First, I’ve been MIA lately because other priorities have kept me away…as I’m reminded at times, writing my blog doesn’t earn me money {YET…people who give out book deals, are you listening?} so I’ve been heavily involved in projects that are totally awesome, and do happen to make me money. Girl’s gotta pay the bills, right?

You may know that I’ve been working with Drew to open our first gym, if not, you do now! It’s called ProKine Performance, and is a performance training facility that caters to individuals who want to achieve optimal performance in their sport, in their life, and in their health. You can learn more about us here & here. We “grand open” on Sat. Nov 12th & our classes begin Nov. 14th, so suffice to say, from before the sun comes up till well after it goes down, my time has been tied up.

But I’ve missed writing. When I don’t write,  I try to tie up those around me (usually Drew) in what is essentially a verbal Op-Ed piece of why I think (x) is crazy or how I wish folks understood (y) so they could have a healthier/fitter life. It usually involves wild hand movements & elevated voices (mine). It’s entertaining, but is commentary that could be used far more constructively. So, let’s get to the topic I’ve chosen for today, you can read up, & if you live anywhere in IL, I hope we’ll see you at our grand open party on Sat! Contact me through the contact page of this blog, on Facebook, Twitter, or email if you’d like info.

Here we go! So, it would be logical to assume- if you want a crystal clear lake to swim in or fish in, you need to not let the local sewage line run into it, no one can be allowed to dump in the lake & you need a good ecosystem so you don’t get a layer of algae across the top of the lake.

Take that same analogy to your body & it’s performance (performance being ‘health’ ‘sport’ or ‘lifestyle’) & draw some parallels. Not letting the sewage line run into it your body means keeping to a minimum the toxins that enter your body. Think:

• cleaning products with harmful chemicals in them
• phthalates & sulfates in your moisturizer & soaps
• toxins on and IN your non-organic produce

Sure, you may only use the cleaning product with harmful chemicals in it once a week, but that exposure builds up over time, & your body must process it in some way.

And what about absorbing phthalates through your skin? Many chemicals in beauty care products are endocrine-disruptors, meaning they upset the balance of hormones, & they absolutely can interfere with your health. From something as minor as perpetual skin irritations from the chemicals, to cancer, phthalates & their synthetic chemical buddies really should be minimized to reduce potential risk to your health. Use this site to check out your beauty & body products to see if they’re safe.

As for organic vs. non-organic, sure sometimes, you may not be able to swing it cost-wise. But there are a Dirty Dozen that you should ALWAYS strive to buy organic, or buy extremely infrequently if buying non-organic. And you can’t just look at organic vs. not. You must also be educated about GMO produce – genetically modified food, the alteration of which, usually includes a pesticide growing within the fruit or vegetable. Did you know that if you’re not buying beets that are organic (which means they are non-GMO), you’re eating beets that have a pesticide growing from within them, which means you must ingest the pesticide, and that the pesticide can attach itself to your gut lining. FYI – your gut does not like having pesticides in it.

So you’re not going to let the sewage line run into your lake, then you must also not allow dumping in your like…that means your mouth is not a garbage can. Don’t stuff it like it is one.

• Obviously, junk food like fast-food, candy, and fried stuff should be out.
• Did you know some of those “healthy” foods you eat are actually filled with antinutrients? (yeah, ANTI-, meaning ‘AGAINST’)

Think of this analogy: If a tiger feels like you’re threatening it, it will either kill you or run away to save itself. Everything in nature has a defense system to ensure it reproduces. Plants system involves having toxins in them that irritate the annoying person or animal who ate them, to discourage them from continuing to eat them, and thus allowing the plant to continue to reproduce.

Apple seeds have cyanide in them & a hard protective shell, wheat (and other grains) have antinutrients called phytic acids, which binds to minerals and makes them unavailable to the body. Specifically, it binds to things like calcium, magnesium, zinc, and iron. And lest you forget, gluten (found in all wheat-based products, also in wheat-related grains) unlocks the tight junctures of your gut – no matter who you are, no matter if you have an immune response to gluten or not – meaning you develop a ‘leaky gut’ when you consume gluten. So…you’ve got that going for you! Read a more detailed write-up of antinutrients here.

