So now you know one of my fears…how about another?  I have a tremendous fear of bad foundation application.  Now stay with me here because I promise to be brief.  (There is no way we can set up our menus for beauty and not talk about skin so hold on while I get off topic for 2 seconds!;)  Nothing scares me more than being *that* girl.  You know the one with the 2 inch layer of foundation/concealer all over her face that just wreaks of bad application.  She is literally sloughing off powder as she walks along the hall.  What caused this to happen?  Bad skin.  Wrinkles.  Excessive dryness.  Or she’s blind—but that’s another post at another time!  But what she’s trying to do is use make up to hide what her diet is lacking:  nutrients. 

Fruits and veggies are the easiest way to get those nutrients for the skin as well as add variety to your diet, yet everyone has the proverbial apple everyday with some form of berries in the morning.  Can we break that habit please?  Let’s talk about some new fruits and veggies to add and then put a system in place to keep you on your toes so you don’t fall back to the same old stand by’s.

First, let me let you in on a secret:  I don’t like fruit.  There, I said it.  I am not a fan.  I eat it because I have to and it adds flavor to my oatmeal.  But if I don’t eat oatmeal, I may not eat fruit that day.  Is that good?  No!  So I had to grow up and be a big girl and start to eat things that I may not always like as much as other things (I don’t *hate* fruit, I just prefer veggies more).  I mention this because I get this one A LOT, “I don’t like other veggies.  I only like àfill in the blankß.”  Really?  I mean, really?  Would you also like me to walk you to school and tuck you in at night?  Yeah, I’m punkin’ you!  What are you going to do about it?  Hit me with some asparagus?  Honestly, if you are over the age of 25 and you are pouting over veggies or any other food item, I can let you spend a week in a third world country and you’ll be over that REAL quick!  Get over yourself and start thinking long term.  I say that as I eat a plum. OY!

Oh but I’m not done with the rant because now I’m coming after the fruitaholics.  You know who you are.  You send me the food diary with fruit (usually all the same kind) at 5 out of the 6 meals and try to justify it with a “big” salad at the end of the day.  Way to go on variety there!  Usual comeback from this person, “I had carrots and tomatoes in the salad”.  Really?  I mean, really?  What are you one of those folks who chews gum after a meal and tries to say that’s brushing?  Get some floss will ya!  Yeah I’m calling you out, too!  Honestly, if you are that creative at stretching things out like that, can you do my taxes? OY!

Ok, so I sound harsh…but this is important stuff!  Foundation application is at stake here!  You spend $45 on a small vial of that stuff and you’ll find time to vary your vegetables, your fruit, heck your way home from work!  There becomes no limit to your variations!  That’s money right there!  Enough already about that stuff, let’s get past this nonsense and move into the real stuff:  3 Green/Blue fruits and veggies everyday, 2 Red/Yellow/Orange and 1 white per day and you are good to go.  Again, will it work out that well?  No…but it gives you a road map to start with and then you can make better choices as you become used to opening up the diet.

 (Note:  These are not complete lists and some fruits and veggies have been omitted on purpose.)

Green/Blue/Purple

Artichokes, Arugula, Asparagus, Broccoflower, Broccoli, Broccoli rabe, Brussel sprouts, Celery, Chinese cabbage, Cucumbers, Endive, Green apples, Green beans, Green cabbage, Green grapes, Green onion, Green pears, Green peppers, Honeydew, Kiwifruit, Leafy greens, Leeks, Lettuce, Limes, Okra, Sno Peas, Spinach, Zucchini, Black currants, Blackberries, Blueberries, Plums, Eggplant, Elderberries, Grapes, Plums, Pomegranates, Prunes, endive, Purple cabbage, Purple grapes, Purple peppers, Raisins

