Something is not right

The acne, bloat and brain fog is back! 

Not in a major way, but enough for me to take notice. There are lots of little bumps on my jaw line and the breakouts on my chest have returned. I also got a nasty little cystic bump on my chest which was pretty painful and there are a few breakouts on my back. 

And this week at work, I could not get my thoughts straight during a status meeting. My brain was just all over the place and I was getting my programs confused. Very embarrassing. Darn brain fog. Losing the brain fog was one huge benefit I noticed when I gave up wheat the first time. 

Could all this be from the wheat I've been happily consuming over the past few weeks? It's funny, now that my pre-wheat free symptoms are showing up, I realize how much better my skin was and how the brain fog had disappeared.

I didn't consume a TON of wheat, but on Saturday, I did eat some foods made with white flour. My body was still processing the damage I did during my wheatastic weekend two weeks ago!

Ok, ok, ok, I get it. Wheat is not good for me. 

Digestion starts in the brain

BOING!

I just had a light bulb moment while eating my lunch. 

On my last blog post, I'm tweaking, not twerking, I talked about making tweaks to my diet by crowding out the "avoid" foods based on my O+ type blood. In preparation to do this, I purchased the Eat Right 4 Your Type cookbook for my iPad and this afternoon I was perusing the pages, looking for yummy recipes and making a shopping list. This is something I have done 1,000 times before. Whenever I would start a new diet, I would do intensive research on what to eat and what not to eat. I would scour the web looking for recipes so I could do meal planning. I would make an extremely long shopping list and head to the grocery store to buy all the "approved" foods. Then I would cross my fingers and pray that this diet would work. 

It's funny how it's so easy to slip back into the old diet mentality. 

This ritual of preparing to diet is second nature to me. I didn't realize what I was doing until I had an almost painful experience eating my "last meal."

Side bar: If you're a dieter, you know what the last meal is. It's that last meal where you eat the foods that you're about to avoid for the next [insert length of diet program] all at one time! Yea, I had one of THOSE meals for lunch today. 

Now, back to the painful experience eating my last meal which consisted of:

• A vegetarian fed hamburger patty (only grass-fed beef on the new diet)
• 2 slices of provolone cheese (no dairy on the new diet)
• the last 2 slices of bacon (no pork on the new diet)
• sauteed button mushrooms (no domestically grown mushrooms on the new diet)
• BBQ sauce (the sauce I used contains vinegar which is a no no on the new diet)
• 2 slices of brown rice flour bread (this is acceptable on the new diet)
• baked sweet potato fries (this is acceptable on the new diet)

As I sat down at the table to enjoy a yummy meal, I was plagued with negative thoughts about my meal. 

"Is this bacon going to react like a poison in my system?"
"What exactly is a vegetarian fed cow and is the one I'm eating going to mess up my stomach?"
"Oh, I should have put cheddar on this last meal sandwich instead of provolone."  
"Oh man, I may never eat cheddar cheese again."
"What am I going to eat on my eggs if I can't eat cheddar cheese? Oh wait,  I can't eat eggs."

While all these thoughts were circling around in my head, I still attempted to eat mindfully, by eating slowly and breathing between bites, but I wasn't able to enjoy the meal. About four bites into it, I felt the what-should-have-been-a-delicious-burger start to back up in my throat. I ignored the feeling and took another bite. Again, I felt something gurgling in my esophagus.  So much so, that I started to cough.

Do you think that stopped me from eating? Heck no! This was my last meal and I was going to enjoy it come hell or high water!

Wait? What was I doing to myself? My body was clearly telling me that something wasn't right and I chose to ignore it. Why? Because diet means deprivation and if I stopped eating at that point, I would feel deprived. 

That was my a-ha moment.

I fell right back into the same pattern which I have been trying to avoid. I started to stress about this new diet and the food that I think I should be avoiding, that my body rebelled and actually tried to reject what I was eating. 

Just today, I heard someone say that digestion starts in the brain and this is a perfect example of that. My crazy diet thoughts put my body in a low grade state of stress while I was eating and my body was unable to digest and absorb the meal. 

Crazy, right? Well, it's not. Digestion is inarguably a physiological process.

"Here's the deal: when you are in fight-or-flight mode (sympathetic dominant), you will not digest your food well. Period. End of story. Do not pass GO, do not collect $200."

Evidence that this is true: 

1. I didn't enjoy the taste of the meal like I should have.
2. I experienced acid reflux in the middle of my meal!

See, this is yet another reason dieting does not work. So what is my plan now, you ask? After this a-ha moment, I thought about this very question. Here's my answer. I'm going to decrease the frequency and amount of some of the food "avoid" foods, but I am not going to cut them out completely. Nor, am I going to categorize them into the good food/bad food choices; or as Dr. D'Adamo refers to them as beneficial, neutral and avoid foods. 

