What can I eat????
With all the conflicting information, misinformation, and disinformation out there regarding nutrition, to someone who is just starting out on changing their diet to lose weight or get healthy, it can make their head spin! 
Vegan is a huge craze right now, especially with the movie “Forks Over Knives” that just came out. (I haven’t seen it yet, but I intend to “stomach” it and view it sometime soon).
The movies and books promoting the vegan diet are usually well-intentioned. And, they even provide a place for those eating the Standard American Diet (SAD) to go and get healthier. Going from eating lots of sugar, and getting the bulk of your calories from grains and processed foods, to a plant-based diet is no doubt a step up in health.
But is it possible to get even healthier?
Of course!
The vegan diet is so restrictive, that you pretty much have to eat grains to survive. And grains, especially wheat, as we know are the cause of so many problems including “wheat belly” and other nasty maladies!
So then what? Well, as we have discussed on the Healthy Mind Fit Body podcast, the healthiest diet will be one consisting of a variety of meats, veggies, fruit, some nuts and seeds, and some dairy if you are able to tolerate it.
It’s really not that complicated. And, this “diet”, whether you want to call it paleo, primal, or low carb, actually allows for a whole lot of tasty foods and interesting variety!
I hear a lot of people who truly want to know what is best, and REALLY want to get to their perfect weight, get confused at what is “good” and what isn’t. There are a few points that are really important to grasp no matter where you are in your journey, to make sure to make the positive changes permanent:
1. If you have followed the USRDA or the S.A.D., you are addicted to sugar. You must lose that addiction! This doesn’t have to be as hard as it may sound, or even that you can never have the taste of sugar on your lips again. As you replace you sugars with healthy fats, you will start to miss sugar less and less.
2. If you have transitioned to veganism, you may have to get over your fear of meat. Meat has certainly been demonized from many angles, particularly after the now-debunked China Study came out a few years ago. However, ancestrally speaking, it’s what we as humans were meant to digest. And, this idea that you will get sick if you transition from a vegan diet to one with meat is also a myth! You may have a transitionary period where things aren’t perfect for a while, but this would also happen if you were quitting sugar. Hardly a bad thing!
3. Get interested in vegetables. There are so many of them. You don’t have to be boring.
4. Find what works for you. Get the general gist of paleo/primal/low carb, but don’t become religious about it. If you think something isn’t working for you, remove it from your diet for a month. See what changes happened.
A lot of this will be trial and error. You will learn what works for you.
Do you have any good paleo/primal/low carb recipes you can share for the newbies?
Getting Anything You Want
September 22, 2011 by Kevin
Filed under Uncategorized
I just got a book in the mail from Amazon that I ordered called “Getting Anything You Want” by Derek Sivers. I read a few pages last night and so far I’ve picked up on a few things. It’s mainly focused on business, and how he has been able to create a business in a less-traditional way, one in which he unintentionally built a business based on a hobby and sold it later for $22 million!
How he did this is by basically throwing out the old rules, and learning from all his mistakes as he went along, instead of analyzing everything to death and never getting out of the starting gates.
What is it that you’ve been wanting?
Politics, Religion, and Nutrition
In our recent interview of Dr. Barry Sears, he brought up something that we have also mentioned on the podcast a few times. 
If you want to get a debate going and even tempers flaring, just bring up one of the topics in the 3rd rail of discussion: politics, religion, or nutrition.
Some people will say to avoid discussions of politics and religion in mixed company. But not many mention nutrition in that category.
I contend that nutrition is the most potentially inflammatory topic of the three!
Here’s why:
1. Most people eat 3 times a day. So, everyone is an expert in nutrition! Even if they eat breakfast at Starbucks, lunch at McDonalds, and dinner at Taco Bell every day. Science be damned, don’t take away my mocha frappachinos, French fries and 7 layer burritos (do those still exist?)!
2. Politics and religion can easily be avoided. Most gatherings involve a meal. Church is only once a week for most religious people. Politics is a little trickier, because it’s talked about on TV 24×7, so you’d think our individual worlds revolved around it! But the truth is, despite all the rhetoric about Democracy, as citizens we have very little control of what our so-called leaders may decide for us. So everyone may have an opinion, but once you realize that all these opinions don’t amount to a hill of beans (or beef?) at a luncheon, it becomes advantageous to move on in the discussion- or take it “off line”.
