It’s hard to believe that we’re nearly 5 weeks away from the autumnal equinox. If you’re like many of my San Jose Bootcamp clients with gardens, you’ve got tomatoes and zucchini coming out of your ears! Today I’ve got my favorite tomato recipe for you. I only use it when I have home grown tomatoes on hand. It really works best with tomatoes from your garden or from a farmer’s market; store-bought tomatoes just don’t cut it for this recipe!
There’s nothing like a homegrown tomato fresh off the vine. They tend to be juicier and more flavorful since they don’t have to be picked early and trucked into your local supermarket.
So, in the spirit of enjoying fresh and nutritious vegetables, here is one of my favorite home-grown tomato recipes. It is packed with vitamins and it’s waist and taste-bud friendly.
Fresh Tomato Sauce for Pasta
1 ½ pounds tomatoes, chopped
2 T olive oil
1 T red wine vinegar
¼ c red onion, chopped
1-2 cloves garlic, minced
2 T fresh basil, chopped
2 T fresh parsley, chopped
Salt and Pepper to taste
Combine all the ingredients and mix well. Serve over hot whole wheat pasta. Just so that it doesn’t cool down the pasta, I microwave the sauce for about 2 minutes before spooning it over hot pasta. I serve this pasta dish with homemade turkey meatballs and a side of steamed brocolli.
If you’ve got a favorite home-grown tomato recipe to share, please feel free to post it here in the comments section!
As you take advantage of summer’s tasty produce, what other healthy eating recipes make it to your family’s dinner table?
Vitamin K plays an important role in the function of the body. It is a key player in blood flow and clotting. If you are deficient in Vitamin K when you are cut or injured your blood will not clot as easily. Some scientists and researchers also think that Vitamin K is important for maintaining your bone health–especially as you age. The best way to ensure you’re getting enough of this hardworking vitamin is through food sources. However, if you are still unable to fill the body with enough Vitamin K you should speak with your doctor about the available Vitamin K supplements.
There are thirteen different vitamins that your body needs to survive. Of these thirteen, four are fat-soluble and the rest are water-soluble. If the vitamin is water-soluble, it dissolves quickly and exits the body. Therefore, water-soluble vitamins must be consumed daily in order to keep your levels normal. However, if a vitamin is fat-soluble, it does not exit the body but is instead stored in your fat to be used at a later time. Vitamin K is a fat-soluble vitamin, so it is not crucial for you to consume it every day. However, it is important for you to keep a careful eye on your levels of Vitamin K in the body in order to make sure that you are not becoming Vitamin K deficient. If this occurs, a vitamin supplement may be necessary.
Vitamin K is found in a variety of foods. It is also produced in the body by the bacteria found in the lining of your gastrointestinal tract. Therefore, your body helps regulate its own Vitamin K levels. As for foods that contain Vitamin K, you will more than likely get enough if you simply eat a healthy, balanced diet. Some foods that are especially high in Vitamin K include vegetables like cabbage, spinach and other leafy greens, soybeans, and cauliflower.
If you do not get enough Vitamin K in your diet, it is important to talk to your doctor about taking supplements. Signs of Vitamin K deficiency include easy bruising and bleeding. Extreme Vitamin K deficiency is very rare, but when it does occur it is usually due to a problem in the intestinal tract. Instead of absorbing Vitamin K like normal, the body simply allows the vitamin to pass through with the waste. In this case, vitamin supplements are necessary. However, because this is a fat-soluble vitamin, you should take vitamin supplements for Vitamin K under medical supervision. There may be another underlying condition that is affecting your vitamin absorption and must be looked into further by a medical professional.
Whether through diet or vitamin supplements it’s important to include Vitamin K in your diet along with all the other vitamins and minerals that are needed for a healthy, functioning body.
It is no secret that certain vitamins can not only contribute to better overall health and life longevity but some may not be aware of the fact that vitamins can also help our bodies heal quicker than they normally would without vitamins. For those who participate in sports activities or exercise program, accidents and injuries are to be expected. One vitamin that is aggressive in helping our bodies recover is Vitamin C. Here is what you should know about Vitamin C and recovery from exercise.
What is Vitamin C?
Vitamin C is one of nature’s best gifts whether ingested it in pill form or from food sources. Because it has antioxidant properties and components it naturally assists our bodies in growth, production and healing. Vitamins in general fall within one of two categories-either water soluble or fat soluble. Vitamin C falls in the water soluble category which simply means is has the ability to dissolve easily and therefore the benefits we get from it are quick. Water soluble vitamins transition or pass through our urine as well and help regulate the toxins within our systems.
