Lately I’ve been hearing so much about drinks made with “superfoods” like acai, goji berries and noni juice.

However, some of the best superfoods are much more familiar to us and are not OVERPRICED fruit juices.

I’m talking about plums.

Food scientist Dr. Luis Cisneros and plant breeder David Byrne judged more than 100 varieties of plums, peaches, and nectarines, and found that their antioxidant and phytonutrient content matched or exceeded blueberries.

According to Byrne, one inexpensive plum contains about the same amount of antioxidants as a handful of blueberries.

“People tend to eat just a few blueberries at a time. They’ll eat a few on their cereal or as an ingredient mixed with lots of sugar,” Cisneros said. “But people will eat a whole plum at once and get the full benefit.”

The researchers didn’t stop after measuring the antioxidant content of plums.

Plums consistently score near the top of the list of high-antioxidant foods. They also tested the effect of the phytonutrients in the fruit on breast cancer cells. They found that plums inhibited test tube breast cancer growth without adversely affecting normal cell growth.

“We suggest that consumers take seriously the recommendation to eat at least five servings of fruits and vegetables or even more every day,” Byrne said, “and to make sure that plums are part of that.”

If you have any tasty ideas about how we can add plums to our diet, send them to me and I’ll pass them along!

shelli

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Have you ever noticed that sometimes you catch yourself focused on the problem instead of looking ahead to your goal or destination and figuring out how to get there?

I witnessed an experience like this on the golf course recently.

Henry Ford said, “Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off your goal.”

So true, so true.

I was playing golf with two men friends of mine.

On one hole Joe hit a ball smack into a large electrical utility box situated on the fairway alongside a pond. His ball went into the pond.

He dropped another ball on the grass and once again hit it into the box and it ricocheted into the pond.

I kid you not, he did this a third time as well!

I was on the other side of the fairway watching and waiting, and I must admit I started to laugh.

What were the odds of this happening three times in a row?

After all, he only had to get the ball into the air and over the electrical box. He’d gotten golf balls airborne millions of times before, right?

So what went wrong?

I’m guessing he was focusing on the obstacle and taking his eyes off the goal.

If you focus on the fact that you don’t have any willpower to stick to your eating plan, or you have bad habits, or you don’t think you can find exercise that you enjoy, you will hit those barriers and probably not pass them.

You must be aware of the challenges you face in order to navigate past them, but don’t make your obstacle the focus.

Your focus should be on where you’re going next and how you’re going to get there.

If you don’t have willpower, find a group of women with similar goals and challenges and put together a support group.

If you have bad habits, tackle them one at a time and take steps to change.

If you think you can’t find a workout program that you’ll enjoy, talk to women who do seem to be enjoying an active lifestyle and learn how and what they do.

After talking with Joe, the next time he’s got a challenging shot to make on the golf course, he’s going to focus on the options he has for getting his ball to the green and not on the obstacle in his way.

I hope I’m there to witness his success!

Keep this in mind when you pursue your own goals.

Focus on the destination, not on the obstacle.

shelli

Have you ever wondered if there’s a connection between eating sweets and breast cancer?

This topic comes up in the media every now and again, so here’s some information for you.

Limiting carbs and sweets IS one way to decrease your breast cancer risk.

Eating carbohydrates and simple sugars causes a spike in blood sugar. The constant elevation of blood sugar can result in insulin resistance. When that happens your body loses the ability to utilize the calories from the carbohydrates you eat.

It becomes a vicious cycle and takes its toll on you.

You eat carbs, your insulin levels rise but you become less efficient at getting glucose into your cells to be used for fuel.

Your body begins to store excess fat from not utilizing the carbs.

This combination of elevated blood sugar, insulin, and increased fat tissue causes inflammation, which damages other tissues in your body.

Insulin resistance leads to diabetes, heart disease, and strokes. Insulin resistance and diabetes are also linked to cancer.

A 2005 Italian study on the subject, published in the British Medical Journal, looked at roughly 5,000 women. After adjusting for their health history and lifestyle factors and comparing those women with and without diagnosed breast cancer, the researchers found that the women who consumed the most high-carb/high-sugar foods (like biscuits, pastries, and ice cream, as well as chocolate and simple sugars, including honey, jams, and jellies) had a significantly increased risk for breast cancer.