And once we’ve ensured we have addressed the ‘no sewage lines’ thing for our lake & we’re not dumping in our lake, we’ll make sure the ecosystem is spot-on so all the good stuff can flourish & the bad stuff doesn’t overtake it.

• Think probiotics, digestive enzymes, hydrochloric acid to support digestion/absorption.
• Think fermented foods like sauerkraut to further support the probiotic culture in your gut
• Think fish oil for your omega-3′s & minimizing nuts & oils like canola, safflower, soybean & sunflower which are high in omega-6′s.

Because 99.995% of the country has had vaccines, antibiotics, birth control, recreational drug use, and/or excessive consumption of sugar and yeast in their lives – our guts ain’t what they should be – what they were when we were born (if we were breast fed….if we werent’…we’re up a creek from the get-go, so this is even more important).

A probiotic lays down the right bacteria in your gut so the food coming in can be absorbed properly. I take 1 with each meal. I also buy one that is shelf-stable, and that has 20 billion strains per capsule. You can read what I do, then decide what’s right for you.

A digestive enzyme does what it says, brings the right enzymes into your digestion so you can break down foods and get the nutrients out – because it does you no good if you just poop ‘em out! I take 1 with each meal, NOW Brand makes a ‘digestive super enzyme’ that is pretty spot-on.

HCl (Hydrochloric acid) is needed for most folks because we simply do not make enough HCl on our own to, again, breakdown and absorb food. I take 1 with each meal, and again, NOW Brands makes some enzymes that include HCl or ‘ox bile’ which is exactly what it sounds like.

Fermented foods were the probiotics your great-grandma used before we capsulized everything. Store-bought sauerkraut is fine, just make sure you read your label & it didn’t have any junk added to it. They last about 4 months in the fridge, once opened. There’s other fermented foods to eat, but why worry about them when you get to eat sauerkraut

It’s been found that most folks omega 3:omega 6 ratio is 1:100 or worse. *It should be 1:1 or 1:2 at the most.* When you eat food in restaurants that is always cooked an industrial seed oil high in omega-6, eat lots of nuts or nut flours (if you’re eating nuts every day, I’m talking to you), or eat processed foods that use these industrial seed oils – you’re getting way, way, way too much omega-6. A good omega-3 supplement (Carlson brand is a good one) is needed to combat this, as is minimization of omega-6 foods/oils. Why too much omega-6 is bad: omega-6 is pro-inflammatory, omega-3 is anti-inflammatory. Inflammation is at the root of most diseases. So you decide – nuts now but disease potential later? or a varied diet rich in oily fish and fish oil supplement now and reduced risk of disease via inflammation later?

So yeah, there’s a lot of stuff you can and should be doing to keep your health that relates to your gut. Without your gut, your immune system is compromised since most of it resides in your gut, as do most of your happy-hormones (i.e. serotonin). You can workout all you want, eat a reduced calorie diet or do hot-yoga till the cows come home – but if you don’t care for your “lake” that is your gut, you’re missing out on a key part of life-long health.

And the best part? It’s really not hard once you get in the habit of eating the truly healthy foods, supplementing correctly, and avoiding those toxic, pro-inflammatory, antinutrient filled foods.

It’s wonderfully rich, somewhat tart, thick, creamy, protein packed!, yogurt  that makes regular yogurt look like a pansy. It’s the base for the Honey Berry Bowls & can serve as the base for dips, sauces, breakfasts, even pies!

Greek yogurt has double the protein of most yogurts, meaning it will keep you full longer, and will send more of the stuff to your muscles that help to grow them & maintain your metabolism. It’s also way lower in sugar, providing you get the simple versions like plain or vanilla. When you start getting into fruit-mxed-in types & honey already in there, you will invariably start raising the sugar content of the product. Do yourself a favor & get the simple version then add your own honey & fruit.

