My Short-Short Health & Fitness Book Report!
Thanks to Turbo Jennie (who got it from Leah? Or Sara?) for the vid! Totally safe for work. In fact, this video should become the theme for your next office party. Awesome. Click through to see the video if you get this via e-mail or RSS.
Relaxation is such a personal thing. Some people get pedicures, others watch a show, still others crawl into the butt-end of a Dope Zebra and get all Party Rocker up in their backyard. Me? I read stuff. Not even fun stuff but non-fiction science-y stuff. I love it. But not everyone has the time or interest to read it all so here’s my book report. And in the interest of efficiency – I have a tendency to write reallly looong pooosts – I’m doing each report in three sentences. Enjoy! Or just enjoy the dope zebra. Whatever boot scoots your boogie.
* **Gist: Processed food is bad for you – you may have heard? – but these evolutionary scientists have figured out that it’s because of the over abundance of Omega-6 fatty acids from corn, soybean, safflower and other processed oils. In addition they make a very compelling case for why women a) need to be fatter than men and b) need to be fatter than our current standard of beauty.
Best advice: Ditch the Omega-6′s in your diet by breaking up with processed foods and increase your intake of Omega-3 fats by adding fish, fish oil, walnuts and canola oil to your diet. Oh, and stop hating your thighs that touch – they’re why your kids are so smart.
Who should read it: Everyone! It’s awesome and the fact that the last 60 pages are nothing but dense citations make me trust it even more. Check out my post Women Are Supposed to be Fat for a more nuanced review.
Just 10 LBS: Easy Steps to Weighing What You Want (Finally)
Gist: I got to interview Brad Lamm for a Shape piece on Adderall abuse but his real expertise lies in helping people overcoming addictions of all kinds, especially to food. He presents a very thoughtful and loving way to lose weight.
Best advice: Don’t making loving yourself conditional upon losing weight. Love yourself first.
Who should read it: Anyone who is trying to lose weight in a healthy positive way and develop the life skills to keep it off. Also, be prepared to go slowly with this one – crash diet it’s not (and that’s a good thing!)
The Playful Brain: The Surprising Science of How Puzzles Improve Your Mind
Gist: Solving all kinds of puzzles helps your brain stay younger and healthier.
Best advice: Go beyond crosswords and Sudoku to challenge and strengthen different parts of your brain. I found myself skipping all the spatial puzzles (like those stupid matchstick puzzles they stick on every IQ test) and then I realized that’s because I’m super bad at them… which means I really need to do them to strengthen the spatial processing center in my brain. Gah.
Who should read it: Not for casual puzzle buffs just looking for a fun bathroom book but more for people really interested in the why and how – it really delves into the science.
The Mindful Way through Depression: Freeing Yourself from Chronic Unhappiness
Gist: Focusing on the Eastern philosophy of mindfulness, this book takes you step by step through how to change your thoughts, actions and lifestyle to rewire your brain and make it more resilient when it comes to depression and other mood disorders.
Best advice: We are not at the mercy of our moods, we can change the way we think and consequently the way we feel. As a girl who has struggled most of my life with depression and anxiety, I found the message of this book to be both helpful and hopeful and it also made a lot of sense to me – although I’m still working on implementing it.
Who should read it: For anyone who struggles with “chronic unhappiness” this book is a game changer.
Gist: Intermittent fasting guru Brad Pilon takes you through all the research supporting using fasting both as a diet and a healthy lifestyle tool. He advocates fasting (abstaining from all food and caloric beverages) for 1 – 2 days a week for 18-30 hour periods.
Best advice: Fasting gets a bad rap as being extreme but done properly (i.e. not in an eating disordered way) it is an immensely powerful tool for health. It’s also not as hard or scary as people think it will be.
Who should read it: Anyone who wants to know all the science behind IF and/or be convinced to try it. You don’t need the e-book to learn the technique, it’s simple: don’t eat or drink anything with calories for 24 hours.
Gist: The subtitle of this e-book is “weight loss without the rules” and it’s kind of like Intuitive Eating but a little more in depth.
Best advice: I’ll admit I was surprised as I assumed it would be just another diet book saying what to eat and what not to eat but it’s really a sane system of tapping into what your body wants and needs. It’s not a quick-fix diet.
Who should read it: People who have started Intuitive Eating but maybe need a little more structure.
The Physique 57(R) Solution: The Groundbreaking 2-Week Plan for a Lean, Beautiful Body
Gist: This book is the basis of this month’s Experiment but it basically details and expands upon the Lotte Berk method of using ballet techniques as a workout program.
Best advice: Ballerinas are tough, don’t discount a workout that pretty much only uses body weight as resistance until you’ve tried it. It’s a long workout but we sure are sore afterward!
