Pesto Cauliflower Salad over Baby Arugula

Here’s and oldie but a goodie! Originally posted on our Abundant Health blog – this one is a true family favorite – even skeptics who don’t like cauliflower loved it!!!

I know I have touted the health benefits cauliflower before, but it still bears mentioning that – even though it is not green – it is one of the most nutrient dense vegetables out there. You can read more about the specific benefits of cauliflower in my Mashed Potato Surprise post here.

OK – Recipe time…

Ingredients:

• One large head of cauliflower
• Juice of one lemon
• 1 tbsp Olive Oil
• 1/2 tsp sea salt
• 2 bell peppers chopped
• 1 cup cherry tomatoes – cut in halves
• 1/2 cup Coconut Pesto
• 4-6 handfuls of baby arugula

Break the cauliflower up into small, bite sized florets and toss with the lemon juice, olive oil and sea salt. Cover and place in the fridge for 2-3 hours to marinate (you can leave it overnight too if you have the time.)

Toss the marinated cauliflower with the peppers, tomatoes and pesto. Taste and add salt and pepper to taste.

Serve over 4-6 handfuls of the baby arugula. YUM YUM!!!

*** if you have any left over salad, its really yummy the next day if you warm it up a little with some white beans and maybe a touch more pesto sauce

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Almond Milk

• 1/2 cup raw Almonds (soaked at least 4 hours)
• 4-6 cups water
• (3 – 6 Pitted Dates IF NOT RESTRICTED – Optional for sweetness)

Blend soaked almonds in water until completely pulverized.
Strain through cheese cloth or a fine mesh strainer to remove pulp.
Refrigerate and use within a few days.

SUPER EASY… and SUPER YUMMY!

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Skylar’s Coconut Macaroon Trees

I love it that my Daughter loves to help in the kitchen! This is one of her favorite cookie recipes – we don’t eat sweets and we are essentially a grain free house, so this is one of our healthy treats. My daughter modified this recipe based on a recipe she found from Martha Stewart. This version is very low in sugar, but you can easily use pure stevia extract to lower the sugar content even more.

Ingredients:

• 2 ½ Unsweetened Shredded Coconut
• ⅛ cup sugar
• 2 Tbsp Baking Stevia (this is a stevia sugar blend available in the baking aisle of most supermarkets.)
• 2 Large Egg Whites
• 5 teaspoons Pure Vanilla Extract
• Pinch of Salt
• Confectioners’ sugar

Pre-heat oven to 350°

In a large bowl, combine coconut, sugar, baking stevia, egg whites, vanilla extract, and salt and mix well.

Shape into tree shapes and place on a cookie sheet* about 2 inches apart.

Bake for 12 – 15 minutes until the tops and undersides are golden and toasty.

Let cool on a wire rack.

Once cooled completely, right before serving, dust with confectioners’ sugar.

*We love to use our Pampered Chef Stoneware for these cookies.

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Coconut Chocolate

From the Kitchen of Dr. Dana

• 1 cup Coconut Oil
• 1 Cup Cocoa Powder
• Stevia – to taste
• Real Maple Syrup – to taste (grade B is the best option)

Combine 1 cup coconut oil* and 1 cup cocoa powder and whisk together until nice and smooth.

Stir in1/4 – 1/2 tsp powdered Stevia extract (you could also use liquid Stevia) and 2 -4 tbsp maple syrup and whisk well. * what you’re going for here is to sweeten the mixture with stevia until its ALMOST sweet enough for you – and then add just enough maple syrup to cut the bitterness of the stevia.

Pour into clean ice cube trays or your favorite Chocolate Molds and place in the freezer to harden.

Once hardened, remove from molds and store in a container in the freezer (or fridge) so they don’t melt!

Coconut oil is liquid above 75 degrees F. (25 C.), and below that it will be a solid fat. It can be stored in either form, and it can be liquefied easily by applying low-level heat.

*In cooler months you may need to do this on the stove. Melt the coconut oil In a small pot over low heat to bring the coconut oil to liquid state, then remove from heat and stir in the remaining ingredients.

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This is a fantastic, dairy free pesto sauce. Toss it with your salad, with Zucchini Noodles, or over you favorite veggies.

Place the following ingredients in a food processor:

• 2 tbsp coconut cream*
• 1 tbsp tomato paste
• 1/2 cup walnuts
• 1 cup parsley
• 1/2 cup basil
• 2 cloves of garlic, chopped
• 3 scallions
• the juice of half a lemon
• 1/4 tsp sea salt

Begin to process all the ingredients together and then, with the processor running, slowly drizzle in 1/4 cup olive oil until all ingredients make a smooth paste.

