Wrapping things up

Well today is day 30!  Tomorrow you can wake up to french toast and Fruit Loops and wash it all down with a diet coke (because you are still concerned about your weight).  But there is a better way.  First off, we want to thank all of you who stuck with the challenge and shared your experiences with us.  It helps us learn and improve upon what we do and we are grateful.  We also have a few rock stars each time we do this and their excitement for the changes they are seeing and feeling in their body are what make it all worth while for us.  Understand, though, that everyone is different and that our challenge may not work for everyone.  Over the years it has proven effective for most who have given it an honest shot, but there are a few who would benefit from an even more strict elimination protocol.  If you did not see the results you expected, shoot us an e-mail and we would be happy to talk things through with you.  Please do not give up and go on a 30 day make up binge of Ding Dong's and Twinkies. We have said several times that this whole experience is about changing your mindset and your relationship with food and you have taken those first steps.

As for coming off of the challenge, I think most of you know what we are going to say.  The challenge does not really end!  Sure, you can have some unfriendly foods from time to time, and you may even find, upon reintroduction that beans or some types of dairy do not cause you any problems and they may work their way back into the regular rotation.  But, the days of the quick honey bun, the boxed cereal, and the three day a week Dominoes call, because it is more convenient are over.  We want you to be more mindful of what you are putting into your mouth each and every time you eat.  Think to yourself, "Is this food? and if it is, is it going to make me more or less healthy?"  There will be times when certain foods you know will not make you physically more healthy, but will do wonders for you emotionally or mentally.  Go for it!  But those times should be few and far between.  Ours used to be pizza night.  It became a family tradition that we all looked forward to every Friday night.  We have progressed to the point that the juice is not worth the squeeze on that one either and the feeling like crap and bad attitudes of everyone after a night of pizza and ice cream were ruining the experience.  So we have cut that back to maybe once a month.  Our indulgences now are more tame, pretty much wine and dark chocolate do the trick.

Here is a more detailed post we use to conclude challenges and here is another done by Diane Sanfilippo over at Balanced Bites.

We hope this has been a worthwhile experience for you. Whether it was your first or your fifth time there is always something to learn.  We enjoy sharing what we have learned and truly hope in some small way we are making a difference in the lives of the people we care about.  We would love to hear from you about your experience either in the comments or from an e-mail.  It helps us plan for future challenges.  We will have our normal spring challenge just before bathingsuit season, it has traditionally been a shorter 15 day one, but we are thinking about stretching it out to a 30 day one this year.  We will keep you posted.  We will also continue to put out information and musings as we see fit.  If you would like to be removed from our e-mail list please let us know, no offense will be taken.  Also if you know of anyone who would like to be added let us know and we will add them to the group.

Finally, we are going to host a clean food pot luck Friday night at our house.  Sorry for the late notice. We forgot about it, but had such a good time last time we wanted to do it again.  So if you are in the area and would like to come over to join us we will serve up our favorite dish and a couple good bottles of wine.

Tuesday January 31, 2012-Workout

5X5 hanging squat cleans.

Then, complete

21, 18, 15, 12 of:

thrusters

hand release push-ups

Record your time.

Now You Know

A possible down side to your participation in this challenge is that with your growth in knowledge of nutrition and the effects food have on your overall health comes a growth in responsibility.  Responsibility to do the best you can for yourself and your family when it comes to nutrition.  This is a huge responsibility!

Many of you have already started to look at what people are eating and think to yourself, "I wonder if they know how bad that is for them,"  or otherwise make judgements about how people eat.  It's human nature.  We are not suggesting you smack the food out of their hand and start yelling about the insulin, blood sugar roller coaster, or that you become that guy.  But you now have a responsibility to yourself and your family to do all that you can to provide quality nutrition for them.

I(Paul) was at the playground one day this past summer and I overheard a conversation a group of mothers had about car seats. The whole group seemed to be in agreement that you were an irresponsible parent if you did not have this top of the line, $200 car seat.  The reasoning was that their children were too important and that cost was not an issue when it came to safety.

Well, snack time came around and out popped the Cheetos, Oreo's, and juice boxes.  I did not judge, although several of the young children already had that puffy look I associate with inflammation. I truly believe that most people do not know the powerful effect food has on the body, both in a positive and negative way, but you do.  I did find it amazing and somewhat ironic that while these Moms obviously cared for their kids there was, seemingly, no link made to their health and what food they chose to feed them.