But back to Yoplait. I found one at my grocer this week, and compared it to my fave, Stonyfield Farm’s Oikos.

You should know if you’ve read this blog long enough that front of the label packaging & even the nutrition label doesn’t always tell the whole story. The very first thing I took a look at was the ingredients list. In the Oikos Greek Yogurt, the ingredients are: 

CULTURED PASTEURIZED ORGANIC NONFAT MILK.  CONTAINS FIVE LIVE AND ACTIVE CULTURES INCLUDING L. ACIDOPHILUS, BIFIDUS, AND L. CASEI.

So, you’ve got organic milk & some some probiotic cultures swimming around together to make that Greek yogurt.

Here’s what’s in the Yoplait Greek Yogurt.

INGREDIENTS: CULTURED PASTEURIZED GRADE A NONFAT MILK, MILK PROTEIN CONCENTRATE, KOSHER GELATIN, VITAMIN A ACETATE, VITAMIN D₃

If one company can do a product using essentially 1 ingredient – milk – why does another company need other stuff added to make their supposedly same product? Because it’s not the same product and it may not be the same quality. Know that it’s up to YOU to do the reading, the learning, and the product-comparison-checking to make sure you’re getting the most food for your dollar, the most bang for your health food buck!

It’s like we need to see it for ourselves, with our own lab rats, for it to be “real science” for us.

Take this article from Time. Anyone practicing naturopathy, integrative medicine, Eastern medicine, and other similar practices has known for a long time just how critical intestinal bacteria or “gut flora” is to overall well-being, weight, energy, and so much more. People practicing these types of healthcare also know just how imbalanced the flora becomes due to many things in the Western lifestyle – antibiotics, The Pill, diet, stress all alter the make-up of the intestinal flora.

Gut flora is made up of both good/helpful & bad/damaging-if-overgrown bacteria that do all kinds of things to help the body function (or make it nearly impossible to function if imbalanced). Gut flora assists in absorbing nutrients for use in the body, sending out the proper amounts of chemicals that allow the body to run a cycle called the Krebs Cycle, which gives the body much needed by-products of water & ATP (aka energy), sending signals to the body to crave certain foods & not others (like sugary foods!) as well as assist in helping the body to assimilate & expel what is delivered to the stomach (meaning, it helps organize the food so it gets connected where it’s supposed to & then gets expelled through the intestines).

Think this isn’t a big deal? I had to re-balance my gut a few years ago due to several chronic health issues, some minor, some not so minor, and the recovery was challenging indeed because of the severe cravings that the bad flora was giving me as it was dying off. I fought a Candida overgrowth, with my naturopath, that gave me some fabulously large sugar cravings while it was dying off – since the Candida feeds on sugar, it makes you crave what it needs to survive as you’re killing it, so the mental fortitude it took to keep sugar, excessive fruit,  & simple carbs at bay was intense. Then, I needed to re-balance my stomachs’ pH which made me feel as if I was tipsy anytime I had a grain of some sort & fought fatigue & dehydration as the pH of my body was becoming more alkaline. Point being, your gut flora is no small potatoes.

The Time article outlines how having imbalanced gut flora really does play a role in a persons’ weight – the study noted in the article showed how obese people have different gut floras than those who are of a normal weight. So how do you know if you have a gut imbalance? Why get yourself to a naturopath of course! Self-diagnosis may seem effective & simple, by just reading a list of symptoms online, but knowing exactly where the problem lies & what supplements, foods, or treatments your body needs to re-balance & heal is not that easy. What you want to look for is an integrative physician near you, or a chiropractor who is trained in naturopathic care, applied kinesiology or Eastern Medicine. Think booking a visit for something that may or may not be covered by insurance is just too much right now?

That’s what I thought, until I realized I’d be spending more & suffering more if I continued down the Western Medicine front. Getting to the root (or in this case, the intestines of it all) makes a MAJOR DIFFERENCE in the road to optimal health. It’s worth more money than you’ll have to spend.

