Coconut Flour Muffins: Quick and Easy Breakfast!

Following up my recent post on how to make eating a whole foods diet more feasible for us who feel like we're always running out the door (especially in the morning), I've found this to be an excellent breakfast. These muffins are a wonderful recipe from a fellow Nutrition Consultant, Mary Vance (maryvancenc.com). All you need to do is find about 20 minutes sometime during the week to prepare these. I then store them in the fridge and re-heat them in the toaster oven in the morning, and have one with two eggs. You will then have started off your day with a nice healthy serving of fat and protein. Also, try spreading them with almond butter or tahini!

I know, I am obsessed with coconut, but remember that coconut flour is full of fiber and protein, and can be purchased at Whole Foods, your local co-op, or online at tropicaltraditions.com. And these muffins are far superior to other, gluten and sugar containing muffins that will spike your blood sugar and set you on the wrong foot for the day to come. Enjoy!

COCONUT FLOUR MUFFINS

1/4 cup + 1 tbsp coconut flour
3 eggs
2 tbsp melted coconut oil or butter
1/4 cup whole coconut milk (melted if needed)
1/4 tsp baking powder
cinnamon to taste
pinch of sea salt

Optional:

Add blueberries, honey to taste, cardamon, or vanilla.

Pre-heat oven to 400 degrees. Mix all ingredients together well (coconut flour can be a little chunky so make sure to really mix). Pour into greased or lined muffin tin (if you don't have a muffin tin, you can try making these as "cookies" as well), and bake for about 15 minutes.

Veggie Pancake Recipe

It is always a challenge for me to include enough veggies at breakfast, as I grew up eating sweet, dessert-like breakfasts, and now that I realize how devastating this is to my energy throughout the day, have realized the need to find (quality) protein and fat rich breakfasts that will sustain my blood sugar, set me off on the right foot, and are quick enough to make early in the morning. Here is one of my recent favorites, and it can be modified/experimented with....get creative! Also, if you're pressed for time in the morning, try grating the veggies the night before.

Ingredients:

1-2 cups vegetables of your choosing, I like to include a combo of: zucchini, summer squash, sweet potato, carrots

1 tablespoon coconut flour

1 egg

Spices of your choosing, I like: salt, pepper, and a touch of cinnamon

Directions:

Simply mix all together, cook stovetop in coconut oil, and serve topped with 1-2 eggs, sunnyside up or over easy!

Modifications:

For a sweeter pancake, stick to sweet potatoes for a sort of modified "latke." Then add cinnamon, cardamom, and a touch of sea salt. I've also added grated or finely chopped kale before

Tips to Make Eating a Whole Foods Diet Easy!

One thing I hear all the time from clients, friends, and family, is that switching to a more whole foods-based diet is hard because, first and foremost, it is more time consuming. I can't disagree with this! It will undeniably take you a bit longer to chop up vegetables in the morning than it will to go next door and buy a burrito. BUT....as is the case with so many aspects of life, it's all about creating new habits. Studies have shown that this habit making/breaking period is generally about 3 weeks, so be prepared for the first 3 weeks to be a bit more difficult, but have faith that your health, energy, mind and body will pay you back tenfold. Here are some suggestions of how to better incorporate this kind of diet from a time management perspective, as well as some simple, quick meal suggestions:

• Over the weekend (or whatever day you have off), make a grocery list and do your grocery shopping for the week. Don't make this trip on an empty stomach, because you are way more likely to stray from the list at hand and buy foods that will tempt you later on in the week. 
• Menu plan! If you are a recipe person, make a detailed menu plan for the week before shopping. If not, make a more rough plan, buy the types of foods you want to eat, and wing it. Just make sure you have enough food for the week so you can prepare your meals.
• Cook once, eat 2, 3, 4 times. Take time one day of the week (or more) to make some staples. For example, sometimes I will roast a chicken, or cook a pound or two of ground beef with yummy spices (takes 10 minutes), and then I have these quality protein sources to add to salads, lettuce wraps, eggs in the morning, etc. Chop vegetables ahead of time and keep them in the fridge. Or, make whole meals and eat leftovers.
• When you are at the grocery store, stick to the perimeter. Avoid packaged foods as much as possible, and if you must buy something with an ingredient list, make sure you recognize all of the ingredients! If you can't pronounce it, probably not a good choice.
• If you know you will snack throughout the day, keep healthy snack foods at your work, home, etc. This could be raw nuts/seeds, chopped vegetables with nut (not peanut) butter, whole fruit (no fruit juice!). If you get stuck, see if there is a store nearby that sells Lara Bars, the one commercially made bar that is, actually, healthy (has just 3 ingredients or less, made of nuts and dried fruit).
• Hard or soft boil eggs ahead of time. These make a great snack or can be added to salad.
• Make a salad dressing to use for the week. One of my favorites is a simple vinaigrette: chop garlic, crush with a bit of sea salt, add olive oil and vinegar and shake well. 
• Remember not to let yourself get really hungry by forgetting to eat or skipping meals. Eating every 3-4 hours will guarantee that you don't get to the point of being ravenous at night and reaching for anything in sight.
• Practice getting up from 10 minutes earlier to assemble food for the day. It is worth it.

