35 Points From A Body Transformation Contest

Recently, I entered into a 6-week body transformation challenge at the gym I belong to. It’s called KDR Fitness. Great place. It began February 10th and ended March 22nd. It was technically 41 days long. I decided to enter because I needed a kick in the butt to get back to the gym. In the previous year gym days were hard to come by. With a brand new baby and practice, my gym time was way down. To top it off, I had a neck injury that took me completely out of the gym for 3 months at the end of the year. As a consequence my body fat had increased to 21.7%. Not ideal for me. During the contest, I recorded my diet and exercised in order to lose body fat and gain lean mass. I wore a heart rate monitor for all of my workouts to calculate my calories burned and generally keep track of my workouts. Here are the things I learned:

1. I started at 21.7% body fat.
2. By the 4th week I was down to 19.4%
3. By the end of the 6th week, I was down to 18.4%
4. I gained 3.7 pounds of muscle in 6 weeks.
5. I lost 7 pounds of fat in 6 weeks.
6. I missed the gym.
7. I worked out 25 times in 41 days.
8. That’s 4 workouts per week with an occasional 5th thrown in.
9. I ate MORE food than I had been eating and was able to lose fat and gain muscle.
10. I burned 15,655 calories in 25 workouts.
11. Each workout was about 1 hour.
12. Each workout burned an average of 626.2 calories.
13. The range of calories burned was 273 all the way up to 958.
14. It is not that hard for me to avoid grain.
15. I can count on one hand how many times I ate grain in 41 days (and it’s less than the whole hand).
16. Cheat meals are important.
17. This was a typical day in terms of food intake:
    Wake Up: 6:15
    Food for the day:
    Breakfast: 6:45 – 3 eggs, mixed veggies, and cheese cooked in butter. Coffee with organic half and half.
    Snack: 10:15 – 3 large beef and veggie meatballs, carrots, celery, and hummus.
    Lunch: 12:20 – Chicken breast, mixed peppers, 1 whole avocado.
    Snack: 3:30 – Protein shake, steamed broccoli.
    Workout – 60 minutes – protein/carbohydrate workout drink
    Dinner: 6:45 – Meatloaf, steamed broccoli and cauliflower with olive oil.
    Snack: 9:15 – Greek yogurt and banana.
18. Food preparation is key.
19. Eating 6 times per day isn’t that hard IF you’re prepared.
20. Eating a lot of vegetables is fairly easy IF you’re prepared.
21. You don’t necessarily have to count calories if the quality of your food is good.
22. You can eat A LOT of food if you are working out hard and still lose weight.
23. Burpees get easier the more you do them.
24. Working out more consistently makes you want to workout more consistently.
25. Using the scale to measure your progress is a bad idea.
26. My weight changed from 190.9 to 187.6 in 6 weeks. Hardly encouraging if you’re just looking at the scale.
27. Body fat analysis is far more informative.
28. You only have time for the gym if you make time for the gym.
29. You don’t need to be in the gym 7 days/week.
30. Two busy people (my wife and I) can each take turns working out during the week and get great results.
31. You should be willing and able to do an extra workout or two from home if you need to.
32. You can turn snow blowing and shoveling your driveway into a workout quite easily.
33. Body mass index (a measure of height to weight) is a terrible health assessment tool. According to it, I am “overweight.” This is because my lean mass is high, not because I am actually overweight.
34. My basal metabolic rate (calories I burn at rest over 24 hours) increased from 1,835 to 1,870 over six weeks.
35. The area of my body that gained the most muscle (as percent growth) was my left arm.

I was on a team of three and our entire team (Bro’s before Hoho’s) did very well. The winning team will win $3,000. I’ll find out in a couple of days which of the 18 teams won the contest. That’s not the important part, but it sure would be nice!

5 Foods You Should Never Eat!

Have you heard the news? There are five foods you should never eat. And here they are for your viewing pleasure.