Other studies, including one just published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, suggest that insulin may be the link to the increased risk for breast cancer.

So take this information and remember that eating too many sweets and having elevated insulin levels raises the risk for breast cancer.

It is a risk factor that we can control.

Focus, instead, on eating a high-fiber diet rich in non-starchy vegetables, fruits, organic animal proteins, fish, beans, nuts/seeds, and other healthy fats. Monitor your sugar intake and gauge your intake of healthier carbs, like rice for instance, by your blood sugar and insulin levels and your weight.

shelli

Whether it’s from my yoga students, personal training clients or runners I’m coaching, a common question is about what to eat before they work out.

So let’s take a closer look at pre-workout fuel ideas.

It’s an important question because many of you exercise early in the morning.

You want to eat something that will digest well and is not too much food, yet you don’t want to feel lightheaded during your workout.

Eating before exercise can boost your performance, improve your endurance and help prevent low blood sugar, thereby preventing lightheadedness.

It also fuels your muscle and liver carbohydrate usage, providing you with energy throughout your workout.

The type of pre-workout fuel you’ll need depends on a few things.

One is your metabolism and digestive system.

The other is the type of exercise.

Your digestive system and metabolism are unique, so as I always suggest you must listen to your body to find out what works best. If finding a good pre-workout meal or snack has been a challenge for you, keep a journal of what you eat, the workouts, and how you feel.

Use these general guidelines when making your choices:

1. Blood flows to your belly during digestion. This means less blood flow for fueling your muscles. If you feel bloated when you exercise, this might be the reason. Have a meal or snack 45-90 minutes before your workout. You also need to allow for more digestion time before intense exercise as opposed to lower-intensity exercise.

2. Having difficulty with digestion? Then a liquid snack might be a better idea than a solid meal. Liquids take less time to digest (30 minutes or so).

3. Sugar will give you a quick boost. However, you’ll experience a drop in energy when your blood sugar levels stabilize. So if you’ve been feeling like your energy is on a roller coaster when you work out, stay away from sugar based snacks beforehand.

4. Eating carb-heavy foods before a workout can interfere with performance and cause stomach discomfort. If this happens to you, it’s because your body is still digesting. Make note of this and adjust the amount or type of carbs until you find yourself feeling fueled and energetic during your workout.

5. A study published in the May 2009 issue of the Journal of Nutrition found that women who ate low-glycemic carbs before a workout burned 50 percent more fat during the workout. If that’s one of your goals, then opt for slow-burning low-glycemic carbs.

Finding optimal pre-workout fuel comes down to following these general guidelines and then tweaking them to your individual needs.

Hope this answers some of your questions about pre-workout fueling!

shelli

If I asked you, “Why do we eat protein?” I’m wondering what you would answer.

One of the most common answers is, “For energy.”

How about this protein question, “Does it matter which sources of protein we eat to get maximum protein nutritional value?”

Most people would answer that gram for gram all protein sources are the same.

While it is somewhat true that protein provides energy, it is not the main reason why our bodies require protein.

And, all protein sources are not the same when it comes to their nutritional and usable benefits.

Let’s look more closely at protein so you understand the correct answers to these protein questions.

Your body is built of protein.

Protein makes up your organs, bones, tendons, ligaments and blood.

It also makes up many of your hormones (insulin, growth hormone), immune system, neurotransmitters and all of the enzymes of metabolism, digestion and detoxification.

In other words, it plays a huge role.

Because of the acts of daily living, proteins break down. They need to be repaired or replaced so that all the structures they comprise stay healthy and functional.

That’s why getting enough daily high quality dietary protein is essential. So, protein is a key nutrient for both recovery and longevity.

If you’re working on increasing your fitness, your needs for quality protein increases so that you’ll be able to support your structure as you increase your workload. If you don’t do this, you’ll likely feel less energetic, experience irritability and poor sleep, and perhaps injure yourself or feel ill.

Protein is a complex structure made up of smaller units called amino acids.