Red/Yellow/Orange

Blood oranges, Cherries, Cranberries, Guava, Papaya, Pink grapefruit, Pink/Red grapefruit, Pomegranates, Radicchio, Radishes, Raspberries, Red apples, Red bell peppers, Red chili peppers, Red grapes, Red onions, Red pears, Strawberries, Tomatoes, Watermelon, Apricots, Butternut squash, Cantaloupe, Carrots, Golden kiwifruit, Grapefruit, Lemon, Mangoes, Nectarines, Oranges, Papayas, Peaches, Persimmons, Pineapples, Pumpkin, Rutabagas,  Tangerines, Yellow apples, Yellow pears, Yellow peppers, Yellow summer squash, Yellow tomatoes, Yellow watermelon, Yellow winter squash

White

Bananas, Brown pears, Cauliflower, Dates, Garlic, Ginger, Jicama, Mushrooms, Onions, Parsnips, Shallots, Turnips, White nectarines, White peaches

Here are the rules:

1)    No more than 2 fruits per day. 

2)    Do not repeat the same veggie more than once in a day.

3)    Do not become a banana psycho.  We’ll talk about this in another section.

4)  Limit the tropical fruits to 3 per week.  Easy mon, ya hear.

 Getting the green guys in assures that you keep your metabolism revving.  And getting the blue guys in like prunes assures that you keep your colon revving.  Although, keep that under wraps there will ya!  So you have more of those than the reds and such.  The reds/orange/yellows protect you against disease and the whites possess a ton of vitamins that boost immunity.  Spread it out folks.  It’s on!

We’re getting close to putting this together!  Starches and fat are simpler and they are next!:o)

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Menu Planning:  Living Life Beautifully

As we embark on this fun journey together (which will resume on Monday after I finish getting through all the emails that state, “I didn’t know you had a blog and now I need to get caught up on the reading!;) learning how to plan our menus, I feel the need to empty my soul as to why this needs to be so important to you. 

Do you have any fears?  I mean real “wake-you-up-in-the-middle-of-the-night” fears that almost take your breath away because they seem so real?  I do.  More than most of you will ever know.  Some of my fears are irrational just like most people’s fears.  But there is one that I have that is real…and big…and furry (ok, not furry, but I loved how that sounded). 

If you think it is the fear of dying you are wrong.  I do not fear death so much and as I age I am almost embracing it (I make myself sound so old yet I still feel like I am oh so young).  Somehow for me there is an unspoken serenity in a timely death.  No, I do not fear that.  What I fear is living with disease.  Not dying from disease—living with it. 

Now I know what you’re thinking: “Jodi, I already eat clean”.  Yes, I know.  If you are reading my blog, you care what you look like.  However, that’s why I am talking to you about living with disease.  Not dying from it.  I do not want to be 65 with beltway skin, shards of teeth, straw for hair with enough fire in my engine to make it from A to B, but otherwise so depleted that I literally hurt all over to get there.  I am not interested in being 70 but looking like I am 90.  Don’t you feel so bad when you meet that person?  Or how about being 75 with every known condition out there that requires oodles of medication to keep you going?  Not my desire.

That’s us, though.  That’s the path we are headed on.  We exercise daily so we are keeping our vessels healthy.  We do not eat processed food so our arteries are clean.  And we flush ourselves daily with loads of water to keep our cells teeming with life.  But we also secretly stuff ourselves with so many chemicals and artificial sweeteners that if we listen closely at night we can actually hear our livers sobbing quietly looking for relief from the toxins.  We work hard, play hard and pretty much live hard, too.  Don’t forget, we are type A.  And lastly, we eat the same nutrients day in and day out so that when we go to replenish what we rob of our body everyday in our killer workouts, we fall short.  Thereby creating what I call now, “the slow, painful life”—not death.

See we’re going to live.  And we’ll be somewhat vibrant.  Maybe vibrant is too pain free of a word.  We’ll be operational.  But for who we are used to being, we will not be happy.  More than even the processed food loving general public folks who do not value their health, we need to be diligent about food periodization.  That’s a $100,000 word for “not eating the same thing all the time”.  We need to cherish the gift of performance that we have been so blessed to possess. We take for granted things like weight loss, functioning joints, working organs (hysterectomy anybody?) and regeneration. 