1. There

2. Is

3. No

4. Such 

5. Thing

Confused? You shouldn’t be. There is no such thing as a food you should never eat. There are a lot of foods that you should eat sparingly. Ice cream, bread, pasta, white potato, potato chips, french fries, and any fast food come to mind. But even those can be eaten every great once in a while without fear. However, you shouldn’t have ice cream on Monday, pasta on Tuesday, french fries on Wednesday, etc. and expect to feel healthy, lose weight, avoid chronic disease or whatever your goal is. That kind of thing can add up. 

Eating food that is bad for us once in a while will never cause you to be unhealthy. It has no more potential to cause you to be unhealthy than eating healthily every great once in a while does to make you healthy. It’s the consistency that matters.

The exception to the rule:

There’s always one, right? If you have a food sensitivity or food allergy it is best to avoid those foods all the time. Do not cheat with those. Cheat with something else. For some this can be a life or death thing (i.e. an anaphylactic allergy or celiac disease). 

I think this is an important concept as we all can be consumed by the information we see in the media and from health gurus telling us to “eat this” and “don’t eat that.” We have to remember, they have an agenda – it’s to sell books, get ratings, and generally be as polarizing as possible. That’s what gets attention and sometimes the information is lost. 

Sugar, Sugar, Sugar

Do you eat “healthy?” Or, perhaps a better question should be ‘DID you think you ate healthy,’ before this post?

Food labeling is VERY misleading. Don’t be fooled. Get educated! High sugar consumption increases the risk of diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure and Alzheimer’s disease!

Is this really a “healthy” diet?

 

 

Time Saving Tips For Healthy Eating

If you want to be healthy, eating correctly is a critical part of the equation. Often, eating healthy is associated with taking too much time. It doesn’t have to be that way! Click below for some awesome tips!

The Road To Chronic Disease

It’s been a while since we posted something. Dr. Carrie and Dr. Court had their first baby eight weeks ago and we’ve been playing catch-up ever since! Here’s an infographic to get things started again!

 

Our Paleo Thanksgiving Revisited!

Thanksgiving Dinner!

As it’s a week before the big Turkey Day 2012, I wanted to share our Thanksgiving post from last year. I hadn’t really started posting recipes regularly so some of you may have missed it. Since we will be traveling to Illinois to see my family this year I won’t be cooking, but I hope you give some of these recipes a try as they were fantastic. I’ve left my original content here and added a few new comments (in italics) and pictures to some of the recipes.

This is Dr. Carrie. Dr. Court usually writes these posts but I thought it might be interesting to switch it up. Since tomorrow is Thanksgiving I thought it might be fun to share our menu. Normally, I don’t get the opportunity to cook on the holidays as we usually travel to be with either my family or his, but this year we decided not to go anywhere. As some of you know we eat mostly meat, eggs, vegetables and low glycemic fruit which means we try not to eat a lot of grains, sugar or processed food. I guess you could say we eat a Paleolithic diet which he has posted about in the past (see Why Eat a Paleolithic Diet?). We aren’t strictly Paleo as we do include some dairy in the form of cheese, Greek yogurt, cottage cheese and for me cream in my coffee.

Now, I grew up in a fantastic Midwestern, Standard American Diet family and it is sacrilege to not have pumpkin pie and stuffing to go with your marshmallow sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes and gravy, turkey, cranberry sauce from a can and green bean casserole. So, you can see my conundrum when it comes to preparing my own Thanksgiving dinner. Do I make the traditional dinner and call it a cheat day? But then what do we do with all of those leftovers? I mean we’re only 2 people. Or do I stick to my principles and make a “healthy” meal that’s just meat and veggies and have some fruit for dessert? Boring….that’s what we eat every day! (This year I do plan to make the Brussel Sprouts and Bacon to take to my big family dinner…they’re so good they’ll never suspect it came from a Paleo cookbook!)

