (or have Plant Cafe add it for me!) or bone broth to
my fresh vegetable juices, making them more of a balanced snack than a carb bomb.

Have a juice after eating protein and fat: Say you had a nice grass-fed steak with some avocado and still felt hungry. Perfect time for a vegetable juice.

Final tip: Chew your liquid and drink your food. If you drink a juice, make sure you take the time to swoosh it around in your mouth rather than gulping it down. Because the digestive process starts in the mouth, this little trick will ensure that you prepare your body to effectively metabolize the juice.

What I'm Eating: Beef Bavette with Red Onions and Chimichurri Sauce, Roasted Cauliflower Soup

Get thee to BiRite

Happy Halloween! And Go Giants! With all of this celebration, chaos and candy, you might find it difficult to stay on track with healthy eating this week. But as you all know, the best way to avoid eating bad foods is to have good foods (really good foods) readily available. So here are two vitamin-packed, fat-burning recipes that I love as dinner AND as leftovers for lunch (and even breakfast!) the next day. You'll find that both of these recipes are incredibly quick and easy, giving you more time to workout, spend time with your kids and take your dogs to the beach. The soup takes a little over an hour, but of course can be prepared ahead of time, and the bavette takes only about 20 minutes to prepare. 

Roasted Cauliflower Soup:

Soup is the perfect food for boosting your immune system, and fighting off the common cold and flu. I love to add a bit of coconut oil to any soup for added immune support, and a good dose of healthy fat.

What You'll Need:

1 medium-head cauliflower (roughly 1 3/4 lbs), separated into 1-inch florets
1 medium onion
32 oz organic chicken stock (fresh is best, such as from Bi-Rite or Prather Ranch...or homemade!)
2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
Sea salt
Ground pepper
Parsley

Drizzle the cauliflower florets with olive oil, sea salt and pepper and spread them evenly on a large-rimmed backing sheet. Roast in the oven at 400 degrees until the florets are tender and golden. Meanwhile, sauté your chopped onion in a pan with olive oil and a pinch of salt. Cook the onions, stirring occasionally, until they are translucent and aromatic. Add the roasted cauliflower and the onion to the chicken stock, and let simmer for 45 minutes, stirring occasionally. Once the simmering is complete, use an immersion blender (or food processor) to blend the soup into a rich and creamy texture. Add salt and pepper to taste. I like to garnish my soup with fresh herbs for an extra kick of flavor, and find that parsley blends wonderfully into the nutty flavor of the cauliflower in this soup. And if you're looking to add even more flavor, add a dollop of Green Valley Organics' Lactose Free Sour Cream on top just before you add your parsley. Similar to whipping cream, this sour cream simply contains the healthy fat and none of the lactose that causes the inflammatory reaction most people experience from milk products. 

Health Tip: Cauliflower is loaded with antioxidants (namely vitamin C and manganese) and has been proven to aid in the detoxification process within the body, significantly lowering the risk of cancer.

Pan-Fried Bavette Steak with Red Onions and Chimichurri Sauce (from BiRite's cookbook, Eat Good Food)

Chimichurri sauce hails from Argentina, and tastes a bit like a vinegary pesto. Its bright, herby notes bring an unexpected freshness to the richness of the steak. You can buy the sauce freshly-made from BiRite, or simply make your own. 

What You'll Need:

1 1/2 lbs of grass-fed bavette steak (flank or skirt steak will also do)
Sea salt
Ground pepper
1 large red onion, cut into 1/4 inch rings
1/4 cup red wine vinegar
1/4 cup plus 3 tablespoons of extra-virgin olive oil
1/2 large bunch of parsley, stems removed
1/2 large bunch of cilantro, stems removed
2 large cloves of garlic, peeled and smashed

Sprinkle the salt and pepper over your steak and set aside until it comes to room temperature.
To make the chimichurri sauce, put the garlic in a blender or food processor and pulse to chop coarsely. Tear the parsley and cilantro into 2 or 3 inch lengths, and add to the processor, along with 2 tablespoons of the vinegar, 1/4 cup of olive oil, and 1 teaspoon of salt. Puree until smooth. Add more salt or vinegar if needed. 

Heat 2 tablespoons of olive oil in a large skillet (you might wish to use coconut oil, which is safer at higher heats) over medium-high heat. When the pan is smoking, add the steaks and cook undisturbed for at least two minutes. Lower the heat if they are browning too quickly, and cook for about 4 minutes on each side, depending on your preferred doneness. Remove the steaks from the skillet, cover with foil, and let rest while you cook the red onions. To cook the onions, add a little more oil to the pan along with the onions and a pinch of salt. Stir occasionally, until they become soft and golden brown. Add 2 tablespoons of red wine vinegar to the onions and cook, stirring until the vinegar has evaporated and the onions are soft. 

