What to Eat: Breakfast

A lot of you have been so excited and interested in the 21 day challenge! I'm stoked that I am getting more people excited about eating healthy. There is one question that keeps popping up, what do I eat?  Most of us don't think that there's no food outside of bread products. Guess what? There is. My next few posts are going to be focused on what to eat for breakfast, brunch, lunch, linner, and dinner. *Yes, linner is a made up word*

So Many of  you 

think that the only foods

 to eat for breakfast are cereal, toast, 

muffins, fruits, yogurt, and coffee.  Turns out, 

that there's plenty of delicious breakfast foods 

that are healthy for you and will help you lose weight! 

EGG MUFFIN

These are delicious little muffins that fill you up, 

easy to make, easy to keep, and keep you on 

the go!  There are a lot of variations you

can do with this recipe so play

around with it and have

fun!

If you like a more guided approach here's what I did:

Ingredients:

1 egg for every muffin tin you want to fill (You can use just egg whites, but try to put a few yokes in it.)

1 slice of turkey bacon for half of the muffin tins you want to fill

All the vegetables you want!

Mushrooms,

Green onions,

Tomatoes,

Peppers, 

Spinach

.... and so on :)

Instructions:

Pre-heat your oven to 350. Crack eggs in a large bowl and mix, cook bacon using pan or microwave. Chop up all veggies desired and put in bowl and mix. Now cut up bacon and mix into bowl.  Spray your muffin tins with olive oil so they don't stick (Pam is an alternative) then fill each tin 2/3 to 3/4 of the way full.  The egg muffins will rise.  Cook for about 20 min, but keep a close eye on them, you want them to be golden.  Then you can put them in your fridge, and heat in the morning for 30 seconds and bon apetite!

Here's some pictures from my muffin making to help you out:

I've used both Jenny O and Applegate, and I have found that

Applegate turkey bacon has more protein and less fat,

which makes a little bit better for you since you're

getting plenty of fat from the egg yokes!

Chop the spinach thoroughly or else 

it will be hard to pour into the tins.

Chop the green onions little tail off, then chop them until 

they start to get less firm and more grass like.

Depending on how much you put in 

your batter will be thicker or thinner, 

my batter here is pretty thick.

I love this Misto spray can, you fill it

 up with olive oil then pump 

and spray! Way better than Pam spray.

I use my favorite kitty measuring cups

to fill the muffin tins!

Ready to store in my fridge!

YUM!

Thanks for reading and look for more eating ideas coming up next: BRUNCH

Best,

Heather Larsen

How To: Lose Weight

Hello, again friends, family and internet acquaintances. I hope you all enjoyed my last post about sugar and why you should get off it, but I'm sure a lot of you are asking: How? Why? How long? Do I need to get rid of it forever?How much weight will I lose if I do?

Let's start with Why? Hopefully you should all have a reason for why you should get off sugar (Hence reading my last post...) But more than that think about why you want to lose weight. Why is it  so important to be healthy? I know for me, there's the obvious reason that I want to live a full life and stay healthy so that I can actually live a full life with out restrictions. Then secondly I believe that the human body is one of the most sacred creations of God. I want to respect my body and treat it as such. To me, that means, looking and feeling the absolute best that I can to help me 

be the best person I can.

You need to find a reason why and write it down. 

Okay, so how? How do we do it? How do we take all the information we know about food, about exercising, all the thousands of pins we've pinned and then lose weight?

Let's Start With 21 Days.

Now before all of you click to the next blog, 

I'm letting you know now 

that there's no purchase necessary. 

I'm not selling ANYTHING.

21 Day Challenge

      This challenge is literally going to rip the fat off of you. It's high in protein, low in carbs, and LOTS of veggies. 

Rules: 

5 meals a day for women, 6 meals a day for men. One of them should be a post-workout meal/protein shake.

            For every other meals you will follow this regiment:

                      1. Protein

                                             1 palm full (size and thickness of the palm of your hand) of lean 

                                      beef, lamb, chicken, duck, turkey, fish, shell fish, pork or eggs.

                         2. Fat  

                                      A thumb size of nuts and seeds, avocado, olive oil, fish oil, or 

                                      flax seed oil.