I did what every American does…I Googled it! I wanted to see if there were recipes for Paleo versions of traditional Thanksgiving fare. Thanks to the Crossfitters who endorse the Paleo diet there are now tons of recipes online. I was amazed at what I found including an entire Paleo menu. I am not ashamed to admit that I am using most of the recipes from the first website I came across but how could I pass up Mushroom Butter Roasted Turkey, Beef Celery, Walnut and Apple Stuffing, Cranberry Sauce and Pumpkin Pie! If you want to see the complete menu, visit PaleoDiet Lifestyle.

After one click I had most of my menu complete. I still needed a yam recipe. I turned to my favorite Paleo recipe source EverydayPaleo.com. If you receive our email newsletter, you’ve heard me rave about Sarah Fragoso’s book Everyday Paleo. I love her recipes. They are super easy and sooooo tasty! I found a recipe for Paleo Holiday Yams right away. Of course that’s not the only recipe of hers I’m using. I made one from the book called Brussel Sprouts ‘n’ Bacon a few weeks ago and wanted to have it again. I also really wanted to try a recipe she calls “meat candy” aka Sausage Stuffed Dates for an appetizer. (I made these already. I tried to resist but they kept calling my name…they are AMAZING!)

Here is our complete Thanksgiving menu (pics below):

Appetizer:

• Sausage Stuffed Dates

Dinner:

• Mushroom Butter Roasted Turkey
• Beef, Celery, Walnut and Apple Stuffing
• Paleo Holiday Yams
• Brussel Sprouts ‘n’ Bacon
• Cranberry Sauce

Dessert:

• Pumpkin Pie with coconut milk ice cream!

We’ll let you know how it all turns out. So far, so good! The Sausage Stuffed Dates are a winner but I haven’t tried anything else. I have to save something for tomorrow. We have a lot of food to eat so it’s a good thing we’re going to Turkey Torcher at KDR Fitness tomorrow morning. (I’m bummed to miss the Turkey Torcher this year. It was a blast last year and a great way to kick of Thanksgiving Day! I think there are only 2 spots left but you should contact KDR Fitness if you are local and interested in participating.)

Your family might appreciate one of these recipes at your next holiday dinner! I hope you enjoy your Thanksgiving Dinner be it Paleo or Traditional.

In the spirit of the season we are so Thankful for each and every one of our blog readers and patients. Your questions, comments and feedback are always appreciated and welcomed.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

Sausage Stuffed Dates

I’ve made these little gems a number of time since last Thanksgiving. They’ve become a requested appetizer for get togethers! This was the large version but you can also make a smaller one bite version that’s just as addictive! (Sausage isn’t something that we recommend you eat a lot of as it typically has a lot of preservatives, but it’s fine to have once in a while especially if you buy an organic, preservative free version.)

Mushroom Butter Roasted Turkey

While the mushrooms on this turkey turned out a little crispy it tasted fantastic! I think I left it uncovered a bit too long.

Beef, Celery, Walnut and Apple Stuffing

This stuffing was so good that I’d make it as a meal! I’m glad I revisited this post so that I can do that! The texture is close to regular stuffing but a little different. Now in my family they usually make dressing, so the texture is quite different from that but it has all the right flavors!

Paleo Holiday Yams

These were yummy and reminded me of traditional holiday yams. With on a 1/4 cup of maple syrup they were sweet! You could probably just drizzle a little on there or leave it off entirely if you wanted.

Brussel Sprouts ‘n’ Bacon

I’ve also made these a number of times since last year! They’re tasty! I’m making them for my family for Thanksgiving this year.

(P.S. I’m also making my family Paleo Breakfast Bread and Chunky Apple Muffins to have at my baby shower…don’t tell! I don’t think they ever know they taste so good!)

Cranberry Sauce

Some how I forgot to take a picture of the cranberry sauce. It was good but of all the things I made last year I would tweak this recipe a bit. It was really tart. I would maybe take the maple syrup out of the yams and add it to the Cranberry Sauce.

Paleo Pumpkin Pie

Oh, now this was a hard one. I love pumpkin pie! My family loves my pumpkin pies and my grandfather used to request my pumpkin pies at Thanksgiving. Now that’s a big deal because my grandmother was an amazing cook! So, when it came to pumpkin pie it was hard to decide if I’d try something new or stick to the traditional. I ended up trying something new and was not disappointed! It was really good. It’s a little different but all the flavor that I love was there!