Take it from someone with first hand knowledge, regeneration ends.  And when it does, will you be on the good side of that stick or on the bad side?  Don’t get caught out there on the bad side of the regeneration stick!  Hormonal hell, emotional distress and physical therapy will all be staring you in the face.  And they are not that good looking to be that close to you!

I bring all this up because I don’t want this series to be a fly by night thing for you.  You know, you throw a few amens out there and agree with all that is being said to you only to find yourself 2 weeks later eating the same thing you were eating 2 weeks before.  I don’t want that.  I want you to read this, get this, try this, live this.  For that to happen, we need to take it slow and develop some habits.  Food is habitual.  If you think you are going to just wake up and start balancing menus left and right—good luck to you.  Actually, if you find that you can I have a few food diaries for you to help me with when we’re done with this series.  Email me. J

So although the info will be coming faster than it has so far, it will not be coming so fast that we are on the next letter before you have fully taken advantage of the first.  Please try to incorporate as much as you can in between posts so that it is instilled in you in real time.  You learn by doing, not by reading.  Give me feedback as to how it is going and share any tips and tricks that you learn in the comments so that others may learn with you. 

The response from this series so far has been tremendous and it has just started.  I am so excited for the rest and from the looks of my Facebook page, you are too!.  Let’s put this to good use and truly set ourselves up for living beautifully…cool?:o)    

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Dieting for beauty sounds a bit odd for most people.  When you think of dieting, you think of weight loss but you really do not equate the end result to something like ageless beauty.  And when you think of beauty, you think of creams and treatments instead of fruits and vegetables.  But as you go through this series with me you will hear me refer to beauty over and over again.  Why?  Because you are wasting your time just dieting to lose weight, diet to look good at the end! 

Dry hair, brittle nails, wrinkled, leathery skin and a less than bright smile all take away from the weeks of effort you just put in to make your body hot.  So how can we control how we look at the end of all this dieting?  Menu planning. 

Adding variety to the diet allows the body to flourish.  Hitting it fresh from all angles makes you look fresh, young and beautiful.  Instead of walking around with a list of vitamins and minerals in foods, let’s work on easy ways to remember how to get it all in.

Most of us eat many of the same foods day in and day out.  Protein does not change too much throughout the week (here’s a conversation you hardly hear: “I wanted squid today but they didn’t have any on sale so I swung over to the meat department and picked up tripe instead) with us depending on chicken, chicken and chicken for every meal with an occasional ground turkey and shrimp tossed in the mix.  Starches are the same old starches and fruits and veggies are just an afterthought for the most part (Oh look, berries.  I’ve never seen that on a menu.)    If we do not actively have some way to stay on top of our variety, we are just not going to do it.  Instead, we rely on the usual suspects (however healthy they are, they are not the only fruits and veggies in the world) like berries, broccoli and salad (really lettuce) to populate our plates.  Unless, we color code it!

Color adds variety and not just in fruits and veggies.  Meats and starches can be characterized through color, too.  Texture is important as well but that’s how you liven up a menu so just hold your horses will ya?  Jeez! J Here is a different way to think about the colors of protein in your diet:

From light to dark:

Protein may be categorized from light in color (shellfish, white meat chicken, dairy, white fish for example) to various medium tone shades (salmon, lentils, ground chicken for example) to darker shades (skinless chicken thighs, steak, buffalo just to name a few).  An easy way to look at your day is to think 3, 2, 1.  Three sources of light, 2 sources of med tone and 1 source of dark per day.  Do you have to be exact with that?  No.  But it gives you a starting place instead of aimlessly milling around the store picking up numerous forms of chicken!

So what does this really look like?

Light: 

Chicken breast, scallops, shrimp, cottage cheese (1%), egg whites, turkey breast (non deli), extra lean ground turkey, white fish of all kinds, greek yogurt, albacore tuna, lobster

Medium:

Salmon, chunk light tuna, chicken livers, sardines, lentils (yes they are a starch but I am using them as a protein here), egg yolks, protein powder, tempeh

Dark:

Eye of round, buffalo,bison, venison, skinless chicken thighs and legs, flank stank, beef liver (you knew it was coming), lamb, duck

Here are the rules:

1)       Try not repeat items on the list more than twice in a day, but you certainly can within the week.

