I’m not going to be one of those who promises a cure, but I am going to offer you a thought to see if maybe, just maybe you can actually get those bumps to go away. ‘Cuz it ain’t normal to have bumpy skin – I don’t care what doctor tells you, “that’s just the way you are,” that’s NOT just the way you are and you may be able to do something about it. After trying to get rid of the bumps on my arms for as many years as I’ve been alive and aware that I had weird bumps on me, I finally got mine to go away – so who knows – this just may work for you too. But maybe not, because there’s waaaay more to optimal health than just 1 cure-all ‘fix’, so don’t hate on me if you still have bumps after trying what I did.

First let me tell you what I did that didn’t work: I scrubbed w/ a hard brush in the shower, I used one of those soaps that has “acne medicine” in it, I switched my sunscreen, I tried laying in the sun more(in case I wasn’t getting ENOUGH vitD), I tried picking them (for the love of all things holy, do not do this!!!), I tried using alpha-hydroxy pads meant for peeling layers of dead skin off your aged-face on the backs of my arms, I switched to an all-natural soap (like seriously all-natural, practically make-it-yourself all-natural, castile soap w/ no fragrances), I switched my lotion from the pretty-smelling ones to a plain lotion (again, all-natural, no gluten, no parabens, etc), I switched my detergent to an all-natural, unscented one, I tried just about every do-it-yourself scrub routine listed in whatever glossy mag landed on my doorstep each month.

So when I tell you I tried a lot of things, I really did. Maybe I can spare you the time I wasted…none of them worked.

Could It Really Be ALL About Diet?

When we (Drew and I) first began considering the pros of switching from a gluten-free diet to a paleo diet, one of the things Robb Wolf talked a lot about in his podcasts (which are free ya’ll and you’re crazy if you don’t download them, those things are science-as-told-by-your-smart-ass-best-friend-who-when-half-drunk-is-still-smarter-than-you-solid-gold) was skin irritations from eczema to acne that were cured after going on a paleo diet, specifically, an auto-immune protocol of the diet. **Also get Robb’s podcasts via your smartphone in iTunes by searching “Robb Wolf”**

First off, a paleo diet is essentially an anti-inflammatory diet – as in – you eat foods that are rich in ANTI-inflammatory properties, and you avoid foods that are PRO-inflammatory. Foods that are anti-inflammatory are high-quality meats/fish, veggies & fruits, and certain fats (especially coconut oil, which is anti-bacterial, sort of ‘scrubbing you out’ from the inside when consumed, and thus why some homeopathic cancer diets recommend consuming daily Tbsp’s of straight coconut oil).

Foods that are PRO-inflammatory are grains (highly acidic AND contain a large protein called lectin, which wiggles its way through the gut lining of the majority of humans, essentially leaving the barn door open for the lectins and all the other food particles to get out & begin circulating in your body. This sets off your immune response to attack anything that looks like the food particles, and unfortunately in the process, it ends up attacking your human cells too. Some people think they have no issues with grains, but most actually are having symptoms that have become ‘normal’ parts of aging & will become noticeable once a person goes without grains for 30 days to see how “normal” begins to change for them.), dairy (which also contains gut irritants, especially casein, which is similar in size and function to gluten), legumes (peanuts & beans, which also contain lectins), sugar, processed foods, and soy.

This allows the gut lining to begin to heal and close itself so that food particles are no longer escaping into the bloodstream and setting off an immune reaction in other areas of your body, like the organs, tissues, joints, and brain. I figured I had nothing to lose by giving it a shot – because really – what’s 30 days if it means I start to see some results. I think even the most skeptical person can grant that 30 days is not that long when it could mean your health and life take a turn for the better. And if giving up those addictive grains & cheese is just too much for you, then you’re just not sick enough to try. ‘Cuz when people are searching, really searching, for an answer..they’re willing to try even the “craziest” of ideas, like giving up grains. The symptoms are THAT BAD that giving up grains holds enough potential to give it a shot….and for me, bumps on my arms were a symptom that something was going on “under the hood” that may become a much more serious issue down the road. For instance, what if the bloat or bumps or GERD is a symptom of your immune system saying “hey! the check engine light is ON! achtung!” And you’re all “m’eh, that’s just the way I am.” So your body 1o years from now is all “ok, told ya so, I can’t take it anymore…insert disease HERE.”

I digress…my point is that I was willing to try because what did I have to lose? Nothing else had made the bumps on my arms go away, may as well try. So I followed a paleo diet for 30 days. And I haven’t stopped following a paleo diet since then. And it’s been 13 months now, and shocker of shockers, I am almost bump-free!

Be Your Own Science Experiment

My arms started clearing after I seriously reduced my egg consumption, as well as my nut consumption. Some folks who lean more into the auto-immune condition camp also have cross-reactions to compounds in nuts, eggs, and nightshades (tomatoes/potatoes). So I eliminated them 1 by 1 from my diet for a period of time, and then re-introduced them to see what happened. Eggs & nuts seemed to have the biggest response for me in arm bumpy-ness. Eat them a lot (several times per week), and I have bumps. Eat eggs 2-3x/month and stick mainly to macadamia nuts (which are lowest in n-6 fatty acids as compared to other nuts, which are quite high in the not-so-awesome n-6 fatty acids) & my body does well. My conclusion is that large doses of egg proteins and excessive n-6, especially from nuts, seems to flare up my immune system by raising little pilaris kerastosis bumps on my arms.

And it wasn’t just my backs of my arms that began changing for the better. Within 30 days of going paleo, my face became much brighter and clearer. I never had acne on my face (thank GOD!) but my skin was dull and I had dark circles under my eyes, for which I used every under-eye concealer and lotion out there. I started getting asked what I was doing for my skin. I stopped wearing any under-eye concealer, I stopped wearing any kind of base/bronzer, except when I was doing night-out make-up when bronzer is an obvious must.

Stick It Out – This is Not Miracle-ville

While I hoped my bumps would be gone after 30, 60, or even 90 days – I saw modest improvements in the overall bumpy-ness  over that time period – it was really closer to 6 months when my arms started more fully clearing.

(Side note: I had LOTS of other things I was hoping would improve on an anti-inflammatory/paleo-style diet, and they did improve – DRAMATICALLY – which is why I stuck with this way of eating. I also stuck with it because, having taken numerous nutrition courses in college and having tried the low-fat/carb-based diet that is recommended by the USDA & having looked into vegetarianism – there simply isn’t another way of eating that makes this much sense. The science is there. I can’t say the same for the USDA rec’s and while I appreciate vegetarians’ approach to ‘love all things on Earth’, they’re wrong about meat being the problem when it comes to long-term health. The fact is, eating an anti-inflammatory diet is easy to do for the rest of your life. It’s not a “diet”, it’s not super restrictive, and it re-directs our intuition back to hearing our body’s real signals of hunger, satiety, “feeling good”, and overall health.)