There are 22 different ones in nature that are used in your body to make protein. Only eight of them must be in your diet on a daily basis. So when it comes to making proteins, you can’t make them without the 8 essential amino acids.

They are called “essential” because your body cannot make them and must get them from food.

Eat enough of these eight essential amino acids and your body can make all of the other proteins it needs. Therefore, a protein’s quality is attributed to the amount and proportion of these eight essential amino acids. For instance, animal proteins have all of the essential amino acids and vegetable proteins are often missing one or more of them.

In order to make sure you are getting enough protein to maintain your body in an optimum state, make sure you don’t fall into one of these two groups.

1. People who are not eating enough quality protein. This can be due to a lack of accurate information about which foods have high quality protein. If you are a vegan and don’t eat animal protein, make sure to learn what your best sources of high quality protein are. Also, many dieters who cut calories are likely not eating enough high quality protein.

2. People who cannot digest protein fully, so it does not enter their bodies. Protein digestion begins in the stomach with an enzyme called pepsin. Pepsin only works if the pH (acidity) of the stomach is very low, between 1-2. If the pH of your stomach is too high (from taking antacids or other medications for instance), your protein digestion will be compromised. So, you may be eating enough protein but not digesting or absorbing it.

Now let’s say that you ARE eating enough protein and you ARE absorbing it. What happens next?

One of two things will happen. Either the amino acids are used by your body to make protein, OR your body uses the amino acids for energy.

What determines whether the amino acids from your diet go down the “make protein” or “make energy” pathway?

The answer to this question was only recently discovered.

The route that a dietary protein takes is determined by the ratio and amounts of the eight essential amino acids in that protein. If the makeup of a protein has a ratio of essential amino acids that is correct to what your body needs, that will be a “quality protein.” If it is missing certain of the essential amino acids, or if they are in an improper ratio, it is considered a lesser quality protein.

Nutritionists measure the quality of a protein using an index called NNU or Net Nitrogen Utilization. Of the three major food groups, proteins, fats and carbohydrates, only proteins have nitrogen.

Scientists can measure how many grams of nitrogen go in the body when a certain amount of protein is eaten and then they collect the urine and stool to measure how much nitrogen came out. What didn’t come out is what the body used to make its own proteins. That’s the NNU of that food.

Here are some examples of the NNU in foods you commonly eat:

Beef, poultry, fish and eggs have an average NNU of 32%. This means that if you ate a can of tuna with 28 grams of protein, the actual amount of that protein that your body could use would be 32% of that or about 9-10 grams.

For dairy products and soy products the NNU is much lower at 17%. Remember when looking at the NNU you are measuring the quality factor of the protein.

Vegetables and nuts have much lower NNUs (under 10%). This is why it is more challenging to get adequate protein if you’re a vegetarian or vegan, since the NNU quality of those proteins is lower.

As active women you must get enough high quality protein in your diet.

You need enough quality protein to keep up with your body needs, and then some if you’re looking to improve performance and not break down.

Use this information to keep enhancing the quality of your protein intake so that you can improve performance and optimize your health.

If you feel you are eating enough quality protein and yet feel you are not digesting or absorbing it properly, seek the advice of a qualified health professional.

Keep the protein coming, and keep it of the highest quality possible!

shelli

Do you consider yourself lucky?

Do you know someone you think of as having all the luck, and you call them a lucky duck?

It’s interesting how we view luck.

Some say luck is preparedness meeting opportunity.

There’s also the expression “born under a lucky star.” Some people seem to have the Midas touch and all they touch turns to gold. They seem to get lucky breaks followed by more lucky breaks.

I DO consider myself lucky.

I have abundant health, a profession I enjoy and wonderful relationships. While I’ve had my share of lucky breaks and serendipity, I must admit that I do feel like I also go out and MAKE my luck.

How?

Glad you asked!

Here are some ideas about how I approach creating my good luck:

1. Get out there.

I admit, my naturally outgoing personality makes this one look easy but I still have to practice getting out there. The more you do this the more you’ll come across opportunities and the helpful people who go along with those opportunities. Meet new people. Learn something new about the people you already know. Ask questions. Develop a curious nature. Put yourself out there so that luck will find you!

