Perfect fat for athletes

I found this great article from Body Sport.com that addresses one of the biggest nutritional myths ever~that a low fat diet will equal weight loss.

I have been eating a lot of avocado’s lately and loving them. Not only becuase they are creamy, satisfying and delicious but becuase they helped me lose weight- 30 pounds!

Currently, while preparing for a figure competition,  I added an avocado a day into my meal plan and the weight just kept coming off.   I never allowed myself to eat an avocado prior to this experience as I always thought they were FAT and would make me FAT. Well nothing can be further from the truth.

Figure competitors have low body fat and eat avocado’s which proves the point that nutrient rich fats are healthy and promote natural weight loss.

This is one diet trap that I am happy to have broken free of. By the way there are many, many other diet traps that keep ups stuck in dieting hell.  If you are unfamiliar with what a diet trap is Click here for a free report and leave a comment on some of the diet traps you’ve personally experienced and what you have discovered.

Rosie Battista

I was in the nail salon the other day, and the food channel was on the TV screen. You simply can’t get away from it even if you try. Two other women were watching intently while Jada whipped up her Italian magic. As I was eavesdropping on the conversation, (what else could I do in such a small space?),  one woman says to the other…”Oh my, what a simple idea, I never thought of doing that”. I started to judge this comment, thinking to myself, how in the world could they not have known such a simple concept. Jada took some left over bread and put it in her blender and made bread crumbs. These 2 women where literally blown away by the idea of how great that would be when they were in the kitchen and out of the store bought stuff.

Not that I am bragging, but I have always made my own breadcrumbs, because the ingredients added in the store bought kind have no business in my body.

I simply take some Ezekiel (sprouted grain bread) bread, tear it up and put it in the blender and “instant nutrient rich” breadcrumbs emerge. I just assumed everyone did this. I guess I was wrong about that.

Sometimes when things are so obvious and simple to us, they simply get discarded as unimportant or don’t register in our minds as something we could do.

For me, it seems like, the more ingredients in a recipe, the less I want to cook it. The more choices when shopping, the less I want to buy. The more choices on a buffet, the more confused I get, and the less I want to eat.

What if you could keep it simple and really nail this “Nutrient Rich Eating” way of eating?

I am going to help you out with this.

Everyday I am going to post a SIMPLE TIP. If you take these simple tips, you can put the basic concepts together and form a mountain of knowledge that will change the way you eat for the better forever.

Can I state it anymore simply that that?

Coming up in the next post…KEEP IT SIMPLE TIP #1 – Beets

How many bananas is too many bananas?

I don’t know but your body knows.

You can overdo and overeat the GOOD stuff too.  My partner, John Allen, and I talk about this concept all the time. Contrary to that popular belief that “eating healthy doesn’t taste good and is boring” reason/excuse that many people give for eating poorly, we’ve discovered that, actually the opposite is true. Nutrient Rich foods that include green vegetables, juicy fruit, nuts, seeds, beans are satisfying and delicious. They make you feel good too even after you eat them because you are getting the nutrients your body needs and wants.

We buy bunches of ripe bananas, peel ‘em and freeze ‘em. That way we can dump them in smoothies. They are so sweet and creamy that we make ice cream out of them.

Using our beloved Vitamix high powered blender, we add bananas, dates, natural unsweetened cacao powder, and walnuts and whip up a creamy delectable ice cream. It’s so good you can finish it off in one sitting. And if you don’t listen and stop, you can eat this ice cream until the whole thing is finished off and you bust!

The actual challenge we discovered is that nutrient rich “healthy” food is so good ~ you want to keep eating. And justification for this overeating comes easy – you can simply convince yourself that since it is healthy you can keep it coming.

Over the past two years as I started to eat more and more nutrient rich foods, I found myself gaining some unwanted pounds, and I didn’t do it by eating potato chips.  Nope. I ate too much of good things. Grant it there were emotional eating situations going on as well, however, I figured I was eating healthy foods so it didn’t matter.  But it does matter. Too many bananas is too many bananas. I was certainly eating for health but overeating even healthy foods is not a healthy idea.

Nutrient rich food is truly yummy. I can’t say enough about Dr. Fuhrman’s EAT FOR HEALTH 2 book set. Book 2 is full of amazing recipes. I started to experiment and cook up these recipes and was truly wowed by the ease it took and the taste that exploded. You should try a recipe or two. I recommend the healthy chocolate cake on page 262. It’s literally made with vegetables but you wouldn’t know it unless I spilled the beans. I guarantee if you have the “healthy food doesn’t taste good” mentality – eating this cake will flip that switch off immediately.
When you start eating nutrient rich, amazing things happen to your health. You give your body the true nutrients it needs to function and perform well. You feel really good and energetic. You’ll want to eat this way and your body will start craving the good stuff.

