Monday Nutrition Tip of the Week

If you hang out on the Beachbody website or do any Beachbody programs, it won't be long before you come across Michi's Ladder. Michi isn't a who, but a what. Michi is a Japanese word for path or "The Way," and the nutrition experts at Beachbody came up with the ladder as a guide for people trying to lose weight.

The ladder has five tiers, with the top of the ladder being the best foods you can eat, while the bottom is the not-so-good stuff like fast-food hamburgers.

Here's what Beachbody fitness guru Steve Edwards says about Michi's Ladder:

"First, it's just a food substitution guide for people trying to LOSE WEIGHT. Depending upon your situation you may find it necessary to eat more on a lower tier, especially for athletics. Performance nutrition is different from weight loss nutrition. For performance, dense calories are often important. For weight loss, they almost always want to be avoided. So Michi's focuses on low-density foods from a caloric standpoint that have a high density nutrient ratio. Therefore, tier 1 is filled with many veggies, which are loaded with nutrients per calorie as well as no calorie fiber. For people trying to fill their stomachs with as many nutrients and as few calories as possible, this is the primary aim of your diet.

Secondly, it's not a diet! A diet consists of an eating plan. You still need to adhere to some sort of plan. You could eat out of nothing but tier 1 and still have a poor diet if you don't cover your basic nutritional needs, such as getting plenty of carbs, proteins, and fats. Michi's Ladder was never meant to address this. All it was designed for was to help you make substitutions of similar types of foods."

Zach and I have been contemplating Michi's Ladder pretty heavily in the past week or so, because after the first of the year we plan on doing a food challenge that uses Michi's Ladder as a guide. Our goal is to only eat foods that come out of the top two tiers for seven days.

I can tell right now that the tough things for me to give up will be crackers and cheese, especially since that's what I'm serving up for my daughter 80 percent of the time.

Here's a link to Michi's Ladder in case you want to print it out, and I've pasted it below for quick reference.

http://www.beachbody.com/category/michis_ladder.do

Eat to carve your physique!

Michi's Ladder is a guideline, but we leave it to you to decide. If you only ate from Tiers 1 & 2, you would have a near-perfect diet!