Who should read it: Anyone who was a ballerina growing up or ever wanted to be a ballerina although expect mainly barre work. There are no dance moves, sadly.
Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption
Bonus: This isn’t a health or fitness book but ohmygoodness is it amazing! It’s a true story and proves the saying that truth is stranger than fiction. I absolutely could not put it down. You’ll be surprised, impressed and inspired.
What good books have you read lately? Anyone have a favorite Internet meme to make me giggle??
*The link is an Amazon affiliate link. I figure since I went to the trouble of reviewing them, I’d love it if you used my link if you decide to purchase it! And for my local friends – you’re always welcome to borrow my copy!!
**I received a copy for free for review purposes
When Exercise and Health are Not Synonymous: Are boot camp classes bad for you?
Our “boot camp” class on Saturday! Yes, my interpretation of boot camp was to wear a frilly pink tennis skirt with a top that made Gym Buddy Jeni ask, “Are those feathers?!” Also, Lindsey (to my right) pointed out that she and I look more like jolly pirates than soldiers. I love us.
Boot camps, the real U.S. military kind, frighten me. My first boyfriend was a boy with more piercings than appendages, who liked to punch brick walls until his fists bled, and ran with the cross country team as his warm up for daily double-digit runs. I tell you this not to brag about the fact that I know what it’s like to kiss someone who could spit with his mouth closed but to show you that whatever he was, he was not a wuss. And yet when he enlisted in the army straight out of high school and went away for basic training, he came back to me a broken man. We broke up not long after and I credit the military for some of that. He was different. Harder in some ways, more vulnerable in others, but not at all the person I remembered.
I figured he’d been gone for a few months running around with a backpack, doing push-ups in the mud and getting yelled at. But he quickly disillusioned me and I’ve never forgotten what he said next: “The army doesn’t care about push-ups. The whole goal of boot camp is to break you down so they can build you back up into the soldier they want you to be.” What does that mean? He continued, “They want you to be in as much pain as possible. Physically they make you run until you puke. But even worse is the mental stuff. They make you watch videos of real people getting blown up so that you won’t lose it if you see it happen in real life.” And with that he refused to tell me anything else.
I was reminded of this when I came across this post “The Problem With Boot Camp Training” by Michael Allen Smith. Smith, like my ex, is an alum of the U.S. military and because of his experience with doing the real deal he makes some very good points about why boot camp fitness classes – the fastest growing type of fitness class in 2011 – are a bad idea. He writes, “Basic Training was never about turning lumpy out of shape middle aged people into warriors. [...] the function of Basic Training is not about designing optimal athletes or getting lean. It is about building soldiers willing to kill or be killed in defense of their country.”
This functional misunderstanding of the purpose of boot camp is the reason why boot camp training is a problem, Smith contends. He points out that thanks to the military’s rigorous pre-screening standards “soldiers are ALREADY LEAN AND HEALTHY before they ever started Basic Training. And it wasn’t Basic Training that made them lean and athletic. For most soldiers it was youth. (emphasis his).” He adds that people who fail basic training are simply removed from the program. Personal trainers who teach boot camp style classes are not getting a select group of the athletic young and neither can they fail people (unless they want to lose money). “Training an overweight woman in her 30s that just had a baby as if she were an 18 year old infantryman doesn’t make sense to me,” he concludes.
Then Smith adds one last thing that surprised me. “Something I’ve noticed about the type of person attracted to Boot Camp style training is they often have some self loathing issues. They hate their body. They feel their past failures with other programs were their fault. And as a way to undo their past sins, they will pay some personal trainer to put their body through grueling military style workouts as a form of punishment.” As a girl who just did a boot camp style workout on Saturday and loved it (thanks Turbo Jennie!) and who, admittedly, has struggled for most of my life with “self-loathing issues” I had to sit with this one for a while.
He may have a point. But I also think he’s missing some pieces. A big one, for example, is the fact that many (most?) boot camp classes really have nothing to do with military style training anymore. The trend may have started with drill sergeants and push-ups but these days “boot camp” is simply an umbrella term for anything, well, hardcore. At my Y alone, we have high-intensity interval style boot camp (what I did on Saturday), strongman boot camp that involves tire flipping and heavy ropes, circuit training boot camp that incorporates weights and cardio and the regular boot camp class that encompasses everything from sprints to basketball drills to using kettlebells in the pool (yes, seriously, you can use kettlebells in the pool!). On TV I’ve seen wedding boot camps, bikini boot camps and boot camps for kids.