And if you’re not taking probiotics & digestive enzymes, then you’ve got something really easy you can start with! Go to your local health food store & talk to them about probiotics & enzymes – they make a vital difference by assisting your body to breakdown, assimilate & expel food as it comes in. This can help things like gas or bloating, body fat & lean muscle tissue ratios, energy levels, frequency of sickness or colds, and much more.

So congratulations to intestinal bacteria – they’ve known for centuries just how important they are – but now they are finally getting their press. Maybe this will help more people realize that weight loss, fitness, energy levels & mood are more complex than just calories in/calories out & mental fortitude to pass by the doughnut counter (although that’s a vital step too!)

Yes, we found a sushi bar in Mexico & yes, it was good.

No this does not totally describe me right now. Not totally. Too many margaritas? Yes. But I like to workout, vacation or not, and I just can’t eat crazy things like many people would do on vacay due to the Gluten-Free thing & because I just wouldn’t eat until I was stuffed…ever.

But coming back from vacation where workout schedules, nutritional profiles, and vitamin/supplement routines were anything BUT routine – this is my chance to share with you exactly how to get your body back to “optimal” after it’s been bombarded by alcohol, extra calories, too little water, and only a few workouts to balance all the laying on the beach.

Does this only work after you come back from vacation & are ready to get on track? Nope! In here you’ll find the perfect Tips for getting back on track after any absence from ‘optimal’ i.e. when the New Year is looming quickly & you are realizing you need to get truly serious about your health, wellness & fitness.

Bouncing Back to Optimal: The Guide

1. Start sending breakdown & repair signals as soon as possible. i.e. go for a workout – cardio or weights – it doesn’t matter which.

• If your body has been sedentary for days or weeks, simply getting a renewed signal to it that says “Hey, there’s some extra workload now. We better burn off a few of these calories. While we’re at it, we better break down this old decaying stuff & start rebuilding with newer materials!” will be the catalyst you need to start boosting your metabolism again.
• What to do:
  • Go for 35-60 mins at a pace of strength training or cardio that you can do throughout, but DON’T go at the same pace the whole time. Break up the intensity like a rolling hill, rising then recovering then rising again.

2. It’s critical to re-balance your gut – failing to do so will decrease the effectiveness of any healthy food or supplement.

• Any period of time of excess – drinking, eating – not only adds lbs., it can massively affect your gut health (your stomach & intestines). Your gut is only secondary to your brain in quantity of nerves & vital functions. Mess this up & the whole kit-and-caboodle is messed up i.e. functions you’d never relate to your gut go hay-wire. 
• Commonly, in a gut that has taken on the excesses of food & drink, you’ll find an overgrowth of Candida(a yeast normally found in the gut, but when allowed to over-produce, it wreaks havoc throughout the body), an imbalanced pH, & possibly even a development of food allergies/sensitivities.
• Candida overgrowth result in a myriad of symptoms: recurrent yeast infections, oral thrush, brain fog, congestion, stomach upset, skin irritations, and more things than I can list on this page.
• pH balance regulates your entire body – get the wrong pH going in your blood, and you die. Imbalanced pH in the gut messes with the body’s functions for producing energy & water – the two things you need to survive.
• Food allergies/sensitivities can develop from an overconsuption of a certain food or food type, or from the body missing out on key vitamins & minerals to break down said food & thus the body views it as an inflammatory response & attacks, rather than befriends the food.
• What to do:
  • **Getting on a probiotic as soon as possible will help re-populate the gut with friendly flora, thus leading your gut ecology closer to a balanced atmosphere where the good flora can do their thing & keep the “bad” flora to a minimum. And as I’ve said before, Activia does not count – that’s just a sugar-filled yogurt dressed up in a savvy-marketing dress.
  • **Consider taking digestive enzymes. When taken at the start of the meal, they send the proper enzymes to the gut, who may not be making enough of their own, & help to break down the food as it comes. This is important because if you’re eating a banana, or a piece of chicken, if you want to absorb the nutrients from the banana or chicken, you need enzymes in your stomach to break them down & use them.
  • Get on your vitamin/supplement schedule ASAP so that a complete spectrum of nutrients is getting into your body & assisting every single function in your body.