As we head into the final stages of the challenge you may be thinking about the opportunity to indulge in one of the "unfriendly" foods  you have been denying yourself and you should.  We will give you tips on how to reintroduce some of the non-friendly foods back into your eating, but understand that if your goal is health and longevity, your ways of eating have changed forever.  This does not mean the occasional treat is banned, just that you make the core of your nutritional practices line up with foods that we know make you more healthy.

You are fighting an uphill battle, friends, family, and the media will all push back hard against your efforts.  Stay strong, because now you know.

For some Friday informative reading this week we head over to Marks Daily Apple.  If you have not book marked his site yet you are missing out.  I don't know how he does it, but he pumps out several quality posts a week.  He recently completed a series on inflammation and his latest post on his top 6 anti inflammatory foods is a well worth the read.

It is the last weekend of the challenge, enjoy the good feelings and quality sleep.  Next weekend I plan on drinking wine until my lips turn purple and that usually results in poor sleep.  We will pepper in posts about how to come off of the challenge over the weekend and into next week.  If you started with us at the beginning, your challenge ends on Wednesday Feb. 1st.  Stay strong!  and see this thing through till the end.

Thursday January 26, 2012-Workout

Complete 5x5 reverse lunges.  5 reps on each leg. 

Then,

Complete 3 rounds of the following circuit.  1 minute at each station.  The clock keeps running the whole time.  When you are finished with the last station, rest for a minute before completing the next round.  

The circuit includes the following stations:

Bosu lateral lunges

jumprope

ground to overhead(25lb plate)

box jumps(step ups)

renegade rows

medicine ball taps

Status Check

We are in the home stretch of the challenge and we just wanted to do a quick status check to see where everyone is mentally.  If you have been around our blog for any length of time, we hope you are coming to the realization that it is all mental.  Changing your mindset is what this thing is all about and we hope that you are on your way. 

I picked up a book over the holidays and Dawn got a hold of it before I could.  She got sucked in fast and read the thing in a week and with her schedule that is no small feat.  She could not stop talking about how it all made sense to her and how the book tied together so many loose ends.  Anyway I finally got the book.  I am halfway through and can see what Dawn was talking about.  The book is called Deep Nutrition and is written by Dr. Cate Shanahan a family physician in Hawaii.  It is about how the food you eat can affect the genes in your body, we will provide an in depth review of the book in a future post, but I wanted to share a couple of paragraphs that encapsulate what we hope you are coming to realize about the food we have grown accustomed to eating.

Take a look at the back of a bag of dog or cat food, and here are the ingredients you'll see: corn meal, soy meal, (occasionally) wheat, partially hydrogenated soy or corn or other vegetable oil, meat and protein meal, and a few synthetic vitamins.  But guess what?  The animal pushing the shopping cart is buying foods with the same list of ingredients for himself.  The main differences between donuts, breads, and cheerios are the quantities of hydrogenated oil and sugar.  Cheerios, in turn, are nearly identical to Ramen noodles.  Throw on a little salt, and you've got snack chips.  Add tomato flakes and bump up the protein powder and -bam!- it's Hamburger Helper with Noodles!  Add a pinch of meat byproducts, take away some tomato powder, and we're in the pet food aisle again, holding a 20-pound bag of grade A Puppy Chow.

We already know why manufactures make food this way: it's cheap and convenient to reformulate the basic ingredients of protein, starch, and fat..into a variety of shapes and textures, coat them in sugars and artificial flavor enhancers, and ship them just about anywhere.  That's why they make it.  But why would we eat it?  Same reason: It's cheap and convenient.  These day's a busy parent can buy a frozen lasagna dinner heavy enough to feed a family of five for about what it would cost to make from scratch.  It comes in its own disposable aluminum pan so - no fuss, no muss - the dinner riddle is solved.  Like other foods in the supermarket, it keeps forever(or at least a really long time) in the freezer, so if we don't eat it tonight, it'll be ready when we want it.  And thanks to the fact that these convenience foods contain protein, fat, and carbohydrates plus some synthetic vitamins, we can survive on them for a certain amount of time.  But that doesn't mean these foods aren't changing us.  They are. 