3. Nutrition is not off limits! It’s completely acceptable to launch into a discussion on food while at a gathering where there is a lot of food eating going on. Typically, I will be prompted to give my opinion because of my part in Healthy Mind Fit Body. However, I’m not a fan of the topic. Not many will be convinced of anything, no matter what one’s credentials are. And I’m sure there are those who will think “What do a couple of goofballs on a podcast who talk about donuts all the time know about eating?” I take solace in realizing that even bio-chemists who spend their lives with this stuff face the same wrath at their dinner parties!
4. The general consensus is, it’s fun to eat poorly! Some events I have been to remind me of my 8th grade. I had always been taught to get good grades, and I was generally in classes with smart kids. But 8th was high school for me, and suddenly it was COOL to get BAD grades! Being the contrarian that I am, I did the bare minimum and ended up on top of the bell curve with mostly A’s that year. So, not much has changed. I’ve been accused of being a carb nazi and even trying to ruin people’s fun because of the things I eat at parties or get togethers. But the funny thing is, I don’t preach- the mere idea of eating what I want to eat often times doesn’t sit well with people. So, in the general consensus case, actual talking doesn’t even have to happen before people get offended!
What has your experience been with the triad of inflammatory topics? Put in your comments below!
Sign Up here and receive:
“The Three Pillars of Achieving Your Perfect Weight Through the Mind-Body Connection” Audio
Kids, Carbs, and Connecting Mind and Body for Health
When it comes to raising kids, sometimes there is not a lot of thought going on. 
Last weekend, I attended my nephew’s 3-year old birthday party. There were probably 15 other kids around his age there. Let’s take a look at what was on the menu:
1. Capri Sun. Ohhh, but this is the 100% fruit juice one! Still, there is probably as much sugar as there is in soda.
2. Corn chips. Yummy, salty, & addictive!
3. Candy, LOTS of candy. In fact, there was not just one, but TWO pinatas, filled with Tootsie Rolls, Dum Dums, Sweettarts, and some unknown white chocolate treats. Kids had pockets full of this stuff that’s usually reserved for Halloween!
4. Pizza! What kids birthday party would be complete without pizza?
5. And of course, cake, because their insulin levels needed to be jacked up just a little more!
I’m pretty sure I was the only one in attendance who saw anything wrong with the eating agenda. And, I know what you might be thinking: “Don’t be such a party pooper! Live a little once in a while!” I do get that this isn’t a daily thing for most of the kids (at least lets hope not). However, I’m looking more at the question of why do we as a society feel that carb craziness is just part of life as a kid, particularly at a birthday party?
I think it comes down to this. Most of us grew up with this same sort of routine carb indulgence around holidays and birthdays. Many still do participate in this on a regular basis. So, we think “we turned out okay, why should I deprive my kid?” Or, it’s simply that questioning the premise here is just too difficult.
Imagine serving healthy snacks like beef jerky, instead of junk food?
What if they didn’t get juice and had to drink…water?
And, wouldn’t it be sac-religious to not have birthday cake??
So it comes down to keeping social connections in tact and not rocking the boat and risking isolation from friends.
You see, it all comes down to self esteem, and being able to individualize when you know what is the best route to take, even if that means going against the stream.
I think there’s a way to “have your cake and eat it too” here (and not even have to serve cake!). Some things can be outright skipped, i.e. pinata hitting can be replaced with another game that doesn’t involve candy. Soda or juice can be sparkling water or even some semi-healthy drinks like flavored coconut water or the low sugar Vitamin Water. Vegetable chips over corn chips, steak instead of pizza, and are you ready….a paleo dessert like this chocolate custard instead of cake!
It all may sound insane at first glance, but a healthy and still fun kids birthday party is all totally doable. You may get questioned by your friends at first, but who knows, you may influence them in some way by leading by example, and showing what a healthy family looks like!
What about you? What do your birthday parties look like?
Sign Up here and receive:
“The Three Pillars of Achieving Your Perfect Weight Through the Mind-Body Connection” Audio
Extremism in Nutrition
Yesterday, a question was posed on a paleo diet forum that I visit. 
This person said she had just started to eat paleo-style, and was really hungry, but felt like she was eating too many nuts so was trying to cut down on them.
Many hard-core paleo types chimed in:
“Yes, stay away from nuts! Just eat big meals and don’t snack, that’s what I do!”
“Eat real foods! Stay away from nuts!”
