Back-to-Basics Nutrition Plan

Tip 1: If it can’t be plucked or picked, hunted, fished or if it didn’t have a mom, don’t eat it. It’s that simple. No processed foods, no additives and no artificial ingredients. It’s eating clean, organic foods in their truest, most natural form.

Tip 2: Eat real foods every meal and snack. Eat more free-range, lean protein — fish, chicken, turkey, bison, eggs, etc. Make sure your plate is full of fresh/frozen organic vegetables. Make sure you add some healthy fats – cold-pressed olive oil, walnut oil, coconut oil or raw nuts/seeds. Finally add a small amount of healthy grains/carbohydrates if you desire – brown rice, quinoa, sweet potatoes or berries.

Tip 3: If the food has more than 2 or 3 ingredients and your 7-year-old can’t pronounce the ingredients, don’t eat it.

Tip 4: Always eat a protein with a carbohydrate. This will help stabilize your blood sugars and reduce insulin secretion, which leads to higher energy levels and more weight loss. Sample pairings include: apple with almond butter, tuna with crackers, hard-boiled egg and berries.

Tip 5: Lunch should always be the largest meal of the day in order to prevent large meals at night. When your body is physically active during the daytime, you will be able to metabolize and breakdown food more efficiently. Food will take longer to digest at nighttime, especially if you are not physically active at night.

Get the other 5!  

Farro Salad With Beets, Beet Greens and Feta

2 medium or 3 small beets (any color) with greens, the beets roasted, the greens stemmed and washed in two changes of water

1 cup farro, soaked for one hour in water to cover and drained

Salt, preferably kosher salt, to taste

2 tablespoons sherry vinegar

1 teaspoon balsamic vinegar

1 small garlic clove, minced or pureed

1 teaspoon Dijon mustard

1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil (may substitute 1 to 2 tablespoons walnut oil for 1 to 2 tablespoons olive oil)

1/2 cup broken walnut pieces

2 ounces feta or goat cheese, crumbled (more if desired for garnish)

1/4 cup chopped fresh herbs, such as parsley, tarragon, marjoram, chives, mint

get the directions . . .

Post Gobble Workout

10 sit ups and 10 burpies...10 rounds-for time.

Make Running a Family Tradition

Whether you're participating in the challenge or bringing the cheers and high-pitched screeches to the scene, everyone's a part of the journey.

I never in my life thought that I would be immersed into a world of running, endless supplies of GU packets and aquaphor. However, I have found myself locked in and ready to go, but not for the reasons you may obviously think.

See, I'm not a runner, nor have I ever been. The whole 'Runners World', which everyone always talked about, sounded so foreign to me. I was only able to understand it once I was thrown into the scene at a speed which felt like my boyfriend's seven minute per mile pace. I now refer to my mother, brother and boyfriend as the "Awesome Threesome".

They've formed this nomadic trio in which they venture over many different states to run half marathons and marathons. They've become this team, each running at their own pace, but all with the same gratifying end result. I guess you could say that I've become familiar with this whole running lifestyle, in the sense that I know what to expect at each race and could navigate any expo on my own. I've become a cheerleader, the support on the sidelines and the big smile, with a raspy voice, at the finish line.  Keep reading and be inspired to get your family active this Thanksgiving!  

Slow Cooker 20 to 40 Clove Garlic Chicken

3-4 pounds chicken
1 large onion (or 2 bitties, like I used), sliced
1 tablespoon olive oil
2 teaspoons kosher salt
2 teaspoons paprika
1 teaspoon pepper
20-40 garlic cloves, peeled, but intact


get the directions for this awesome slow cooker recipe.  

Weekend Challenge

100 air squats 3 min. rest, 100 air squats.

Why You Should Keep a Workout Journal

You can get better results faster, and who doesn't want that?

If you want to see results from each and every workout you do, chart your progress in an exercise journal. According to Jeffrey Katula, PhD, an exercise physiologist at Wake Forest University, self-monitoring your workout has proved to be a cornerstone in losing weight and building muscle.

While many people jot down their weight after stepping off the bathroom scale, researchers at Northwestern University found that those who consistently tracked their exercise habits — especially during holidays — lost more weight compared to those who did not.