2)       The items are not listed solely by fat content so you will have to catch the post on how to track your macronutrients. They are listed by color.  Don’t forget that.

3)       Lastly, this is just a fun way to remember how to spice it up a bit.  There is not any major scientific basis for this—yet.  First we learn to crawl…wink, wink.

Using this format, you could have egg whites, chicken breast, white fish, protein powder, salmon and buffalo in one day.  Holy mother of variety, batman!  I think you have covered just about every avenue with that winning combo.  Much more to come on how to put this together, but at least you’re getting the idea.

Why does this matter?  Mainly because if you choose all the same protein sources all the time, you’ll miss out on choline in egg yolks which supports cardiovascular and brain functioning or selenium which is more abundant in dark meat than in light meat.  And since selenium is an antioxidant and staves off certain cancers, I like to think you’ll be adding a bit more dark meat to your diet.

I hope you realize how much you will be learning in this series and you get to stick around for more.  Next we will tackle carbohydrates and give you great ways to think about adding more color to your plate!

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What a one hit wonder they were!   And when it comes to menu planning for an effective diet, you do not want to be a one hit wonder!  But you do want to C.O.L.O.R. yourself bad! 

Menu planning may seem incredibly daunting task at first if you think you are just going to write one up without a “plan”.  You know how much simpler life seems when you have a step by step guide that shows you how to do something.  So let’s quickly break down the process of making a menu and it’s as simple as adding some C.O.L.O.R.:

C             Color code it           How many colors do you have in the week?  Can you add more?

O             Order it        Your goal decides your menu format.  There are a few and we’ll cover as many as we can.

L              Liven it up     Too much seriousness in your menu is no good.  Let’s dress this puppy up!

O             Optimize it      Step back and look at all you have.  Can we improve anything anywhere? 

R             Repeat it all over again      Create your own “bank” of menus.

If your menu has COLOR, it has everything!  When I receive food diaries to check out (and in season I probably view over 50/week), I see many of the same eating patterns that we as busy people like to perpetuate:

Eating the same thing everyday

Limited choices of fruits and veggies

Focusing on only the “super” foods (how much broccoli can you eat?)

No “fun” in the diet

No rhyme or reason for food placement

If you do not know why you do something or are not sure how to do something, you will never really do it well.  You are just going through the motions faking it while in reality you hope you are “making” it.  But you know you really are not making it yet you are not quite sure why.  You are falling short somewhere and it is getting old to you.

There are hundreds of books out there with recipes in them and now there are even people selling ebooks of menu plans.  You are more than welcome to find one of those and follow them if you want.  But what’s going to happen?  You are going to become bored with the food choices or feel limited by the way they put the menus together.  What happens if all of the recipes are not clean enough for your goal?  What if they give you plans and their lowest cal level is 1400 and you are 4’10” and 95lbs?  That’s like Thanksgiving for you!  And because you do not know why they did what they did, you cannot adapt it to be what you like it to be.  How about just creating your own menus, with your own fun added to them? 

Let’s begin the process of creating our own menus and take it step by step—from color coding it all the way to repetition—because face it, no one really knows what you like but you.  And success depends upon you planning an effective menu and adhering to it as much as possible.   Next post:  Adding some COLOR!

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If you have been on my Facebook page today (and if not, friend me now and go check it out) you would have seen my ’smokin’ body’ friend Mandy (and I do mean smokin’ body!) ask me to check out an article.  It was on Time Magazine’s blog and it was about exercise making you more fat.  She wanted my take on the article and you know that’s just asking for trouble!

I am sure everyone thinks that that article is ridiculous–and you know, you would not be too far off!  BUT, on the same hand maybe not.  I am warning you…this is going to be long.  Also, I am going to come from two completly different angles on this article so be prepared to stretch your brains today. 