We can go on for a long time with our hedonistic view of nutrition being about instant gratification.  Eating what pleases us temporarily and is easy and fast.  We deal with any complications from that by blaming it on heredity and finding a new medication to treat any symptom that pops up.  Unfortunately, we are reminded, fairly consistently, these days of the long term effects these foods have on the health of those we care about.

But there is another way.  We can take a closer look at what we are providing our body to perform the most important function in the world, keeping us alive and well!  While we hope you are losing weight and looking better, improving your health is the main goal.  We hope you are starting to make that mental connection that the quality of the foods you consume has a dierct effect on the quality of your health.

Garbage in = Garbage out. 

Tuesday January 24, 2012

Complete 5 rounds of the following complex:

1 hanging power clean

1 front squat

1 push press

1 back squat

1 push press

Complete this cycle all the way through 7 times without putting the bar down. Rest 1 minute between each cycle of 7. 

Record the weight.

Meals in Pictures

                   

                      

     Hopefully everyone is still going strong and feeling good!  Please, please check out this quick inspirational article about a woman named Laura, here.  I love this article because it stresses the importance of focusing on your health goals and not the aesthetic reasons for working out and eating clean.  I find that my clients stress themselves out over the aesthetics which stresses their bodies even more and ruins their efforts.  This vicious cycle drives them and me crazy!!!!!  Also, here are some more meals in pictures.  Enjoy!

Homemade barbecue sauce from the cookbook Paleo Comfort Food-was too spicy for kids, but included challenge friendly ingredients and Paul and I really liked it.

Pork shoulder and a can of salsa verde from Trader Joes- put it in slow cooker and let it cook for several hours

Pulled pork on top of spinach salad with homemade barbecue sauce

Spinach salad with olive oil, balsamic vinegar, and garlic powder with a few pecans sprinkled on top.

Kids had pulled pork with broccoli and some hash browns with sauce on the side

Kylie's plate-neither one was a big fan of barbecue sauce-going to try a less spicy one next time

 

Spinach, avocado, loose sausage, cubed potatoes, and leftover pulled pork

Country sausage from Amish Market, kale with onions sauteed in coconut oil, butternut squash, peeled and sauteed with coconut oil and baked in the oven, guac, shrimp, and pureed broccoli

My quick lunch-spinach salad, leftover hamburger meat, and an egg over easy-was actually very tasty!

Kale, sausage, bacon, pepper, and onion omelet

Apple Pie

OK so it not your grandmothers apple pie, but it is challenge friendly and it is good!  We throw this together a couple times a week to help with that sweet fix.

Peel apples, we used the Pink Lady ones from Trader Joes

Dawn bought some dates for sausage stuffed dates, but we never got around to making it so I cut them up and put them in with the apples.  Kerry gold butter is made from the milk of grass fed cows and has a favorable fat profile.  We used three tbsp for the  "pie."  We got both of these at Trader Joes as well.  Go easy on the dates, they are loaded with sugar.

Cut everything up in chunks and place in a baking dish, throw a little cinnamon on top(Will did the cinnamon on this one!) and put it in the oven on 350 for 20-25 min or until apples are your desired tenderness.

The finished Product

We like to top ours with Trader Joes almond butter with roasted flax seeds

Tues. January 17, 2012-Workout

Complete 7X3 overhead press.

Then, complete as many rounds as you can in 10 minutes of:

8 dumbbell swings

12 push press

20 lateral jumps(place 2 bumper plates on a barbell)

Record the number of rounds you completed.

Friday Mash up

Happy Friday!  We hope things are going well for you on the challenge. We are just about halfway there and things should becoming more routine by now.  We like to share motivational posts on Fridays so today we have a great Ted Talk to share with you along with some meals in pictures and a few recipes that were shared by challenge members.

Dr. Terry Wahls shares her remarkable story.  Yet another example of food as medicine.  It is 17 minutes long, but well worth the time spent.

Meals in pictures:  A few of our meals this week

A quick breakfast of spinach and yams with chicken and a fried egg

A Sunday night circle of joy, Paul's famous wings, flank steak, broccoli stalks and red peppers, roasted broccoli, and Guac.