But how do you know when enough is enough, when you’ve had enough and when you should stop?  There is no complicated answer here. It’s actually the simplest concept you probably ever heard.  LISTEN. Listen to the signs and eat when you are hungry and stop when you are full.

These “simple” rules are key to nutrient rich living and eating and natural weight loss – eat only when you hungry and stop when you are full. That will be the sure fire way of not overdosing on one too many bananas. Your body doesn’t want one too many bananas and it will give you signals to stop. Your body knows best – when it has had enough – it lets you know – you just need to LISTEN.

Can you spend today just taking the time to notice how you feel before a meal?  If you are not really hungry, wait a bit longer to eat.  As you are eating notice how your stomach feels. Do you feel satisfied? Can you stop now? It takes practice to hear and notice your body’s signals but once you connect and the more you listen, the more you will hear and you will naturally lose weight.

What the heck is that anyway?

Yet, it is in a lot of our refined, processed, American food items and most of us are not even aware of what we are eating.

Look at this list:

whole grain rolled oats, high fructose corn syrup, oat bran concentrate, brown sugar, oat flour, dried fruit treated with sulfur dioxide to promote color retention, margarine (partially hydrogenated cottonseed oil, salt, mono and diclycerides, soy lecithin, EDTA, annatto color, artificial flavor, vitamin A, mopalmitate), malodextrin, glycerin, modified food starch, corn syrup, rice flour, dried whole eggs, malted barley extract, calcium bicarbonate, water, salt, cinnamon, artificial flavors, sorbitol, corn cereal, partially hydrogenated cottonseed oil, wheat flour, sodium bicarbonate, corn flour, malic acid, malt barley, soy, sodium alginate, enzyme modified soy protein, tumeric color, natural mixed tocopherols, yellow 6, calcuim phosphate, sodium hexametaphosphate, artificial color, niacinimide, vitamin A palmitate, potassium sorbate, BHT, reduced iron, soduim phosphate, pyridoxine hydrochloride, riboflavin, thiamin mononitrate, folic acid !

Yes. This is all one product’s ingredients. It’s a very popular, very refined and processed oat bar. Can you even imagine eating all of these ingredients? I have no idea what some of them even are. I don’t ever want to put any fake crap in my body.  But that’s what you get if you are unaware. I haven’t even begun to tell you what that stuff does to your body.

If you want an oat bar ~ you CAN have one.  How about taking 5 minutes and mixing up  a banana,  applesauce, walnuts, oats, and raisins. Can’t get much simpler or more nutrient rich than that.  Tomorrow I will be sharing a video with you and showing you just how easy it is to prepare Nutrient Rich oat bars.

Simplicity RULES.

TIP: Think of this simple rule when choosing to eat. If it doesn’t have a label, its probably nutrient rich. THERE ARE NO LABELS ON AN APPLE and in all Nutrient Rich Recipes the ingredients are all whole foods.

As weight is gained all 3 components vary according to several factors; the most common include genetics, the personal energy level, diet quality and activity level, and environment.

If a persona has a predisposition to gain weight relatively easily, their personal energy is low (burn out), food energy intake is too high, physical activity is low and the time its taken to gain weight is over a longer term, as much as 90% of the excess weight will be made up of mostly extra fat stores. However, a small percentage of any gain will comprise lean weight and water.

When weight gain is short term, all other lifestyle factors aside; it’s not just the food, it is the affect of the food that really makes the difference. This is a major diet trap.

For example, a gain in water weight is often due to an increased daily sodium intake.

Sodium in the body is mainly found in the fluids that surround the body’s cells, such as the blood and lymph fluid. When sodium intake exceeds the amount the body can handle it builds up within the interstitial areas and the kidneys have to work extra hard to excrete a constant rise in daily sodium intake. A build up may cause the body to hold extra fluids in the blood and around the cells which contributes to increased blood pressure and also excess weight gain from water.
Daily sodium intake will always be high in the standard western diet.

The average diet in the western world is commonly made up of fast, packaged or convenient foods with long shelf life due in part to preservation affects of sodium. These typically nutrient poor foods, typically again, consist of high levels of salt and salt contains sodium. If a diet is mainly composed of high sodium foods then naturally the sodium intake also rises thus extra weight is gained quickly as the body holds onto water. It has been estimated that many people in the UK and USA may be carrying up to 5 pounds of extra weight due to the effects of a high sodium intake.