                         3. Vegetables (non-starch carbs)

                                      1-2 handfuls of broccoli, lettuce, cabbage, cauliflower, green 

                                       beans, asparagus, mushrooms, brussels sprouts, cucumber, 

                                      spinach, watercress, onions, all forms of peppers, RAW carrots

                                      tomatoes(not a veggy but this is okay), zucchini, and eggplant

                                      (there's more, but you get the idea)

Yes, you must eat all three with each meal, Protein, Fat, and Vegetables. Yes it sounds impossible, is it? FIND OUT! (AKA, DO IT)

                  Post Work Out Shake:

                                       These are the specifics: drink within 10 minutes of working out.

                                       Women 0.3 grams of protein per kg of body weight.

                                       Men 0.5 grams of protein  per kg of body weight.

                                       This will help you to regain energy lost (in a healthy way) and

                                       help you to feel okay to work out the next day.  For me, I don't

                                       always have a protein shake, but I do try to eat protein after my

                                       workout. 

                 Water, Water, Water:

                                            Take your body weight, and divide it in half and drink that many 

                                     ounces of water per day. Add one extra glass of water for every 

                                     hour of exercise. Example: I weigh 130 lbs. half of that is 65.

                                    So I need to drink 65 ounces of water per day. Or about 8 glasses. 

                                    (Hence 8 ounces = 1 cup/glass and 8x8=64) 

                                    Water is so important, I can't say it enough. Start drinking the 

                                     minute you wake up in the morning. YOUR BODY NEEDS IT.

                 Foods to Avoid: 

                        1. Dairy Products (it's okay to add a little bit of almond milk                                              to your protein shake, or for whey protein)

                                   2. Roasted or Salted Nuts - the fats in roasted nuts can be nasty.                                       (freshly ground almonds are okay and delicious!)

                        3. Grains - wheat, cereals, oats, rice etc. If it comes in a 

                                     cardboard box, THROW IT AWAY.

                                   4. Fruit - YUM, right? Remember, you are what you eat and do you

                                     want to look like apple?

                                   5. Starchy Vegetables i.e. sweet potato, potato, kumara, parsnip, 

                                    yams, and pumpkin - they're natures answer to bread. STAY AWAY

                                   6. Soy Products (don't be fooled, these are carbs, not proteins.)

                          What to Drink:

                       First of all water (HENCE the paragraph above), coffee, black tea,

                                  herbal tea (MY FAVORITE check out my stash below) and absolutely

                                  NO SWEETENERS! What about soda? What about vodka? What about

                                  all other alcoholic drinks? YOU'RE ON A DIET. N-O. 

I LOVE Herbal Tea (TIP: warm water makes you feel full)

                   Tips:

                                 1. Never skips meals. PLAN them throughout the day so you don't

                                  go hungry.

                                 2. If you feel hungry, snack on nuts (6-8 nuts = 1 serving).

                                 3.  Always eat breakfast.

                                 4. Try to stop eating 2 hours before bed so the digestion process

                                   doesn't effect your sleep and recovery.

                                 5. Rotate protein sources to get a good mix of amino acids

                                 6. PLAN, PLAN, and PLAN.

                                 7. If you are dying and you need a snack, brush your teeth or eat a

                                  mint, because it help that feeling goes away. Also sugar free gum                                     and mints helped me through my first 21. BUT DO NOT CHEAT OR                                       THIS DIET WILL NOT WORK.

RESULTS:

Guess what. YOU ARE GOING TO SEE THEM AFTER THE FIRST WEEK. Yeah that's right one week. Most of you will lose at least, AT LEAST 5 pounds. Take a before picture, and measure your waist (right above your belly button and the smallest part of your waist). Measure your waist each week and only weigh yourself after the first week! Then wait until the end of the 21 days! 

WARNING: IF YOU CHEAT, YOU'RE NOT GOING TO GET THESE RESULTS

Complaints, Comments, and Concerns:

Now I'm sure some of you are saying, "You need grain!" "You need carbs!" "You need dairy!"

Well guess what, you do need these things, and you're not cutting them out forever. But also guess what, you are trying to lose weight and you need to get your insulin level down because that's the hormone that's putting fat in the fat cells. That's why we are cutting these out only for 21 days. Look for my next post about how to eat after the 21 days.

Last HOORAY: I did this challenge from October 22, 2014 - November 4, 2014 and I lost 10 pounds and 2 inches off my waist. I will be posting my story, and pictures soon!