Slice the steaks across the grain into 1/2 inch thick strips, and top with the sautéed onions and chimichurri sauce. Enjoy! 

Remember: The healthiest snack doesn't come in a package....it's a mini version of a meal! These two dishes make the perfect leftovers, and are sure to keep your blood sugar regulated and your hand out of the candy jar.

What I'm Eating: Grass-Fed Beef Taco Bowls

Let's face it: a big hunk of meat and a side of vegetables gets old quick. I find ground meat to be the perfect cure for hunk-o-meat boredom, so I headed over to BiRite, took a look around and decided to make some grass-fed beef taco bowls for dinner. Tacos are an incredibly easy meal to cook that's family friendly, delicious and perfect for those of you who are on a grain-free, dairy-free diet. Use the right ingredients and I promise you, you won't miss the tortilla.

What You'll Need:

1 lb Grass-Fed Ground Beef (Incredibly fresh from Bi-Rite or my other go-to, Prather Ranch)1/2 Yellow Onion1 Green Pepper1 Bunch of CilantroGuacamole or Avocado SlicesTaco Seasoning (Sea salt, Pepper, Ground Cumin, Oregano, Garlic Powder and Chili Powder)


Slice the onion and green pepper and sauté them on medium heat in either olive or coconut oil (you won't taste the coconut later, and it's a great source of healthy fat). Once the vegetables have cooked for a few minutes, add the grass-fed beef, stir and let cook for about 7 minutes, or until the meat is no longer pink. Before you remove it from the heat, season the taco filling with sea salt, pepper, oregano, ground cumin and chili powder (alternatively, Whole Foods sells taco seasoning packets that are salt-free, non-GMO and gluten-free). Serve the taco filling in a bowl and garnish with guacamole or salsa and freshly cut cilantro. Full of healthy fats from the beef and avocado, and loaded with vitamin C from the green peppers, this meal is sure to please your appetite and fix your "same old meat and veg" boredom. 

What I'm Eating: Root Vegetables

While there's an enormity of information out there about eating your greens, many of you will find that it's much easier to digest root vegetables, such as carrots and beets, than it is to digest a raw green salad. Feeling like you need a little detoxification and cleanse? Looking to lose weight? Root vegetables can help. Beets, carrots and other root vegetables, with their high levels of soluble fiber, are incredibly helpful in both the digestive process and the detoxification process within the body. How? Quite simply, the better you digest your food, the fuller you feel (and the less you'll eat). And the better you eliminate your food, the less toxic you'll be, which significantly reduces your stress levels and aids in the fat loss process (after all, toxins are stored in fat). 

Many people who switch too quickly from an unhealthy diet to one loaded with vegetables and high-quality proteins and fats often experience diarrhea or constipation, both of which can be the result of too much insoluble fiber (found in broccoli, brussels sprouts and many other raw vegetables). Root vegetables, on the other hand, are incredibly easy to digest and absorb, often leaving you feeling more satiated post-meal. While they are often misunderstood as "too sweet for fat loss," root vegetables, having grown underground, absorb all of the vital nutrients and minerals from the soil, making them highly nutrient-dense foods that are loaded with free-radical-fighting antioxidants.

I bought some gorgeous (as gorgeous as underground vegetables can be) beets from my local farmers' market this weekend and roasted them, a super quick and easy way to transform beets into a warm or cold salad. With just a handful of ingredients, this recipe couldn't be easier:

Roasted Beets Drizzled with Walnut Oil and Sea Salt

-Pre-heat your oven to 375 (you can even go higher if desired)

-Clean the beets and cut off their greens, allowing an inch or two of the beet stems to remain

-Cover a baking sheet with foil and a layer of parchment paper and place the beets on top

-Coat the beets in a thin layer of olive oil

-Roast beets in the oven for 30-40 minutes, or until a butter knife easily goes through them

-Let the beets cool, cut off their stems and peel off their top layer

-Drizzle the beets with La Tourangelle roasted walnut oil, add a pinch of sea salt and serve!

I want to lose weight: Should I eat fruit?

I've been getting this question a lot lately, so I decided to write a quick post about it. While it's true that fruits are a great source of fiber and nutrients, they are also a source of sugar. Anytime you hear "ose" on the end of a word (fructose, dextrose, sucrose) you should immediately think the of the S word: Sugar! Fructose is the sugar contained in fruits. And while it is a natural sugar, it's still sugar. In fact, sugar itself is natural. It's a whole, real food. That doesn't mean you should eat it! 