And being able to do this for the long-haul is important…because as I found with my own Kerastosis Pilaris, it takes a while for the body to truly begin healing YEARS of improper nutrition. Did you know it can take 5 years for a gluten-intolerant individual to heal their gut from the damage of eating gluten up to the point of diagnosis? 5 years to get back to restored health. Most people are far too impatient to go the long haul, but I encourage you to not be an impatient type & see what is really possible with a change to your diet and/or lifestyle. It’s not a death sentence to make changes to your diet and lifestyle if it means you actually get MORE years on your life and BETTER quality years from the changes you’ve made.

So for my fellow Kerastosis Pilaris friends out there, consider what a change to your diet could do for your skin. And for everyone who never had to hide the little bumps on their arms, what symptoms that you’ve grown to consider “normal” may be positively affected by changing some part of your diet/lifestyle? You’re the driver in this life, why settle for “that’s just the way it is” when there is massive potential for you to make it whatever you want it to be…

I attended an online summit recently centered around all things paleo & anti-inflammatory. It was nothing short of incredible – with many of the top industry leaders giving presentations on the latest evolutionary nutrition news, and doing so for free, it was like college but so much more awesome. I took notes on the gluten intolerance lecture that gluten intolerance expert, Dr. Tom O’Bryan gave so that I could share the latest info on gluten intolerance with you.

As many long-time readers know, I was diagnosed with non-Celiac gluten intolerance in May of 2009. That means that I’m not in the end-stages of gluten intolerance – Celiac Disease – which is the very last stage of devastation caused by continued ingestion of gluten when intolerant. (Full-blown Celiac Disease is diagnosed by a flattening of the finger-like surfaces within the gut, this occurs after someone has been eating gluten for long enough to wear down their gut lining, making absorption of nutrients extremely difficult from that point forward.)

Just because I do not have Celiac Disease does not mean my gluten intolerance is any less severe – I just caught my intolerance early enough to stop the breakdown of my gut before it got to that point. I cannot stress this enough: if you are diagnosed with gluten intolerance, there is NO more severe/less severe diagnosis – the only concern is how soon was it caught & what symptoms are associated with that stage of health breakdown due to gluten. And as you’ll discover in Dr. O’Bryans’ talk, just because you had some test done for gluten and it came back as ‘not a problem for you’ doesn’t tell the entire story!

As a reminder to folks diagnosed with any level of gluten intolerance: THERE IS NO SAFE EFFECTIVE DOSE OF GLUTEN for someone intolerant to it. Consuming gluten when you know you have a sensitivity to it equates to speeding up the day you’ll meet your Maker. Gluten intolerant individuals die 20% earlier, mostly from cancer and heart disease, than any other person when they continue consuming gluten post-diagnosis. Why, oh why, would you do that to yourself?! Lest we digress into a full-blown discussion on the “why’s” behind people’s food and life choices, let’s get on with the notes that I took from Dr. Tom O’Bryan, leader in gluten intolerance, Celiac Disease, and the care for individuals with gluten intolerance.

Gluten & Gluten Intolerance:
Going Mainstream (or was it always here & just getting overlooked)

Presentation by Dr. Tom O’Bryan

“Let’s be clear about how gluten intolerance can manifest….it can manifest as Celiac Disease (in the gut), as myocarditis (in the heart), as autism or ADD (in the brain), as PCOS or infertility (in the reproductive organs)…gluten sensitivity can manifest anywhere that the immune reaction occurs. You see, gluten is a gnarly protein that loosens up the gut lining so it can slip through, taking other food particles with it to various places in the body. The immune system catches that & says, “woah, send immune responders over to the brain/ovaries/joints/pancreas/any place the food and gluten end up”, and the immune carries out its response on the cells in that area – including the cells of that organ or tissue. As those cells get broken down, strange things happen to that organ or tissue – it develops problems like ADD or autism, it stops working correctly thereby creating pain, dysfunction & disease in that area of the body. Gluten sensitivity is on a spectrum – you can be majorly reactive to it, or very minor-ly reactive to it. But make no mistake, everyone reacts to gluten. “

“Let’s back up a minute…there is something about calling it “gluten intolerance” or “gluten sensitivity” that makes it sound ‘less bad.’ In fact, people will say, ‘do you have a gluten allergy’ and it’s often easiest to say “yes!” even though that is actually not true. You see, when the skin-prick allergy testing first began, this was the very first method used for testing if someone had an immune-response to foods, environmental things, or chemicals. And so if you got a positive response from that skin-prick test, you were told you had an ‘ALLERGY’ to it. Even though, the skin-prick test is only testing for 1 FORM of immune-response…

Let’s back up again…think of your immune response as the Armed Forces. You’ve got the Army, the Navy, the Air Force, and so on. In your body, you also have several divisions of armed force immune responders – they are called IgE, IgA, IgG, and so on – there are actually 5 types of immune response, and only ONE is measured by doing a skin-prick. Similarly, only  ONE type is measured when you do a blood-allergy test (thus why those tests are only 30% effective)……

So we’ve got these skin-prick immune responses as the 1st kind ever tested for & so the flag was struck in the ground naming those as “allergies.” It’s kind of like “Kleenex” ‘will you get me a Kleenex,’ we all know that it may not be an actual Kleenex-brand tissue that we are requesting, in fact, we’re just requesting a tissue, but it’s so tied into our lexicon, that getting everybody to change and call it by its’ correct name, ‘a tissue’ instead of saying ‘Kleenex’ and everyone knowing what you mean – it’s just not going to happen. Well, the same is true for “allergy”. Many scientific papers were written using the term ‘allergy’ & then later on, we discovered we could test for these other immune responders, the other divisions of the armed forces within us, and it was just too late to go back & change the lexicon, so discovering an immune-response that uses other divisions of the armed forces in our body had to be called something else, and so we got “intolerance” and “sensitivity”. They are no less worse than “allergy” but they simply must be called something different.”

“A food sensitivity is when you have an immune response to that food. A food intolerance is when you don’t have enough of that enzyme to break down that food i.e. ‘lactose intolerance.’ Far more people have food sensitivities than realize it. This is not a rare problem, and it is not exclusive to gluten, although that is one of the worst immune-producing responders out there.’

“Autoimmune disease is the #1 cause of morbidity(meaning; you die)/mortality(meaning: you get sick & it leads to death) in the industrial world. We thought it was heart disease for a long time, but we are now seeing a strong auto-immune connection in the progression of heart disease. Heart disease, remember, begins with inflammation in the heart walls.”

“Almost all of us have an autoimmune condition within us already, it’s just not bad enough to make us sick yet. No one gets Alzheimers’ in their 70s. It begins in their 30′s and 40′s & progresses….

There are 3 components to developing an autoimmune condition into something that produces major symptoms:
1) genetic variability – do you have the genes for it AND did you up-regulate those nasty genes by your lifestyle choices
2) environmental trigger – gluten is the most common trigger that leads to #3
3) intestinal permeability – we find in patients with end-stage autoimmune conditions, many have long-standing leaky gut syndrome”

“Every bit of food is either inflammatory or anti-inflammatory.”

“If gluten gets through your gut, your immune response goes after it. It becomes trained to fire bullets at the gluten wherever it finds it (blood vessels, thyroid, brain, etc.). Regularly consuming gluten brings a regular onslaught of bullets at the gluten floating around your body. You have then successfully developed your autoimmune condition.”

