Day 45: LIfe After the Whole 30 and How to Stay on Track

Life After Whole 30: How to Stay on Track

The 45 Day Challenge is coming to an end — Ahhhh, “the feeling of accomplishment” or more like, “YES, I am finally done with it and can go back to my normal life?” One of our winners, Mandy, stated in her essay “‘It’s over!’ That was the first thought that came to my mind when I woke up on day 31. However, my second thought, that came very quickly, was “Wait a minute…I’m not going back!”

Reading the testimonials past contestants, most used the Whole 30 as a spring board for changing their eating habits. The goal was not only to do that, but to also gain insight as to what food does to our bodies. Hopefully, the take away is that as you re-introduce non-Whole 30 foods, you begin to see more clearly how certain foods effect your body.

So, one of the questions is HOW DO WE STAY ON TRACK? Although it may be our goal to stick with it, life hits and when we aren’t trying to complete a goal ,creep often comes in before we realize it.

Keys to staying on track:

1. Make a goal or two. Remember back to how you felt and what really struck you as you did the challenge. Was it the energy level that you liked? Performance and recovery was better? Make a goal around the one or two things that are important to you and work to incorporate that into your daily life. Working items in smaller increments is the key to getting it to be part of your lifestyle.

2. Learn from the re-introduction of foods. Pay attention to what happens and what you body does. But, here is a novel idea…if you didn’t love the food before, or if your taste buds have changed and it doesn’t taste the same…cut it out of your diet! Don’t go back to it.

3. Grab a buddy or make it a family affair. You are more likely to stick with something when you are doing it together. Accountability can be very helpful. Many participants stated that they were going to try to get their kids or their family to eat this way. But, also, don’t forget that you have plenty of support and help right at your very own Exercise Coach Studio! The coaches are all there to help you with questions and encouragement.

4. Keep inspired. Continue to read up on nutrition and try new recipes. There are all kinds of resources out there at your fingertips. Researching and trying new things gives new life to our routines. Never let it get boring…if it gets boring you are more likely to revert back to old habits.

Day 44: Resources

As we approach the end of our Whole30 challenge, we want to know that you are fully equipped to continue this journey past the 30 day mark. Continue to educate yourself on eating clean and well-balanced meals. Continue to make good food choices. You have made many changes in the past 30 days but may still need to continue to make modifications to find that perfect balance to accomplish satiety and continued weight-loss.

There are a number of websites out there that are tremendous resources to help in continuing the education process and even more with fabulous recipes. Websites we recommend are:

Whole9 - http://whole9life.com/

Whole30 Program - http://whole9life.com/

Robb Wolf - http://robbwolf.com/ 

• Full of blog posts, articles and podcasts including a wealth of empirical and scientific information (cutting edge discoveries from genetics, biochemistry, immunology and life extension research) about "the original human diet".

The Paleo Diet - http://thepaleodiet.com/

• Website of Dr. Loren Cordain, author of The Paleo Diet. Includes published research and nutritional tools, as well as practical, applicable information about the Paleo Diet.

Mark's Daily Apple - http://www.marksdailyapple.com

• Mark Sisson has more articles on healthy eating, moving and living than you could hope to read in a month. A great entry-level resource for those looking to expand their knowledge.

Chris Kesser - http://chriskresser.com/

• Chris Kesser, a licensed acupuncturist, writes about health, wellness and balance in this informative blog.

Everyday Paleo - http://everydaypaleo.com/

• Sarah Fragoso is a mother of three who creates delicious, healthy meals for her family and yours. Her cookbook Everyday Paleo is highly recommended).

Happy reading!

Day 43: Make Healthy Habits Stick For Good!

Don’t Believe The Lie of Motivation

It’s normal to be highly driven one week and rather apathetic the next. Psychologists have confirmed this phenomenon by studying human behavior. Don’t waste time feeling bad about your fluctuating levels of motivation; this only makes you “more human.” Roll with it and adjust accordingly.

Write Down Your Goals

Have you ever written down your health-related goals? You probably think this sounds unnecessary, but it actually works. According to one study, people who wrote down their goals and shared updates with their friends on a weekly basis were 33% more likely to achieve them.