First point:  I want to always look good naked.  I don’t just want to be thin/skinny/small/whatever.  If you said to me right now, “Jodi, you have two choices 1) thin but with a saggy tummy and an ass that could be mistaken for a sackcloth at an Amish Revival OR 2) big like Queen Latifah but you could lift a small child with one butt cheek”, I would be in a day care right now moving some kids around!  Do you hear me?  I ALWAYS WANT TO LOOK GOOD NAKED.  PERIOD.

So whenever I read these articles I have to laugh.  We want what we want but just don’t want to work for it.  Starve me to be thin but dear God in Heaven–don’t make me work!  OY!  What do you mean I have to work hard?  Sweat?  Oh heck no!  So instead of accepting that the human body was meant to move, exert energy and be active, we conduct study after study after study to prove how inactivity is ok or not ok.  Or better yet, we fool ourselves into believing that walking up a flight of stairs to get to our chair–I mean work–is a good substitute for exercise.  The fact of the matter is if you want to “just” lose weight (and muscle tone), then go ahead and just diet…or cut off a limb–whichever is the path of least resistance to you.  But if you want to be beautiful, hot, sexy, healthy and whatever other adjective you can put in there, then get your butt up and grab a kettlebell and work that posterior chain until you can put a cup on it and call it a tabletop!

Looking good naked is hard!  And it is rewarding.  And it separates you from all the other folks out there.  Looking good in clothes is not super easy but it is not as hard as looking good naked.  I do realize that if you are reading this blog, you want to look good naked. 

So no matter how many of these articles people print up, those that are concerned about how they look as a finished product are not going to pay them much mind.  They know.  And those that are looking for an excuse are going to laminate the article and use it as a place mat for their meals.  Know what I’m saying?  To me this is like politics or religion:  your views are not going to be swayed by one article or news piece.  It’s either you get it, or you don’t.  It’s as simple as that.

Now to bend your mind a bit…

Second point:  He’s right.  Yes, you heard me.  He’s right.  I am a perfect example of what he is talking about.  The problem is, he has the mechanism all wrong.  If he keeps up his research he will eventually get it right.

Most of you know me so you know where I am going to go with this.  I am a big girl.  I have no problem telling you that.  In fact, it’s the pink elephant in the room when you meet me.  I am not ashamed of it nor am I intimidated by it.  But I am frustrated as all get up about it at this point in my life.

I was always thin.  I was the girl that couldn’t get pregnant because I didn’t weigh enough.  I actually had to gain 10 pounds to get pregnant with my first child.  I have had to lose weight 2 times in my life:  when I graduated college (what do you mean I will gain weight if I sit in a library from 4pm til midnight 7 days a week eating Snicker’s bars?  Who knew?) and after my second child.  In between those two very brief times in my life I weighed no more than 110 to 115 pounds.  Then I competed. 

Competing brought my body to another level.  I had muscles on my muscles and if I got any leaner you would be able to see the outline of my intestines through my skin.  But just like this article, I was too extreme.  I dieted to the macro, worked out to the very last minute that I could each day and never backed off.   One month after I got off stage for the last time, I let myself gain about 15 pounds to put me at about 10 pounds above my normal skinny weight.  I hung out there for a year but get thisàI never stopped show dieting and didn’t stop working out like a clown.   Instead, I fried myself into a state of fatness gaining 40 pounds in 4+ months with no change in diet and no change in exercise.  And for the first time in my life, I was “fat”.

My fault? Yep!  Cause? Jackass behavior and metabolic disruption.  Plain and simple: I fried my adrenals and depleted my metabolic cup.  Could I have fixed it?  Sure—if I knew then what I know now, yes.  But it took me 4 years to learn that diet and exercise can make you fat if you are not responsible about it.

So this brings me to his shortcomings in the article, and honestly, the short comings of America.  Why do we have to be so SO?  Why must we be just SO far to the right or SO far to the left?  The point that he is bringing up in this article is valid but he did not QUALIFY it.  Instead he SENSATIONALIZED it and made it trivial and silly.  He made it so ridiculous that you cannot see what is really going on here.