Baked chicken leg quarter with kale and onions and guac

Kylie's meal, leg quarter, hash browns, carrots, red peppers and a homemade ranch dressing for dipping

Hamburgers with guac, carrots and onions, asparagus, kale chips

Recipes from challenge members

Ellen - "I made some great soup tonight, and as we discussed, I wanted to be sure to share it with you.
I used my left over rotisserie chicken with about half the meat left.  I took the meat off the bones and set it aside.  I boiled the bones, skin, etc in a big pot of water and threw in a bouillon cube.  I boiled it for at least an hour adding water as needed.  Once the stock looked nice and golden, I stopped the boil, cubed the chicken, added it to the stock, threw in several handfuls of kale (all stems removed, torn in to little pieces), and a pack of portobella mushrooms chopped small.  I let it cook for 15 min then ate.  YUM!  One day when I have more time, I'll try to make it without the bouillon cube...:-))"

Maria- "I was planning on trying the "fried rice" but wanted something easier... so I tried the roasted curry cauliflower.  Super easy and very good!"
Here is the link

Marti made some tasty scallops and a salmon dish.  She sent pics with both, but they somehow got blurry when trying to convert them from text to blog, but trust me they looked good!  Here is the scallop recipe.

2 tsp olive oil18 large sea scallops (abt 2 lbs)sea salt and fresh ground pepper to taste1 small shallot, minced1/2 cup fresh orange juice1/4 c low-sodium chicken broth2 tsp olive oil buttery spread (i am thinking of leaving this out or using kerry gold butter)1 tsp grated orange zest1 tsp chopped, fresh parsley (optional) In a large frying pan, heat oil on medium-high.  Pat scallops dry with paper towel and sprinkle with salt and pepper.  Working in 2 or 3 batches, sear scallops until cooked through, flipping once, about 3 to 4 minutes per side.  Transfer to a serving plate and cover with foil to keep warm. Add shallot to pan and saute until softened, about 1 minute.  Add juce and broth.  Deglaze pan by scraping brown bits from bottom with a wooden spoon.  Bring to a boil and simmer until liquid is reduced by half, about 4 minutes. Remove pan from heat and quickly whisk in buttery spread.  Add zest and parsley, if desired.  Add 3 scallops to each of 6 plates, topping each with 1 1/2 tbsp shallot-juice reduction. TIP: Avoid crowding the pan when you sear scallops.  Scallops release moisture as they cook, so too many in a pan at once will cause them to steam instead of sear.  To achieve a caramelized crust, you may need to work in batches, depending on the size of your pan. NUTRITIONAL BONUS: Thanks to their high levels of omega-3 fatty acids and magnesium, eating scallops and fish as little as 1 to 3 times per month can reduce your risk of stroke.  A 4-oz serving of scallops also offers 29% of your recommended daily allowance of vitamin B12, which is considered an energy and metabolism booster.

This may be too much!  Will came home from soccer practice Tuesday and scavenged around for something to eat while dinner was being made.  I came downstairs to see this.

If we would have had some processed crap in the house you can bet he would have gone for that!

Enjoy your long weekend, I know of a couple of people who will be facing some serious temptations this weekend.  We are excited by how many people are in on the challenge and with the depth of the questions we are getting.  We will share some in a future post.  We would love to hear from more people about their experience with the challenge so far.  Please leave a comment on the blog or e-mail us.

Finally, an interesting read on soy.
Dangers of Soy

Tuesday January 10, 2012

Complete 5x5 deadlifts
Record your max weight.

Then, complete as many rounds as possible in 20 minutes of the following:
5 push-ups
10 sit-ups
15 air squats
Record the number of rounds.

A Look At The Potato

Potatoes are a tricky food that we have left out of all of our previous challenges.  We have recently been rethinking our stance on this food.  It started this summer when we inadvertently got potatoes with our vegetable order from South Mountain.  I didn't want them to go to waste so we made hash browns.  We paid close attention to what was going on in our bodies for the next couple of hours and nothing happened.  This was huge, because the kids loved the hash browns and we were happy to have another good carb to provide at meals.  Potatoes are a good source of vitamin B6, vitamin C, copper, potassium, manganese, and dietary fiber.  Potatoes also contain a variety of phytonutrients that have antioxidant activity such as Carotenoids, flavonoids, and caffeic acid, as well as other proteins that are known to act against free radicals.