But in the end, I agree with his point that we don’t need to kill ourselves with crazy intense workouts to be healthy. In fact the research has repeatedly shown that moderate consistent exercise increases health in every measure but too much or too intense exercise, as described in this recent study of marathoners, weakens us and makes us more likely to get sick. And of course I have learned this myself with my struggles with overexercising. A recent, powerful, comment from Tanya last week on one of my old over-exercising posts highlights the unique impact this has on women in particular:
“After two years of fighting my body to perform, I started noticing problems. Unusual tiredness, head aches, brain fog, confusion and memory loss. I couldn’t put on weight and I also couldn’t lose it either; severe acne that would leave scars and the most frightening for me was when my periods completely stopped.
I went to the Dr. and asked for tests to be done. I had fought so hard and for so long that FSH (hormone responsible for egg release from the ovaries) had failed. My estrogen and testosterone levels had bottomed out, and I also had high prolactin levels due to an underactive thyroid. Like you, I had never had an underactive thyroid until exercising. [Charlotte's note: One of the worst effects of my compulsive over exercising was discovering after gaining 10 pounds in one month that I had suppressed my own thyroid.] So for me to see the test results, I was flabbergasted. To top it off we also found tumours sitting on the pituitary gland, which had been aggravated further by the exercise regime I had given myself.
Since then, I am still finding more problems. Early onset bone loss and to this day my period has not returned. It has been two months since I have been to the Gym (which is VERY unusual for me) and I feel very uncomfortable. One month ago I started to notice the scales elevating in weight – But I know within myself now that my body would not be able to cope with the added stress now or in the near future.
I’m now getting ready to receive treatment to get the HPA axis of hormones back into order. BUT I can’t do that without rest, proper nutrition and very “light” physical exertion (casual walking). I’ve been told anymore than that could cause a spiral back to where I started again.
There is a difference… Do you exercise to live, or do you live to exercise? Without our health, exercise means nothing.”
Am I saying that all exercise is bad? Of course not. Exercise is fantastic for you and I love it. And I still love boot camp classes. All I’m saying is that it doesn’t have to be hardcore or make you sore to be a workout. You don’t have to push 100% all of the time. This is something I’m still learning myself. As I was writing this post, I got a text from my friend Tyler (of garage gym fame) that I think sums all of this up perfectly. He is recovering from a bout with mononucleosis and was able to do a whole workout today for the first time in months. A hardcore fitness fanatic like me, he has had to reevaluate. He writes, “My mindset has changed. I believed I was entitled to health because I tried to live healthy. And now I’m beginning to understand that these judgments of myself and expectations of how I want it to be are what lead to my misery, not the malady itself. Today all I am is grateful.”
What do you think of boot camp style classes – do you think Smith is right about the self-loathing thing? Anyone else have the mentality that if you’re not sweat soaked and completely spent then it wasn’t a “workout”? Anyone have a first boyfriend story to share??
Black and Red Nails: What They Really Mean to your Health
Read full story on The Green Beauty Guide
My first ever bright red nail polish was phthalate-free, toluene-free, formaldehyde-free very pretty shade of true red by Zoya, a professional quality line of nail polishes founded by a pregnant aesthetician – sounds good to me! When my petite Marie saw my bloody red 
toes (with pretty red glitter, mind you!) she said: “Mama boo-boo… Mama vava” which in toddlerish means that Mommy’s got a wound, Mommy is in pain! She actually thought mommy was bleeding.
How actually true! When did red nails start looking attractive or healthy? To the toddler who was not (yet) brainwashed with glossy mags and music videos, red nails simply look like open, bleeding wounds on Mommy’s toes. And as a holistic nutritionist, I got particularly interested in one area of studies, namely symptomatology. So here’s what a physician would think of latest nail trends:
Pale, ebony-colored nails: pale nails can indicate chronic liver disease, lymphoma, renal disease, or general fungal problem. So long for the chic, impossibly classy shades of pale beige and pink!
White nails, as in French manicure, can indicate of kidney, liver, or blood disorders such as anemia.(source: Disabled-World.com) Half white nails, with dark spots, especially on the tip, may be indicative of kidney diseases.
Blue and purple nails can often be symptoms of argyria or Wilson’s disease, a liver and blood disorder.
Green nails (does anyone over 14 wear them?) may signal of arthritis, glaucoma, lung problems, emphysema, cardio-pulmonary disease.
Yellow nails (as in golden shade of nail polish) can signal of fungal infection, lung disease, or diabetes.
Red nails, apart from looking a bit risque (which was my reason to wear gaudy red with glitter) may suggest polycythaemia and carbon monoxide poisoning. Disabled-World.com adds to this lovely list “possible brain hemorrhage, heart disease, high blood pressure, lung disease, stroke…” – all linked to red nails.