“Eat more vegetables!”
I’m getting the feeling that some people are starting to get a little extreme on their devotion to all things paleo. First of all, “strict paleo” is a myth. You will never be able to eat true paleo, because it’s impossible- unless you are going to go out and kill the animals yourself, and eat the organs and all!
People wanted to advise this woman to stay away from nuts. Tom me, this idea of staying away from nuts is….nuts! The latest trend seems to be that nuts have too many omega-6 fatty acids and therefore, would throw off the sacred omega6:3 ratio which I hear should be around 3:1 or so.
I have issues with that. First of all, who came up with this ultimate ratio? It seems no different to me than going back to the Zone ratios of 40/30/30, and pretty soon we’re going back to calorie counting obsession!
Of course we do want to get plenty of omega 3 fats in our diets, as they are anti-inflammatory in nature. However, eliminating nuts is not necessarily the pinnacle of health. As Mark Sisson pointed out in his article on Nuts and Omega-6s, “Isolating Omega-6 fatty acids and then exposing them to air or heat is bad dietary policy.”.
So isolating omega-6 fats, rather than eating whole nuts, is the problem.
Now, am I suggesting we all go hog-wild on nuts? No!! It’s better to get your fats from wild caught fish and grass fed beef, and avocados, and a bunch of other things.
But let’s get back to the original question, if someone is hungry all the time, should they be looking to avoid nuts?
This is mostly an individual call. Bigger meals may help here. More veggies may help, so might adding fats like olive oil or coconut oil to meals.
But let’s say you eat lunch around noon most days, and let’s say that you like to exercise around 6pm. For me, I could not go 5.5 hours and still have enough energy to work out without consuming some food beforehand. Can you skip the nuts? Sure, but they are a convenient, filling snack. I also mix in avocadoes, fruit, and even a packaged energy bar here and there. (I can here the screaming now, “OH NO YOU’RE NOT PALEO!!!!”). This works for me. I typically will eat 4-5 times a day. If I eat less, I will usually be hungry.
The point is there is no paleo prescription, there is no perfect macronutrient ratio, or exact times you should or should not be eating.
Once obesity levels are no longer an issue, I say we have an all-out knock-down drag out caveman brawl about the minutia. Until then, by all means go paleo, but keep it in the realm of something that you can do, not something to get all nutty over.
Sign Up here and receive:
“The Three Pillars of Achieving Your Perfect Weight Through the Mind-Body Connection” Audio
The Ancestral Health Symposium (AHS) 2011
Last week, Friday and Saturday, I had the pleasure of attending the first annual Ancestral Health Symposium (AHS) held at UCLA. 
I snuck in as a volunteer!
I had such a great experience overall and wanted to blog some of the highlights here.
There was a huge list of amazing speakers, and there were 2 tracks so you couldn’t possibly see everything you wanted. Also, as a volunteer, I was unable to attend a few because of the responsibilities I had. But I made it to more talks than I thought I would!
They will be releasing all the talks on video. I’ll post here when they do. But for now, just a few tidbits (going off of memory, as I did not take any notes).
First, the volunteer team was a really amazing group! I felt lucky to have met everyone and hearing everyone’s story and how they arrived at paleo. Overall, the impression I get with paleo/primal types is that they are generally happy and open-minded (rejecting everything you ever thought you knew in the area of nutrition is probably the reason why here!).
I don’t really have a favorite talk, most of the ones I saw were top-notch. However, here are a few that really motivated me:
Mark Sisson/Marks Daily Apple: He spoke about bringing back play into your life. I was so happy to hear this message, as my priority with workouts these days has been to have fun with whatever I’m doing. He made a lot of good points about how it is so important to our health to have fun! Dragging yourself to the gym a few days a week can get old really fast, why not try activities where there is no “goal”, and instead it is just about being in the moment? He discussed this idea of being present, and not being attached to the outcome. It really hit me that playing is a great way to be completely in the moment (he even showed a picture of himself on a paddle board with a dolphin right next to him, on a day when the dolphins were especially playful!).
Erwan LeCorre/MovNat: MovNat is probably the most revolutionary concept at the Symposium. Erwan really knows his stuff and delivers it in a compelling and humorous way. At one point he showed a picture of a mountain lion, and said “What do you think he does, strength training twice a week with a little cardio mixed in?” The overall message was the same one he’s been putting out there- train your body to work with nature. Why are you doing the exercise you are currently doing? What is the purpose? The MovNat message is extremely motivating to me, and made me want to get out there and move naturally, instead of sitting through another talk!