“In the Annals of Internal Medicine Journal in 2006, there was such a strong correlation found of osteoporosis patients that were ALSO carrying a gluten sensitivity that the researchers of the study confidently wrote in the Journal that ALL osteoporosis/osteopenia patients SHOULD be checked for Celiac/gluten sensitivity….when you ingest gluten, it binds to the minerals in your diet, and since your body needs those minerals to function correctly, in an effort to save itself, it leaches the minerals from your bones, thereby creating weak & brittle bones – osteoporosis. Interestingly, the greater the degree of osteoporosis, the greater the degree of improvement on a gluten-free diet!”

“Another very common symptom of patients with a gluten sensitivity is terrible muscle pain, aches, and weaknesses. The reason? Sometimes, when the body makes antibodies to gluten to fight it off, it also makes antibodies to actin, myosin & endomysium. Every muscle in your body is made of actin, myosin & is covered by a sheath of endomysium. Now you have created a system where the immune response thinks it should be attacking the very things that make-up your muscles! This not only can make a person sore, but it can make them feel overly fatigued because their muscles are being torn down continuously.”

“Fatigue is the #1 symptom of people with allergies/sensitivities.”

“Athletes on a non-inflammatory diet consistently improve their performance.”

“The gut biopsy is no longer the gold-standard for testing for a gluten sensitivity. Other tests are catching Celiac and gluten sensitivity much earlier. If you have damage in your intestines, it’s already gotten bad. You want to catch an immune response to gluten early – before your gut is permanently damaged.”

CYREX LABS {cyrexlabs (dot) com} offers the best early testing.

“There are 2 steps to addressing gluten sensitivity: 1) stop throwing gas on the fire. You must eliminate gluten from your diet. Entirely & forever. 2) Heal the damage caused to your body (rebuild the brain cells that have been damaged, heal the gut wall that has been torn apart, fix the adrenals from all the stress your body has dealt with from constantly fighting the foods you’re eating)…

Many people eliminate gluten and begin to feel better. But many miss the 2nd step – you’re going to need to supplement with natural vitamins, minerals, and possibly herbs & nutrients in order to repair the damage. This is where a well-qualified naturopath or integrative physician/functional medicine doc can help you. Unfortunately, conventional doctors are not well-trained in this arena, and are often of little help in diagnosing or recovering from this. It can take 1-2 years of work on this issue to begin to fully heal the body. But don’t give up, your life will get better & better as you look, feel, and perform better & better!”

And the Doc’s final words of the presentation, which I love:
“Just think rationally & ask the question: Are there things that could be keeping me from truly being optimally healthy?”

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This recipe was banging around in my head ever since I picked up the bone-in pork chops on sale at Whole Foods Saturday. I wouldn’t say I’m an all-star at pork cooking…except for bacon…which I’ve easily achieved all-star status in that arena. And what do you do when you want to “liven” up some meat that’s sort of bland on its’ own? You buy pre-packaged spice or marinade blends & smother the meat in them, right? Well, I don’t do that because they often (always) contain MSG, gluten, or some other ridunkulousness that I choose to not ingest. Thus, I needed to figure out what to do with these chops, and I was super pleasantly surprised when this whole meal turned out!

Upon eating the meal, I asked Drew if it was blog-worthy, he said ‘yes, unless you don’t like sauerkraut, then no.’ Well, if you don’t like sauerkraut, I don’t have much help here for you, other than this: it’s not as ‘kraut-y’ as you may think, please try it before you turn it down! I didn’t think I liked it either, until I started learning about what an awesome probiotic source it was (as in all things, this only applies if you buy the good stuff, not the crammed in a can garbage- good stuff usually comes in a clear jar with lots of liquid in it…or is homemade). So I was willing to try ‘kraut again, and lo & behold, I liked it!

Since ‘kraut is a fermented food, it’s teeming with good bacteria, acting as one of nature’s best probiotics! You’ll want to shake up the jar yours comes in until the liquid is cloudy – then you’ll know the good bacteria have been stirred up. And even if you *think* you don’t like ‘kraut, I urge you to try this recipe before deciding that. The mix of green apples, celery, and onion amidst the ‘kraut softens the ‘kraut-y-ness’ of the whole dish, and it pairs SO well with the pork chop, it’s a match made in heaven!

PS – This whole thing took 20 mins from prep start time to plating. Seriously, I don’t do these long, involved dinners, so don’t lie to yourself that you just don’t have 20mins to put a helluva dinner on a plate. You do, now get cooking!

Pork Chops with Apple Kraut

You’ll Need:

- 1 bone-in pork chop per person, or boneless, whatever’s on sale is fine
- 1/2 an onion, 2 stalks celery, & 1/2 a green apple per 2 people
- 1/4 – 1/2 cup sauerkraut per person
- fresh flat-leaf parsley (it adds a lot of brightness to the dish, but skip it if you can’t be bothered)
- butter (or ghee/clarified butter if you’re dairy-free)
- bacon grease (so long as it’s nitrate/nitrite free & from a good source of bacon), or olive oil if bacon grease freaks you out, but I’m telling you, bacon grease is no problem for your health, especially when compared to the problems with industrial seed oils like canola/safflower/sunflower/other seed oils.
- spice blend: paprika, red pepper, dried oregano, dried onion, dried thyme (or whatever combo you like that mimics this combination to some degree)
- ground black pepper, salt

What To Do:

Preheat oven to 350. Also warm a pan to medium heat. Make a spice mixture; this one is loosely based on Emeril’s “Essence” blend. It doesn’t have to be measured, just add what you like in the amounts that you like it. I do these spices in their own bowl so they incorporate, then shake them over the meat….paprika, red pepper, dried thyme, dried oregano, & dried onion.

Season pork chops with your spice blend along with ground black pepper & a dash of salt. Press seasonings down into pork so they stick once in the pan. To your warmed pan, add 1 Tbsp of olive oil or bacon grease- you could also use butter (or ghee if you’re dairy-free). When the oil is warm & sizzles a bit if you sprinkle a drop of water in it, add the chops to the pan, giving them room to breathe.

Cook for 3 mins each side, just enough to get them browned on each side. Once both sides are browned, move the whole pan to the oven to finish cooking, approx 10-12mins based on thickness of chop. Take a 2nd large pan & heat it over medium-low. Add 1/2 Tbsp butter (I used ghee/clarified butter). While the butter/ghee warms & melts, begin chopping 1/2 an onion, 2 stalks of celery, & 1/2 green apple (quantity is per 2 people). Also do a rough chop of your parsley – you want very small pieces – just keep piling it up & running your knife through it. I really hope you’ll buy the parsley to add to this meal as it, like any fresh herb, brightens up the flavor – but if you forgot to buy it, or would prefer to go without, no worries!

Once the pan is warm enough to allow the butter/ghee to coat the bottom of the pan, add onion, celery & apple to pan, & toss to coat. Allow to cook for 3 mins to soften everything, stirring regularly to ensure there’s no excessive browning of any ingredient. Once everything looks to be softened up, and onions are translucent, turn heat to low & add sauerkraut. We don’t want to cook the kraut, just gently warm it, so that we do not lose all of the beneficial properties of the kraut, so it should only be in the warm pan for a short time.