The opposite effect also happens when an individual reduces food intake in order to lose weight quickly. A percentage of the loss will be water because a reduction in high sodium foods means a reduction in daily sodium intake which results in water loss as the kidneys have a chance to finally rid the excess sodium from the body. This also helps partly explain why a dieter may experience the yo-yo effect when dieting, water weight is lost with food reduction or a temporary change in food quality, but quickly regains the weight when old eating habits are back to normal and daily sodium intake rises once more.

Here’s the reality.

Just because you eat a food that has 200 calories for example, does not mean if you were overeating, you would gain .057 lbs of weight – 200/3500 calories (the amount of calories in a pound).

If that food is very high in sodium, and depending on how your body reacts, you could gain many pounds as your body holds excess water to keep the excess sodium away from negatively affecting the function of the cells. This throws many people off, particularly those who eat packaged diet foods, or unknowingly eat less of foods that are very high in sodium.

According to Joe Fuhrman M.D. we don’t need more than 1000 mg of sodium per day, (which would probably increase if you were an athlete); basically, the amount of sodium you would get eating a 2000 calorie nutrient rich diet, full of nutrient rich foods that have natural sodium levels approx, 1/2 mg per calorie.

If you are eating a nutrient poor diet, and not eating for health, it’s not uncommon to be eating foods that take your sodium intake upwards of 2000 – 3000 – 5000mg of sodium and that’s is a formula for major weight gain, even if the excess calorie intake does not equal the amount of pounds gained.

It’s not just the food and its calories, it’s the quality of the food and it’s affects on the function and performance of your body, that often determines weight gain and of course, your health.

The title of this article is from an acquaintance of mine Rip Esselstyn.I know Rip through his father Dr Caldwell Esselstyn.

Here is an excerpt from his article Attention Athletes: Eat Your Vegetables!

Alex Rodriguez. Barry Bonds. Jose Conseco. Andy Pettitte. Jason Giambi. Roger Clemens. Baseball players in the news, all of them in hot water for using illegal substances for a competitive edge.

As a former professional athlete with friends active in all areas of sports, I know that steroids and other illicit substances have permeated just about every sport. A feeling has sprung up among athletes that if you’re not on this stuff, you’re at a disadvantage. You’re just not going to be as good as the next guy.

But the secret to hitting fifty home runs, to stealing a hundred bases, to pitching a perfect game, doesn’t involve needles or pills, the cream or the clear.

The secret is no farther away than the local grocery store, where no one needs an illegal prescription or a shady doctor. It’s right there, in the produce section, where you’ll find Nature’s naturally lean, bad-ass performance enhancers: plant foods such as whole grains, vegetables, fruits, legumes, seeds, and nuts. Instead of injecting themselves with human growth hormones and steroids, instead of having those monsters coursing through their 65,000 miles of veins, arteries, and capillaries, by consuming plant-powered foods, athletes’ systems will be bursting with vitamins, minerals, phytochemicals, and antioxidants, and they’ll not only be on their way to MVP seasons but also to the best health of their lifetimes.

Read More…

What is so powerful about this article, is that it’s true and reinforces the new mentality that is sweeping the nation one person at a time – that it’s your lifestyle that determines your health, how you look and feel, and perform!

So many people spend a lifetime, trying to find the magic pill or powder, some substance that will help them overcome the common ills, created unbeknownst to them, mainly by the way they eat. They think low energy, what they don’t know as poor performance due to their lack of true health, and the fight against disease are normal and natural, but they aren’t… just common because of our modern day way of life that is simply caught up and unhealthy.

What has also become common is thinking that that we need to seek performance enhancing substances to function and perform at peak, when we haven’t even begun to proactively tap the potential of our own lifestyle – how we think and live.

Of course, a big BIG part of your lifestyle is how you eat. The quality of the food you eat, whether you eat Nutrient Rich foods or nutrient poor foods is going to have a huge and compounding effect on your energy level, your health, how fit you are, and what you are able to achieve in your life.

Most people just can’t get it, that they need to change the quality of their diet, not simply seek another way to lose weight. They will naturally lose weight, when they focus on eating for health, functioning and performing better in a now more active and healthy lifestyle.

Rip Esselstyn has has it right. As the founder of www.PerformanceLifestyle.com, and author of the PerformanceLifestyle blog, this mentality is clear, near and dear to my heart and hopefully yours.

When how you live is driven by your ability to function, to have quality of life and the capacity to perform “well”, you will look at how you eat and your overall lifestyle so much differently. You will finally leave the eat less diet mentality ingrained in our heads by a diet industry that knows very little about living a balanced and healthy lifestyle.

You will learn everything you can about eating better, about eating Nutrient Rich foods and eating for health!

~ JAM
John Allen Mollenhauer