Remember, I'm not a doctor, a personal trainer, or a professional fitness instructor, you should consult your doctor to make sure this is safe for you to do.

Thanks for reading, and if you haven't asked yourself, what about exercise?  Well, you don't need much, which is why I didn't talk about it. Try to get in 3 to 4  forty-five minute exercises in during the week (You don't need to the first 4 days or so, because those days will NOT BE FUN, your body will not be happy with the lack of sugar).  Look for more posts on exercises, but for now DO THE 

21 DAY CHALLENGE!

Best,

Heather Larsen

                      

It's BITTER to Face the Facts on SUGAR

Hello friends, family and random people that find this blog on the internet.  I am starting this blog like many others have to share the truth about how important dieting is to finding weight loss. 

I know that many of you are not convinced that 

your eating habits are the cause of your weight gain or

inability to lose weight. Most of you believe that it is because

you don't exercise regularly or exercise at all.  Most of you blame

yourself because of your addiction to "fatty foods" and unhealthy habits 

of eating. But what if you are not to blame and you are actually the victim?

I want to share some information and facts that I have learned from my personal trainer, self discovery, health articles and informative videos.

Some of you may not like what you read, but it may be because

it's hard truth to hear that what you have been told about

weight loss and healthy living has been bad advice.

I ask you to honestly consider these studies

and facts before you brush them aside

with other myths you read on

the internet.

SUGAR. Is it really that bad for you? It tastes delicious, we get it whenever we celebrate anything and it's in almost every food at the grocery store.  So if it's that bad for you wouldn't the government or someone have done something by now? Truth is, it's complicated.

In the 70's obesity was on the rise and so was heart disease and guess who was the villain? Dietary fats. So guess what happened? Low-fat foods started appearing in our grocery stores because eliminating fat from our diet would make us thin. FALSE. When you take the fat out of food it tastes like cardboard. So what do you do? Add sugar. Let's take a look at this Yoplait Yogurt label

It has 26 grams of sugar! A sugar packet contains about 2 - 4 grams of sugar, would you sit down and eat 7 - 13 packets of sugar for breakfast? This is the nutrition label for Starbursts original. 

For 8 pieces there's 23 grams of sugar, and the same amount of carbohydrates. Eating a cup of yogurt is almost equivalent to having a pack of starbursts. But wait isn't the yogurt low-fat? Well maybe dietary fats aren't the villain here at all.  Were the fats framed?

Now our food tastes great, so great that we can't put it down. That's great for the food industry, but bad for our health. By the mid 90's sugar was viewed as a health alternative to fatty snacks! It was suggested by the American Heart Association to replace fatty snacks with high sugar foods like hard candy, juices and spreads like syrup or honey.  

One half of the sugar we eat today are in items we didn't even know had sugar, tomato sauce, barbecue sauce, hamburger buns, hamburger meat, and pretty much all processed foods have added sugar!  Our diet has vastly changed over the years from the agriculture revolution to be high in carbohydrates.  Now here's a little biochemistry for ya.

The truth is if you constantly eat carbs you’ll have higher insulin. The more insulin you have the more likely you are to store fat, because insulin is the main hormone, which puts fat into fat cells. If it's subcutaneous fat, the type that collects under skin that’s okay, if its visceral fat (around belly and organs) that is bad for your health. Visceral fat releases a different set of hormones that can cause inflammation through out the body. Some of you may start to think, well I'm not obese and I eat carbs all the time. Well, it’s possible to be thin and have visceral fat which means you're metabolically unhealthy,  40% of people that are normal weight show signs of metabolic syndrome and 20% of obese people are metabolically healthy. (Metabolic syndrome is a name for a group of risk factors that occur together and increase the risk for coronary artery disease, stroke, and type 2 diabetes.)

Sugar is a simple carbohydrate formed of two molecules fructose and glucose.  Glucose drives fat cells under the skin and Fructose drives fat cells around organs for example around your liver. When you have fat around your liver it mucks up the work it does. It can make you insulin resistant so the pancreas has to make extra insulin. It also causes hyper tension in your brain, which are changes in the brain that might cause dementia. It can increase cell proliferation which can cause cancer, also heart disease. 