Black nails may signal of anemia, severe heart problems, vitamin B-12 deficiency, and cyanosis (in this case, lips turn blue, too). Disabled-World.com adds that black nails could be a sign of adrenal gland problems, liver disease, cancer or melanomas, silver deposits (heavy metals), and trauma. Rouge Noir, anyone? So I am off red polish, for the time being. I was thinking of medically neutral polishes, and it seems like the healthiest color would be a muted rose or mauve, maybe amber, basically, anything that is one shade darker than your natural lip color.
So far, Zoya nail polish line offers just one shade in warm pink. Revlon, being DBP, toluene and formaldehyde free (bless them!)Â has some lovely shades including Really Rosy and Tropical Temptation. They look very classical on the verge of being boring. But rose, coral, and blush is how healthy nails really look like. Any other ideas? Phthalate-free suggestions, please!
Adrenal Fatigue: Health Menace or Mythology? [Dueling Research]
Adrenal fatigue or Ambien-induced subway riding?
I had a pretty great weekend: went to the local high school’s chemistry demonstration, ate chocolate covered figs for the first time, sewed a vintage-esque dress from a pattern I made myself based on a picture (my first time making my own pattern and it turned out so cute!!) and watched Jelly Bean play “where’s your bellybutton” with two other toddlers at the church Christmas party. Oh and did I mention I lactated?! That’s right, the old gray mare ain’t what she used to be – and apparently now she’s mutated into a cow.
So I did what any woman who hasn’t nursed a baby in over a year and yet who has suddenly sprung a leak would do: I texted all my mom Gym Buddies. I got two immediate replies. Gym Buddy Krista told me I’m pregnant and Gym Buddy Megan told me I have a brain tumor. (Okay, three replies. Turbo Jennie texted me back, “I only have 1. What do I know?”) As I Googled my symptoms, I came across pregnancy (I’m not) and pituitary tumors (seriously?) but it was a different answer that really caught my eye: Adrenal fatigue.
Hang around health and fitness circles long enough and you’ll start to hear a few catchphrases over and over and adrenal fatigue is one of those (it comes right after “fat burning zone” and before “abs are made in the kitchen!”). For years I’ve heard fellow gym rats chalk up everything from extra sore muscles to fatigue to “tinny-tasting” protein shakes to this strange malady. A favorite diagnosis of alternative medicine practitioners, it is either ignored or decried by most conventional docs.
Basically your adrenal glands are two little tiny organs near your kidneys that help moderate your fight-or-flight response. For something so little they sure are controversial. While there is an official disease called “adrenal insufficiency/Addison’s disease” where your adrenal glands are woefully – and measurably – under-producing, it’s rare and you don’t get it from being overstressed. Adrenal fatigue on the other hand is, depending on the speaker, a very common by-product of our modern society and quite possibly the root of all evil. (And you thought that was Donald Trump!)
Says WebMD, adrenal fatigue is “a mild form of adrenal insufficiency caused by chronic stress. The unproven theory behind adrenal fatigue is that your adrenal glands are unable to keep pace with the demands of perpetual fight-or-flight arousal. As a result, they can’t produce quite enough of the hormones you need to feel good. Existing blood tests, according to this theory, aren’t sensitive enough to detect such a small decline in adrenal function — but your body is.”
Eh, naysayers! Plus WebMD doesn’t even list spontaneous lactating as a symptom. The Natural News rebuts, saying, “In mainstream medicine, doctors refuse to recognize there is a problem with the adrenal glands unless you meet the diagnostic criteria for Addison’s disease (extremely little adrenal function) or Cushing’s disease (hyper adrenal). These diseases together affect less than 2% of the population, but some experts believe that upwards of 80% of the population suffers from some level of adrenal insufficiency.” You hear that Mr. Web-anyone-can-string-MD-after-their-website-name-.com? 80%! It’s an epidemic!
Well, if the existence of Celebrity Intervention tells us anything it’s that we are all chronically overstressed (where Kathy Griffin leads, the country follows!). And heaven knows I’m a cortisol factory – my kids are going through a chanting stage that makes me want to stick forks in my ears – so I’ll give them that. But there are plenty of other symptoms besides chronic fatigue and stress, including everything from dizziness upon standing, headaches, memory problems, salt cravings, hemorrhoids, and a funky-sounding dub in the lub-dub of your heartbeat. Other than the last one (why oh why do I not own a stethoscope?!) I have every one of the 50+ symptoms listed.
And then it hit me: I am a Google-induced hypochondriac who just made her children all listen to her heartbeat to see if it sounded “funny”.