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Metabolic Limbo: Why Your Diet Isn’t Working and You are Eating Less and Gaining Weight as Your Energy Goes Down the Drain.

I define limbo as being stuck in the grey area of two distinct worlds. In this case I am referring to the metabolic mess of being caught up in the physiologic space between fat burning and sugar burning.

Believe it or not your body needs no dietary carbs or sugar to survive. Here is the catch, you do need some carb metabolism to survive. Yes, you read that right. You do need glucose (carb) metabolism for health and healing but you do not need to eat any carbs to get what you need.

Before I go into that, let me give my two cents on calories. They are a terrible measure for food intake. The calorie concept in biological energy expenditure for metabolism, weight loss or gain, is completely inaccurate and even the inaccuracy of that model changes throughout the day, day in and day out. That being said, I will use calories as a reference for food intake when studies have used them in their research, but please understand the limitations of the caloric model and don’t take it as a hard and fast rule.

Here’s how it works: when your body is an efficient, effective, fat burner, your metabolism will will become more efficient and appear to lower it’s caloric needs and be able to handle higher caloric intakes much easier. Making calories almost irrelevant. Interesting huh?

So, as a true fat burner your metabolic rate will stabilize at around 1,800 calories per day. About 320-360 of those calories will come from glucose (carbs). This is how it breaks down:

35-40 g of glucose from recycled lactate and pyruvate (exercise)
20 g from glycerol (breakdown of triglycerides)
15-20 g from protein derived amino acids (mainly alanine from exercise)
10-11 g from ketone bodies (formed from fat burning)
(Annu. Rev. Nutr. 2006 Cahill Jr, G. F)

Basically, even with a 100% dietary fat diet, or as seen through different fasting protocols, 20% of your caloric use of energy for running your body will still come from glucose, or AKA, carbs.

Now, if you eat carbs, like sugar, grains and starches, then that glucose becomes priority one for use. Why? Glucose can be toxic if it floats around for too long. Sugars in your system from dietary sources can bind to damaged proteins and produce Advanced Glycation End products, (AGEs), the literal molecules that age us.

When we consume processed carbs our body will take up that sugar, even at the risk of advanced aging and the free radical damage that is seen with burning glucose, to get it out of your system. When this happens insulin stops fat metabolism and rushes ANY extra glucose into our body fat for storage. The glucose that would have been liberated from burning your body fat stays where it is, and so does that extra fat.

As I outlined here is doesn’t take a lot of processed carbs to satisfy the body’s needs and then shut down fat burning and start storing fat thanks to the only direct fat storing hormone we have, insulin. Even with normal blood sugar levels, by eating poor quality (processed) foods and eating every couple hours (healthy or not) you will keep your insulin exposure high causing insulin resistance and accelerated aging.

If during this time you are lowering your food intake, but not improving the quality or decreasing your meal frequency you will lock your body right into metabolic limbo where you are not burning fat, not burning carbs efficiently, and continuing to store fat, lower your energy and raising your blood sugar.

Now in that state you try and do all the right things, eat small frequent meals, graze, and start to exercise to burn fat which at this point will essentially drive your suffering metabolism deeper and deeper into that limbo. Over time your sleep, mood, sex drive, and motivation all start to falter. Your other hormones get thrown off due to the insulin resistance and now the cortisol from all the stress you are feeling and the cascade of chronic health problems like heart disease, diabetes, cancer, stroke, and dementia all keep progressing.

Look, I am not saying here that you should stop eating carbs. 360 calories is a good amount of green veggies. I am just illustrating how the body can run just fine with little to no dietary carbs and if you want to heal your damaged metabolism you will have to do what is necessary to not only stop being a chronic sugar burner but to get yourself out of limbo and become an efficient fat burner. When you effectively do this, become a flexible consistent fat burner then things will change, and change dramatically.

It doesn’t end there. Once you are a true adaptive fat burner then the need for advanced efforts to heal the damage done to your liver, pancreas, viscera and other organs to truly reverse this disease promoting physiology will arise. More on this later.

What can be done NOW?

1. Balance Nervous System Tone (paced breathing, chiropractic, meditation)
2. Reduce Hormonal Resistance (cut sugar, up fat, natural foods)
3. Promote Cellular Healing (quality fat, supplements, detox)
4. Enhance Physical Fitness (physical activity, exercise, intensity training)
5. Sleep (prioritize sleep and create an evening routine drink lots of water)

Now before you ask me what detox to do, remember step one to an effective detox is to stop RE-toxing! Then when things are moving in your favor and progressing stop eating so frequently. Yes, I am referring to fasting. There are many types of fasting and multiple fasting methods can be used together and in rotation for ease of implementation, avoiding hunger, and optimal health impact. Let’s save that for future articles.