Stir all ingredients in the pan to break up the kraut & incorporate everything. At the very end, sprinkle your chopped parsley over the kraut mixture, start with 2 Tbsp (a small pile on your cutting board) & stir to incorporate. Add more if you prefer. Your chops should be finishing, remove a chop & do a test cut to see if the juices are clear. The new rules with cooked pork is that it is fine to have a slight pink tone to the meat, but you still want your juices running clear. If you’ve got clear juice and pinkish/white-ish flesh, remove the remaining chops from the oven & allow to rest for a few minutes while you plate your kraut mixture. Plate your chops & you’re ready to eat!

A quick update before we decide today if being gluten-free is ‘enough’! Since last post – I moved! I didn’t kill Drew or anyone else, although they likely wanted to end me at a few points along the way – but I’d say it was a reasonable success! We now live about 20 mins drive from our gym & very close to amazing running paths (perfect timing since it’s now time to turn these legs back into ‘running legs’!)

Ok, so let’s figure this out – is there ‘enough’ benefit from just going gluten-free? Last post, we determined that the food journal I’d kept was showcasing insulin-spiking foods, a lower amount of protein & very little fat. Here’s the food journal again to refresh your memory:
Bfast: Oats (steel cut) with berries and honey
Snack: Apple with almond butter, nuts (probably almonds or cashews)
Lunch: Caprese salad, asparagus
Snack: Gluten free crackers

To recap why I could have been doing much better than that: insulin-spiking foods make you perpetually hungry, they certainly don’t help you to lose weight, and they increase inflammation in your body. Eat enough insulin-spiking foods for long enough, and you break your signaling system (hello, type-II diabetes & metabolic syndrome).

Reason #2 that my food journal looked less-than-optimal: It contained foods with pro-inflammatory compounds in them.

I just wasn’t tuned in to this a few years ago. I’d stumbled across an anti-inflammatory diet once or twice, but never really looked at it or understood what the purpose of it was. So let me save you the time and mistakes that I went through, & let’s get you applying this information to your life right away.

We’re all united by “fight or flight”. Except plants. They just fight.

Every thing on this earth is fighting for survival so that it can reproduce and its genes can carry on for generations to come. For instance: if you come across a tiger, it will either run away or kill you. It’s instinctual to that tiger that it must protect its’ survival somehow – either by fleeing or by fighting. Plants are no different. Except that plants can’t flee. So what does a plant do to ensure that you or some other animal doesn’t eat it into extinction? It fights.

To fight for survival, it creates chemical compounds that, inside you, act like the drunk jerk-off at your party. They break the lamp, they instigate bad behavior from other guests, & they leave their mark after the party’s over.

If you’re eating gluten free, you already know about how gluten is one of the biggest jerk-off’s there is – every person on the planet reacts to gluten, those who react more significantly are the ones who test positively for gluten intolerance or Celiacs’. But be clear!…gluten does not break down in anyone’s body well. It unlocks the tight junctures of your stomach lining, allowing for tiny food particles to slip through into your bloodstream. These food particles go places they shouldn’t – like your joints, your ovaries, your pancreas, etc. Your immune system goes after them because, well, they’re not supposed to be there. And there you have rheumatoid arthritis, PCOS/infertility, cancer, and so on.

I can’t stress it enough. You do not function your best with gluten in your life. Period. 

Now, looking beyond gluten – there’s another jerk-off who broke your lamp at your party.

Who Invited The Jerk-Off?

Grains contain chemical compounds aptly called “antinutrients” because they are just that – anti-nutritional/opposite of nutritional. These chemical defenses include gluten, but also include lectins & phytic acid, which disrupt your digestion, cause inflammation, and prevent you from absorbing vital nutrients and minerals.

Mark Sisson clarifies: Lectins’ stickiness allows them to bind with the lining, particularly the villi, of the small intestine. The result? Intestinal damage(with impaired cellular repair potential), cellular death as well as compromised intestinal villi, which means reduced absorption of other nutrients, including minerals and protein.

Add to this altered gut flora, which can allow certain harmful bacterial strains like E. coli to run rampant. Furthermore, because the body is now responding full-time to the needs of the injured gut lining, proteins and other resources are redirected from other basic growth and repair processes. In addition, lectins have been associated with leptin resistance, a pre-diabetic condition linked to obesity.

If  we lost you in there, know this…lectins eff things up in your gut. Why would you invite that jerk-off into your gut? Your immune system is mostly housed in your gut, which lectins are messing with. Lectins, like gluten, open up your gut a la ‘leaky gut syndrome’ – setting the stage for autoimmune mayhem<–es no bueno. Antinutrients take up your body’s attention so that it can’t do growth & repair – growth & repair applies to how you recover from workouts, but even more so, it applies to aging. You look & feel old when your cells are no longer regenerating at the rate they were in your very young youth.

Maybe you’ll never develop these serious conditions…but sadly, at the rate of development in the US (like obesity) it’s likely you’ll end up in the sick & fat camp if you don’t do something about it now. But let’s just say you don’t get really fat or really sick. How can lectins bug you? Maybe, like gluten, you’re less sensitive to lectins than others – the cold you hang on to for 3 months…the excessive soreness in your body…the head fog you can’t shake some days…the menstrual issues that are painfully irritating…the ADD-like attitude of you or your child…maybe that’s all that will happen to you. But what if eliminating or significantly reducing your antinutrient intake allowed you to experience none of those things?

And if none of that gets you, maybe there’s vanity in you that doesn’t want to look like an old fart even though you are one! People who live a healthy lifestyle look younger. Period. No cream or potion is better than the effects of a good diet on your skin. 

But here we go gang, we’re bringing it home, here’s my plea to you:

How awesome do you want your health, wellness & performance to be? Do you want your life to be ‘fine’ or ‘optimal’? Do you want to be pro-active in fending off disease potential? How fit & healthy do you want your later years to be?

If you want to be as awesome in your health as possible, if you want to rise above ‘fine’ to be ‘optimal’, if you want to fight like hell to have a body that disease simply can’t live in, if you want to be 90 and rockin’ out to the Foo Fighters while driving your car around town, then you need to keep striving to make your exercise & nutrition more healthy.

As you learn new things about achieving optimal wellness, you need to apply them, so that you continually step up to greater heights of optimal health. And if that means taking another look at exactly what those ‘heart healthy whole grains’ are (not) doing for you, you should do it. What have you got to lose? And if you absolutely hate what going grain-free does for you, you can always go back to them.

If Not Grains, Then What?

If you’re a sedentary to slightly active person, you’re capable of sustaining your energy almost entirely from protein, fat & vegetables. General carb needs are less than 70g of carbs/day.

If you’re a into mid-length endurance activities, you’ll also do fine mostly running on protein, fat & veggies – but you’ll also have the room and the need for some starchy vegetables like sweet potatoes, and a bit of fruit. General carb needs are 100-150g of carbs/day.