Simple Meal Suggestions:

• Big salads with protein. This is probably the easiest to throw together, include any leafy greens and other veggies you have in the fridge, add a protein source, maybe some raw nuts/seeds, avocado, hard boiled eggs, anything! 
• Make a lettuce wrap. Kale and collard greens work great for this, too. Try ground lamb (or any meat) with avocado, onion, and cilantro. Or ground beef seasoned with cumin, topped with raw sauerkraut and spicy mustard. Or a BLT lettuce wrap with bacon, tomato, and onion. Get creative!
• In the morning try a smoothie (see my previously posted breakfast smoothie recipe). If you like eggs in the morning but don't have time to cook them, have 2-3 hard boiled eggs with a handful of raw nuts/seeds to go. 
• For a snack or part of a meal, or if you are craving sugar/refined carbs, bring a roasted sweet potato topped with some coconut oil or butter, grass-fed butter, shredded coconut, or nut butter. I guarantee this will satisfy your sweet tooth!
• If you are going to eat out, opt for baked, broiled and grilled options. Choose a salad with protein, skip the bread basket, ask for oil and vinegar vs. pre-made dressings, and if the portion is huge, bring half to go.

Remember, building routines and habits centered around a whole foods based diet might take a little getting used to, but with time, the idea of opting for non-nourishing and energy-blasting meals/snacks will slowly but surely become a distant memory...

Letter From an Angry Tufts Nutrition Researcher...

I received this letter recently from someone I used to know, who is now studying and researching the economics of food at Tufts University (a very noble, yet very different field of study). Her message is very angry and accusatory, yet I think (sadly) indicative of how a more mainstream nutrition "professional" might see the work practiced by a more holistic nutrition model. I wanted to share not only her letter, but my response, so all of my blog followers can have a better understanding of what I do! I posted it here on my blog, so see the link if interested!


Hey Rachel-

I don't know if you have your RD, but if you don't, I just wanted to say that I think it is totally inappropriate for you to be giving dietary advice! I hope your clients know that you aren't an RD (are you? correct me if I'm wrong). I am NOT an RD, which is why I NEVER give dietary advice, and, if someone asks me, "well, you're doing your PhD in nutrition, don't you know enough to give me dietary advice?" I respond, "no, I don't, I'm a researcher, I am NOT clinically trained, I haven't taken the exam, and my specialty is in the economics of food, so here is the phone number of a good RD that I know."

Probably you should do the same, especially because it seems that you are recommending only what is "trendy" in the world of "alternative nutrition," things that haven't necessarily been established in the literature yet.... I hope your clients know that you're not qualified! It bothers me when people give advice when they aren't certified or appropriately trained, because they think they're just "going against the system," which is apparently cool and hip and makes you not have to get the proper credentials.

Look, if you really want to change the system (and I understand that there are important things to change, and things that could be improved), just get the RD, and work in policy or research! Change it from the inside...otherwise, you're just whining! The patients/clients who really need people like you (educated in health/nutrition), are mostly poor, and can't afford your fees unless you work in a clinical setting, which you can't do if you don't have an RD! Unless you do pro-bono for malnourished, poor clients, don't pretend that you are "making a difference" in any consequential way.

Anyway, feel free to un-friend me....(maybe I should un-friend you, my message might provoke some kind of vindictive backlash, I suppose??)....I'll understand if you do, this is obviously a very bitchy, arrogant, butting-in-to-your-life-when-I-don't-know-you-anymore message. Unfortunately, I couldn't help it. I'm quite an arrogant person, and fine with it! Have a nice life! Try not to give anyone heart disease.


MY RESPONSE:

Don't fear a vindictive backlash, while I do think your message was a bit ignorant (and undoubtedly arrogant, as you pointed out), I think you are the one getting more worked up here than I am! However, I would like to address a few things.