3. Run to the foods that will feed your whole body, not just your craving. You got to do enough ‘craving’ in your “off-time.”

• Eating sweets, salty foods, and fatty foods WILL create an increased desire for more of those foods in the future. This is what every food producer knows & thus why most foods sold in fast-food & sit-down places are some combo of sweet, salty and/or fatty.
• Choosing certain foods will provide ample amounts of key vitamins & nutrients that will help you to balance out your body & manage down your cravings for unhealthy foods.
• What to do:
  • Eat the superheroes of nutrition - beets, kale, broccoli, spinach, salmon, blueberries/raspberries, organic pastured eggs, coconut oil, colorful vegetables like red peppers, asparagus & red onion – along with lean/clean proteins & healthy fats from olive oil, real butter, & real dairy.
  • Avoid any foods that promote inflammation (head over to the ‘nutrition’ section for articles on inflammation & food additives for more info).
  • DO NOT SEVERELY CUT CALORIES. You’ll only gain weight in the end. Eat enough to be 80% full at each meal & be sure to eat every 4 hours, at least.
• The superheroes of nutrition all help balance your pH by creating an alkaline environment in your body, as well as bring you great nutritional properties such as:
• …beets - full of K2, which sends calcium everywhere it’s supposed to go (the bones), and nowhere it’s not supposed to go (the heart), as well as play a role in supporting the adrenals & thyroid…
• …kale- rich in vitamins A,K, & C and acts as an internal detoxifier & has been shown time & again to lower the chance of getting cancer.
• …coconut oil- rich in lauric acid, found also in mothers’ milk, it helps support a healthy metabolism & acts as an anti-fungal, anti-viral, anti-microbial…can’t think of a better way to boost immunity than this!
• …real butter & dairy - NOT “I Can’t Believe it’s not whatever” & not not-from-nature-pink yogurt – the real deal foods are where you’ll find the healthy properties of high protein (yogurt), lauric acid & easily absorbable vitamin A to assist in adrenal function (butter), even more probiotics to boost gut health (yogurt), lecithin- which assists in cholesterol metabolism & Activator X-which helps in mineral breakdown/use in the body (butter).

4. ASAP make a date with your Blackberry/iPhone/PDA to set dates to sweat almost every day of your life, till death do you part.

• I can’t stress it enough people, your body needs regular, repeated signals of exertion to trigger the flood of rebuilding chemicals in your body & to slow the decay chemicals. Every species on the planet is here today because they evolved through actions or non-actions; had we been lazy a million years ago, and not taken action in life to hunt, gather, and run from killer animals, we’d probably not look like the humans we see today. If the rate of overweight & obese people in this world continues to rise, humans a thousand years from now will either cease to exist or will exist as something new- fat, slothenly walruses types.
• I’m proud of you if you start by taking a walk around the block, but remember, you must work hard enough to break a sweat. It doesn’t have to be a buckets of sweat workout, but enough to perspire & feel like you’re working. It’s called a WORKout for a reason. If it were called a RESTout, it would be easy. It’s a workout folks, make it hard. If you don’t know how, search this site for workouts in the Tip of the Week section, the fitness section, and/or contact me directly for personal coaching.

Start on these things immediately & you will begin to feel a change in your body in 24 to 48 hours – IF you get your mindset right. If you do this kicking & screaming the whole way, then don’t even do it because you won’t feel any different except to feel deprived. But! If you want to feel great, look great, and live an optimal well life – then I say, welcome back! Let’s get this baby going!

**While writing this week’s tip, it hit me how much more I have to say on this topic. Keep checking back for follow-up Guides, or possibly even an e-book, depending on just how much I really do have to say on just these 4 Tips (and I can already think of a bunch of other things to off-shoot to you from here) so I hope you’ll stay connected to Fit For Real Life as we finish out 2009 & swing into 2010!