I encourage you to give one or all of these recipes a try for your Thanksgiving Dinner next week.  I think you and your family will be pleasantly surprised at how delicious they are and how great you feel when you’re not loaded down with all that bread and sugar. I know we felt great last year!

Organic No Better For Us Than Conventional Food?

A recent Stanford study concluded that organic foods contained no more nutrients than conventionally farmed foods.  They also found that organic foods contain significantly less pesticide residues than conventionally farmed foods.  But that’s not what the media decided to report! They reported that organic food is no better for us than conventionally farmed foods. Quite different. See my blog below for the real deal!

Read the transcript:

Hi everybody, Dr. Court bringing you another Ninety Seconds of Knowledge. Today we are going to talk about a recent study that came out of Stanford that said organic food is no better than conventional foods. I’ll read you the conclusions of the study here, “The published literature lacks strong evidence that organic foods are significantly more
nutritious than conventional foods. Consumption of organic foods may reduce exposure to pesticides residues and antibiotic resistant bacteria.”  However, what the media picks up on as evidenced  by this title here from the New York Times, Stanford Scientist Cast Doubt on the Advantages of Organic Meat and Produce. That will go out there into the blogosphere and into everybody’s mind and say that organic food is no better but here’s what you need to consider. Pesticide residues are cumulative. In fact, they found that organic food had 30% less pesticide residue than conventional food and they also noted that there was a 33% higher risk of ingesting antibiotic resistant bacteria in conventional food than organic food.  So, that’s another big point.

This pesticide residue point is the big one however. Pesticide residue exposure is cumulative and just like the evidence of poor dietary choices are not readily available in every person those poor dietary choices and dietary indiscretions add cumulatively.  That results in the chronic diseases that we see such as heart disease, Alzheimer’s disease and cancer. Your exposure to pesticides may not manifest as problems today, tomorrow, next week or next month but perhaps when you’re in your fifties, sixties, seventies, eighties or nineties. It may manifest then as an issue, so it’s always best to go with organic.

I think there are some serious flaws in this study. Hopefully there will be more study in the future. If you have any questions let us know.
Additionally, check out this downloadable guide to buying produce. This list, compiled by the Environmental Working Group, tells you which foods have the lowest amount of pesticide residue and which have the most.

Snacks for the On-the-GO

Ok, ok so this post isn’t exactly a recipe but I still thought it was information worth sharing. One of the questions we are most often asked is, “what can I eat on the go?” There are a number of things that you can do at the beginning of the week to make sure you have plenty of healthy snacks on hand. I make a couple of bags of mixed nuts up each week. One goes to the office and one goes in my purse. I’ve been caught with out anything to eat enough that now I don’t ever let it happen. I hate it when I’ve gone too long without eating because I start to get sleepy and cranky. Here see for yourself:

A glimpse inside Dr. Carrie’s purse.

If you look closely you can see something sitting under the nuts….that’s my backup snack. It’s a packet of almond butter with a little honey in it. I can get the little packets at the local COOP. They’re about 200 calories and perfect when I need something in a hurry and don’t want to eat crap.

Backup Snack

At the of office we often have a stash of apples/pears and cheese sticks in the fridge so we never to too long without eating. Other great snack ideas are hard-boiled eggs and veggies sticks. It just takes a few minutes to chop some fresh veggies and hard boil some eggs. In fact, you can chop the veggies while the eggs boil. Instead of cheese sticks you can always get a block of cheese and slice it up.  A little prep can go a long way in making sure you have healthy food on hand.

If you don’t have time to that you should keep some of these on hand….It’s called a PaleoKit and is one of our favorite snacks. You get them from Steve’s Originals.com.