Tom Naughton/Fat Head Movie: Definitely the funniest talk of the weekend, Tom took a shot at both “bad science” and the mainstream media who love to spin stories. He showed a variety of examples of times where correlation does not equal causation- including a study where they “proved” that eating meat causes cancer- but unfortunately were including meat on a pizza as eating meat, without considering everything else! I really liked the end of the talk. Someone in the audience asked how are we going to change things? His answer was to make the government with it’s FDA and USRDA wings irrelevant, by bringing the truth to light!
So many more of the sessions were fantastic and I highly recommend checking out the videos when they are available.
Next year, I’d like to make a push to include a psychology angle that was not presented- self esteem as it relates to weight loss and health. There were a couple of good presentations on how food affects mood and behavior, which is an important topic, but Wes & I could add another dimension to this mind-body equation that is tremendously important to overall health. Hopefully there will be a HMFB talk at AHS12!
Special thanks to Aaron Blaisdell and Brent Pottenger for putting this amazing event together!
No Carb, Low Carb, or Slow Carb?
It gets confusing out there. What should one believe about carbs? If they are so evil, wouldn’t a no carb diet be the way to go?
First of all, let’s assess why carbs would be considered “bad” to begin with. Eating carbohydrates causes your blood sugar to rise, and your body to produce insulin. This insulin, when elevated continuously, will lead to fat storage. And, high carb meals lead to a crash in energy and more hunger only a a few hours later.
So what can we do?
Eliminate carbohydrates altogether? Slow them down? Or just keep them “low”?
The answer to this depends on what your goals are.
Are you 100 pounds or more overweight and addicted to sugar and other carbs? Then it will be important to go without almost all carbs for 2 or 3 weeks, then slowly bring them back in. This will allow you to lose your taste for them, and give you a much better chance at not continuing to go carb crazy! (By the way, the human body can live without carbs, but not without protein or fat).
Then there’s the slow carb approach, which has been made popular from books like the 4-Hour Body by Tim Ferriss. This means sticking to the carbohydrates that take a long time to digest, mostly vegetables and legumes (beans). These are high in fiber and will keep you full longer. But there is a catch. Eating veggies is pretty much undisputed in the realm of health, but legumes are another story. Yes, they are high in fiber. But they contain gut-irritating proteins that cause indigestion and gas for a lot of people.
Finally, there’s the low carb life, which is what we discuss on the podcast. We lump the paleo diet into the low carb category, but in the overall big picture, paleo is not a true low carb diet (just much lower carb than the Standard American Diet, SAD). The paleo diet is an attempt to eat more like our ancestors, emphasizing whole foods over processed, and quality protein like grass fed beef and wild caught fish. Like the slow carb diet, there is no counting of calories. Cavemen and women did that for ages and they didn’t seem to have weight problems.
There are even people talking about combining paleo with slow carb!
So: while there are reasons to go no carb on a temporary basis, low carb/paleo is the best option, where you will get the most overall nutrients, or “bang for your buck”, and experience the least amount of food-related allergies and other health issues.
Unconventional Ways To Lose Belly Fat Fast
You may have heard of all kinds of methods for losing belly fat fast.
There’s doing lots of crunches at the gym. There’s cutting fat out of your diet. There’s “8 minute abs”.
These belly fat trimming schemes have been around for a long time. But they’re not working! Otherwise, people would be getting thinner, not fatter.
Most people are annoyed with their belly fat. In fact, they don’t even want to admit that it’s there! So it becomes a constant state of living in denial. Here are some lesser-known ways to get rid of belly fat once and for all:
1. Start by accepting where you are. Are you 20 pounds over where you’d like to be? Then don’t keep saying you want to “lose 10 pounds”.
2. Don’t even think about exercising harder or more often to lose your belly fat. It most likely won’t help! You may even make yourself more hungry and GAIN weight that you don’t want.
3. Be aware of what you are eating. Don’t count calories, just think about every last thing you put in your mouth, instead of just doing “social eating” or “stress eating” without thinking, and finishing off a bag of chips or pint of ice cream for no reason!
4. Set goals, but don’t tell anyone. It seems counter-intuitive, but if you tell someone your goals, it diffuses them. So, write the goal down, but keep it to yourself- and stick with your plan for at least 30 days to create a new habit.