Remember my friends, doing nothing will get you just that, nothing! Start with something, anything, make a plan, get an accountability partner, give it some effort and give it some TIME.

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Be well my friends,

Dr. Don

Hey, those people are FAT! THAT is what OBESE looks like…..I am not that bad…….WRONG!

Perspective is everything. How we perceive our environment determines how we interact with it. Our interaction, or in this case lifestyle, is what determines our health, weight, and the genetics we pass on both biologically and in learned behavior.

When people see 400 and 500 lb people on the Biggest Loser and think, “that is unhealthy,” “that is morbidly obese,” “that means my 250 lbs are not that bad,” they are often fooling themselves.

This is a vey dangerous comparison to make. On the other side of this self weight assessment equation is the fact that there are very few actual pictures and references of what it really looks like to be technically overweight, and technically obese. A lot of people will be surprised when they actually look into it.

I prefer to use body fat percentage as my ruler, but if you use BMI, go for it. But here are the numbers:

Did you read that? Over 20% body fat for men and 24% body fat for women is the starting point defining being over weight, and considered acceptable, NOT healthy.

Over 24% for men and 37% for women is the point when you are technically considered obese. And morbidly obese line is roughly considered 20% over your ideal body fat level.

On this chart a good body fat percentage, what I am calling healthy, is 11-14% for men and 16-23% for women. So, morbidly obese would start at 34% for men and 43% for women.

Look, in today’s American culture the GOOD/HEALTHY standard body fat seems very low….comparatively, but honestly it’s not. We have become accustomed to seeing much higher body fat percentages over the last 5 generations and larger bodies have become very common, but should not be confused with normal.

As it stands the CDC says 35% of Americans (officially reported) are obese, 35% are just overweight. that is 70% of adults are either overweight or obese….are you one of the 30% who are not? How about your kids? Over 20% of adolescents are obese, almost 18% of kids 6-11, and 8.4% of kids 2-5 years old.

I have been in this game for myself and in practice for 22 years and I know that for me to get my body fat into the 11-14% healthy range for men is hard. I can do it, and have done it, but it takes very strict efforts and adherence to a long term, multifaceted plan. I tend to fall in the 17% range most of the time, especially if I am lifting heavy weights. If I am not on my game, not structuring my efforts then I can easily drift up to the 22% plus range. Honestly, I have been in the obese range, as in the 25% body fat range three times in my life.

So I get the struggle, I live it, and I research, teach and practice this stuff. I have read over 1,000 articles on weight loss, read over 150 books on weight loss alone, gone to multiple seminars and conventions, launched group programs to thousands of people, worked one on one with a couple hundred by now at least, my most successful client lost over 185 lbs, we had a number lose over 100, and the fastest lost 100 lbs in 10 weeks……AND I still am learning, I still need to work hard, and I STILL have set backs. What I am saying is, THIS AINT EASY!

Here is the million dollar question: Is extra body fat alone unhealthy?

My answer: “NO!”

BUT, what causes extra fat accumulation and keeps fat on us when we try to lose it in a healthy manner, is NOT healthy and CAUSES chronic disease. Extra body fat would not be much of an issue if it wasn’t driven by and consequently contributes in return to high toxicity levels, cellular oxidation, systemic inflammation, and multiple hormonal problems.

The main drivers of all that makes extra fat unhealthy:

1. Chronic metabolic sugar burning
2. Exposure to artificial chemicals/poisons (by the way, natural damaging chemicals are called toxins, artificial, man made ones are technically poisons)
3. Continual Neurological Tone in Stress Mode
4. Hormonal imbalances and resistance
5. Liver, pancreas, visceral fat and scarring
6. Lack of appropriate movement and muscle development and glycogen storage capacity

Then there is the cosmetic turn off we have for extra body fat. Hey, let’s be honest, that can be a strong motivator, so I say use it to your advantage.

In the meantime, just be honest with yourself. Go online and try and find actual pictures of people with both overweight and obese body fat percentages and get a REAL perspective of what that looks like and understand what it means to you, your health, and family. It is not going to be a picture of the biggest loser, I promise!

Awareness is step one. Increased awareness promotes a change in thinking. Change your thinking on health and your behavior will follow. Change your behavior and you can change your very life and future.

Oh, and if you are getting healthy and losing weight and people get weird and say things like, “you look fine, you don’t need to lose weight,” understand why they say that. Whether they are trying to support and love you or it is a reflection of what they think of themselves, they simply just might not know what you do. So, it is important to set your own goals and follow what you need and want to do based on what YOU now know.

Don’t settle my friends and don’t compare yourself to the masses to feel good, get healthy and you will feel good and look better and the masses will start to compare themselves to you!

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Dr. Don

Live free of the calorie my friends!

Dr. Don