Specify the When, Where, and How

It’s hard to achieve goals unless you have a solid plan of action. So to reach them, specify the when, where, and how. This is called implementation intention.

Set Realistic Deadlines

Set deadlines, but make them realistic. You’re more likely to stick with a plan if it’s doable!

Get Support from Friends or Family

Friends give encouragement and make you accountable for your actions. If you have a friend that has similar goals, you’re in luck. Studies show that people who exercise together are more likely to stick to the program.³ So buddy up whenever possible in order to hit your goals.

Use Healthy Competition

Competition is a great motivator. For some reason, winning can really increase your self-esteem. If you’re planning to lose weight or eat healthy, consider making it into a competition. Compete with friends, neighbors or even coworkers. Why? Research shows that competitive weight loss actually works. Apparently, the TV networks have already caught on to this. ;-)

Don’t Get Discouraged

You’re not going to be consistent 100% of the time, and that’s okay. When you’re good, reward yourself for the things that you have accomplished. People respond better to reward than punishment when they need to change behaviors. So when you’re “bad,” please don’t beat yourself up!

Day 42: Probiotics

What are pro-biotics, and what role do they play in the body? 

Let’s back up a second before talking about probiotics and talk about gut flora.  Inside our digestive tract we have somewhere around 100 trillion bacteria happily living in us.  We’re like a giant high-rise building, and the bacteria are our tenants.  About 7 lbs of “you” is really bacteria that live in your intestines, from your mouth to the other end. Our understanding of gut flora has advanced by quantum leaps in the past decade or so but we’re still just scratching the tip of the iceberg here.  We now know that our gut flora helps us properly digest our food, protects us from pathogens (harmful microorganisms), helps us detoxify harmful compounds, produces vitamins and other nutrients, keeps our guts healthy, and balances our immune systems.

Probiotics are a culture of “good” bacteria.  Most often when we say the word probiotics we are talking about a supplement (a pill or powder) of beneficial bacteria, but we also use the word probiotics when talking about fermented foods.

Does a Paleo diet typically reduce the need for probiotics? Does healing the gut help restore a healthy balance of gut flora and fauna?

 

Gut health and gut flora are a very chicken and egg type of thing.  Bad gut flora causes poor gut health.  Poor gut health causes poor gut flora.  Depending on how severe the dysfunction, sometimes we have to address both in order to get things working properly, sometimes not. There are a variety of reasons that a gut can be messed up.  If the main reason is food-based (i.e., if the person is having food reactions), then a program like the Whole30® is superb for helping. However, a generally Paleo lifestyle (which includes such thing as adequate sleep, appropriate exercise, and stress management) along with healthy whole foods would reduce the need for probiotics.

Day 41: 2-Year Anniversary Celebration!!!

2-Year Anniversary Party!

The Exercise Coach invites you to come celebrate our 2-year anniversary of being in the valley!

Where: 8320 N. Hayden Road, Suite C114, Scottsdale, AZ 85258 
When: Saturday, May 30, 2015 from 10:00 am to 2:00 pm
What: Music and refreshments, raffle and giveaways, take a tour of our newest studio and "test drive" of our proprietary high-tech equipment


Make sure you stop by and join in on our celebration! 

Day 40: Muscle Quality and Brain Health

Muscle Quality and Brain Health

Is it inevitable?  Is it just bad luck or bad genes?  Is it an accepted form of aging; the memory loss, the confusion, the loss of independence?
The greatest health fear we face is no longer heart disease or cancer but Alzheimer’s disease.  Nearly 1 in 3 people now list Alzheimer’s as a bigger fear than even death itself.  What’s more is that over half of those surveyed between the ages of 30-50 listed dementia as the thing they feared the most for their parents.  The question becomes, what are we going to do about it?

Understanding Dementia and Alzheimer’s

So is that it then?  “Incurable and Progressive!”

Chances are if you are reading this now you believe in doing something for your health.  Whether you are acting preventively or proactively, many of us have no intention of accepting this fate.  What’s more, evidence has been emerging for the last couple of years that there are things we CAN do to protect ourselves from the cognitive decline as well as active steps we can take right now if some of the symptoms have already started taking root.

