Buzzfeed's "Clean Eating Challenge"

Mitch and I have spent the past two weeks doing Buzzfeed's "Clean Eating Challenge," which was basically two weeks of almost-Paleo eating, all real food - no processed food, and a LOT of fiber (I realized later...).

Here is a link to the Challenge: http://www.buzzfeed.com/christinebyrne/clean-eating-challenge

A big part of the reason I wanted to do this challenge is because I needed a "boost" to get back into low carb, healthy eating and Buzzfeed made it super SIMPLE:

1. Every single recipe is planned out for you,
2. along with 2 grocery lists (you go shopping on Saturdays),
3. and the carb counting is already done for me so I knew exactly how much insulin to take before every meal without even having to think about it.

For those three reasons, this was a great diet. We also learned some delicious and nutritious new recipes!

For other reasons, it was not. Here's what I ran into:

1. We ate so many greens and uncooked vegetables that my digestion could not handle it very well. I wish they would have incorporated more cooked veggies or soups that go with salads to help with the digestion factor.

2. We ate a lot more legumes than I am used to eating, since Paleo does not allow legumes. And this seemed to make my bowels go crazy - lots of bloating, gas, and [minor] pain. I discovered that my body does not handle legumes well.

3. I did not lose any weight, though I had hoped to lose some. Maybe this is because I mostly eat healthy anyways? I was at a loss for figuring this one out...

Here is one new food I have never eaten before (that I remember): fennel. And it was delicious in a salad!



So anyways, I'd recommend giving it a try with some of the modifications I mentioned above.

The downside to fermented foods

As a follow up to my last post about fermented foods/drinks, I wanted to share one downside to them that I discovered - and did not read about at all prior to increasing my consumption of them. This downside is teeth sensitivity.

Granted, it should be fairly obvious that acidic foods/drinks are hard on one's teeth. It is just not something that crossed my mind until it happened to me.

After drinking a fair amount of vinegar, apple cider vinegar, and kombucha over the past couple years for my digestion and general health I recently started having very sensitive teeth. I thought about what might have caused this sudden, extremely painful change in my health and realized that the likely culprit is all of the acidic things I have been drinking lately!

So this past month I started using sensitive toothpaste and cut way back on my vinegar and kombucha consumption. And do you know what happened? I got a cold!

Unfortunately, now I need to work on finding another way to increase the probiotics in my life besides relying so heavily on acidic drinks like kombucha.

Fermented Food

Dr. Loren Cordain's book, The Paleo Diet, says that fermented foods were not part of our primal ancestors' diet. But in his new Paleo Diet blog he has mentioned fermented foods and probiotics in a positive light and recommended them in some circumstances.

Specifically, here is a quote from a Q&A on The Paleo Diet Blog explaining why probiotics can be helpful to us today, even though they may not have been a part of our Paleo ancestors' diet:

Q: In your book, you said not to consume fermented foods. However, in the new Paleo Diet blog (which is great, by the way), I've seen probiotics recommended a couple times.
So I'm wondering ... did Paleolithic man consume fermented foods? 

A: Yogurt, leavened bread, alcohol, pickled foods and other fermented foods clearly require technology to produce and consume. However, pre-agricultural humans ate plenty of fruits and vegetables (good sources of soluble fiber), which encourage growth of gram positive gut bacteria. For most people, after years on a low-fiber high-glycemic load diet, probiotics have been demonstrated to have many therapeutic effects, perhaps because they restore the gut flora that likely would have been present had they been consuming large quantities of fresh fruits and vegetables throughout their life.

Being that I have eaten many foods over my life that encourage the growth of bad bacteria (for example: sugar, grains, processed food) as well as been exposed to stress, pollution, and taking antibiotics, I decided to look into the positives and negatives of eating fermented foods - to help my gut flora be in balance - while I am trying to follow a Paleo Diet.

First of all, what are fermented foods?

Wikipedia has a nice definition that says:

"Fermentation in food processing is the conversion of carbohydrates to alcohols and carbon dioxide or organic acids using yeasts, bacteria, or a combination thereof, under anaerobic conditions."

And the benefits of it include:

"The primary benefit of fermentation is the conversion of sugars and other carbohydrates into preservative organic acids, e.g. converting juice into wine, grains into beer, carbohydrates into carbon dioxide to leaven bread, and sugars in vegetables. 

Food fermentation has been said to serve five main purposes:^[12]

• Enrichment of the diet through development of a diversity of flavors, aromas, and textures in food substrates

• Preservation of substantial amounts of food through lactic acid, alcohol, acetic acid, and alkaline fermentations

• Biological enrichment of food substrates with protein, essential amino acids, and vitamins

• Elimination of antinutrients

• A decrease in cooking time and fuel requirement"

- Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermented_foods

Basically, fermented foods have been around for thousands of years in cultures all around the world, as a means of preserving food. For example, here are a few traditional fermented foods from different cultures/countries around the world:

• Korea: kimchi
• Japan: miso
• China: pickled vegetables, kombucha
• Middle East: olives, wine, yogurt
• Rome/Germany: sauerkraut, beer

One of my personal favorite probiotic foods is kombucha. So when I learned (from numerous sources) that 70-80% of your immune system resides in your gut (!!!), and that it can be helped by consuming probiotics, I decided to put this to the test with kombucha.