So now what do I do? Call my regular doctor and pray they don’t find a tumor? Find a naturopath and sun-salutation they don’t tell me for the eleventieth time to take up meditation? Sell my milk on the Internet and fund Christmas from my boob juice thereby making the phrase “money makers” both funnier and more horrifying all at the same time? Unfortunately there’s not a lot of definitive research into adrenal fatigue. Since the available tests supposedly aren’t sensitive enough to detect a biological change and pretty much everyone feels tired and worn down (except my 5-year-old who wakes up at 6 a.m. every stinking day) it seems like it comes down to a matter of opinion.
Seriously – what do you guys know about adrenal fatigue? Is it real? Pseudo-science? Any other women out there ever lactated spontaneously?? (And Dad, if you’re still reading, I’m sorry.)
Preventative Health Care: Is being “not sick” the same as being “healthy”?
YES IT WILL. At least that’s what I keep telling myself. Don’t disillusion me.
Remember that kid in your class who ate dirt or licked the inside of the freezer or sucked down paste? Well it turns out that he may not have been one pinto bean shy of a bingo like we all thought. Pica – the intense desire to eat non-food items – is now thought to be the result of an iron or other mineral deficiency. Who knew? Get the kid a steak and he might have been class president. Or maybe his blood was fine and he just really liked the taste. See, that’s the tricky thing about our bodies – figuring out what is actually going on inside them takes a weird mash-up of science, voodoo, ESP and cosmic luck. One of my greatest fantasies (you ready to find out how truly geeky I am?) is to have a computer screen attached somehow to my brain that would tell me exactly what is going on inside my body.
Back in the days when I counted calories – so glad that’s over! – it used to frustrate me to no end that every measurement was an estimate. There was no real way to tell exactly what calories were in that apple or how my body used them or what nutrients I gained or lacked from it. And it wasn’t just calorie counting. I’d lay in bed and wonder if my intense craving for Lindt dark chocolate truffles were really from PMS hormones – and which hormone exactly? – or if I was lacking magnesium or if my body was fine but it was my mind that was whacked out. (I heart my OCD.) But of course there is no way to know any of that.
Or is there? Recently I got to try out a new service called Inside Tracker. Basically it’s all the blood tests you wish you could ask your doctor to do. The difference is that your doctor is mostly interested in diagnosing dysfunction in your body and being “not sick” is not the same as being “optimally healthy.” Inside Tracker doesn’t diagnose disease but rather focuses on helping people be their healthiest. All you have to do is go get your blood drawn at a local lab – because that’s what everyone does for fun in their spare time, right? Just me? – and within just a couple of days you get your results back along with recommendations about how to improve your numbers based on your age, gender and fitness level. It also gives you recommendations on what foods and supplements to take more of and which to avoid.
Answers? Numbers?? I was like a kid in a candy store! Unfortunately – or fortunately, depending on how you look at it (you say Back Street Boys, I say N*Sync) – my results were surprising. And they raised more questions than they answered.
First the good news: out of everything tested (folic acid, glucose, calcium, magnesium, creatine kinase, vitamin B12, vitamin D, ferritin, total cholesterol, hemoglobin, HDL, LDL and triglycerides if you’re curious), I only had two “red flags.” But here’s where it gets weird:
First, my folic acid was too high, despite not taking a multi-vitamin and pretty much never eating fortified foods like bread, pasta or cereal (I eat those things but I make my own so obviously I’m not adding supplements to them). This is concerning because too much folic acid leads to increased cancer risk and brain damage. (And in case you missed the memo, too little is really bad too, especially if you are a pregnant woman.) When I clicked on the recommendations from Inside Tracker it told me to eat boxes of Kellogg’s Corn Flakes. Because they’re really high in folic acid. Obviously the program is used to people being too low in folate rather than too high. (Inside Tracker assures me this was a glitch and they’re fixing it.) So I did what any freaked out person would and googled the crap out of it. According to the womenshealth.gov it is “impossible to get too much folate from natural sources.” Okay, then. Phew?
Second, my triglycerides are too low. Again, most people have the opposite issue. I’m a freak? I’m too healthy for my own good? I have a glandular problem?? Unfortunately Googling this did not reassure me. So I have my yearly checkup scheduled in a couple of weeks with my doctor and I’ll definitely be talking to her about this. (Side note: my regular doc happens to be my OBGYN. I adore her. Is it weird that I’m willing to put up with a pelvic exam just to talk to her about my anti-depressants?)