First of all, I'm not sure if in between your rants you were able to check out my website to see what I actually do, but just in case you don't know, I do have a 2 year certification from Bauman College of Holistic Nutrition...I am not simply blogging about the "trendy" new fad diets out there. And let me tell you a bit about what got me to this point, since you're right, you don't know me at all.

Post Guatemala, I worked in social services with various non-profits for several years, both in domestic violence shelters and as a case manager for a child abuse prevention program, where I did home visits with my clients. Seeing the kinds of foods they were putting into their bodies, and the diseases that were created by lifetimes and generations worth of non-nourishing foods, along with some personal health issues, led me to consider getting my doctorate in Naturopathic medicine. After a few pre-reqs, I realized this was financially not feasible, and ended up finding Bauman College of Holistic Nutrition, since nutrition was/is my main area of interest.

My long term goal is to open a wellness center which provides, first and foremost, community education in poor/uneducated communities, and sliding scale fees (which if you saw on my website, I do now as well). So yes, I feel good about the difference I am working towards making, and I think it will be/is consequential.

As far as our ideas about food and diet go, we simply just don't agree, and that's ok. I do give dietary suggestions. I would never tell my clients who were thinking of visiting an RD not to, by any means, and I'm sure there are many good ones out there. But the RD's I've met in my practice have a very different approach than I take, which is more a USDA food pyramid based model (for example, fat is just a tiny little triangle, and canola oil is recommended, an oil that is oxidized before it even hits the shelves). Here is one of the various studies I have read, a 2010 meta-analysis on saturated fat and heart disease risk:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20071648

This is showing that there is very little statistical evidence for the occurrences of saturated fats and heart disease. Furthermore, the study does not specify the kinds of fats they were using...there is a world of difference between conventional (non-grassfed, commercial) butter, and raw, organic coconut oil, for example. Please also check out this following article by Mary Enig, PhD, an expert in lipid biochemistry and author of Know Your Fats, and Eat Fat, Lose Fat.

http://westonaprice.org/know-your-fats/526-skinny-on-fats

So do I think I'm "going against the system?" Perhaps sometimes I do when I am confronted by attitudes such as yours, but mainly what I focus on in my day to day practice is helping my clients who have (in most cases) tried a more conventional diet model (lower fat, higher carbs, for example), and have experienced ongoing health problems (ranging from something less serious like heart-burn to more serious degenerative disease). When they come to a Holistic Nutritionist, they generally realize that changes need to be made that are, many times, outside the scope of the RD's they have seen previously.

So thanks for your input, but I feel pretty good about the knowledge I have acquired, how much more there always is to learn, and the practice I am growing to help people, regardless of their economic status.

Rachel Fiske, NE, CPT-NASM
madronawellness.org

Quality NOT Quantity: What Counts When Considering Weight Loss

QUALITY, NOT QUANTITY

WHY EXERCISING MORE AND EATING LESS DOESN’T WORK FOR WEIGHT LOSS!

We have all been consistently told that in order to lose weight, we must simply eat less and exercise more, the basic law of thermodynamics. We now know that not only will this not promote weight loss, but will actually often lead to weight gain or weight loss resistance. Most importantly, it is the types of foods we eat that is key, as they influence our metabolic and hormonal responses, leading to true change, or (in many cases) lack thereof. 

What about the law of thermodynamics?

There is certainly truth to this principle: if we are taking in more energy (calories) than we are burning, we will not effectively lose weight. However, this law does not touch on the quality of energy we take in, and it’s effects on our metabolism and hormones. The primary hormone we are talking about is insulin, which is our fat storage hormone, and is produced in the pancreas as a response to ingesting carbohydrates. Many individuals find that once they change the kinds of foods they are eating, without adjusting their caloric intake (in many cases, increasing it), they begin to see fat loss.

I burn so many calories from doing cardio, so why am I not losing the weight?

Again, this really comes down to our body’s hormonal responses to exercise. When we cardiovascularly overtrain, our body produces excess cortisol (the stress hormone), which inhibits our ability to lose weight, and makes us gain weight around our mid-section. Strive for somewhere between 1-2 hours/week, and focus more strength training and diet. See what happens. Incorporating weight/resistance training into your exercise program will build lean muscle, which raises metabolism (and no ladies, you will not bulk up, I promise), as well as preventing future injury.

So what types of foods should I eat?