If you’re a marathoner or Ironman-type triathlete, you’ll absolutely need starchy vegetables as a big source of carb energy to fuel training and recover from the calorie depletion. There are athletes doing these distances entirely grain-free- if you still insist of some kind of grain, consider significantly limiting the amount of grains you eat in favor of a greater consumption of sweet potatoes and other starchy vegetables. General carb needs are 150-200g of carbs/day.

For ideas on how to create meals that do not include grains, search through the archives of my Paleo category, as I have 30 days of meals listed there as part of the 30-day challenge I did in May of this year (while training for & PRing a 10mile race totally grain-free). There may be days that are uncomfortable as you transition from insulin-dependent grains to protein, fat & vegetables but keep in mind. As you’re taking out the grains, you’ll need to add in more of the other stuff. Getting more protein, fat & vitamins from veggies & fruits is a good thing!!

I’d love to hear what hurdles you overcome as you figure out how to eat grain-free! Please share your experience so the rest of us can possibly get some new ideas on great meals for living grain-free!

In addition to the busy-ness of the gym, I’m moving! And yes…getting threatened with stiff $ penalties if my apartment walls are not back to builder-white has been prioritized by me as greater than blogging. But I’m here now! So let’s get talking!

I was organizing the office last week, and while I was organizing the notebooks we have, one had the papers flipped so the back page was facing out. And on it had been written the first half of a day’s food journal – my food journal, actually. When I found that food journal, I read it and laughed while simultaneously shaking my head. “No wonder…” I thought. Here’s what my journal listed:

Bfast: Oats (steel cut) with berries and honey
Snack: Apple with almond butter, nuts (probably almonds or cashews)
Lunch: Caprese salad, asparagus
Snack: Gluten free crackers

Why do you think I laughed at this list & thought ‘no wonder?’…It looks like pretty decent food, right? I mean, it’s definitely not McD’s!

We’ll explore several variables that are ‘less than optimal’ with that food journal over a few blog posts (because you’ll glaze over if we do this all in 1 go) & it’s my hope that you’ll learn from my early mistakes & make more optimal choices for your meals and snacks.

So what’s wrong with that list of food? It’s just one big insulin-spiking roller coaster that contains very little protein or fat and a whole lotta carbs. It has approx. 34g of protein, 35g of fat and 100g of carbs. Remember I still had dinner to get through (where there would have been another grain + protein) to add to these totals. Compare that to today, when I don’t eat 100g of carbs in an entire day, I eat 2.5x that amount of fat, and eat 3.5x that amount of protein. And I’ve gotten significantly healthier since changing how I eat from that early food journal when I’d just gone gluten free.

Whether you’re on the Paleo bandwagon, the gluten free band wagon, or no wagon at all – one thing you simply must understand if you are to understand how food/lifestyle plays into health/wellness.

Inflammation is at the root of almost* all disease.

*the scientific theory does not allow for a definitive statement unless every variable has been proven/disproven. Since new diseases are still emerging, we cannot say all, but for the top killers of humans- heart disease, stroke, diabetes, and even cancer – look to inflammation first.

Here are 2 ways to create inflammation in your body. (There are other ways, but we’ll leave those for another time)

1. Eat foods that spike your blood sugar, causing lots of insulin to be released into your blood stream.

2. Eat foods that contain pro-inflammatory compounds in them.

Let’s take apart #1: When you eat a food, it breaks down into smaller components as you digest it. Eat a food that breaks down as a simple sugar (carbs do this) & your body has to send out insulin to deal with the spike in blood sugar. Because, you see, you no live long time if you have sugar for blood.

You don’t eat many sweets you say, eh? How about your whole wheat bread (2 slices raise blood sugar more than 2 Tbsp table sugar), your rolled oats (because you already know those ‘instant’ oats are not as healthy)…sorry, same deal- blood sugar spike, your side of fruit along with your yogurt (sigh…sorry Charlie, fruit is full of fructose & most yogurts have 8g of sugar or more)…and all those cheery little gluten-free goodies like gluten free pasta/crackers/bread/cookies/etc.? oh this is so not good, those spike your blood sugar even more than the whole wheat bread. Total bummer right? Initially, I agreed…yes, bummer.

But when I looked at what those silly little gluten free foods were doing for my wellness and performance, I was willing to try something different. What wasn’t working for me? Well, at the time I wrote that food journal, I was gluten free, but I was unknowingly relying on sugar to keep me going all day. No, I wasn’t eating sweets at every turn. I was eating grains at breakfast daily, as a small part of lunch or afternoon snack (usually tortilla chips or GF crackers) and a few nights a week quinoa would show up on the dinner plate.

Grains break down as glucose in your blood stream. Whole9 says it well in their Grain Manifesto: “When too much blood sugar is present in the system, your body quickly runs out of places to store it as useful energy, and will store any excess as body fat.

In addition, when too much insulin is present in the system, the cells in your body become desensitized to the hormonal “message” insulin is trying to send. Since the message isn’t getting through, your pancreas is prompted to release even more insulin when your body doesn’t need it.

Finally, chronically high insulin levels lead to a condition in which your body has trouble releasing the energy already stored in your cells. This is a bad place to be. If (via a diet high in carbohydrates) this pattern continues, insulin levels continue to rise, fat stores continue to grow and the body becomes completely incapable of responding to its own directions.”

Does that make you re-think that pre/post-long run bagel or your gluten free crackers and cheese afternoon snack? *For the record: I’ve leaned out more since cutting the grains in my diet way, way down. No, it’s not hard, you just have to learn what you’re doing. Vegetables and potatoes provide ample carbs for the diet of even an active person.

I’m also not “hangry” anymore. Hangry: ‘hungry’ + ‘angry’ = “hangry” <–not a good thing for all parties involved. Hangry-ness happens when your blood sugar is plummeting after a previous skyrocket. Now, I get hungry, but it’s a deep, real hunger of needing nutrients – not a response I’m feeling from my ‘here & then gone’ simple carb snacks. I can go several hours without eating, and am not wrecked from it. I used to eat literally every 90mins some bite, snack or meal would go in my mouth because of the blood sugar roller coaster I was on.

We’ll get to method #2 for creating inflammation in the next post. We’ll look at how you can limit the amount of pro-inflammatory compounds you eat & find more optimal foods that will fuel your body better. Till then, take a good look at what you’re eating – maybe do a food journal for a few days, and see what types of foods you’re eating most. If it’s a carb-heavy diet, take a serious look at how that’s making you feel, look, and perform & consider how a change to your diet could improve on those things.

First of all, I only fully eliminate all those things for 30 days at the start or if I want to tighten up the diet after a period of repeated offending foods. Most people are so quick to write off this way of living & eating that they don’t ever find out that many of us do, indeed eat corn or rice on occasion, that some tolerate dairy (full-fat, grass-fed) quite well, and that we still make delicious food (food I’d bet tastes better than whatever people are re-heating in their stove that came out of a box & calling it dinner).

The fact is, you’ve got to eliminate the foods that cause serious inflammatory conditions to erupt throughout your body in order to know which foods are of no issue for you and which are highly problematic – thus the 30+ days of full elimination at the onset of eating this way.

