Lead a Fit and Healthy Life
Paleo
Kitchen Window: Baking Without Flour Brings Sweet Results : NPR
1It’s estimated that 1 out of 133 people in the U.S. must cut out gluten because of celiac disease, according to the Celiac Disease Foundation. Other people might prevent different health conditions by avoiding gluten, a protein found in wheat, barley and rye. But they can continue to enjoy a myriad of favorite treats by substituting gluten-free flours made from nuts, seeds, legumes and rice (technically these would be called “meal” but are usually referred to as “flour”) such as brown or white rice flour, amaranth, corn, millet and quinoa flours, among others. A combination of gluten-free flours substituted in recipes that call for all-purpose flour produces the best results. There are many commercially produced gluten-free blends, but many bakers prefer to develop their own recipe through trial and error to meet their specific tastes.
For gluten-free folk, it’s best to look for oats and cornmeal that are labeled gluten-free on the package. Oats, for example, do not contain any gluten but may be manufactured on equipment that also is used to process wheat flours that could trigger an allergic reaction. An issue to keep in mind if you don’t keep a strictly gluten-free kitchen but are baking for someone who is gluten-free is cross-contamination from regular flour. Make sure to carefully clean all utensils and equipment so as to avoid inadvertently including gluten.
via Kitchen Window: Baking Without Flour Brings Sweet Results : NPR.
Super Easy Paleo Meatballs
1
Last night I made some Paleo meatballs — super easy recipe:
- Package of 80% lean ground beef
- Package of spicy all natural sausage
–
In Food Processor blend 1 onion, a bunch of parsley, a few cloves of garlic
–
Blend well with your hands the following ingredients:
- meat
- the parsley, onion, garlic mix
- variety of spices (Penzey’s Pizza Spice, Red Pepper Flakes, Garlic Salt)
- 1 egg
- 1 cup of Almond Meal
Once all blended, with your hands create meatballs
Place in shallow baking dish
Bake in oven at 425 for 20m or until cooked
Add cooked meat balls to a all natural sauce and simmer until sauce is warmed through
Eat meatballs with a side salad and you have a meal!
Gluten is NOT good for your health!
0All grains, including other non-gluten containing grains like oats and corn, are bad because they contain gut irritating lectins and mineral binding phytates, but you’ll learn here why gluten-containing grains and wheat especially can not only cause the same problems as other grains, but also cause much more trouble down the road.
11 Ways Gluten & Wheat Can Damage Your Health
Three main constituents are of interest here: gluten, WGA (wheat germ agglutinin) and opioid peptides found in wheat. Gluten is a compound protein that composes about 80% of the protein found in wheat, barley and rye and WGA is a lectin found in wheat that can be particularly damaging. Opioid peptides are psychoactive chemicals and those found in wheat are similar to those found in other well known psychoactive drugs like opium or morphine.
Contrary to what is believed by many, wheat is not to be avoided only by those who suffer Celiac disease, the autoimmune disease caused by a reaction of the immune system against gliadin, a gluten protein. Those with Celiac disease only react more strongly to wheat and gluten than those without the disease, but most people have a reaction in some way or another to wheat consumption, often in insidious ways.
Are you Well Fed & Healthy?
6
When I was first exploring actual CrossFit and then later, Paleo eating, one of the first athletes I found blogging about it was Melicious from Clothes Make the Girl. I felt so special when she would respond to my comments I left on her blog and then later – when I got really into blogging – found out she read my blog — Rockstar! She’s someone who changed her life years ago but is not such a vigilante that she can go on a trip and indulge. That’s what I look for in people to follow — they balance their lives with healthy living. Living is about trying that special dessert that your friend made, and having that Carvel ice cream cake on your birthday (oh, wait that;s me)– but overall you live healthy and get right back on the track the next hour or day. It’s a journey!
I seriously credit Mel with inspiring me throughout the years to continue with my own journey despite challenges and self-doubt. She is one of those souls that even though I have never met her in person, I know she’s as awesome as she comes across online. One day our paths will cross —
Melissa just wrote a book about healthy eating with recipes. I have gotten so many recipes from her blog over the years. Her sharing them in a book is awesome.
Also make sure to take note – when you find your passion for something, it leads you — I bet she didn’t know she was going to publish her recipes when she first headed down this healthy and fit path.