PaleoKit from Steve’s Originals

I mentioned them in and email I sent out earlier this week. They are easy, yummy and healthy. We usually order a bunch at time. We like the grass-fed beef kit and often get the Coconut PaleoKit as well. He also carries a product called Just Jerky which is pretty self-explanatory. The PaleoKrunch bars are good when you need a sweet treat or they could be eaten after a workout to replace carbohydrate. Plus, 15% of the proceeds from the PaleoKits, PaleoKrunch and other Steve’s Original products goes to the Steve’s Club National Program to help bring Crossfit, nutrition and personal development to youth across the country. (We don’t do Crossfit but we do support programs that get children and adults up and active.)

 
You’ll notice that the focus is on snacks that for the most part of whole foods. There are tons of bars on the market but honestly I’ve not really found one that has enough protein that’s not soy or doesn’t have too much carbohydrate. Kind bars are one option that are low glycemic but often for me they still seem to have too much carbohydrate and not enough protein which leaves me feeling hungry not long after I eat it. However, if I manage to somehow run out of both of my snacks and need something quick I’ll probably grab one but it’s not my first choice.

 

What are your favorite snacks? Are they listed here? If not, share them with us.

Summer Tomatoes

There is nothing better than fresh tomatoes in the summer! Now that they are in season you may be wondering how to best prepare them. There are tons of things you can do with them like slice them up for burgers, add them to salads, make a caprese salad and now you can try this recipe. It’s easy, delicious and yes, tastes like summer! This recipe came from the June issue of bon appétit magazine. It’s perfect for a hot night and tastes great with just about anything. I have made it 2 ways. One exactly as the recipe states with the watercress but I’ve also just made the tomatoes and omitted the watercress salad which is what I have pictured.

 

Summer Tomatoes

Serves 4-6

4 large tomatoes sliced 1/4” thick

1 shallot, thinly sliced into rings

¼ cup (loosely packed) flat-leaf parsley leaves

1 Tbsp olive oil plus more for drizzling

Flaky sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

1 bunch watercress, tough stems removed (about 4 cups)

1 Tbsp fresh lemon juice

 

In a medium bowl toss watercress with 1Tbsp each oil and lemon juice. Season watercress to taste with salt.  Mound watercress on a platter.

Arrange tomatoes around the watercress on the platter. Scatter shallots and parsley over tomatoes: drizzle with olive oil and season with salt and pepper.

 

For the version pictured I only used 1 large tomato and half of a small shallot. I omitted the watercress salad but squeezed half a lemon over the tomatoes along with the olive oil, salt and pepper, shallot and parsley.

Bon appétit!

Moroccan Hamburgers

 

Someone had a bite!

This recipe comes from a friend. We both love to cook and often share recipes. I’ve already posted a couple of things that she’s shared with me in the past. This is another delicious recipe from her. We buy our beef in bulk so we tend to make a lot of hamburgers but I like to spice things up by adding different veggies and herbs to our burgers once in a while. Okay, it’s more like once in a while we have a “regular” burger without all the flair. Here is a post with one of our many burger varieties.

This Moroccan burger recipe comes from myrecipes.com. I did make a few changes. We don’t eat much grain so instead of breadcrumbs I used almond meal which doesn’t affect the taste of the burger at all. I also, have to omit the red pepper flakes for Dr. Court because if you’ve been reading these posts his digestive system can’t really handle it. These are so good and will definitely be worked into our burger rotation!

Moroccan Hamburgers

2 pounds ground beef

1 medium onion, finely chopped

1/3 cup finely chopped fresh parsley

1/4 cup almond meal

1/4 cup finely chopped fresh cilantro

1 large egg

3 garlic cloves, finely chopped

2 teaspoons paprika

1 teaspoon ground cumin

1 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper

1/4 teaspoon ground red pepper (optional)

Combine all ingredients thoroughly; shape into 8 (4-inch) patties. Cover and chill at least 2 hours. Grill, covered with grill lid, over medium-high heat (350º to 400º) 6 to 8 minutes on each side or until beef is no longer pink.

Thoroughly combine all ingredients.

 

Make into patties.