I know I can do a little dairy once in a while, but if I eat corn or rice, my skin itches for days afterwards. Will itchy skin kill me? Not likely, but the itchy skin is the RESULT of inflammation in my body, and it’s that inflammation that signals ‘things ain’t right’ on the inside. And that could kill me…by way of cancer, heart condition, autoimmune condition, or some other major organ breakdown.

And I’d never know if I didn’t fully eliminate them for a period of time long enough to allow my body to heal a bit. So, before you go writing off this way of living & eating, know that it’s not a restrictive diet. This picture of Robb Wolf’s 2 week haul at the grocery store is proof of that!

Second, if you take some kind of protein, add some kind of vegetable, and some fat – it’s called a meal. We make them using fire in our kitchen called a stove or oven. Every other country in this world spends more time preparing food than Americans do, and we rank above all of them in obesity.

Cooking is not a chore, it’s not a bother, it’s what you need to do as a human to ensure nutrients get into your body. Eat out at Chipotle, the local sushi place, or grab a box from the hot bar at Whole Foods a few times a week if you want, but if you’re going to be healthy, you’re going to need to cook your own food regularly. Save some quick options for weeknights when you need food on the table, like, 10 mins ago….like eggs, ground meat that sautes in 10mins, leftovers you can reheat…but plan on spending 30mins or less making food a few nights a week – if you want to be as optimally healthy as you can.

So from that first comment of “what do you eat??” came this recipe out of this fabulous new cookbook, Paleo Comfort Foods, written by two foodies out of the south who just knew they could make the meals they loved that originally were not the healthiest much, much better. I highly recommend you buy this book if you want to make great food that just happens to be Paleo. Some of the recipes are best saved for special occasions, like birthdays or Thanksgiving, since they require a bit more than 30mins…but wouldn’t it be great to bring a dish to a party and know it’s going to taste awesome AND fit in the “Paleo plan”!

Without further ado, here’s what you should be making this week! Paleo Meatballs (make a bunch, save the rest for an easy snack!) We made this Sunday night with a kale salad…they reminded me of the combination of flavors on the pizza my parents used to order – thin crust, sausage, and green olives. A little zing, a surprising combination of flavors, and very filling! I thought I’d eat most of the batch we made, but I was satiated after 3 meatballs.
PS – These took 20mins from prep to plate, easy enough for a weeknight meal!

Sausage Meatballs

1/2 tsp. red pepper flakes
1 1/2 lbs. ground pork
6 oz. pitted green olives

- Mix pepper flakes with ground pork.
- Measure a Tbsp. of sausage at a time & press firmly into palms to flatten.
- Place olive in middle of flattened sausage & fold around the olive to create a ball. Roll the sausage, using fingers to pinch any cracks together. Repeat with all the meat & olives.
- Bring a dry frying pan to medium-high heat & add balls to pan, leaving room around them to avoid sticking together.
- Turn meatballs every 3 mins or so, for 15-20mins. They should be browned on all sides & cooked through.
- Remove to a clean plate with a paper towel on it to absorb any grease left on the meatballs from cooking. *Once we started cooking these, I could see why you should use a DRY pan….pork releases a LOT of fat, so the pan doesn’t need extra to cook these in.*
- Serve with a warmed kale salad or your favorite veggie side!

That is a giant gummy bear in the picture. Consuming that would be 1 very bad way to regulate your blood sugar. Let’s talk about another…

You probably know that if you eat foods that spike your blood sugar, that’s not good. You may not totally “get” why, but you get the idea…high blood sugar means you ate something that was sugary, and at some level, you know that is not good for you. Right? ok. So did you know this?….

Whole wheat bread raises your blood sugar MORE than 2 Tablespoons of sugar.

It doesn’t matter if it’s fancy 9-grain or the weird wheat bread that is white (gotta trick those kiddies who only want white bread!) Whole wheat bread is a high glycemic index food, and was the main food cardiologist, Dr. William Davis, removed from his patients’ diets when he was trying to help them avoid obesity & its’ related diseases (namely, diabetes and heart disease).

The curious side effect of doing this? His patients reported back in the following months with not just normalized blood sugars (diabetics became NON-diabetics, no sign of the disease at all & no more need for medication!) but they also reported back with:
*major weight losses
*skin rashes they’d had for decades were suddenly gone
*acid reflux clearing up entirely, rheumatoid arthritis pain improved & disappeared
*asthma symptoms were eliminated
*deeper sleep & greater focus was reported
*athletes reported more consistent performance
*and even irritable bowel syndrome so severe a patient was looking at a colon removal – healed within 1 year

Many of his patients were NOT intolerant to gluten based on a blood or saliva test – yet they STILL improved their overall health by removing wheat/gluten from their diet.

Have I got your attention? Given the health stats of the US population, either you see yourself or someone you care about in the list above. This was NOT intended by Dr. Davis to be a study on the removal of wheat/gluten from the diet. He simply wanted to lower, then stabilize, their blood sugar by removing foods that severely raise blood sugar, wheat being one of the biggest influencers of blood sugar.

Once Dr. Davis started seeing consistent results like this, he began to investigate what exactly was going on here. If you look at every disease or condition above, they are ALL rooted in inflammation.

Wheat (and all products made using wheat and all of wheat’s by-products) contain gluten. What we know already is that people with gluten intolerance are highly affected by gluten. It cuts through the gut lining causing food particles to float around the body where they do not belong and set off immune responses that can cause cancer, PCOS, RA, IBS, allergies, reflux, and a list that is miles long of other symptoms.

What Dr. Davis was seeing, and explained so well in his book, Wheat Belly, is that “everyone, to some degree, is intolerant to gluten. Gliadin, the protein within gluten (which is within wheat) has the unique ability to make your intestine permeable. It triggers the release of a protein that handles intestinal permeability. This protein, called zonulin, unlocks the tight junctures of your gut wall & allow for food particles to pass through, making a “leaky gut”.”(1)

Think of it this way: Our stomach is billions of cells linked together by a seam, just like the seams in your clothing. Now remember, whether “intolerant” via a blood or saliva test or not, gluten comes along & once in the gut, zonulin realizes its time to party & comes out of the woodwork.

Zonulin is able to act like a needle and un-stitch the seam of cells in your gut. Breaking down food in your gut is an incredible process, & one that must be tightly controlled. And when the tight junctures of the gut are opened, that food can go anywhere in the body it wants. Once food escapes to other areas of the body, the immune system mounts a response, and if a particle of pizza is sitting near the ovaries, guess who’s under threat of developing some kind of fertility issue?

FYI – there are only a few other things in this world that share the ability to unlock those tight junctures of the gut lining. They include cholera & dysentery. Not the best company to be in, eh gluten?

So, it’s now established that gluten is a total douche canoe when it comes to your gut lining, whether you’re blood/saliva-tested as intolerant or not. But what about the blood sugar deal that started this whole blog post out?

Go back & look at the partial list of conditions above, that Dr. Davis saw improved in his patients. They are all rooted in inflammation. When your blood sugar is dis-regulated, inflammation runs rampant in your body. It will be very difficult to keep fat off your body (due to perpetual hormone imbalances) you will be slow to recover from workouts & athletic performances, & you will be incredibly susceptible to other diseases like heart disease & cancer, if left unchecked long enough.