The other thing I noticed about my Inside Tracker results is that their definition of “optimal” is different than what most doctors and health organizations recommend. I found their answer very intriguing: ” The bottom line is that the AHA [American Heart Association] gives you generic numbers for everybody in the population, from baby to centenarian. If you are within these wider ranges you are within physiological boundaries, ie. you are not sick. This zone is depicted by the pink zone in the InsideTracker graph. However, we are not diagnosing disease. InsideTracker gives you an optimized zone for your special cohort: age, gender, race, performance needs. This zone is much tighter, and InsideTracker makes its recommendations based on this zone.” I’ve often wished for more individualized recommendations so this is awesome.
In the end, I am glad I did this. Preventative health care is so so important. Plus I’m a girl who loves numbers and this takes me a step closer to understanding what all is going on inside me. (Yay, no anemia! I had anemia for years as a vegetarian that never resolved with supplements so seeing these numbers was a relief and an assurance than adding some meat back into my diet has been helpful for my body.) While I still have a lot of questions – my total cholesterol is nice and low but my LDL (“bad”) is a little higher than I’d like and now I’m wondering if that’s because I eat a ton of coconut oil and other saturated fats? – I feel like this test gave me some useful information that I can now use to make tweaks. Their food recommendations were not at all accurate or helpful for me, however. I mean, there was no glue on their anywhere!
Do you worry more about being not sick or about being optimally healthy? (As I type that it strikes me there may be a happy middle ground between the two. Seeing as I am notoriously bad at the whole balance thing, please enlighten me!) Do you do any of these kinds of “extra” health tests? Have you ever had a pica??
Swanson Health Products Review & Giveway
Of course you all know that since vitamins and supplements are consumed like food, you have to be sure they are gluten free.
Thankfully, Swanson recently made that easier. They now have a
I noticed that the Swanson brand products are not labeled as gluten-free which concerned me since I have used some of their brand products, including the
When I inquired about the gluten-free status of their products, I was sent the following information:
“Since we do not specify “gluten free” for our manufacturers, their facilities may handle gluten-containing products, introducing the possibility of airborne cross-contamination even though a particular product may not contain any inherent gluten-containing constituents. The same is true in our warehouse since we do bottle products containing barley, rye, oats and wheat; there is still the possibility of airborne cross-contamination even though no inherent gluten-containing components may be present in the product.”
In addition, they recommended two companies,
“Country Life is a certified “Gluten-Free Manufacturer.” They do not handle any gluten-containing products, nor do they get components from any manufacturer that handles anything with gluten.
Now Foods is another good choice for “Gluten-Free” since they have separate areas in their warehouse for gluten-containing products and separate bottling lines for gluten and non-gluten containing products. Both of these manufacturers are excellent choices that will specifically label their products as “Gluten Free.””
That was very helpful to know. If you are interested in products from either of these two companies, there is a “shop by brand” option in the left column of the site.
I have decided to start using
The Giveaway: Swanson is giving away a $25 coupon to one winner. The coupon can be used towards products and shipping costs.
To enter you must leave a comment on this post, not on my Facebook page and not an email. If you receive my updates by email, click on the underlined title and it will take you to my blog page where you can leave a comment.
Leave a separate comment for each entry:
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The giveaway will end on Friday, December 2nd at 11:00 pm eastern time. The randomly chosen winner will be contacted by email and will have 24 hours to respond after being contacted.
Disclaimer: I was provided with a Swanson coupon code to purchase products free of charge, but I was not paid to write this review. The opinions in this post are my own.
Good LORD I love my HEALTH! DANG!
This was KELLY the past few days. Seriously. Only without red hair. But I do love that coffee mug. Y’all know how I love my big mugs. 
Kids, I did my workout on Monday night and woke up Tuesday like a freight train name THE FLU hit me. OMG. I have not been that sick in years and it was ODD because- no sore throat- but I became SO OVERWHELMINGLY WEAK and every muscle in my body hurt and I was nauseated like to the nth degree. OMG. Bad fever too. Today, Thursday (is it Thursday? I’m in a fog) is my first day feeling remotely normal.
I’m telling you, although I do wake up every day and say my prayers and thank God for my health, being sick makes you SO GRATEFUL for your health!! Seriously! How can we complain about working out and getting fit EVER when there are people stuck in hospitals and that can’t walk!
I’m so in the mood for a kicka** workout today but…..I better take it easy. It’s about 6pm so I am going for a walk outside. Fresh air, reasonable way to get back into my workouts….sigh. Another week where I can’t say I did 6x a week. RATS!! BUT I am ok with it this week, as I literally could barely MOVE or eat or speak. That’s RARE!
I also feel like doing a Crossfit WOD but hello I haven’t even gone to my local Crossfit gym yet. I’m being patient because I know we have a whole lotta Crossfit fun coming up with FitFluential in 2012, and I am NOT going to a Crossfit gym locally alone….my Realtor actually is a total hardcore fitness-ninja-badass and I’m going to interview him for a future WWF– maybe he and his badass wife will go with me. He did a Tough Mudder race recently and loved it.