Tier 1: The Pious Tier
Apples, with skin  Artichokes   Arugula  Asparagus  Avocados  Beans    Beets  Bok choy  Boysenberries  Bran  Broccoli   Broccoli sprouts   Brussels sprouts  Cabbage  Carrots  Cauliflower   Celery  Cereal, whole grain    Chard   Cherries  Citrus fruits	Collard greens   Cottage cheese, nonfat  Cucumbers  Egg whites  Endive  Fish, cold water (salmon, mackerel, sardines)   Fish, freshwater   Flaxseed  Garlic, fresh  Granola, raw, no sugar    Hemp seed  Kale   Lettuce, romaine, green or red leaf  Milk, nonfat   Milk, soy    Muesli, raw, no sugar    Mushrooms	Mustard  Nectarines  Oatmeal    Olive oil  Olives  Onions  Pears, with skin  Peas   Peppers  Plantains  Prunes  Radishes  Raspberries  Refried beans, nonfat   Rice, brown  Salsa, natural, no sugar  Seitan   Spinach   Squash   Strawberries  Sweet potatoes	Tea, green or black Tempeh   Tofu   Tomato sauce, no sugar  Tomatoes  Vinegar Water Yams  Yogurt, nonfat, no sugar
Tier 2: The Happy Tier
Apples, skinless  Bananas  Blueberries  Bread, whole grain  Cantaloupe  Cheese, nonfat  Chicken, skinless white meat  Coffee, black or cappuccino with nonfat milk   Corn  Cottage cheese, low-fat	Cream cheese, nonfat  Duck, free-range   Eggplant  Fish, farmed  Granola or energy bar  Grapes  Hummus    Juice, fresh-squeezed with pulp, no sugar  Kiwifruit  Mangoes  Meal replacement bar    Melon, honeydew	Milk, 1%    Nuts, raw    Ostrich   Pancakes, buckwheat   Papayas  Peaches  Pineapple  Plums  Raisins  Ricotta cheese, nonfat  Soy nuts    Soy sauce  Squid  String beans	Sunflower seeds    Tortillas, whole wheat    Turkey breast  Vegetable juice   Veggie burger    Venison, free-range   Watermelon  Yogurt, no sugar    Zucchini
Tier 3: The Swiss Tier
A1 Steak Sauce  Angel food cake  Applesauce  Bagels  Beef, eye of round   Beef, London   Beef, top round   Canola oil  Cheese, low-fat   Chicken, dark meat   Chicken sandwich, broiled    Chicken taco, baked    Clams	Coffee, cappuccino with whole milk   Crab  Cream cheese, low-fat   Eggs, whole   French fries, baked  Fruit, dried  Graham crackers  Granola   Honey  Jam or marmalade  Jerky, turkey  Juice, from concentrate  Ketchup	Lamb, lean   Lettuce, iceberg  Lobster  Mayonnaise  Milk, 2%    Muesli   Oatmeal, flavored  Oysters  Pancakes  Pasta, plain  Peanut butter, raw   Popcorn, plain  Pork tenderloin   Potatoes, baked or boiled	Pretzels  Refried beans, low-fat    Rice cakes  Rice, white  Sauerkraut  Soup, canned broth   Steak, lean   Sweet-and-sour sauce   Veal cutlet   Wine, red  Yogurt, frozen, nonfat
Tier 4: The Dodgy Tier
Animal crackers  Beef, filet mignon   Beef, lean ground   Beef, sirloin   Beef Stroganoff   Beer  Bread, refined flour  Buffalo   Butter  Caesar salad, with chicken    Canadian bacon   Cheese (including bleu and goat)  Chili    Chinese food    Chips, low-fat, baked  Coconut	Coffee, iced mocha latte with nonfat milk   Coffee, latte with whole milk    Coffee cake   Crackers  Grilled cheese sandwich   Ham   Hot dogs, turkey   Ice cream, sugar-free or fat-free  Jell-O  Juice, sweetened  Lamb chops   Lasagna, with meat   Macaroni and cheese   Margarine	Meat loaf   Mexican food    Milk, whole    Muffins   Nuts, salted or roasted  Peanut butter, not raw   Pepper, stuffed  Pizza, meatless or Hawaiian style    Popcorn, with salt and butter   Pork chop   Potato salad or macaroni salad   Pudding, with low-fat milk   Reuben sandwich	Sherbet  Shrimp  Sloppy Joe, lean beef or turkey   Soft drinks, diet Soup, canned creamy   Spaghetti, with meatballs    Sub sandwich    Taco salad, with chicken    Tortilla, refined flour or corn   Tuna salad or chicken salad   Vegetable oil  Wine, white  Yogurt, frozen
Tier 5: The Newburg Tier
Alcohol, hard liquor Bacon   Baked beans    Beef, ground, regular   Beef taco, fried   Breakfast sandwich, fast food   Cakes   Candy  Cereal, sugared  Chicken a la King   Chicken, buffalo wings or nuggets   Chicken or fish sandwich, fried	Chips, potato or corn   Chocolate   Cinnamon bun   Coffee, mocha, macchiato, ice blended, frappé, triple caramel vanilla buzz bomb, etc.   Cookies   Cream cheese  Creamed veggies   Creamer, nondairy  Doughnuts   French fries   Gravy  Hamburger, fast food	Hot dogs   Ice cream   Jerky, beef, pork, or venison  Juice, sugar added  Lobster Newburg   Nachos   Onion rings   Pastries   Pies   Potato skins, fried   Potatoes, fried   Potpie   Refried beans, with lard	Salad dressing, creamy  Sausage   Soft drinks, sugared  Tater tots   Toaster pastries

Feeding the Fire

I got a newsletter from Beachbody today that included an article that deserves to be reprinted. And possibly shouted from the mountaintops.