We then picked up some white potatoes from Giant and were ready for another I HOP style breakfast.  We peeled and grated the potatoes, fried them up just as we did before and Dawn and I both had that woozy, tired feeling that lets us know our blood sugar was too high not to mention that they tasted completely different than the potatoes we had gotten from the farm!!! They were not the same! What's the deal?

Potatoes have a high gylcemic index, meaning they are a carbohydrate that is broken down into sugar and released into the blood very rapidly.  This is bad for our purposes, as our goal with this challenge is to level out your blood sugars.  To further complicate things, potatoes gylcemic index can vary depending on the type of potatoes and the way they are prepared.  Another issue with potatoes is that they are a night shade which is a particular group of foods that contain alkaloids.  Alkaloids are a defense mechanism in certain plants that can cause an irritation to the nerves and digestion of people who are sensitive to them.  Tomatoes, sweet and hot peppers, and eggplants are other night shades.  It is also thought that the skin of the potato has anti nutrients to help prevent nutrient absorption when eaten.

With all that said, it would seem that we should leave potatoes off of the list of approved foods for the challenge, but we are leaving the decision up to you.  It is another situation where people say, "Just tell me what to eat and I will eat it."  It is not that easy.  Dawn and I are pretty much at our desired weight, we have been eating clean for the better part of four years a have no known issues with insulin resistance or nightshades.  These factors make the decision to add in potatoes occasionally one we are comfortable with.  We do peel our potatoes when we eat them.  If our goals were weight loss, or trying to heal an autoimmune condition potatoes are something we would leave off.  Everyone is doing this challenge for different reasons and taking charge of your own health is a big part of what it is all about.  So are potatoes in or out on the challenge.....you decide.

One More Prep Tip and Links

We hope your first weekend is going well, they are always tougher than weekday's where our schedule is pretty much set.  We had three birthday parties and a goodbye dinner to navigate, but so far so good.  Another good thing is that we found our camera.  It was MIA last week, we usually like to put pictures up of our meals to share ideas and will begin to do that this week.  Other challenge members have also shared some of the meals they have made complete with pics, so we will share those as well.  We found our camera in the front pocket of our cooler, which brings me to our first topic for today's post.  It all goes back to what we talked about early on, being prepared.

Pack a Cooler
We have three different size coolers.  One is a smaller lunch sized cooler for quick runs, the other is a larger cooler that ironically I purchased years ago specifically because I could fit a 30 pack of liquid bread(beer) in it and still hide it in a golf cart and the third is the big daddy with wheels and all.

We rarely leave the house without one of the coolers packed with clean foods.  Our family and most of our friends have come to grips with the way we eat and many are on board, but it can be hard to navigate parties or just find something quick and on the go that is not filled with some sort of processed crap. We rely heavily on leftovers for this and always have the coolers ready to go.

Two of our coolers, getting ready to hit our second day of birthday parties.

Hopefully you have some time this evening to read a couple of stories that we hope will keep you strong through this second week.  They come from two of our favorite web sites that we have linked on the right of our page.  After the second week habits start to form and things get easier.  It is also the time that your hormones level out and you can start to feel and see some real changes in your body.  Keep it up!

The first story is about a guy who had always been healthy but just let things slip over the years and decided enough was enough and set out to set things straight with a focus on nutrition.  You can read his story here.

The second story, here, is the beginning of a woman's journey to find health.  She started by becoming a vegan, was not happy with the results and is now at the beginning stages of her Paleo journey.

Why it's so important!

"Everyone looks so lonely and sad. I don't want to have to be here when I am old."  Kids tell you like it is!  Those were Kylie's words when we were visiting my mom at the stroke rehab facility in Annapolis a week ago.  While some of the patients are able to move around, there are many more who are wheel chair bound and unable to take care of themselves. 