Each time we take something into our bodies, our metabolism works hard to process it. Vitamins that are water soluble such as Vitamin C are easily processed and therefore our bodies can absorb what it needs and flushes what isn’t needed (or the excess) out with ease.
Benefits of Vitamin C
With regard to exercise, Vitamin C is essential not only in the preparatory stages of exercising but it also plays a key role in helping our bodies recover from aches, pains and injuries. When we exercise we are naturally putting strain on our joints, tendons and muscles so we need to take preventative measures to not over strain them and to be responsible in helping them to repair themselves when we do over-extend.
Our bodies contain massive amounts of tissue that connects our muscles and ligaments. Vitamin C plays a vital part in strengthening and repairing these tissues, particularly the connective ones. Since Vitamin C is stored within the tissues, it has direct access and can aid in promoting healthy tissue development. Additionally Vitamin C has antioxidants that have been shown to assist with oxidative damage that often occurs during exercising. This type of damage is sustained and caused by free radicals within the air that we breathe and can deteriorate our cell functions.
Because antioxidants also promote healthy immune systems, our bodies will recover from illness and exercise related injuries much quicker than someone who has an infected or compromised immune system. This is especially true once we begin to age because our bones, muscles and connective tissues are more fragile than they were in our younger years.
Taking Vitamin C for pre- and post-exercise regimes
Whether you’re a high level athlete or just beginning to incorporate regular exercise into your life, the benefits that one can obtain from taking recommended doses of Vitamin C are vast. Many health professionals recommend that you take Vitamin C on a daily basis. Because Vitamin C is soluble, it doesn’t remain in our systems permanently; our body will absorb what it needs and secrete the rest through sweat and urine, therefore we have to offer our body a steady stream of it for it to be beneficial.
Taking the proper dose of Vitamin C prior to working out can prevent muscle aches and pain and can also assist the repair of injuries at a much quicker rate. The recommended dose of daily Vitamin C will vary depending on your own physiological make up as well as the intensity of your regime. Professionals generally recommend anywhere from 400 to 3,000 mg of vitamin C per day.
Have you noticed how hard it is to make healthy diet changes, especially lasting ones? Intellectually you know that if you cut out certain foods, you’ll see a difference the next time you step on a scale. You know that if you make healthier food choices, you can reduce your risk of conditions like diabetes or heart disease. Yet when that candy bar calls to you from the office vending machine at 3 in the afternoon, sometimes your best intentions fly out the window.
The clients that I see succeed over the long term make small healthy diet changes to habits they already have. They focus on tweaking one habit at a time rather than making drastic changes. Here are a couple examples:
Half & Half to Low Fat Milk in Coffee. If you like this creamy additive in your morning java, you might try whole milk. If you use 2 tablespoons to each cuppa joe, you’ll save about 20 calories as well as reduce fat grams. If you drink two mugs a day that adds up to 280 calories a week. That’s the equivalent of a Snickers bar. If you switch to 2% milk, you’ll save even more.
Instant oatmeal to unflavored oats. Those pre-packaged sleeves of oatmeal packs a sugar punch. The Maple & Brown sugar version has 9 grams of sugar, while its slow-cooked alternative has 1 gram. By adding fresh blueberries or ½ a banana, you’ll get the sweet without the same glycemic hit. You’ll also increase your fiber intake by adding fresh fruit to your oatmeal :-).
Fatty cuts of beef to lean cuts of beef. There is a lot of saturated fat in regular ground beef and several popular cuts of steak. You can shave off lots of calories from fat (without losing much in iron or other nutrients in beef) by switching to leaner steaks (such as flank steak or filet mignon) or to extra lean ground sirloin.
Where could you make small changes to your favorite foods in order to decrease your calories (or sodium, fat, sugar)? Don’t be surprised if it takes several months for your taste buds to change. But once they do, you’ll be amazed! Your taste buds really do change— you’ll be more sensitive to the sugar, salt or fat content of your food once you’ve gotten used to eating foods with less.
My clients have commented that the old foods they used to eat and love just don’t taste as good now. Or, less of it satisfies them. That’s the trick to staying on track with a healthy diet. Small changes over time reap BIG, long term dividends down the road!
What little changes have YOU made that are paying you big weight loss dividends now?
Last week we looked at 5 reasons you may not be losing weight (even though you may be trying!).
Here are 5 more reasons you might not be seeing the weight loss you desire.