First off, there is a strong association between type II diabetes and dementia. The association is so much so, that Alzheimer’s is now being called Type III diabetes.  If you have diabetes your risk for Alzheimer’s doubles.  The exact triggering mechanism between diabetes and Alzheimer’s has not been conclusively proven yet but we know that both conditions share chronically high blood sugar, insulin resistance, and high levels of cellular inflammation.  On the bright side, these are the exact things that our Right Intensity Training™ and Metabolic Comeback™ address.  For more in-depth discussion, check out our previous posts on blood sugar and inflammation.

By reducing blood sugar, insulin resistance, and inflammation, we are slowing or preventing the destruction of our brain cells.  This is crucial in allowing our body to go from defend and protect, to heal and improve. Neurologist, Dr. David Perlmutter, has written an outstanding book, Grain Brain: The Surprising Truth About Wheat, Carbs and Sugar, that is a must read to fully understand the link between blood sugar and inflammation and cognitive decline.  In the book, Dr. Perlmutter looks specifically at gluten as being a major trigger for dementia and Alzheimer’s.

The next crucial step is to stimulate the production of more neurons through a process called neurogenesis as well as protect the delicate neurological pathways that already exist.  Exercise has been shown to do both.  One of the significant by-products of Right Intensity Training™ is brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF). This protein promotes the survival of nerve cells (neurons) by playing a role in the growth, maturation, and maintenance of these cells.  This is a huge benefit to our type of training, and research bears this out.*

Digging Deeper

Our brain needs energy to function at its highest level.  How we supply that energy goes a long way in determining the health of our brain and there are three ways for us to provide that necessary fuel.

1) Consume glucose – This is generally done through carbohydrate consumption.  We know that excess carbs creates blood sugar spikes and can lead to type II diabetes, a major indicator for people with dementia, so this may not be the best solution.

2) Consume enough fat with few enough carbs that our body will convert the fat into ketones, the brain’s preferred energy source.  (It’s worth noting that coconut oil, one of our preferred super foods, can be converted into ketones without our body going into ketosis.  The dramatic effects coconut oil have continued to lead to more and more research being done and its significant health benefits.

3) Lactate – The by-product of anaerobic metabolism, the sometimes (if not all the time) uncomfortable burning sensation we feel in our muscles during high effort exercise is emerging as a major source of brain fuel and may even be preferred over glucose.**  This just checks one more box as to why Right Intensity Training™ is so beneficial and helpful in our fight to preserve our brain cells!

While there are still many unknowns as to some other causes of the loss of mental function, in dementia, there is a significant association with those who are diabetic and have cellular inflammation.  We do know that somehow brain cells aren’t functioning properly, they are dying, and the neural pathways in our brain aren’t regenerating.

There are lots of great reasons and benefits to take advantage of the entire Metabolic Comeback™ program we have at The Exercise Coach®, but we are hard-pressed to find a better one than improving brain health.  That’s exactly what we are talking about here.  What we can do to preserve and stimulate brain cell growth and reparation in our brains starts with improving muscle quality.   Thomas Edison once said, “The chief function of the body is to carry the brain around”.  Is there any better reason to continue to engage in our 20 minute workouts?

Day 33-39: Is It Time for Your System Restore? ( LET THE COUNT DOWN BEGIN!!! )

( Let the count down begin! 5 days left to a brand new you. You can do this. Stay the course and keep eating clean! )

 

 Is It Time for Your System Restore?

Blue Screen of Death, Anyone?

Just like your computer, phone, and nearly every other gadget in your life, you come with a factory setting: the way you are programmed to operate and all the software this requires.  Let’s say that your basic factory-set operation requires you to eat only certain foods; move relatively frequently—at times fast, and at other times, under a degree of heavy load; recharge (sleep) for a certain period of time; keep synchronicity with the sun; to keep stressors intermittent; and to socialise regularly and in-person.

These all become your basic operating parameters.  Not set in concrete—you can operate outside of those basic parameters for brief periods.  But generally, these settings detail how you were intended to operate, honed over generations of testing.