My mom suffered a massive stroke almost a month ago and has paralysis on the left side of her body.  She is making progress at the rehab facility, but has a long road ahead of her.  Her journey is not unlike the journey of many of the patients at the rehab where she is currently staying.  She was diagnosed with type II diabetes more than 20 years ago which quickly progressed to type I diabetes. That was inevitable.  Many diabetes patients are told to continue consuming a standard American diet high in wheat based carbohydrates and sugar and low in fat.  This causes their blood sugars to be very high which is then regulated by large amounts of injected insulin.  Many are non compliant and never really receive proper education on how to safely and effectively manage their diabetes, which was the case with my mom.  After many years of dealing with high and low blood sugars, from the diabetes, she had quadruple bypass surgery in March of 2009 to help reduce her risk of developing coronary artery disease and receive proper blood flow to her heart. During this time, she developed chronic inflammatory demyelinating polyneuropathy which symptoms  include "tingling or numbness (beginning in the toes and fingers), weakness of the arms and legs, loss of deep tendon reflexes (areflexia), fatigue, and abnormal sensations." She had a minor stroke 3 weeks before this massive stroke. 

My whole world came to a screeching halt the day of her stroke and has not been the same.  The reason I am sharing my mom's story is simple.  I don't want anyone going through what my mom is going through right now.  If I had known then what I know now, maybe I could have given my mom a fighting chance.  Instead, we relied on the standard American diet guidelines and the diabetes association and this is where it has gotten us.  No more.  I am mad as hell at the current state of nutrition in this country and refuse to give up the good fight.  I will not stop educating myself with current nutritional information and research and will not turn a blind eye to what is really making sick people healthy again, whole, natural foods found in their purest form.

You have control of your health.  Don't take it lightly.  We are all busy and yearn for convenience, but there is too much at stake.  Not just for us, but our children too.  Part of the problem is that the results of the nutritional decisions we make now are not realized until years down the road and in our rush to find the easiest, quickest way to do things, we ultimately trade our health for convenience.  This challenge is temporary and you will tweak your foods when it is over.  Use this time as a chance to find out what foods might be causing you issues and which ones might be affecting your journey to optimum health.  It will be hard, but so worth it! Sorry for the rant! I love my mom and will continue to fight for her full recovery in 2012!

Me, My Mom, My Grandma, My Dad, and my brothers from left to right Jim, Sean, Steve and John Christmas Eve

Thursday January 5, 2012-Workout

Complete 3 sets of 10 weighted hip thrusts.

Then, complete 4 rounds of:

50 slide mt. climbers

15 push press

15 squat throws

15 body rows

Record your time.

Sugar's Hiding Places

Hope things are going well.  We did a post a while back about the dangers and addictive properties of sugar.  We just wanted to share some of the hidden ways that sugar can slip into your foods.  As always, one of our primary goals of any challenge is for you to become a more aware consumer and part of that is knowing exactly what you are putting into your body.  Spend more time studying the labels of your regular foods and you might be surprised at what you find.

Before we get to the hidden sugars Dawn and I both have had questions about being hungry.  It is normal to be hungry initially as your body gets off of the blood sugar/insulin cycle of peaks and valleys.  You eat a highly processed meal that jumps your blood sugar up fast, your body quickly sends in the insulin to get all the sugar out and then wants to do more so the signal is sent to eat more.  This is why you are hungry an hour after that large stack pancake breakfast.  As your blood sugars normalize you will not have the strong hunger signals and will be able to go longer between meals.  Until this happens listen to your body, but fill it with challenge friendly foods.  IF YOU ARE HUNGRY EAT!  Proteins and fat are particularly filling so they would be a good snack choice.  This first week to week and a half can be rough here is a post on some of the things you might be experiencing as well as some snack options.  Don't make it harder on yourself by starving, IF YOU ARE HUNGRY EAT!  Just make sure you are eating challenge friendly foods.

Today we are focusing on the ways sugar is hidden in your foods.  Food manufacturers understand that health conscious consumers are starting to limit their sugar intake and read labels so they respond, not by removing sugar, but by renaming it.  The following are all sugar.

• Evaporated cane juice
• Corn syrup
• Corn sweetener
• High fructose corn syrup
• Fructose
• Sucrose
• Malt
• Malt syrup
• Barley malt syrup
• Maltose
• Maltodextrin
• Dextrose
• Maple syrup
• Brown rice syrup
• Beet Juice
• Molasses
• Honey
• Grape Juice
• Muscovado
• Turbinado
• Sucanat
• Invert sugar
• Sugar alcohol
• Agave nectar
• Xylose

I am sure there are more, I would also throw in all of those artificial sweeteners, they can be even more damaging because the signal the body's response to high blood sugar in the absence of actual sugar.