While the process from high blood sugar to heart disease is a long one best saved for another blog post – understand this – when you ingest a food with a high glycemic index (like wheat bread, sugar, or processed snacks) a flurry of hormones are released to handle this. Because, you see, if that sugar was not managed out of your blood stream, you’d be dead before sunset. You cannot walk around with sugar coursing through your veins.

What foods have as high a glycemic index as wheat bread? Dried, sugar-rich fruits are higher, as are cornstarch, rice/potato/tapioca starch. That’s about it. For what it’s worth – salmon & vegetables have a glycemic index of, essentially, zero. (2)

So your body does what any good body should do – it uses hormones & metabolic responses to mitigate the blood sugar & get things “back to normal.” Well, sky-rocket your blood sugar enough times & you’ll permanently damage the system…enter type-II diabetes. When your blood sugar is dis-regulated, visceral fat (the stuff around your mid-section) starts showing up.

Visceral fat is a truly remarkable in that it deals double, triple, even quadruple blows upon the body.“Unlike fat in other areas of the body, visceral fat provokes inflammatory phenomena, distorts insulin responses, issues abnormal metabolic signals to the rest of the body, and in men, produces estrogen…hello man-boobs,” writes Dr. Davis.

Visceral fat not only produces abnormally high levels of inflammatory signals, but itself as a unit is also inflamed. It is filled with inflammatory molecules that empty directly into the liver, which in turn responds by producing yet another sequence of inflammatory signals. Visceral fat can almost be looked at like another organ…one you did not come with when you popped out of your Momma’s belly. You grew that sucker all by yourself, and it could very well be the organ that kills you (& will certainly be the organ that most disrupts the quality of your life).

So do yourself a favor & learn to manage your blood sugar. Eliminate the foods from your diet that have the highest glycemic index *it’s worth noting that foods on your grocers’ shelves that bear the label of “ADA [American Dietetic Association] Approved” are generally wheat-based & have some of the highest glycemic indices out there….oh what $$ can buy…* And for Gods’ sake, would you acknowledge that there are so many more foods out there that should hold a higher place in your life than gluten? It’s not good for anyone, whether you have the special “gluten intolerant” label on your medical chart or not. 

All I want is for you to live a high quality, optimally fit life – and for you to see that it is NOT HARD to do it without gluten. And if you can save yourself some diseases down the road, or lacking performance in the short-term, then you’re all the better for it. And PS – just because you are not clinically diagnosed as gluten intolerant now, does not mean you won’t develop it down the line. But that doesn’t matter anyways…because every person’s gut is intolerant to gluten regardless of clinical diagnosis.

Dr. Davis listed his resources in his index. Here are the ones I sited today:
(1)Drago S, El Asmar R, Di Pierro M et al. Gliadin, zonulin and gut permeability: effects on celiac and nonceliac intestinal mucosa and intestinal cell lines. Scand J Gastroenterol 2006;41:408-19

(2)Glycemic Index_Human Nutrition Unit, School of Molecular and Microbial Biosciences, University of Sydney: www.glycemicindex.com

Who doesn’t love eggs?? Someone with an egg allergy (which I was worried I was for a short time) but aside from them, almost everyone enjoys some kind of egg dish at breakfast, lunch, dinner, or snack. It’s one of the easiest proteins to cook & eat – often being ready to eat from ‘in the fridge’ to ‘cooked & delicious’ in 5 minutes or less.

‘s a complete protein – which means it has all the amino acids (our building blocks) human need & it has loads of nutrients, including: vitamins A, D, & E, several B vitamins, choline, iron, potassium, calcium, & phosphorous. Choline always stands out to me because it is a nutrients that helps the tissues of the lungs to be smoother & glide better. When any tissue in your body doesn’t glide smoothly – that’s a problem. For the lungs, think asthma-like symptoms – coughing & wheezing.

Choline also helps keep the liver from becoming fatty. A fatty liver is DEFCON 5 on the scale of ‘healthy’ to ‘impending doom.’ Not just alcoholics have fatty livers – diets full of junk food & excessive carbs also can create a fatty liver too.

Thanks to incorrect dietary recommendations from the USDA (avoid saturated fat-filled meats & cholesterol in eggs), most Americans don’t get enough choline in their diet. From egg white omelets to the bizarre Egg Beaters egg-substitutes, to clients who tell me at our first meeting, “I eat healthy, I throw away the yolks when I’m making breakfast”, people are missing the mark on where the true health benefits of eggs are

It’s in the yolks folks. Yes, there’s fat in the yolks. You need to eat it to be optimally healthy. 

This feeds right into another misconception, that cholesterol & fat are bad, and should be avoided. There is so much proof out there as to why that belief is dead wrong, but it is far too big a concept for this little post on eggs, so click here to read more on that topic.

Having a good-sized whack of fat in your meal (here, from eggs: 2 eggs are roughly 12g of fat) not only keeps you more satiated than a meal consisting mostly of carbs or protein or a combo of those two; it also allows your body to receive & work with the signal that ‘fat is coming, use it for energy’.

We have genes that tell our body to burn mostly fat for energy (which is a super thing if you want your body to head to your fat stores on a regular basis & pull from there for fuel). And we have genes that tell our bodies to burn mostly sugars we consume (breads, pastas, cakes & candies – they all break down as sugars) for fuel, negating the desire to go to the fat cells for that energy (i.e. keep the fat you’ve got & always be hungry for something that breaks down as sugar). Which genes get expressed is up to you & your actions.

When you’re an infant, your fat-burning genes are fully running the show. Consider that breast milk is more than 50% saturated fat – it’s not an accident that the most natural food for an infant is mostly fat, and the USDA-scary-saturated fat at that! If babies have a food naturally available to them that is mostly sat. fat. it seems odd that the same nutrient would be shunned in the diet by the time the child is weaned. It’s worth noting that because a baby’s diet is largely fat, this is why avocados are also a great “first food” for baby.

A quick note on what kind of eggs to get, since the egg aisle has exploded with “free range”, “organic”, “omega 3″, and multiple other types of eggs. Omega-3 eggs seem to be the better choice if you can’t get actual farmers eggs from someone you know locally. When hens are fed diets rich in omega-3′s, their eggs contain more of that nutrient – and given that the majority of Americas omega3/omega 6 ratio is desperately out of whack, this can help get much-needed omega-3′s into your diet.

So eat the yolks of your eggs & enjoy every golden-colored, runny egg-over-easy moment of them!

I got home from work at 7:30 tonight. I was very tired. I wanted to just put my head on my pillow & sleep till 3am when I’d inevitably wake up starved because I went to bed without dinner. I had chicken in the fridge. I don’t love chicken, it wouldn’t be that hard for me to not eat it. But then it would go bad & I hate wasting $ more than I hate eating chicken.

So I looked at the clock & guaranteed myself I’d have dinner on the table by 8pm. Thirty minutes Kate, you can do it. You’ll be behind the 8-ball on nutrition if you don’t (since tonight’s dinner = tomorrow’s leftovers) & you’ll have to spend $ on food tomorrow since you didn’t cook your dinner tonight.