6. Skipped Meals
When one of my bootcamp clients complains that they aren’t seeing weight loss results, I ask if they are skipping any meals. Why? Because chronically skipping meals actually slows your metabolism, causing your body to store calories rather than burn them. I also see that when a meal is skipped, a dieter will actually overeat at the next meal because they are hungrier than usual.
7. Sugar & Simple Carbs
Added sugars and lots of processed white flour-based products can sabotage your weight loss goal. There are literally hundreds of products that contain sugar with deceptive names like sucrose and high fructose corn syrup. Sugar and other simple carbohydrates turn off the hormones responsible for releasing body fat and turns on the hormones to store fat. Effective and healthy weight loss regimes have the opposite effect on the body.
8. Adult Beverages
Alcohol stimulates the appetite and slows down metabolism. While alcoholic drinks taste good, they are loaded with empty calories. So reflect on the number of drinks you have each week. Personally, I plan for (and then thoroughly enjoy) one or two glasses of wine a week. Limiting your alcohol consumption can help your weight loss efforts.
9. Five A Day
Are you having fruits and/or vegetables every time you eat? Most veggies are lower in calories and help fill you up. When you feel satisfied, you’re more likely to stick with your weight loss program.
10. Failing to Plan
The adage “fail to plan and you’re planning to fail” is true for weight loss as well. Are you planning and preparing your meals ahead of time? If not, you are more likely to get off track. By incorporating items you really enjoy in your meal plans, you’re setting yourself up for success.
Can you think of any other activities that throw your weight loss efforts off track? Have you found solutions for them?
In part 1 we talked about foods that may trigger an addiction and their affect on weight loss. Now let’s talk a bit about the brain science behind it: dopamine. Dopamine is a simple organic chemical that the brain produces. It plays a major role in the brain system responsible for reward-driven learning.
In a groundbreaking study at the Brookhaven National Laboratory, researchers looked at the connection between brain dopamine and obesity. They found that obese people had lower levels of dopamine in their “reward” areas than those with a normal weight. Lower level of dopamine is also seen in drug addicts (e.g., cocaine) or alcoholics. This study suggests that those suffering from obesity have different brain chemistries when dealing with food. Unlike other types of addition where you avoid the drug, you can’t avoid food.
So, can certain food really be addictive? Some of my clients would say “absolutely!” When a craving becomes overwhelming or you can’t stop once you’ve started eating it, then it’s time for self examination and other weight loss strategies. Once you’ve identified your triggers, here are some ideas on how to handle the situation:
Avoid the troublesome food. If it’s not in your environment, it’s not there to tempt you and derail your weight loss efforts. Ask those close to you, like family and friends, for their help. DON’T stock your cupboards with unhealthy food that you have a hard time eating in moderation.
Avoid mindless eating. Be deliberate about what you put on your plate and where you eat. Eat sitting down (as opposed to on the run or standing at the kitchen counter). Set a placemat at the dining room table for each meal. Put your fork down between bites. Chew and really taste your food. You’ll probably find you get fuller faster, and enjoy what you’re eating more.
Identify your triggers. Anxiety caused by stressful situations can cause you to reach for those “comfort foods.” Boredom, loneliness and anger can also trigger stress eating. If you know your trigger, it’s the first step toward acknowledging it and overcoming it.
Divert your attention from food. Might I suggest some exercise like dropping in on a bootcamp session 😉 ? Not only will it distract you from eating, it’ll work out any nervous energy. Many times, exercise clears your head, allowing you to find a solution to the problem that originally triggered your stress. Other activities that keep your hands busy like knitting, crossword puzzles can keep your mind occupied when it turns to food.
If you’ve struggled with over-eating and have found solutions to your personal triggers–share your success stories here!
After years of helping people lose weight with fitness training, I have seen firsthand that many clients have trouble with certain kinds of foods. In most situations my clients are rational: They eat “splurge” foods in moderation and limit unhealthy choices from their environment. Yet, they struggle with things like bread, pasta, or sweets. Now there’s science to explain the brain chemistry and how it impacts willpower and weight loss.
We’re bombarded with calorically dense foods or ones that tip the scales with chemical additives. It’s no surprise that more than one third of Americans are obese. According to a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report (January 2012), obesity doesn’t discriminate by gender and 17% of youth suffer from obesity. But why are we overeating to the point where we risk our health to hypertension and type 2 diabetes?