The collection of recipes is called Well Fed and it’s a labor of love which you can instantly tell when you take a look at it. For those that follow Melissa and Dallas Hartwig of Whole9, all of the recipes in Well Fed (except one dessert) are approved for Whole30 compliance – so that means they are good and healthy.
The book includes 115 recipes and you can get a sneak peek with the free 30-page PDF sampler. You will of course want to buy the book and it’s available in a printed, softcover version (175 pages) and an ebook (PDF) version.
I also love that she is giving back with this project. When people buy the printed book, they get a code to download the PDF version for just $1, which is being donated to Common Threads, a non-profit that teaches low-income kids how to cook in a free after-school program, and she is donating $1 from every PDF sale to Common Threads.
So, what are you waiting for — visit her Well Fed site, get info and then buy her book so you can start the new year off eating healthy but not deprived!
Great Info about Good, Solid Nutrition Making the Difference
02 months ago
My brother Jon sent this to me — and really drives home how important nutrition, rest and sweet potatoes can be in your training –
Paleo, recovery, the sweet potato and my neck
In the end, nutrition is the athlete. If what you’re doing isn’t working for you, keep plugging away. The combination of an overall proper diet AND post workout recovery is what makes the athlete a high performer. If you’re bonking before/after/during your workout, you need to fix your nutrition!!
Gluten Free – A Fad Diet?
0What is a fad diet? I only asked because a few commentators have suggested that gluten-free is the latest in a long line of fad diets – similar to the low carb Atkins Diet craze of a few years back, or the hunter-gatherer diet – an eating regime supposedly enjoyed by our ancestors of 2.5 million years ago.
These types of diet – normally endorsed by a celebrity or two – spring into being from nowhere, gets ample media attention, and then disappear within the space of 12-18 months.
For the 1 in 100 people in the UK who suffer from coeliac disease – a severe intolerance to gluten – eating an appropriate diet is essential for preserving their health. For the uninitiated, coeliacs can suffer from stomach cramps, severe bloating, diarrhoea, headaches and other debilitating symptoms from eating foods that contain gluten.
But what about everyone else? The list of well-known figures opting not to eat gluten is lengthening by the week. Lady Gaga, Gwyneth Paltrow, Rachel Weisz, Jennifer Aniston, and Victoria Beckham all avoid gluten. So far, so fad.
However, it is not just trend-hungry celebs that are going gluten-free.
The list of elite athletes who have ditched gluten is also growing. These include Novak Djokovich, Andy Murray and the US pro cycling team. All of them claim that the change in their diet has boosted their performance. In the case of Mr Djokovich, he clinched his first Wimbledon title a few weeks after ditching gluten.
In the US, medical experts are giving weight to the idea that removing gluten from your diet can benefit a much wider group than just coeliacs.
This from Doctor and author Michelle Pick, writing in the Huffington Post two weeks ago:
“It may seem like a fad, but I’ve been taking [non-celiac] patients off of gluten for years, and I honestly can’t think of anything in my practice that makes as dramatic a difference in health and wellness as following a gluten-free diet.”
This is not Fred Flinstone – The Paleo Diet
04 months ago
Paleo diet or ‘caveman’ diet gains traction despite controversies; ‘This is not Fred Flintstone’
Could Paleolithic man hold the key to today’s nutrition problems?
A growing number of adherents to the so-called “caveman” diet contend that a return to the hunter-gatherer foods of the Stone Age — heavy on meats, devoid of most grains — could alleviate problems like obesity, type 2 diabetes and many coronary problems.
The Paleo diet movement is backed by some academics and fitness gurus, and has gained some praise in medical research in the US and elsewhere even though it goes against recommendations of most mainstream nutritionists and government guidelines.
Loren Cordain, a professor of health and exercise science at Colorado State University, said he believes millions in the United States and elsewhere are following the Paleo diet movement, based on sales of books such as his own and Internet trends.
“It was an obscure idea 10 years ago, and in the last two to three years it has become known worldwide,” Cordain, one the leading academics backing the Paleo diet, told AFP.
“There are at least a half-dozen books on the best seller list that are promoting this,” he added.
The underlying basis for the Stone Age diet is a belief that homo sapiens evolved into modern humans with a hunter-gatherer diet that promoted brain function and overall health. Backers say the human genome is essentially unchanged from the end of the Paleolithic era 10,000 years ago after evolving over millions of years.