When we started our Wednesday Workouts at school, one of the first things I shared with them about nutrition is that "dieting" (a word I think should be abolished) by not eating does not work for several reasons. 1) Not eating makes you incredibly cranky and irritable. Why would you want to live that way? 2) Not eating is not sustainable. Eventually you will cave in and eat, and when you do, it's not going to be pretty. 3) When you don't eat, your metabolism slows to a snail's pace. Your body goes into starvation mode, and you WILL NOT lose weight.

If you're exercising, you need to be eating three meals and at least two healthy snacks per day. That way you are constantly feeding the fire of your metabolism, and it will make your metabolism work for you rather than against you.

Here's the article. It says it better than I ever could:

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Eat More, Lose More. (Really?)

By Justine Holberg

You work out practically every day and you're feeling good because you've lost some weight. Until a week or so passes and you can't get the scale to budge. It's like an invisible wrench has been thrown into the works. Now what?

You start second-guessing everything you're doing:

• Maybe I'm eating too much?
• Should I work out harder?
• Do I have to live on parsley and hot water?

So you restrategize. You slash calories and step up the intensity of your workouts. Unfortunately, after another week, you're still not losing. Now you want to give up altogether. But before you throw in the towel, ask yourself this:

Am I eating enough?

Contrary to popular belief, sometimes you have to eat more to lose weight. While that may sound counterintuitive, it often does the trick. Here's why:

1. Metabolism is the key to weight loss. If you don't eat enough, or often enough, your metabolism slows to a crawl and weight loss becomes more difficult, especially when you're exercising. That's why skipping meals isn't a good idea if the goal is to shed pounds. 
   
   Tip: Always eat breakfast to kick-start metabolism and try eating mini-meals throughout the day to keep your metabolism fired up.
2. To keep your metabolism up, you MUST eat. Conventional wisdom dictates that when you first start dieting, the less you eat, the better. While it's true that you often should eat less, eating too little can backfire over time. As your body composition changes, your body will think it's starving, which can make it hold on to fat. (The process actually has to do with excessive release of a hormone called cortisol, but you don't need to know the details, so we'll just call it fat.) To avoid this, most experts agree that over time, you shouldn't eat fewer than 1,200 calories per day for women, 1,500 for men. If your daily diet consists of fewer calories than that, consider eating more. 
   
   Tip: Keep a food diary to track calories.
3. You need more calories when you work out. If you're exercising while following a low-calorie eating plan, you'll need to take into account the calories you're burning. That's because it's now easier to enter starvation mode. Let's say you're burning 400 calories and only eating 1,200 to 1,300 calories per day. This means you're really only taking in 800 to 900 calories per day before you begin to calculate how your body composition is changing. Muscle burns more calories at rest than fat does, so as your body changes, you need to eat more to keep the weight loss coming. 
   
   Tip: Drink an after-workout recovery drink like P90X Results and Recovery Formula^®. After hard workouts, its calories are utilized so quickly by your body, some people refer to them as "free calories." They really aren't, but those calories will ensure that your muscles (and metabolism) recover quickly.

And remember this:

Figuring out to what to eat, how much to eat, and when to eat isn't easy. That's why people often refer to losing weight as a journey. It takes a few different paths to get there. Sometimes you have to adjust your ratio of protein, fat, and carbs to start losing again. Or adjust your calorie level, which can include eating more to lose weight.

Tip: Use the Team Beachbody^® Meal Planner. It can make figuring out your calories much, much easier. You can personalize an eating plan that takes your workouts into consideration.

Finally, if you're still on the fence about needing to eat more to lose weight: You might be thinking, "How come I know some really skinny people who barely eat?"