Here is my story of how I did that.

Since I am a type 1 diabetic, I am at higher risk for developing the flu and it becoming fatal. So the Western medical community recommends I get a flu shot every year to help avoid this sort of thing. But according to one health researcher (and author of the "Great Taste, No Pain" food combining method), Sherry Brescia, whose food principles I have found to be generally sound and whose e-newsletter I receive each week, stated recently:

"despite what the drug companies claim, there are simply NO studies that PROVE flu vaccines significantly decrease numbers of flu cases or mortality (deaths) from the flu. All studies prove that they don't. Flu vaccinations repeatedly come up short in study after study when it comes to having any measurable impact on reducing illness and death from the flu."

I ran this by my doctor and acupuncturist and neither disagreed with what she said. So I decided to not get a flu shot these past 2 years, and instead increase the amount of probiotics (foods and drinks -- but mostly kombucha) I consumed to help give my immune system a fighting chance.

And do you know what happened?

I haven't gotten sick in 2 years!!

Now it helps if you know that every single year before these past couple years I got sick at least 1-2 times every year. So you can imagine how happy I am to not be getting sick or needing to take antibiotics anymore. And all of this is because of one dietary change I made: drinking 2-3 bottles of kombucha per week.

I would make my own homemade kombucha because it is so much cheaper to do this this way (only 50 cents per gallon!) but since I have an autoimmune disease I am more "delicate" and need to drink the store bought stuff. The reason for this is because store bought kombucha is more highly regulated/controlled, with less risk of any bad bacteria growing in the drink (and my immune system not being able to fight it off). In most cases, the acidity of the drink prevents growth of unwanted contaminants. So I would highly recommend to make your own kombucha unless you, too, have an autoimmune disease.

Another benefit I have found to kombucha is that it helps my digestion greatly. For awhile I had to drink straight vinegar (2 Tbsp) before every meal to help me digest my food. This was so disgusting to me and stripped my teeth of enamel. Fortunately, around this time I discovered kombucha, and that drinking a little bit of it before every meal had the same positive effect on my digestion as vinegar! And I think (most) kombucha tastes DELICIOUS. It is like drinking a mild beer in my opinion. My personal favorite type is GT's Multi-green flavor. Not everyone I've talked to likes this particular brand/flavor so I would definitely suggest trying a few different kinds until you find one you like.

So that's been my experience with this "wonder" drink with 2,000+ years of tradition behind it. How has it helped you?

CrossFit

After eating more junk than I care to admit (it was EVERYWHERE I went during the holiday season), not having time to exercise, and gaining around 5-10 lbs. in the months of November to December, I made a New Years resolution (like everyone and their brother...) to get healthy again!

So on January 2, 2014 I joined CrossFit.

If you are unfamiliar with CrossFit, here is an excerpt from the CrossFit website:

"CrossFit begins with a belief in fitness. The aim of CrossFit is to forge a broad, general and inclusive fitness. We have sought to build a program that will best prepare trainees for any physical contingency — not only for the unknown, but for the unknowable. After looking at all sport and physical tasks collectively, we asked what physical skills and adaptations would most universally lend themselves to performance advantage. Capacity culled from the intersection of all sports demands would quite logically lend itself well to all sport. In sum, our specialty is not specializing.

CrossFit is many things. Primarily, it’s a fitness regimen developed by Coach Greg Glassman over several decades. He was the first person in history to define fitness in a meaningful, measurable way (increased work capacity across broad time and modal domains). CrossFit itself is defined as that which optimizes fitness (constantly varied functional movements performed at relatively high intensity). CrossFit is also the community that spontaneously arises when people do these workouts together. In fact, the communal aspect of CrossFit is a key component of why it’s so effective."

The things I really like about CrossFit - and that drew me to it - are:

1. It supports the Paleo Diet, and many people do it in conjunction with eating a Paleo diet.
   > I am hoping it will help inspire me to keep eating Paleo, since it can be hard to do and encouragement is always welcome!
2. It is exercise done in a communal, group setting.
   > This is both motivating and challenging - people notice when you are not there, and you are all in this fitness program (pain!) together. They also write your times on the board so my competitive side kicks in and makes me want to beat other peoples' times.
3. It involves "constantly varied functional movements performed at relatively high intensity" so you get an interesting workout in quickly that is practical for everyday life.
   > One of the things I hate most about working out is how boring it can be. So having a different workout everyday that challenges different parts of your body is fantastic! Also, I am the type of person who hates spending time doing things that aren't practical. So when I go to CrossFit and workout muscles that I know I may use in "real life" at any time is extremely motivating for me.
4. Trainers are there to help motivate, challenge, and make sure you are doing the activities in a safe way.
   > It is always helpful to have a guide/mentor to show you how to do things. And to keep pushing you to do better.

I signed up for the twice a week program, since I have hockey once a week and really seem to need a rest day between every workout. It has been going really well so far -- I am sore after every workout and can tell that my body is getting stronger everyday.

The most noticeable difference? My butt. 

I never really had one before. But after doing 100 or so lunges on Monday, my pants fit completely different because I actually have something that sticks out now. So strange that one workout can make that big of a difference, but I am here to tell you that every workout changes my body a little bit.