“It’s intuitive,” Cordain said. “Obviously you can’t feed meat to a horse, you can’t feed hay to a cat. The reason for that is that their genes were shaped in different ecological niches.”
He said peer-reviewed research has shown the Paleo diet better than the Mediterranean diet, US government recommendations and diets aimed at controlling adult diabetes.
Gluten is Bad News Folks
0Gluten: What You Don’t Know Might Kill You
The Dangers of Gluten
A recent large study in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that people with diagnosed, undiagnosed, and “latent” celiac disease or gluten sensitivity had a higher risk of death, mostly from heart disease and cancer. (i)
This study looked at almost 30,00 patients from 1969 to 2008 and examined deaths in three groups: Those with full-blown celiac disease, those with inflammation of their intestine but not full-blown celiac disease, and those with latent celiac disease or gluten sensitivity (elevated gluten antibodies but negative intestinal biopsy).
The findings were dramatic. There was a 39 percent increased risk of death in those with celiac disease, 72 percent increased risk in those with gut inflammation related to gluten, and 35 percent increased risk in those with gluten sensitivity but no celiac disease.
This is ground-breaking research that proves you don’t have to have full-blown celiac disease with a positive intestinal biopsy (which is what conventional thinking tells us) to have serious health problems and complications–even death–from eating gluten.
Yet an estimated 99 percent of people who have a problem with eating gluten don’t even know it. They ascribe their ill health or symptoms to something else–not gluten sensitivity, which is 100 percent curable.
And here’s some more shocking news …
Another study comparing the blood of 10,000 people from 50 years ago to 10,000 people today found that the incidences of full-blown celiac disease increased by 400 percent (elevated TTG antibodies) during that time period. (ii) If we saw a 400 percent increase in heart disease or cancer, this would be headline news. But we hear almost nothing about this. I will explain why I think that increase has occurred in a moment. First, let’s explore the economic cost of this hidden epidemic.
Undiagnosed gluten problems cost the American healthcare system oodles of money. Dr. Peter Green, Professor of Clinical Medicine for the College of Physicians and Surgeons at Columbia University studied all 10 million subscribers to CIGNA and found those who were correctly diagnosed with celiac disease used fewer medical services and reduced their healthcare costs by more than 30 perecnt. (iii) The problem is that only one percent of those with the problem were actually diagnosed. That means 99 percent are walking around suffering without knowing it, costing the healthcare system millions of dollars.
And it’s not just a few who suffer, but millions. Far more people have gluten sensitivity than you think–especially those who are chronically ill. The most serious form of allergy to gluten, celiac disease, affects one in 100 people, or three million Americans, most of who don’t know they have it. But milder forms of gluten sensitivity are even more common and may affect up to one-third of the American population.
Sometimes you need a good kick in the …
0I seriously had a really bad day yesterday. I am finding more and more people that I thought I knew – really are only in it for themselves. The more things change, the more they stay the same. I have to learn to not be so open and trusting to everyone. The people in my life should meet the requirements I set and earn the right to be trusted — no more settling for half ass’ed quality people.
I really needed a good hard workout this morning and sure enough — it was waiting for me. I visualized some of the anger inside to push myself –hoping it would leave my body. I will let you know.
Warmup
800m jog
10 Pass thrus
10 OHS
10 Whirly Birds
10 Cobras
10 Kick to Handstand (no wall allowed!)
Skill
Kip swing
KB swings
WOD
20m AMRAP
100m sprint
12 35# KB Swings
10 Pull ups (I did jumping)
total: 8+100m+8kb swings
Yeah, it sucked. It was humid and 20m seemed to go on and on and on…
My friend Jason posted this Paleo Cookie recipe. They look pretty tasty –I think I will try to make them soon. Let me know if you do.
Paleo Cookie:
2 Cups walnuts
1/8 cup raw, unfiltered honey (more or less to taste)
1 Tb. cinnamon
2 egg whites, whisked till frothy
Grind nuts and cinnamon in blender or food processor. Stir in honey.
Combine with egg whites. Drop by teaspoon on oiled (coconut) cookie sheet. Bake at
350 degrees 15 minutes. Cookies will be soft; do not overbake. Makes 15
cookies.