The answer is this: You can eventually lose weight by not eating. It's called starving. Reduce calories enough and your body will start breaking down its muscle tissue, and this will result in weight loss. However, it makes your body increase its emergency hormonal responses, which also causes your body to be stressed and hang onto fat, making it.very easy to gain the weight back again.

So I hope you take this thought away with you today: The idea is to keep your metabolism revving and running. This will help you get healthy and stay strong. Eat the right amount of food to help your body continuously burn calories, and you're more likely to shed those unwanted pounds.

The Gift of Fitness

Christmas is barreling toward us again, and I bet you're in the same boat as me. What am I going to get all these people on my Christmas list who already have pretty much anything and everything that they need?

Last week on the National Coach Call, Beachbody's CEO, Carl Daikeler, suggested that we ought to strive to have at least one gift under each tree this year that contributes to the health of someone we love.

Now, obviously I'd love it if everyone took that suggestion to heart and ordered a shiny new P90X or a big bag of Shakeology from my coach site. (Brazil Butt Lift, anyone? I know you know someone whose butt could stand to be lifted.)

But I think Carl was looking at the grander scheme of things. Instead of using Christmas as an opportunity to lay a metric ton of fudge on the ones you love, maybe we should be thinking about how we can improve the health of the ones we love -- so you can enjoy each other for a few extra Christmases.

A few months ago for bosses' day, Zach's co-workers gave him the following items:

• A container of almonds
• Two boxes of Zone bars
• A giant basket of fresh fruit - strawberries, apples, grapes, oranges
• A gift card to Bass Pro Shop

Do these people know my husband or what? He was thrilled, and so were the kids and I. My children literally jumped for joy when I got down the Jack LaLanne Power Juicer to juice the oranges from that basket. (Have you seen these juicers? Now there's a gift idea!)

Do you have a friend who loves to dance? Get her a Zumba DVD.

Schedule a time for you and your spouse to go climb a rock wall.

Buy your parents the Fruit of the Month Club. (And your sibling can buy them the juicer!)

Pick up a Foreman Grill for your brother so he can cook lean meat quickly.

Do your kids have bikes? Buy yourself one so you can all ride bikes together.

Are you friends with a P90X aficionado? I can help there -- Beachbody is offering Tony Horton's One on One workouts for one cent for the first month. Then they get a new workout every month after that for $19.95.

The possibilities are endless if you think creatively. And if you're having trouble, shoot me an email. I'll be happy to suggest some TurboFire with a side of RevAbs.

P.S. If you do order something from my site, make sure to do it by December 17 so it has plenty of time to get to you!

Monday Nutrition Tip of the Week

Today's nutrition tip is short and simple:

Make this soup! It's Butternut Squash Apple Soup, and you'll be so glad you invited it into your life.

It's quick, easy, and tastes like you're eating a delicious cream-based soup, but you're not! It's nothing but vegetables, an apple, and chicken broth, but the consistency of the pureed butternut squash makes it so creamy and thick.

Butternut squash is one of those winter squash (along with acorn and spaghetti) that is so good for you. High in fiber, lots of vitamin A and C, 63 calories per serving, and no fat. And do I have to mention again how good it tastes?

As a special bonus, the leftover soup is almost better than the fresh soup -- kind of like Italian food. And this recipe makes a bunch, so you will have leftovers.

C'mon...It's cold outside, so try it today!

(Special shout out to my friend Nicole who sent me this recipe. Thank you!)

The (Food) Hangover

Last night Zach and I were lucky enough to be invited to eat dinner at The Palm, an absolutely fantastic steak and seafood restaurant in downtown Dallas. This is the third year we've gotten to go, and each year it's a no-holds-barred eating fest.

Even though we've been on a health kick, I decided to go ahead and have a steak, because...c'mon. It's The Palm.