The key may be in how some foods hijack the brain. According to Kelly Brownell who directs Yale University’s Rudd Center for Food Policy & Obesity, “the food industry obviously manipulates the qualities of its food to maximize desirability.” There’s even surprising evidence suggesting that some foods may alter the brain like an addictive drug.
Ask yourself, what foods do you find difficult to limit once you start to eat? For me, it’s sweets (chocolate, cookies and other sweet snacks). For one client it was pasta. She found it difficult to limit her portion to the recommended serving of one cup. It was sabotaging her weight loss, so she eliminated it from her diet. By doing so, she has seen a difference at the scale as well as her energy level. Consuming starchy carbs like pasta can be great if you’re preparing for a marathon or gearing up for an intense bootcamp training session. However, it can make you feel tired and sluggish once you’ve left the dinner table. Sometimes it’s just better to avoid a “trigger” food altogether and make a different food choice.
Do you have any food triggers that may fast-forward you into over-eating? Share your thoughts (or solutions you’ve found!) below.
In my next post, I’ll share some information about brain dopamine, food addiction and weight–and how you can overcome food additions.
Tips for getting greater fat loss results in the next 12 weeks
I recently held a free assessment day for members of our lifeSport Fitness boot camps in San Jose, Campbell and Los Gatos. Because the scale doesn’t tell the whole story, it’s important to track other measurements such as body fat and girth to really get a clear picture of what’s happening once you start to do boot camp workouts. So, we offer free measurements for our members to keep them focused and on track.
At lifeSport Fitness, we work hard to make every boot camp workout extremely effective for fat loss: We do LOTS of strength training. We do interval training to increase the calorie burn of the workout. We make sure to train the whole body in a functional manner in every workout.
That said, my coaches and I can’t out-train a client’s poor diet 🙂.
If you don’t eat enough, you don’t fuel your workouts well and you might lose muscle over time. If you eat too many calories, you won’t shed body fat. And, if you eat about the right amount of food, but it’s nutritionally unbalanced or down right non-nutritious food–well– you’re probably not going to feel very good AND you probably won’t shed fat.
Bottom line, nutrition accounts for a LARGE margin of your results. You need to eat often and eat nutritiously to fuel an active body. You also need to be aware of portions and quantity.
I gave a “tips” sheet to our members at our assessment day to give them ideas for getting to the next level of fat loss at their next assessment, and I’d like to share it with you.
If you want to be leaner in the next 8-12 weeks, you should:
LOG your food intake
If you (or I) don’t really know what you’re eating, you don’t know what needs to be changed, and I don’t know how to coach you on changes you should make.
Start a free account at www.myfitnesspal.com. Your journal is only as “honest” as you are, but you’ll see your calories, protein, fat, etc all listed there. This particular website is “smart phone friendly”. You can scan food packaging and it will automatically upload the food item to your journal.
Increase your vegetable intake by AT LEAST 50%
This will fill up your plate, decrease your calorie consumption and increase your overall nutrition by a HUGE margin! The greater variety of colors on your plate, the better!
Pay attention to the calories you drink
These are very often “forgotten” calories—but they may be the ones that are ending up on your waistline. Big culprits here: Blended coffee drinks, alcoholic beverages, juices and other sweetened drinks.
If you eat out more than 3 times a week, work on decreasing that number
Restaurant food is chock full of calories, fat and salt. It’s really hard to lose fat if you’re eating large fatty, salty or sugary commercial meals on a regular basis.
Plan and schedule your workouts outside of camp
If you’re actively trying to shed fat, I suggest doing some form of cardio exercise (longer, lower intensity workouts, as well as shorter High Intensity Interval Training cardio workouts) 5 times a week. Strength training should be done 2-3 times a week. When pressed for time, do your strength/cardio together circuit style.
DON’T diet
This fails every single time. Diets are temporary. Your lifeSport Fitness boot camp coaches and I want to teach you how to lose fat and keep it off by changing your food habits and your lifestyle. If you start on some sort of fat loss plan you can’t live with—you’re doomed to fail. Deprivation just doesn’t work long term.
Make small changes over time. Focus on what TO eat, not what NOT to eat. Have indulgences now and then. THAT’s real life. Yes, the fat will come off more slowly this way, but it’s more likely that you’ll stick with the new habits.
Some people might read the title of my blog post here and wonder how snacking in between meals can be a good thing if you’re trying to lose weight. Can healthy snacks between meals really help you LOSE weight?