So the race was on. Thirty minutes or less, just keep moving. Put the dang dinner on the table. *PS – I wasn’t cooking for anyone else tonight…”but it’s just me so I hate cooking for 1″ is the lamest reason not to cook good, healthy food. You’re not worth it? It would only be worth it if someone else were around? Lame. Cook your dang food.

Turned on the grill. Seasoned the chicken breasts. Put them on the grill.

Sliced an avocado in 1/2, put 1/2 away & cut the other half into cubes in its shell & seasoned it. Set it aside.

Chose an heirloom tomato, washed it, sliced 1/2 of it into cubes. Set it aside. Turned on pan to low, added coconut oil to pan.

Flipped the chicken. Back to the kitchen to wash the kale & slice it. Turned pan to coat it with oil & added kale. Seasoned kale in pan.

Poured wine. Turned the kale.

Took chicken off grill. Put 1 breast on plate. Poured gluten-free BBQ sauce on it (b/c chicken alone just doesn’t fly for me).

Poured kale on plate. Topped with tomato & avocado.

Sat down with wine & food. Looked at the clock – 7:55pm. 25 minutes! That’s it! To put this on the table for myself. It’s that easy. You’ve just got to keep moving once you get home. Don’t sit down, don’t get lured in to the take-out menu’s beckoning calls. Stay strong in your pursuit of eating real, healthy food that brings you one step closer to truly optimal wellness. It simply DOES.NOT. take too long to put food on the table. You’ve just got to do it. 

Remember lunches like that one up there? Deli meat, “ants on a log”, and an iced coffee (not pictured). Well, maybe you didn’t have iced coffee as an 8 yr old…but iced coffee is to an adult as a Capri-Sun juice pouch is to a child…gives you a pep in your step & totally refreshing on a summer day (sadly, the iced coffee is more “natural” than the Capri-Sun).

I was toasted after my death run this morning. And while I knew I needed food, I simply couldn’t stomach a typical Paleo meal of cooked meat, cooked veg & some healthy fat – but what to eat…..the answer to this question in my house is always, “Go to Whole Foods!” Always a dangerous time to be shopping (when hungry), but going to Whole Foods serves 2 purposes: 1. free samples!, duh. 2. guaranteed, you’ll find 10 things that look tasty to eat, as well as buy 8 other things you didn’t realize you needed, but TOTALLY need to buy.

So why was it a death run this AM? I’d say the insane heat & humidity had something to do with it. And the fact that I was severely out of alignment…”out of alignment” means that the adjustment my chiropractor performs to the bones of my spine had slipped, and now one of my spinal bones was pushing against my nerves, hindering their performance and causing my skeleton to be shifted to one side. I was absolutely trashed after our first ever ProKine Performance camp yesterday (but it was SO fun!!) & I ended up falling asleep on the couch watching the Leon’s Triathlon recap on tv. My head wasn’t supported very well, and I woke up with a massive pain in my neck & a clear difference in the height of my shoulders.

Did you know that the first way to tell that you may have a misaligned spine is if one shoulder is higher or lower, if one ear or one hip is higher or lower? The vast majority of people are misaligned, meaning they are loading more weight on one side of their body than the other, and having their entire neurological system negatively affected. 

Huge bummer to be out of alignment for 9 miles of left foot/right foot/repeat. I was mentally down & had major trouble finding the go-get-em needed to get going on my run. In fact, I headed out, got to the edge of my neighborhood, stopped thanks to the searing headache & I-don’t-wanna mentality I had going, turned around, and walked back to my house. I never take pills, but I needed some advil to cut this headache & get my run done. And it was a race against the heat/humidity to get out there and get this thing done. So I needed to be able to go – soon!

I waited 30 mins then headed out again. Still not really wanting to be out there, I shuffled my way out of the neighborhood. 9 miles is a long freaking time to spend with someone who’s being cranky, so I committed to only positive self-talk for the 1st 3 miles to see if I could get over my negative hump. And the weird thing was, while my mind was working overtime to stay positive, I began noticing how easy it was for my legs to go. They turned over so nicely, I felt light on my feet, it seemed just so easy that my mind started to release the negative stuff in favor of how fun & easy my legs felt under me.

And then I saw the local triathlon in progress up ahead on my route – and I get even more pep in my step. Being around others running in a race has such a buzz about it – you get swept up in the excitement! I scared a few race volunteers by continuing straight when they were indicating a turn in the race course – until I called out “I’m not racing!” Through mile 6 I kept crossing that race course so it felt so easy to just keep going.

Then it turned into a death run for the last 3 miles. Little shade for the last 3 miles, heat getting stronger, and no one around to share their energy with me. bleh. My mind felt fine – no dizzy-ness or lightheadedness, so that was good. My legs and feet, however, yuck. It’s at times like these on my runs that I think about how the suffering has got to be a part of solid training program if you ever intend to improve. It’s similar to pushing through the discomfort of a strength exercise – those last few reps burn & hurt – but if you stop when the burning starts, you’re missing the most important reps! That’s where the change, the growth, the strength comes.

So onward I went. Suffering. Sweating. I have no idea how slow I was, it would be stupid to wear any tracking device today, surviving the run would be data enough. And I did- survive that is. Maybe ‘death run’ is a little exaggerated since 2/3 of the run went well, but when you feel like you’re running on the surface of the sun for the last 1/3 – well, the name sort of fits.

I made it home & saw that while painful, I made it in reasonable time for 9miles. Lovely. Fast forward a few hours to the Whole Foods trip. I got lots of wonderful things to make what I’m calling a “throwback lunch.” You know you ate this stuff when you were a kid. Light. Finger food style. No cooking required. I have a hard time eating much on super hot days – but I make the best choices I can.
For this meal, I used:
-organic celery…non-organic celery is ravaged with pesticides, this is one veg you definitely want to buy organic.
-sunflower seed butter…I’m 98% nut-free now, having an auto-immune issue with the gluten intolerance, nuts are somewhat negative on my body, and I found I’m having less symptoms when they’re out of my diet. AND, the Maranatha sunflower seed butter with a hint of sea salt is damn good.
-dried cranberries…rather than use raisins for your “ants” on your “log”, use dried cranberries! the combo of the whole thing in your mouth reminds you a bit of an old-school PB&J
-natural deli turkey slices…I buy Applegate Farms because they are guaranteed gluten & casein free. I can’t get the meat they slice at the deli counter because they slice meats that have gluten in them on the slicer & it would contaminate the meat I’d be getting.
-Annie’s Horseradish Mustard…Annie’s does lots of gluten-free mustards & sauces. I squeezed mustard onto the center of the deli meat, then rolled them up.

And this meal was perfect! On a normal day, I’d definitely eat more, but when it’s that hot out, I just can’t do it. My meals are light, smaller, & need to keep me refreshed since I feel as dry as the Sahara after sweating it out for 9 miles. Why don’t you try a throwback lunch/snack yourself sometime this week? For yourself or your kids. Unlike many kids meals – there’s no fake stuff, no packaged garbage, still nutritious, & still made from whole foods! And it’s Paleo!