At the end of the day, my body will tell me what it needs and what it wants. The last thing I want to do is stress about the food that I put in my mouth. I'm going to focus on relaxing and enjoying my food and stop wondering what if...

Who knew eating would be this complicated!

I'm tweaking, not twerking

As a student at the Institute for Integrative Nutrition, the world's largest nutrition school, I am learning about hundreds of different dietary theories. Why? Because there isn't just one diet that will help everyone, but it's important to understand how different diets can affect the body. We are encouraged to test out these theories on ourselves so when we begin to coach people we can say, "Been there, done that." 

Most recently, we learned about the blood type diet, made popular by Dr. Peter D'Adamo. I had no idea what my blood type was so I ordered a home test kit for $9.95. Turns out I'm O+ like 45% of the African American population. In doing my research on this diet, I read a lot of great testimonials about the effectiveness of this lifestyle.

My test results with the at home test kit.

This of course peaked my interest. 

The basis of this dietary theory is that your genetic heritage is passed on to you through your blood. Your blood gives you a nutritional blueprint for dealing with chronic health problems, increasing energy and vitality levels, slowing down the aging process and improving emotional strength among other things. 

Webmd.com summarized it like this, "The right diet for your blood type comes down to lectins, food proteins each blood type digests differently  D'Amado maintains. If you eat foods containing lectins incompatible with your blood type, he says, you may experience inflammation, bloating, a slower metabolism, even diseases such as cancer. The best way to avoid these effects is to eat foods meant for your blood type."

My overall daily diet is pretty darn healthy - outside of occasional slips like my wheatastic weekend. However, there is always room for improvement! I have decided to tweak my diet based on my blood type over the next 40 days to see if I notice any improvements. I'm not looking for any huge improvements because D'Amado says it can take up to a year of eating for your blood type before you see any marked changes. I have realized in my old age, that good health shows from the inside out. If my insides are improving first, that is ok with me.  

Now that I have figured out I was type O, I was very interested to see if I currently consume a lot of the offender foods for my blood type. 

Yep, I sure do. I don't eat a ton of terrible foods, but this is the short list of my biggest offenders:

Bacon (say it ain't so)
Dairy including cheese and eggs
Cauliflower (I started eating a lot of cauliflower because I used it as a substitute for rice)
Peanut butter 
Smoked salmon (regular salmon is fine)
Grits
Avocado (no more guacamole)
White wine (red wine is acceptable)

The good news is I need to eat red meat 3-4x a week (no problem there)! Type O folks have the digestive enzymes needed to digest red meat unlike a Type A, for example. I also get to eat more salt water fish and seaweed (can we say, more sushi please)!

The type O diet isn't drastically different from the way I eat now, but the biggest challenge will be to eliminate eggs. Because I am of African descent, D'Amado says it's best to eliminate eggs and dairy altogether. If you're not of African descent, you can have limited eggs and cheese a few times each week. And let's not even talk about the bacon. I guess I'll be going back to turkey and beef bacon for the duration. *sigh*

But hey, I can do anything for 40 days! 

Based on my limited research thus far, I think a few of these suggested tweeks to my diet could be beneficial. At the end of the day, I no longer subscribe to the 100% elimination rule and neither does Dr. D'Adamo. I fully subscribe to the 90/10 rule. Eat what makes sense for your body and your situation at that time. You best believe I will be eating good old fashioned cake made with pure flour, sugar, butter and eggs at my wedding! 

In the meantime, I'll keep you posted on my type O diet progress. 

If you know your blood type, he's a brief summary of what foods are best for you. 

Source: http://glamomamas.com/blood-type-diet-eating-baby/

On a completely different note, I just wanted to share my workout results today from a good old cross training session at Unite Fitness Studios. I haven't been in a week and I sure did miss it! I feel so good when I'm done. Yay me!

A Wheatastic Weekend

I've been wheated and that is not a good thing. 

I had a wonderful weekend but oh, the inflammation I'm now dealing with.

I went a little wild and crazy this past weekend during my BFF's wedding weekend extravaganza. I had a wonderful time with my girls, catching up, acting crazy, celebrating the union of a great friend to her boo. However, my normal wheat free life style went out the window.

It started on Friday with happy hour. Flat bread mushroom pizza, cheesesteak eggrolls, fish tacos...

It continued with Saturday brunch. Breakfast sandwich on sour dough bread, a piece of my friend's french toast. 

By this time, I was wondering if I was going to feel bloated and yucky. Nope. I felt perfectly fine. Stomach was still relatively flat and my digestive system was still moving things along nicely.