But you just said fruit was loaded with nutrients and fiber! There are no nutrients in fruit that you can't get from vegetables, so if your goal is significant weight loss, replace your fruits with vegetables. Because most people reach for fruit in the morning, a simple solution is to make extra vegetables for dinner the night before (roasted broccoli or cauliflower are my favorites) so you can easily reheat them in the morning with your proteins. Not only will you get all of the nutrients and fiber you're after, you'll also feel satiated much longer from the vegetables than you would if you had chosen to eat a fruit salad with your egg. 

And as Gary Taubes asserts in "Why We Get Fat," What makes fruit worrisome from the perspective of Adiposity 101 is that it is sweet to the taste precisely because it contains a type of sugar known as fructose, and fructose is uniquely fattening as carbohydrates go. As nutritionists and public-health authorities have become increasingly desperate in their attempts to rein in the obesity epidemic, they've also become increasingly strident in their suggestions that we eat copious fruit along with green vegetables. Fruit doesn't have to be processed before we eat it: it's fat- and cholesterol-free; it has vitamins and antioxidants; and so, by this logic, must be good for us. Maybe so. But if we're predisposed to put weight on, it's a good bet that most fruit will make the problem worse, not better" (p 136).

The bottom line is this: if you want to lose weight, greatly reduce your sugar intake, including fruits. If you want to eat fruit, stick to the low-glycemic varieties, such as berries and apples, and try to save eating them for when you want dessert or are craving something sweet.  

Need A Little Monday Motivation?

Because sometimes you just want to stick your head in the sand

If you want to lose weight, you don't need to count calories. You simply need to eat until you are nutritionally satisfied. This concept sounds wonderfully simple, but take a look around and you'll see that it's quite challenging for most people. Then look around in nature: do you ever see an overweight lion or a giraffe with love handles? These animals eat, move and live in accordance with their unique body chemistry and needs. We, on the other hand, have lost touch with our internal cues with regards to what to eat, when to sleep, when to drink water, how much water to drink, when to move, when to rest....the list goes on and on. And add into the mix that we are overwhelmed with an enormity of mis-information and a dizzying array of overly-processed food products, and you have yourself a society full of fat lions. 

So, what's an easy way to get back on track? If you've been following my blog, you know that the first steps are to switch to an organic diet, stop eating gluten (and really grains in general), eat right for your Metabolic Type and hire a Chek Practitioner to design a stretching and exercise program that takes your body's stress levels and physiological load into account so that you don't overtrain yourself into an even more stressed state (and, consequently, a bigger pair of jeans). 

Wow. That's actually a lot to chew! No pun intended. So whether you've been gluten-free for 3 years or you're just starting to conceptualize your morning without that big bowl of Cheerios, here are a few nutrition tips that you can incorporate today to start looking, feeling and functioning at your best. 

First things first: if you don't want to gain weight, you must snack! The trick here is to not let yourself get too hungry. If you're serious about fat loss, then you have to be serious about blood sugar regulation. Why? Because when you go too long without eating, the chances are pretty high that the first thing you'll reach for for quick energy when you DO eat will be high in carbohydrates and/or sugar. And when you eat processed carbs/sugary foods, your blood sugar levels sky rocket, which in turn causes your adrenals to release insulin, which results in an energy boost followed by an energy crash. This instability in time leads to body fat storage, adrenal depletion, chronic fatigue and mood swings. So, when should you eat? Most people need to eat every four hours. And what should you snack on? Here are two snacks that are high in heart-healthy saturated fats and omega-3s, wonder foods for keeping your blood sugar levels stable. 

Two Moms In The Raw Gluten-Free Almond Butter Cacao Truffles: Easy to find at Whole Foods and many other health food stores, this low-glycemic, count-the-ingredients-on-one-hand super snack is loaded with healthy fats and proteins to keep you satiated AND keep your blood sugar in check. The perfect snack to keep at your desk at work (better than the doughnuts or candy your co-workers are eating) and ideal to take on a long hike for sustained energy. 

Prather Ranch Grass-Fed Cowboy Style Beef Jerky: The yellow lab approves! Prather Ranch recently got their sugar and gluten-free beef jerky back in stock, so head down to their shop at the Ferry Building before it's sold out again! This beef jerky is an easy and convenient way to get real, high-quality protein in an easy-to-carry-around snack. Working out and heading back to the office? Beef jerky! Long car trip to Tahoe? Beef jerky!  

Mix it up! If you truly want to stick to a healthy lifestyle, it has to be sustainable for life. My friend and fellow CHEK Nutrition and Lifestyle Coach Diane Sanfilippo, recently published an amazing cookbook called Practical Paleo that is full of super easy recipes that are all dairy, gluten and grain-free and most importantly, delicious. Diane is incredibly talented in the art of taking a healthy meal and making it taste so good that you forget it's good for you! So if you're in a menu rut, check out her cookbook for some new healthy dishes.