I say……..YES! Here’s why: Eating a small, healthy snack may help you eat LESS at meal time. And, it may also eliminate blood sugar peaks and valleys that can trigger binge eating. Overeating at meal time and binge-eating are common causes of weight gain. The key to snacking in between meals is to snack smart!
Binging on simple carbs can cause weight gain!
3 Healthy Snack Tips
1- Make sure the healthy snack contains a source of protein. Eating a little protein will help you feel more full.
2- Eat a snack low in sugar. This will prevent a spike in blood sugar and subsequent crash in blood sugar later on.
3- Keep the snack small: 150-200 calories for women, 200-300 calories for men.
I like to see a mix of protein and carbohydrate in snacks, and perhaps a little healthy fat. Healthy snacks should hold you over to the next meal, raise your metabolic rate a little bit (digestion requires calories!), and keep you from having large swings in blood sugar. Studies show that metabolism affects weight loss as it affects how you burn calories.
Tomato and low-fat mozzarella slices drizzled with balsamic vinegar
If you’re trying to lose weight, make sure you have healthy snacks on hand at home, at work and in the car. If you find yourself hungry without something healthy to eat, you ‘re MUCH more likely to make a poor choice.
Set yourself up for weight loss success by planning ahead and snacking smart!
Do you have a favorite healthy snack not listed here? Please share your favorite snack ideas in the comment section!
It is said that it takes 30 days to solidify a new habit or behavior change. As I write this post, it is Monday, August 1st. It’s the beginning of the week, and the beginning of a new month. August has 31 days, so it seems like a great month to put this “30 days” theory to the test.
I am challenging all the members of our Campbell and San Jose boot camps to make a commitment to work on just one simple behavior change all month. I decided to throw to challenge out to all readers of this blog as well.
What is one small thing that you could change in your current lifestyle this month that would lead to better fitness down the road? The ideas are endless–but you instinctively know what you need to change :-).
Here are some ideas to get you thinking……
• If you’re currently sedentary, pledge to add moderate exercise to your schedule on a consistent basis two times per week this month.
• If you’re currently exercising and you’ve hit a plateau, challenge yourself to do a “different” style of exercise once each week or to consistently add in a 4th, 5th or 6th day of exercise.
• If you’re trying to lose weight and you drink alcohol or soda, decrease your intake of calorie filled drinks like blended coffee drinks, juices, or alcoholic beverages by 60% each week.
• If you’re trying to lose weight and you eat out a lot, challenge yourself to eat no more than 2 “commercial” meals each week this month.
• If you eat the same things day in and day out, challenge yourself to eat one new fruit and one new vegetable each week this month
• If you’re trying to lose weight , challenge yourself to decrease your portion sizes by 20% at dinner each night this month.
Very often, when we’re trying to lose weight or get in better shape, we go hog wild and try to change everything in our lives all at once. We over-exercise, we under-eat and we deprive ourselves. For many of us, it’s a 180 degree turn from our normal routine. An approach like this, although it may provide some immediate results, is doomed to fail because it is so foreign to our normal way of doing things. Eventually the “other shoe” drops and we revert to our normal routine.
Although results won’t come overnight, long term results are often realized by taking smaller steps toward better nutrition and fitness. I believe that long term results come from consistently applied change—not quick fix diets or overbearing workout routines that you couldn’t ever stay on for more than a few weeks. The ideas I’ve listed above are ways to work on improving your lifestyle in smaller steps. Work on just that one thing all month. That’s it! Just one thing.
Then, come September, tackle one more thing. If you practice this “30-day Challenge” with yourself each month, you could be living in a totally different body next year at this time!
Healthy, fit people practice a healthy lifestyle most of the time.
Healthy lifestyles aren’t always learned. But they can be adopted one step at a time.
Today is August 1st, 2011. What ONE thing can you do consistently this month to be healthier, fitter, happier or more energetic than you are today??
Be an action taker and commit to change! Please post here and share the 30-day challenge you will give yourself.
It’s hard to believe that we’re nearly 5 weeks away from the autumnal equinox. If you’re like many of my San Jose Bootcamp clients with gardens, you’ve got tomatoes and zucchini coming out of your ears! Today I’ve got my favorite tomato recipe for you. I only use it when I have home grown tomatoes on hand. It really works best with tomatoes from your garden or from a farmer’s market; store-bought tomatoes just don’t cut it for this recipe!
It is said that it takes 30 days to solidify a new habit or behavior change. As I write this post, it is Monday, August 1st. It’s the beginning of the week, and the beginning of a new month. August has 31 days, so it seems like a great month to put this “30 days” theory to the test.