Sugar can also accelerate aging. When you paint your steak with barbecue sauce, it browns faster, and that’s what’s happening inside your body. Browning reaction, which causes cellular aging and you do it with fructose because it browns better, it’s why it’s added to bread, to brown better.  It browns your insides better too, if you had a glass of fruit juice this morning, your aging 7 times quicker. Fructose is found in fruit, and if you had the same amount of fruit that’s in your fruit juice, you probably wouldn’t be able to eat it all. Juicing fruit removes all the fibrous pulp, which means you can take in a whole lot more calories without feeling as full. So if you’re going to eat fruit, stick to whole fruit, because it’s the fiber that tames your insulin response to sugar.

Tropicana Orange Juice Commercial

In this commercial they say they put 16 oranges in one 32 oz carton of Orange Juice. So that means that for every 8 oz that you drink you're actually taking on the calories of 4 oranges.  How often do you sit down to eat four oranges on top of your breakfast or lunch? They say there is no added sugar, but in one orange there are 9 grams of sugar, and with 4 oranges in each glass, that's 36 grams of sugar.

High intake of fructose not only messes with your liver, but it messes with the hormones that control your appetite. There’s a hormone in your stomach called ghrelin which, which is the hunger hormone. So when your stomach is empty ghrelin goes up and tells your brain, “Time to eat,” then you eat and ghrelin goes away, but  when you eat sugar, fructose doesn't get registered by the brain that you have eaten. Ghrelin doesn’t change, and you stay hungry. It’s not just fructose that does this, refined starches do it too (a carbohydrate). 

Doctors have been telling us that it's about portion control and exercise. Overweight people only have themselves to blame, and it shows a character flaw that you can't control what you eat.  But I ask you this what about an obese six month old? Or obese newborns? Yes NEWBORNS.  Can they diet and exercise?

Of course over eating and staying sedentary can make you gain weight, but it can’t fully explain the sudden  escalation in obesity  across the globe. It has to be something in the environment and its likely the change in the composition in our diet. Our fat consumption has stayed the same through the last 30 years and look at the disaster that has befallen us, and a lot of that is because of our vast increase in consumption of carbohydrates. Anything that drives insulin up will drive weight gain. 

Most doctors tell you to watch your calories; it’s all about balance calories in vs. calories out.  It’s not that symbol, we metabolize different calories differently and  this is how this bad advice started. It depends on how the calories are metabolized that will decide weight gain. When you burn protein for energy it takes twice as much energy to metabolize that protein into energy as for carbohydrates. It’s known as the thermo effect of food. You burn more energy metabolizing protein than you do carbs, hence not all calories are equal. 

So how do we lose weight??

We all know starving your self doesn't work, and there have been studies that show that just exercise has virtually no effect on weight loss. One thing it does do is make you hungry. Your body knows you’re losing energy so it slows down your metabolism to store that energy. 

It’s so hard to lose weight because were metabolically programmed to return back to how we were. 

97% of people who lose weight, regain it within five years. 

Exercise does have good health benefits.  But to lose weight you need to lose the foods that are low in fat and high in carbohydrates (foods that we've been told to eat through out the last 30 years) weight loss should follow. 

And now here's the truth:

When you get off SUGAR and 

get your insulin level down, 

you will feel more energetic, 

you will feel better,  

you will WANT to engage 

in physical activity and

that is part of why you

 will lose weight.  

If you're not convinced, 

there's one last thing you should know:

MRI scans show that sugar triggers the same reward center in the brain as nicotine, alcohol, or cocaine. By triggering the reward you down regulate the receptors in that area, making it necessary to consume even more the next time to get the same level of reward. This is a phenomenon called tolerance. Tolerance is the first step on the way to addiction. Sugar has the potential for abuse, and we've seen the results:

to finish...

       I'd like to say, I'm not a doctor, a scientist or a professional in this line of work. I'm someone who wants to live a healthy lifestyle and feel confident about how I look. Believe what you will, but I hope with more of my posts about my journey of weight loss and cutting out sugar you will come to see the bitter facts on sugar.

Best,

Heather

Sources: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sk62VwCGka0, http://www.webmd.com/food-recipes/features/health-effects-of-sugar, Prof. Robert Lustig Paediatric Endocrinologist Uni of California San Francisco,http://www.wsro.org/AboutSugar/FactsaboutSugar.aspx