What if, then, you begin to operate outside of your design specifications?  You begin to add all manner of novel food-like substances into your system. You limit movement or cease it altogether. You inadequately recharge your system. You desynchronise your internal clock. You stress the system chronically.  You spend more time online than outside in the real world.

Such a violation of your normal modes of operation would surely void your warranty.
In the computer world, it is a well-known fact that when you run multiple programmes on your system (particularly those which might be more novel, bug-ridden, or come from a third-party), some ‘conflicts’ or mismatches begin to occur.  The system can run slow or even crash—blue screen of death, anyone?

 

Your System Restore Point

Now, if you only recently loaded just one new programme, the fix for any conflicts or mismatches will be as simple as removing the offender. But what if you have multiple programmes causing multiple conflicts? Your food programme is conflicting your sleep programme.  Your sleep programme is conflicting your movement programme.  Your stress programme is conflicting your sleep, food, and movement programmes.  And now your sleep programme is conflicting your food programme, causing a horrible negative feedback loop.  Your system is sluggish, overloaded, stressed, and unstable, and it can no longer do what it was supposed to do (and used to do) out of the box.

One possible way of fixing such a scenario is to uninstall all of the problematic programmes and wind the system back to a point in time when it was functioning normally—in other words, perform a ‘system restore’ back to a known point in time when few, if any, conflicts existed.

In humans, this ‘system restore point’ is exactly the basis of the paleo/primal/ancestral movements.
 These movements, grounded in evolutionary biology, all assume that our best ‘system restore point’ is the one just before we started to make problematic changes to how we operate—a restore point made about 10,000-12,000 years ago at the end of the Paleolithic time period.

This system restore requires that we eat the foods which best approximate those of our ‘factory setting’—our ancestral past. The same holds true for our movement and sleep patterns, our daily synchronisation with light and dark cycles, and appropriate seasonal rhythms. It requires us to find ways to manage our stress toward a more intermittent ‘load – unload’ pattern and to socialise with a real face rather than a Facebook.

While this system restore can take many forms—the underlying purpose is the same: to reset your system as best we can and as closely as possible with your factory setting. The success of this strategy, and the time it will take to have an effect, will often come down to just how committed an individual is to taking all of the individual programmes (food, movement, sleep, etc.) back to those basic settings, and removing all of the novel and potentially problematic programmes (modern food-like substances, movement restrictions, sleep disruptors, etc.).

 

Why You Can’t Hack Your Life

What is often missed in this system restore strategy is that some of the things which may have been causing conflicts can actually be reintroduced and tested once the system has been fully reset and stabilised. If you can’t imagine life without ever eating your most favourite legume, then the system restore process would require you to remove this food in the first instance, give your system time to settle back in to its reset point, and then add it back to test its compatibility with your system. If after a system restore you can successfully eat legumes without any problem, they can become part of your life again. If, however, there becomes a ‘compatibility’ issue with this food, you may need to reconsider their place in your diet, or accept that your system won’t run optimally if you leave them in.

Sounds simple enough, doesn’t it? Then why aren’t we all successfully restoring our systems after a long vacation, a stressful time period, or at any point when we realize our system is crashing? Too often we see people refuse to push the reset button in the naive hope they can instead find a ‘hack’—a shortcut around all of their lifestyle mismatch issues. (For the record, this doesn’t work long-term, and often makes things even worse.) Additionally, we see the fear and false belief that people can never go back to their favourite things ever again—even if these things prove to be 100% compatible with their system (like coffee).  Still others become stuck in ‘system restore mode,’ too afraid to step beyond their restore point and test new things. (“I can’t eat that—it’s not Paleo!”)

Remember, a system restore is just a starting point—a place you know works well, a place from which you can confidently tweak and add on and modify your programmes to your liking. You’re not stuck with factory settings forever, nor should you want to be! There are so many programmes that will work well with your basic operating system, adding fun and excitement and happiness to your overall quality of life.  So use the common guidelines of returning to eating real food whilst removing fake foods, moving every day whilst sitting less, getting adequate sleep by going to bed earlier (and so on) to restore yourself back to your factory setting. This will provide you with the best platform and opportunity from which to test the compatibility of new programmes in your life—and avoid your own personal blue screen of death.