The key here is having a diet focused on real, whole foods. As Michael Pollan notes, if your great grandparents wouldn’t recognize it as food, probably not a good choice. If weight loss is the goal, strive for meals based more on quality fats and proteins rather than carbohydrates. Primary sources of carbs should be leafy and crunchy vegetables, rather than starchy. Remember, dietary fat does not equal body fat; however, refined carbs, sugar, and alcohol absolutely do.

http://www.jtsstrength.com/articles/2011/05/16/females-fat-loss-and-performance/

undergroundwellness.com

The Paleo Solution, Robb Wolf

Always remember, there may be other players contributing to weight loss resistance, including sleep, stress, toxicity, and other factors, as well. Contact me with further questions!

Why Buy Organic?

Someone recently asked me the reasons to go organic considering the price difference, so I thought I would post a (slightly modified) copy of a simple educational handout I give to my clients. Yes, organic can be more expensive, but you are getting way more bang for your buck, so to speak, in terms of nutrient density. Also, local farmers markets and buying seasonal produce makes organic far more affordable. However, see the bottom of this slide for the EWG's (environmental working group) list of the top 12 foods that are most contaminated with herbicides, pesticides, and other toxins. If you are only able to buy certain organic foods, opt for these first and foremost.

Why Buy Organic?

 

The Environmental Working Group (EWG) states that even the smallest amounts of certain pesticides, herbicides, and other chemicals, and be toxic and cause lasting damange to our health.

Top Reasons to Go Organic:

Reduce Toxic Load

Supporting organic agriculture reduces the toxic load on the environment and our bodies. Prevent illness while also keeping harmful chemicals out of our air, water and soil.

Higher Nutrient Density

Various studies have been done that prove organic foods have significantly higher amounts of critical vitamins and minerals. This means better nutrient status, which leads to greater satiety (feeling of fullness) and prevention of degenerative disease.

Avoid Dangers of “Frankenfoods”

GM (genetically modified), cloned, refined, packaged, processed foods pose serious health risks. Today, 30% of our cropland is set aside for GM foods, and not only are all of these non-foods nutrient depleted, but most are so new that we are still learning the harmful effects they have on our short and long-term health

Buying organic can be more expensive. If you are on a budget, here is the EWG’s “dirty dozen” list, which includes the top 12 chemical-containing foods:

Celery                                                                       Nectarines

Peaches                                                                   Bell Peppers

Strawberries                                                           Grapes (imported)                        

Apples                                                                      

Blueberries

Cherries

Kale/Collard Greens

Potatoes

Raw Versus Cooked

RAW VERSUS COOKED

There are many varying opinions are eating raw vs. cooked foods. As with most “rules” of nutrition, a healthy dietary balance and understanding of nature is important. To make it a little easier, here is a more comprehensive list of some key foods that are best either raw, coked, or both, and why. Also important to note is that some foods simply have different benefits in either form and there is still much debate, so strive to eat at least 5-7 servings of vegetables per day (1 serving raw=2 cups, 1 serving cooked=1 cup) of both.

Rosy fruits such as watermelon, papaya, and red bell pepper: Great to eat raw due to the presence of lycopene, which has been found to lower risk of cancer and heart attack. Lycopene is a very potent antioxidant.

Tomatoes: While beneficial in both cooked and raw forms, cooking actually boosts the amount of lycopene by 35%, according to a Scientific American study.

Carrots, spinach, mushrooms, asparagus, cabbage, peppers: Cooking these vegetables supplies more antioxidants, particularly carotenoids. Steaming is best, as this preserves the antioxidant properties.

Cruciferous Vegetables like broccoli, cauliflower, kale, cabbage, brusselsprouts: Should be eaten both raw and cooked. These vegetables are all high in Vitamin C, which is broken down in the heating process (as are most vitamins, but not minerals), however the phytonutrient indole is formed by cooking, which fights cancer.

Broccoli: Numerous studies have shown that broccoli (despite the above mentioned Vit. C loss), may be better cooked, as an enzyme is damaged in heating which blocks the proliferation of precancerous cells. Also, folate is more available in raw broccoli

Starchy Foods: Foods like grains, tubers, legumes as well as nuts and seeds, are all enhanced by sprouting and cooking, which makes them more digestible. Grains, nuts/seeds, and legumes should all be soaked for 12-24 hours before cooking.

Garlic: This superfood is beneficial in both its’ raw and cooked form, however, raw has by far the highest immune-boosting properties. Chop raw garlic and allow it to sit 10 minutes before eating. Then put over a salad, in a dressing, or however you prefer it.

Quickly Steaming Is Best Cooking Method: The cooking method matters most. Steaming, as opposed to other methods, helps retain water-soluble B and C vitamins. High cooking temperatures and long cooking times destroy heat-sensitive nutrients such as B and C vitamins and folate, so it's best to keep cooking times to a minimum (10 minutes maximum).