Also– today guess what arrived in the mail?? MY NEW TRX!! OMG OMG OMG. So badass!!
That dude pretty much defined Badass.com. right there. Holy Cow.
Anyway, I also found this video while I was dreaming about researching George St. Pierre….check it:
So. Awesome.
Anyway, I’ll be back with a KO vlog and workout tomorrow. Thanks for the well wishes!
Question of the Day: Do you get the flu shot? LOL my mom was just telling me I should and I said NO and then I get the dang flu…..
Myth Busting: Junk Food is Not Cheaper Than Healthy Food [Plus 4 More Health Food Myths]
One more excuse to eat poorly bit the dust as Mark Bittman of the New York Times took apart the oft-quoted adage that one reason why people don’t eat healthier is because junk food is more budget friendly. He writes, “In general, despite extensive government subsidies, hyperprocessed food remains more expensive than food cooked at home.” He then goes on to compare a McDonald’s meal for a family of 4 ($28) with a home-cooked dinner for 4 of roast chicken, salad, vegetables and milk ($14). Debunking the second part of the myth, that junk food provides more calories for the money than healthier fare, he points out that first of all few people in America need extra calories and second that it is still cheaper to add calories to home-cooked food.
I don’t know about you but I was surprised. I shouldn’t have been. Even though I’ve heard this rationale for years - and just accepted it to be true – in my personal life as the head budget maker for our home, I have proven month after month that it is always cheaper to eat at home than to go out. And no I don’t coupon. My friend Shellie taught me a couple of years ago how to plan a menu that would feed our family of 6 for $3-5/person/day. Considering the food stamp program allots $5/person/day, I figure that’s pretty awesome.
But are we eating tasteless gruel every day? Not hardly. It may take more planning and shopping – planning my menu and shopping list each month takes me a couple of hours and then buying everything several more – but eating healthy on a budget can be done. Here are 4 more healthy eating myths busted:
Myth 2. Farmer’s markets are the best place to buy healthy food. Perhaps in California, where food actually grows on trees, this works but up here in the hinterlands the only thing Minnesota grows nine months out of the year are sno cones. The farmer’s markets here, while fabulous when they’re open, are not cheap. Think outside the big box grocery stores and check out local Asian markets for cheap produce (and also weird stuff – just had my first taste of lychee nuts!), hispanic stores for cheaper meats and beans and discount stores for deals on frozen foods, bulk grains and seasonal items. Whole Foods, sadly, is almost never a good deal.
Myth 2b. Warehouse stores are bad for your waistline. People like to decry warehouse stores like Costco and Sam’s Club pointing out that buying peanut-butter pretzels in bulk makes you eat more of them – which probably is true although preventable by portioning them out into individual servings at home – but the reverse can also work in your favor. Buying a 1 pound box of salad for the same price you’d pay for 5 ounces at a regular store might inspire you to eat more greens. In addition to lots of produce, you can often find lots of shelf-stable healthy staples (say that 5 times fast) like quinoa, brown rice, raw honey, oats and dark-chocolate-covered pomegranate seeds (hush, nobody tell me those aren’t healthy). I also buy my uncured meats at Costco; I can get nitrate-free organic breakfast sausage and Canadian bacon for cheaper than the crappy regular kind at the grocery store.
Myth 3. You have to be a great cook. I suppose it would probably be helpful if you were a great cook but if you’re closer to the Swedish Muppet Chef – skewer the berjdie! – than Alton Brown, don’t despair. I suck at cooking so if I can manage, you totally can. It doesn’t take much skill to learn how to boil beans (because eating them raw might kill you - whoops) and chop and sautee some vegetables. I cook pretty much everything I eat in a big cast iron skillet – and bonus, you have permission not to wash it afterwards because it “seasons” the pan! – so I have basically one cooking technique: hot.
Myth 4. You have to have specialty ingredients. Goat cheese. Chia seeds. Amaranth flour. Strawberries and cream hemp protein powder humanely squeegeed off dirty hippies. Us healthy types sometimes get caught up in some crazy food fads and while it can make you feel lame to be the only person not drizzling your shiitake mushrooms with white truffle oil, it doesn’t mean your simple dish of crap on a plate is less healthy. There’s a lot to be said for simple, whole, foods.
Myth 5. It’s time consuming. Like most hobbies, healthy cooking can be as time consuming as you’ll let it be but it doesn’t have to take any longer than hitting a drive through, especially if you’re okay with using your microwave. It really doesn’t get any faster than salad, especially if you have the forethought to pre-chop a bunch of veggies to keep in the fridge.