Here's a rundown of all the stuff we ate:

• Appetizers: stuffed mushrooms, fried cheese ravioli, and mini crab cakes
• Mixed green salad
• 9 ounce fillet mignon
• Cheesy potatoes
• Asparagus
• Green beans
• Dessert sampler: carrot cake, chocolate cake, key lime pie...I even had a taste of the strawberries and whip cream that I'm pretty sure was only there as a garnish.

Oh man, was I ever stuffed. And that food was so good...the steak was so tender and was cooked perfectly. The Palm's carrot cake is out of this world. Since it was a dessert sampler I grazed all over that platter, but kept having to have more bites of carrot cake so that it could be "last" in my mouth.

Fast forward to this morning. I felt terrible! And it had nothing to do with the knowledge of how much I ate. I think it has to do with the salt! We don't go out to eat that often due to a combination of children, cheapness, and dietary paranoia, but when we do, I feel it big-time. I'm always so thirsty, puffy, and headache-y the next morning. It's as if I took one of those navy blue containers of table salt and just started guzzling.

I guess in some ways that makes me feel good, though. If I'm sensitive to salt overload, I must not be doing too bad in the salt-intake portion of my usual diet. By cooking your own food instead of relying on prepared foods or restaurants, you have so much more control over your salt intake. Otherwise it's incredibly difficult to manage how much salt you're getting.

Despite the salt binge from the night before, we did wake up and do yoga this morning. I just had to guzzle about a gallon of water first.

Flax Everything Muffins

We always had baked goods at our house growing up. Maybe it was brownies, maybe banana bread or chocolate chip cookies, but you could be sure there was something in the cookie jar to snack on when we got home from school. I liked that (and so did my friends), and I want to do the same thing in my house now -- with a healthy spin, of course. Even though I don't usually have snickerdoodles or cinnamon rolls around the house, I don't want my kids to feel completely sweets-deprived.

This is a muffin recipe that I got from the back of the flax seed box, but adapted to make it my own. I struggle with what to call these, though. Zach would ask me what's in the muffins, and I would say, "Well, they're Cinnamon-Apple-Raisin-Pecan-Wheat-Flax Seed muffins." I guess I could call them CARP Wheat Flax Seed muffins, but that doesn't sound appetizing at all. So I'll just call them Flax Everything Muffins.

I usually make these with my son. He is five, and I've been cooking with him since he was about three. I love it, and so does he. I never noticed it before I had kids, but there is so much to be learned by cooking . Math for measuring, science for how the ingredients work together, nutrition in finding out which foods are healthy and which aren't. And not to mention the ability to follow the directions of a recipe. I have a sneaking suspicion that the main reason he loves it is because he gets to lick the spoon at the end, but I guess that's O.K. He's bound to pick up some learnin' somewhere during the process.

These muffins are really good, and have a ton of healthy stuff in them. Flax seed has 2600 mg of Omega 3 oils in two tablespoons, and is a great source of fiber. It can be sprinkled in smoothies, on yogurt, cereal -- I even mix it in tuna salad.

Here's the muffin recipe:

- 1/4 cup milled flax seed
- 3/4 cup whole wheat flour
- 3/4 cup white flour
- 1/2 cup sugar
- 2 tsp. baking powder
- 1/2 tsp. baking soda
- 1/2 tsp. salt
- 1 tsp. cinnamon
- 1 egg, beaten
- 1 1/2 cup finely chopped apple
- 3 TB vegetable oil
- 1/2 cup milk
- 1/2 cup chopped nuts (optional)
- 1/2 cup raisins or other dried fruit (optional)

Blend dry ingredients together in a bowl. In a separate bowl, combine egg, vegetable oil and milk. Add dry ingredients to egg mixture and stir till just blended. Fold in apples, nuts, and raisins. Batter will be thick. Fill greased muffin cups 2/3 full. Bake at 400 degrees for 18-20 minutes or until top springs back when touched.

Yesterday, I happened to have some leftover pecan-streusel from the sweet potato casserole I made for Thanksgiving. The leftovers found a happy home on top of these muffins. Yum!