That evening at the reception for all of the out of towners the wheat party continued. Mini deep fried crab cakes. More flat bread pizza. Bruschetta. 

By Sunday, the jaws of wheat had me contained. Can't stop, won't stop was running through my head and I ended up eating more wheat that day at all three meals. 

On Monday, I was still feeling good. No ill effects from wheat so I figured, I don't have an intolerance for wheat. It was all in my head!

On Monday and Tuesday, I continued to push the wheat envelope by eating wedding weekend leftover sandwiches on soft, white bread.

On Wednesday, I met a friend for brunch and instead of forgoing the toast with my scrambled eggs and bacon, I decided to try the biscuit. Yes, a biscuit. I haven't had a biscuit in years and boy was it good. 

By Thursday, I started feeling a bit puffy. Not bloated in the belly, but my body just seemed inflated. When I was working out, I noticed my muffin top which had been shrinking, seemed to poke through my workout shirt. I also felt like my neck was bigger. You know when you get sick and your lymph nodes are swollen? That's what my neck felt like. Just big. 

Today, Friday, I feel like I gained a few pounds. Again, it's not a bloated feeling in my belly, but an overall feeling of puffiness. My new size 8 jeans that were fitting so good last week, now feel tight. When I sat down at my desk earlier today, I actually unbuttoned AND unzipped them so they weren't so restricting. *sigh*

What the heck happened? I overdosed on wheat for 6 days and for me, the negative effects shows up as inflammation in my entire body. Apparently, my wheat free way of life was working pretty well, but it took an overdose on wheat to realize it. They say sometimes you don't know how good you have it until you feel bad. 

Yep, I feel pretty bad. 

Now, I'm determined to eat only inflammation fighting foods and hopefully my body will respond positively over the next few days. Somebody pass me the fish oil. 

Cheers.

Have you ever over indulged and ended up feeling not so great? Tell me about it in the comments section below. 

The Power of Bulk

Someone recently asked me, "Isn't it expensive to buy all those ingredients for your smoothies?" 

Personally, I don't mind spending a little more when it comes to my health and well being, but no, it's not that expensive to buy a bunch of ingredients for my smoothies. 

I buy in bulk. 

Yes, you can buy goji berries, nuts, flax seed in pretty packages, but in most Whole Foods, you can buy these items in bulk. When I first started buying these foods, I would store them in plastic zip lock bags to keep them neat in my kitchen cabinet.

Now, I have graduated to air tight containers made by OXO, which I LOVE. You can buy them in most stores, but I like to get them from Bed, Bath, and Beyond because you can use one coupon per container. If you didn't know, those coupons NEVER expire. I keep a stack of them in my car. 

These containers are BPA free and I use the big ones to store my flours, almond, coconut and garbanzo bean, in the refrigerator. The smaller ones I use in my cabinet to store grains like quinoa, oatmeal, and millet. I store all my nuts, chia seeds and goji berries and separate containers and I even have one for my stash of dark chocolate.  Here is a photo of my cabinet and my growing collection of OXO storage containers.

In case you're wondering...yes, I am still drinking my green smoothies! I don't have one every day, but I do drink one a few times a week. Because the seasons have changed here on the east coast, I don't always want a cold green beverage for breakfast. This morning was a perfect example of that. I made a warm bowl of quinoa porridge (just like oatmeal except I use quiona) first. Then, I made a green smoothie to sip throughout the morning. Gotta get my daily dose of wheat grass in!

2 c Earthbound Farms Zen Blend

1 tsp matcha green tea powder

5 or 6 organic frozen strawberries

1 serving Amazing Grass Organic Wheat Grass

1 tbsp chopped walnuts

sliver of ginger

1 tsp maca root powder

1/2 c Bolthouse Farms carrot juice

1/2 c water

#greensmoothielove

#quinoaporridge

REWIND: October 30 Day Challenge

Remember this?

Last week, I wrote about the my new 30 day challenge for October which was to eat half of what I normally eat. Pretty simple, but definitely a challenge. As I started out with this challenge on my mind, I found it really difficult. I would split my normal portion in half and put the other half away. If the first half was really yummy, I had a hard time not eating the second half. In most cases, I was depending on pure will power not to eat the other half and we all know willpower only lasts for so long.

My initial goal with this challenge was to really hone in my feelings of fullness. I thought by only eating half, I would be able to check in with myself and decide if I was still hungry or if I was satiated. The only thing I could focus on was eating the other half! The simple rule of only eating half put me right smack dab in the middle of a diet mentality. Diets tend to have rules that ultimately cause some type of deprivation. My life's mission is to break the diet mentality! Remember, I'm done with diets?? Following a challenge that causes food deprivation was going to backfire. Actually it DID backfire. For me, deprivation around food stresses me out. 