How can you increase your chance of journal success? "Keep it simple," says Katula. "You're more likely to stick with something that's convenient." Westcott suggests recording the exercises you do, the weight load and the number of repetitions. Also record the time you spend doing cardio, along with other available measurements, including distance, for example, or the pre-programmed treadmill or stationary bike program you followed.  Keep reading . . .

Twice-Roasted Sweet Potatoes with Chipotle

Ingredients

• 6 medium sweet potatoes, unpeeled (about 3 1/2 pounds)
• 1/4 cup butter, softened
• 1 tablespoon finely chopped chipotle chiles, canned in adobo sauce
• 1 teaspoon adobo sauce
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 3 green onions
• keep reading & get the how-to . . .

Weekend Challenge

Run 1 mile, lunging 30 steps every 1 minute.

A Reminder on Maintaining Bone Health

By JANE E. BRODY

Is fear, ignorance or procrastination putting you at risk of a devastating bone fracture?

Most of the news about osteoporosisconcerns the side effects of current therapies and preventives. But it is important to put these effects in perspective — and to focus on treatment benefits and practical measures that can help to prevent costly and debilitating fractures in fragile bones.

Osteoporosis is both underdiagnosed and undertreated. Doctors say it is underdiagnosed because many who have it fail to get a bone density test, sometimes even after they suffer a fracture. The condition is undertreated because some people avoid drug therapy for fear of side effects, while others take their medications erratically or stop taking them altogether without consulting their doctors.

It is easy to understand the prevailing concern. People hear about drug side effects like osteonecrosis, or bone death, of the jaw (extremely rare and mostly in cancer patients) and unusual fractures of the thigh bone. They hear that supplements of bone-building calcium can increase the risk of heart attack or stroke.

Some 10 million Americans have osteoporosis, and 34 million more with low bone mass are at risk of developing it. It is a silent disease that typically first shows up as a low-trauma fracture of the hip, spine or wrist. Low-trauma does not mean no trauma; someone with healthy bones who falls from a standing height or less is unlikely to break a bone, according to Dr. Sundeep Khosla, president of the American Society for Bone and Mineral Research.

While women are the far more frequent victims of osteoporosis and develop it at a younger age, men — especially those over 70 — are also at risk and even less likely than women to have the disease diagnosed and treated.  Keep reading . . .

Creamy Pumpkin Curry

1 small sugar pumpkin

2 pounds of shrimp or other seafood/protein of your choice

2 carrots, sliced

1 medium yellow onion, diced

4 small zucchinis, diced

1 14oz can coconut milk 

1 cup chicken stock

2 tablespoons coconut oil

1 teaspoon fresh grated ginger

1 teaspoon crushed garlic

1 teaspoon coriander

½ tablespoon turmeric powder

sea salt to taste

get the how-to . . .

Weekend Challenge: let me introduce you to your legs

50 air squats, 4 rounds.
rest for 2 minutes between rounds

How Sugar Affects the Body in Motion

Sugar is getting a bad reputation. A cover article in The New York Times Magazine several weeks ago persuasively reported that our national overindulgence in fructose and other sugars is driving the epidemics of obesity, diabetes and other illnesses. But that much-discussed article, by the writer Gary Taubes, focused on how sugars like fructose affect the body in general. It had little opportunity to examine the related issue of how sugar affects the body in motion. Do sweeteners like fructose — the sweetest of the simple sugars, found abundantly in fruits and honey — have the same effect on active people as on the slothful?

A cluster of new studies suggests that people who regularly work out don’t need to worry unduly about consuming fructose or other sugars. In certain circumstances, they may even find the sweet stuff beneficial.

The unique role that the various sugars play in exercise is well illustrated by anew study published in March in Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise. It involved a group of highly trained cyclists and their livers. For the experiment, Swiss and British researchers directed the cyclists, all men, to ride to exhaustion on several different occasions. After each ride, they swallowed drinks sweetened with fructose or glucose, another simple sugar often identified as dextrose on ingredient labels. (Some also drank a milk-sugar sweetener.)  Keep reading . . .