5. Don’t skip meals (or snacks). Breakfast will set you up for the day. Get plenty of protein in the morning to stay full until lunch. If you get hungry, don’t will power your way to noon, just grab a healthy snack, such as a handful of nuts, until you can eat a meal again.
Give these tips a try for 30 days, see how it goes, and you may be delighted with the results!
The low carb vegetarian diet- is it possible?
I’m a big fan of eating a lot of vegetables. Even the paleo diet and atkins recommend lots of veggies to go along with your meat, despite popular misconception!
However, vegetarians and vegans, who have lately grown in numbers due to the many books promoting these diets, have a big hurdle to overcome. How do you keep your carbohydrate intake to a healthy level if you are avoiding meat?
Well, I will say right off that it is very difficult to do a low carb vegan diet. I mean you CAN do it, but you will be living on lots of nuts! It becomes very imbalanced and you miss out on key nutrients.
Being a low carb vegetarian, however, isn’t that hard to do.
And really, it should be the goal of vegetarians to minimize carb intake, particularly the processed stuff, like bread, cereal, and pasta. All too often, I have been around vegetarians who were not healthy, which kind of defeats the purpose of limiting your diet (of course there are other, non-health related reasons people don’t eat meat, but in that case they may not be as concerned about health issues).
So how do you do it? How do you stay in the low carb living zone while avoiding meat?
I would start with cutting down on these 2 things:
1. Processed foods- breads, pasta, cereal, soda. A lot of packaged foods.
2. High sugar vegetables. For example, corn and carrots are high in carbs while broccoli, kale and artichoke give you more bang for your buck.
Then, add more fat into your diet. I mentioned nuts. Nuts are great, but you CAN overdo them! Avocados are another fairly convenient snack. I also like eating green olives, and adding them to various dishes to increase fat content. In order to do this, you will have to get over any fat phobia you may have!
Finally, eat the fruits that are highest in fiber to keep you full for longer. Papaya, Guava, Cantaloupe, Orange, Apricots (dried, unsulfured), Mango, and Strawberries are great options.
If you don’t eat fish, make sure to supplement with fish oils, rich in omega-3 fatty acids which we need to moderate inflammation.
It’s a bit more of a challenge to go low carb and vegetarian at the same time, but with the right tweaks to your diet, you can be on your way to a healthier body!
Eat fat to burn fat?
Is it possible to eat fat to burn fat?
One of the hardest things for people to get over when it comes to eating a truly healthy diet is that dietary fat is an essential part of eating fat for fitness and weight loss. One of the reasons for this is that the word “fat” just has a bad connotation, and is still connected to body fat. And, I often hear people say that fat has more calories per gram than protein or carbohydrate.
Let’s start with this surprising fact: studies have shown that people eating a diet high in fat will generally lose more body fat and at a faster rate than someone who eats a high carbohydrate, low fat diet.
This is contrary to what we have been taught, and contrary to what the government and other agencies keep telling us. However, it’s true: eating fat does not cause fat gain, and it is quite the opposite that is true!
So how is this true?
Well, it’s all about signals. Eating enough fat in your meals communicates a signal to your brain that you are full, and it’s time to stop eating. Carbohydrates for the most part do not have this same effect, although carbs with fiber will do this (however, there are other problems there that I’ll get into another time!). High glycemic carbs like sugar have the reverse effect, and will actually stimulate hunger!
Here are a few examples of fats that will help you to burn fat on your body:
-Coconut oil
-Avocados
-Almonds
-Walnuts
-Olives
-Animal fat
These fats take longer for your body to burn than carbs. This is where satiety comes in, as well as maintaining high energy levels throughout the day. Eating fats like these will also allow you to get away from the idea that you need “will power” to lose or burn fat, or that you need to spend a lot more time exercising.
It’s also important to mention the insulin factor. High levels of insulin mean more storage of body fat. Carbohydrates generally have your body producing the most insulin to digest. On the other end of that scale, omega-3 fats such as from fish actually help lower your insulin levels.
And, finally and maybe most importantly, fats taste good! (yeah probably didn’t have to tell you this!). You can have your fat and eat it too, despite the common misnomer that if it tastes good, it’s probably bad.
Focus on replacing most of your carbohydrates with healthy fats, and you will be on your way to a fit body!