• Aspertame
• Cyclamate
• Sacchacrin  
• Stevia
• Sucralose

Sugar is sugar no matter what you call it and it is all bad, whether you are on a challenge or not.  Take a closer look at some of your dietary staples and see what you find.

January 3, 2012-Workout

Complete 5X5 back squats using light weight and getting down below parallel with good form.

Then, complete 21, 15, 9 of:
hanging power cleans
reverse crunches
bent over rows
Record your time.

Class had a week off so we are going to ease our way back in to a routine:)

5 Challenge Tips

As we head into the first day of our latest challenge, we wanted to share 5 tips that we hope will be helpful as you progress through the next 30 days.

1. Make it a positive experience by focusing on the positive. It is just 30 days, but if you spend the time focused on the things you are giving up or can't have or on how hard it is to cook and clean for each meal it can be a long 30 days.  That mind set will doom your progress and cause you to resent the process leading to frustration and a return to poor eating habits.  You are doing this for a reason and every ones reason is different.  Focus on those reasons and on the subtle signs that show you are doing something healthy for yourself.  It could be a boost of energy late in the day when you are usually spent, noticing that you worked from breakfast to lunch without having to stop for your normal mid morning snack, feeling like your clothes fit better just a week into it, the joy of regularity in your bowels, whatever works for you, but make sure you focus on the positive.
2. Understand that it is all about inflammation.  We have been doing this a while and I grow tired of arguing with people who are suffering from any number of health problems that can be directly related to nutrition about why that whole wheat bagel and orange juice just might not be the best thing for them.  If you strip all the labels away and just focus on what foods are pro-inflammatory and what foods are anti-inflammatory, you are left with the whole natural foods we are recommending for this challenge.  Low grade chronic inflammation is epidemic in our society causing issues wherever it occurs.  Aches and pains in joints, skin issues, lung problems and issues with the gut. It can be directly linked to our nutritional practices since making grains the staple of our diet.  Inflammation leads to fat storage and fat cells produce pro-inflammatory chemicals that create a vicious cycle of fat storage weight gain and more inflammation.  Recent research has linked inflammation to most of our societies common ills such as heart attacks, strokes, cancers, and auto immune disorders.  We will have more on this in a future post.
3. Make this challenge your own experience.  The reason most diet plans fail is because you are trying to take someone elses thing and make it yours.  Don't do that with this.  Make it yours from the start.  There are thousands of foods that you can eat, find ones that you like and eat them.  When we first did the challenge we survived on, green beans, spinach, and yellow squash because those were the vegetables we knew.  We have since discovered a whole world of awesome vegetables that we rotate through our meals, but we had to start somewhere.  If you don't like brussel sprouts, don't eat them, find something else that works for you.  Do keep in mind, that as your taste buds become less affected by the constant barrage of sugar and salt in processed foods you had been eating you will appreciate the unique flavors of different vegetables so don't completely give up on those brussel sprouts.
4. Try not to repackage your current habits into clean foods.  It can be tempting to find "challenge friendly" ways to make all of the bad foods we are trying to give up.  Almond meal pancakes, coconut flour muffins, etc. do not help you get over that psychological hump of needing those comfort foods and depending on the ingredients can be very high in those pro-inflammatory ingredients we talked about earlier, even if they are "challenge friendly."  An occasional challenge friendly treat is fine, but if they become the only thing getting you through the challenge, we might have a problem.
5. As Jedi Master Yoda said "Do, or do not, there is no try." Commit yourself to this and go all in.  Another of our common frustrations is with people who have tried the challenge and found it did not work for them.  Upon further conversation we find that their challenge was "situational."  They did the challenge except for that cake at the party, or the milk and sugar in their coffee, or the cheese in their eggs.  Guess what, you didn't do the challenge.  You are eating a little better, but there is a specific reason for the total elimination of the foods we are eliminating.  We are giving the gut a chance to heal, this usually takes anywhere from a week to 14 days and another two weeks of your body absorbing those quality nutrients from it's newly healed gut.  Any exposure to foods that can damage the gut will interfere with this process.  There is no halfway with this.  Do or do not.

We hope that helps and please know that we are happy to answer questions, offer suggestions, or just hear you out if you need help working through the next 30 day's.