Exercise doesn’t make you fat.  EXTREME exercise makes you fat.  Extreme exercise while over-dieting really makes you fat.  Endless deprivation.  No good fat in your diet.  Lack of sleep.  No recovery.  I could go on for days.  But working out and then “rewarding” yourself with a muffin is not even worthy of an article never mind a deep discussion.  No, let’s talk about the REAL deal.  Most women are bingeing and (not always) purging themselves into the land of heaviness.  JUST EXTREME ON ANY END WILL DO IT.

This is now what I am all about:  BALANCE.  Hormonal balance, emotional balance and physical balance that will elicit that beautiful, lookin’-good-naked body to perform on a level it never did before.  Bring on the balance!

Now I am not a “soap box” kind of girl.  I don’t typically champion causes or want everyone to “get fit” because I am.  That’s great for you if you are that way.  I am much more of a sharp wit and would rather sarcasm you into the right way to do things than rah-rah-shish-kum-bah you.  But this is now my new mantra because seriously ladies, I cannot stand to see the look in your eyes when this happens to you.  It’s devastating. 

So just know, this guy is a putz.  His article is too simple and lacks merit.  But the underlying message is real and you need to take heed.  In the mean time, I am going to go try and pick up my 3 ½ year old with my butt cheek because although I am now a big girl, I am tight.  See you at the gym!  WOOP WOOP!

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You know I am all about inner beauty because it is what facilitates your outer beauty.  And you know that inner beauty comes from a balanced, healthy diet with fabulous training.  And I’m sure that by now you probably know that I shoot straight from the hip and will do whatever is necessary to get your attention.  You may have even picked up on the fact that I may know a thing or two about nutrition.  Well it is time to start putting all those traits together to make some learning magic. 

Welcome to the first of one of many series I will be hosting on my blog.  From time to time I will introduce a new topic that I will cover in bite size pieces so you can really learn something from it and then take something useful away with you.  I do not have any worries about giving you useful information and I hope you do not mind receiving it!  I also hope you don’t mind that I’m going to be pretty silly while giving you the info, too.  You know I’m a clown.;o)

No matter who I am speaking with, food is an issue.  Let me say that again b/c you may be in denial:  food. is. an. issue!   It could be planning it, controlling it, liking it, eating it, sharing it (that’s mine–back it down cuz forks hurt when they hit your hand!lol), who knows what *it* is, just know that “it” is many people’s source of stress.  Thus, success demands that you will to have to be a Jack of all trades and a master of none.  I say master of none simply because people tend to beat themselves up when they are not “perfect” at something and I honestly do not expect any one to be perfect at anything food related. 

Dieting (meaning the act of planning and controlling one’s nutrient intake) is hard.  No doubt about it.  Ask anyone, whether they are a seasoned athlete or a mom just wanting to be hot again, what they are doing that day for a workout and they will give you great detail (whether you wanted it or not).  They can tell you what time they are going, how long it should take, what weights they like to use…etc.  They can even tell you when they last made a change to their workout and what effects they got from the change.  Let me just quickly add that I am referring to those folks that really are interested in looking good–you know…you!  Anyway, they are like a walking workout journal.  But if you ask that same person what they are eating and when the last time they changed what they have been eating, they look at you like you just asked them if you can lick their spoon for them (what a nasty thought…ewww). 

Now don’t get me wrong, they will tell you they eat “healthy” or “clean” or whatever–and they most likely do.  But they also eat the same thing day in and day out because they don’t want to, or do not know how to:  menu plan.  That’s right, I just said it.  Menu Planning.  What are you going to do about it?  Hide under a chair and act like I just didn’t bring that topic up?  Menu Planning.  Said it again!  And I meant it too. Haha!

So let’s stop this awful practice of eating the same thing over and over again and just learn how to plan a menu, rotate some foods in and out, count some macros and etc.  We’ll take it step by step beginning with the layout.  How does that sound to you?  Let me know before I roll this Cadillac worth of information out on this blog and scare some of you into hibernation.  How about we do it over a 4 day period–maybe 3 if we’re feeling adventurous.  We can put a few days in between so you may have time to digest the info and try a few things.  You have one day to say yay or nay…so what you say?

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