Some of my favorite cheap (about $1/serving), quick and healthy* meal ideas (that I totally am not the first to think of):
- Taco Salad: bowl of random greens topped with beans and/or meat, whatever veggies I can grab, sour cream and hot hot salsa.
- Yogurt parfaits: plain full-fat yogurt topped with all-fruit jam, nuts, frozen blueberries and raw oats
- Miso soup: microwave a bowl of water, a tablespoon of miso paste (another reason to hit up the Asian market!), chopped green onions and cubed tofu. My husband thinks this tastes like “dirty foot water” which cracks me up. I like dirty feet.
- Stir fry: meat, veggies, oil. Lather, rinse, repeat.
- Honey mustard chicken: whatever cut of chicken you want (I’m lucky enough to get my dead poultry cheap, straight from the farmer who just wrung their necks), mix equal parts of honey & mustard and spread on top. Sprinkle with a few herbs. Cook in pan. Tastes delish over rice.
- “McMuffins”: Top a whole wheat english muffin with 1 fried/poached/scrambled egg, a slice of cheese, a slice of Canadian bacon or ham and spinach leaves. If the muffin is too processed for you, just pile it all on top of the spinach leaves – still totally yummy!
* I realize that depending on what your personal food philosophy is, these may not be “healthy” per your definition. I’m not trying to make a definitive list – just saying these are examples of what works for me. I hope you’ll tell me what works for you in the comments!
What do you think about Mark Bittman’s assertion that healthy food is actually cheaper than junk food? Do you have a fave tip for eating healthy on the cheap? Do you have a $1/serving meal idea??
Lavender: Amazing Health and Beauty Benefits of Lavender
Lavender is a mildly antiseptic, soothing and calming herb.
Lavender (Lavandula angustifolia, Lavender officinalis) has been used in treating various health and beauty conditions for thousands of years. Lavender’s naturally soothing, calming aroma and cleansing purifying properties made it a favorite among natural healers, aromatherapists, beauty therapists, and conventional medicine practitioners around the world.
Lavender and your health
Lavender appears to have a strong health protective effect. Recent studies show that lavender is a strong antioxidant especially protective against sun damage, toxic exposure, and bacterial infection. One study found that women who have undergone botox injections recovered better after applications with diluted lavender oil! Lavender as an essential oil also shows to be helpful in the treatment of depression and Alzheimer’s disease.
Lavender and your mind
Lavender’s fresh yet woody and floral aroma helps soothe the body and mind.Lavender vaporizers are traditionally used for relaxation and meditation.
Preparing lavender oil
You can use lavender essential oil or infuse your own base oil with stems of fresh or dry lavender. Infused lavender oil can be used for general massage. We recommend using organic lavender oil but you can grow your nearly-organic lavender without any pesticides on your windowsill.
How to use lavender?
Here are ten amazing uses for lavender in your health, beauty, and wellbeing.
- Lavender for better sleep. Dot two drops of pure lavender oil on either side of a pillow to help you unwind and fall asleep easier. Lavender tea or a simply glass of milk can also be helpful.
- Lavender for combination skin. Add 3-5 drops of pure lavender oil to 1 tablespoon of organic yogurt and apply to your face (avoiding eye area) for 10-15 minutes.
- Lavender for wrinkles. Beat the egg white and add 3 drops of lavender oil. Apply to your face and reasonably away from immediate eye area.
- Lavender for relaxation. To make an amazingly effective relaxing oil add 10 drops of lavender oil to 100ml / 3.3 fl oz of any base oil and shake well. Grapeseed, jojoba, apricot and peach kernel oil are the best, but olive oil works just as well.
- Lavender facial: to unclog pores and detox your skin steam your face with 3 sachets of green tea and 10 drops of lavender oil. Do not use if you have low blood pressure!
- Lavender for insect bites and sunburn: Combine a tablespoon of aloe vera gel with 10 drops of lavender oil. Keep handy!
- Lavender for a soothing soak. Add 10-12 drops of lavender to a bath under running water. Relax for 10-15 minutes. Do not use if pregnant!
- Lavender for home cleaning. Add 2-4 drops of lavender to a bottle of vinegar and use as an all surface cleanser.
- Lavender for baby massage. To soothe a baby into a sleep, massage her back with an oil enriched with 2 drops of lavender essential oil per 100 ml / 3.3 fl oz of base oil (any thin oil would do).
- Lavender for smooth skin. Combine 10 drops of lavender essential oil with 2 tablespoons of fine salt and 4 tablespoons of olive oil. Massage your skin using gentle sweeping movements, then rinse well – and no need for a moisturizer because nothing beats the pure rejuvenating power of lavender.