Time to rethink this challenge. 

The New Challenge
This month's new challenge is something that I have done before in the past and it worked well. I just had a hard time sticking to it. Sticking to it for the rest of the month will definitely be a challenge for me. And there isn't any deprivation involved!

Whenever I eat, put the food on a plate, sit down at the table and eat it mindfully.

What does that mean? No standing the kitchen chomping on a cold slice of cooked bacon straight out the fridge, no reading emails, checking Facebook or watching TV while eating. Just sit at my table and focus on the food in front of me. Why this is so hard, I have no idea, but when I did this faithfully for a few weeks, I was really able to tell when I had enough to eat. Sometimes, I did leave half the food on the plate. Other times, I ate the entire plate, but it's not the amount of food that I'm focusing on. The focus is on the food that is going into my body. 

Did you know that when you eat with distractions (i.e. reading a magazine or at your desk), your food doesn't digest properly? Well it doesn't. When you are distracted, you also miss the cue your body gives you that you are full and satisfied so you keep on eating until you're stuffed. 

I now have a new note at my table to remind me of some cues while eating my meals. 

Actually this is an old 3x5 card, I wrote it out when I was practicing this before. Somehow, I stopped referring to it before it actually became a habit. This is my renewed focus for the month. Go me go! 

If you're interested in learning more about eating for pleasure aka Vitamin P, I highly recommend reading The Slow Down Diet. I am going to read it again myself this month to remind me why it's so important to eat mindfully. 

#behealthy

Power through your workouts with coconut water

I've never been a big fan of coconut, but I've learned to enjoy the taste and what it does for my body. I recently started drinking coconut water during my workouts. Not only is it more interesting than regular water, it seems to give me a bit of a boost during my intense cross training workouts at Unite Fitness Studios. 

At one point, I poo pooed drinking straight coconut water because of the carbs. Now, since I am on a quest to break the diet mentality, I realize those carbs work FOR me rather than AGAINST me during my workouts. Honestly, there aren't even THAT many carbs in CO2! 

Now understand, coconut water and coconut milk are two different products of the coconut. Coconut WATER is the clear liquid in the center of a young (green) coconut. If you grab a coconut from the tree, crack it open, the water is what will come out. 

Coconut MILK is created when you blend the white fleshy meat of the coconut with water. Check out this recipe on how to make your own coconut milk. 

Now that you have a bit of background on coconut liquids, let's get back to the topic at hand. Why do I drink coconut water during my workouts? 

1. PREVENTS DEHYDRATION 

Coconut water is super hydrating. When you sweat as much as I do when working out, staying hydrated is extremely important. It's 95% water! Rehydration allows you to push yourself a bit further in your workouts.

2. PREVENTS MUSCLE CRAMPS

It also contains a ton (yes, that's a very scientific measurement) of electrolytes. Who needs Gatorade or Powerade with all that sugar and artificial coloring when you can drink pure, refreshing coconut water? It's also rich in natural salts like potassium and magnesium. Studies have shown that coconut water has five times more potassium that some popular sports drinks. 

3. IT TASTES GOOD!

Like I mentioned earlier, it's a bit more interesting than plain old water. I have a 16 oz. reusable water bottle I take to the gym with me. Before my workouts, I fill it up with 8 oz. of coconut water and 8 oz. of filtered water and I'm ready to rock and roll. 

Next time you have an intense, sweatabulous workout planned, drink some coconut water and see if you notice a difference. If so, leave me a comment and tell me about it!

Cheers!

October 30 Day Challenge

Day 3 of 30!
I've never been good at making goals and sticking to them, but since I successfully completed the 30 day green smoothie challenge in September, I might as well keep riding the wave of success. 

My October 30 day challenge is pretty simple. 

I'm three days in and have been doing pretty well so far. I took a road trip to NY and even when I was out to eat I consciously ate half (well maybe a bit more than half), but I DID NOT join the clean plate club. This was my salad at J.G. Domestic before I took the train up to NYC. 

I also took a comparison photo of my dinner on Monday night. Full plate vs. half plate. The meal was wonderful, but the photo was less than desirable so I decided not to post it. If you're interested, here are the two new recipes that I tried out. Man Pleasing Chicken (yep, that's the name of it) and Balsamic Mushrooms. I got fancy and added some kale and bacon bits in there. Fab-u-lous! 

So as you can see, I have one main goal which is above. My side goals are:

• Continue to drink a green smoothie each day
• Go to cross training 4 times a week
• Continue to pray and meditate each morning

#octobersuccess