2. Go with your gut.

Trusting and believing your gut reactions to life can be helpful. Our instincts can guide us. There’s the intellectual approach to life, which has its place, but don’t forget to make room for your instincts to help you make decisions. Start to notice if your luck comes from the times you let your gut be your guide. This will help you trust your gut feelings in the future.

3. Grab the silver lining.

If you think of those people you consider lucky, I’ll bet one trait they have is making lemonade out of lemons. They seem to find something positive to take out of every situation, even when they are out of luck. Misery loves company, and lady luck does too. Fortune seems to go to the fortunate, so find some positive aspect you can focus on in every situation and create your own luck.

These 3 G’s: get, go and grab, can be applied to all aspects of your life.

Want better health, want to enjoy your life more or want to feel more fulfilled in your relationships?

Work with these three approaches and see if you find more opportunities meeting with your preparedness.

I’m betting on lady luck that you do!

shelli

No matter what your sport or what your health and fitness goals are in life, here are 5 perspectives to use that will enhance your experience, guaranteed!

1. Cultivate an Attitude of Gratitude

Be thankful for your body. It’s such a gift to be able to be physically active and see your body support you in your physical endeavors.

You likely put many hours into your training, so sometimes it’s easy to forget and take for granted our body’s response to the load we place on it.

Recall how far you’ve come as an athlete and how much progress you’ve made.

Play golf? Recall how awkward you were during the early days on the driving range.

Swim? Remember when you could barely swim two laps in the pool?

Training for a marathon? It’s taken months of dedication and adaptation as you ran mile after mile.

Sometimes when you stop and realize where you WERE as an athlete and how much progress you’ve made, it’s quite an eye opener.

Think about injuries you’ve overcome, obstacles you’ve busted through and choices you’ve had to make to enjoy an active lifestyle.

None of these are easy to handle, so bring that attitude of gratitude with you as you pursue activities that bring you pleasure and you’ll enjoy them even more!

2. Believe

Believe in yourself.

It’s easy to get discouraged and think you won’t ever reach your goals.

Setbacks happen, it’s normal. Get back in the game and start from where you find yourself and keep going!

Surround yourself with a good community of like-minded people and learn to use their support. They’ll help you stay the course, however, the core belief in yourself must come from you.

3. Understand your Nutrition and Hydration Needs

As an athlete and active woman you should know what your nutrition and hydration needs are. Don’t get caught up in what someone else is doing. You have your own needs.

Also, make sure to learn what it takes for your body to recover. Being smart about your recovery time is essential to keeping yourself training long into the future.

4. Stay in the Moment

I know you’ve heard this before, but it can be tricky to really grasp what it means.

Simply put, stay tuned in to what’s happening with your body. Stay present in both your mind and body to what you’re experiencing. Stay focused on what you are doing and how you’re feeling while you’re exercising, training, or racing.

You can do a body scan asking yourself questions such as: am I feeling hydrated, how is my heart rate, how do I feel?

Think about what you are doing in this moment. Don’t fall into the mental trap of spending too much time in future planning.

For instance, if you’re out for a hike and your thoughts turn to “what am I going to have for dinner tonight?” it’s likely that you’re probably hungry and should take in some fuel NOW!

Staying present fosters a sense of enjoyment and enriches your experience and memory of what you’re doing. It takes practice, so if you’re not already working with this idea, start now.

5. It’s All About the Journey

I know, this sounds like a platitude but it’s really true. As athletes we reach for new goals and experiences. We can be overly result-oriented so we have a tendency to forget to enjoy the journey and focus too much on our improvement or lack of results as a measure of success.

I train many first time marathoners.

The first goal I look to instill in them is that they finish the marathon with a smile on their face.

Their result time for that first marathon is insignificant compared to having a great experience. There is only one first, and I want them to enjoy it and perhaps even think about doing it again. It requires that their mindset focus on the journey!

There will always be rough spots and obstacles to overcome if we’re active and pursue an active lifestyle.

I think these five focuses help us keep one foot in front of the other, doing our best and moving forward.

Your perspective is key to how you’ll experience your life, so add these five to your perspective checklist and let them enrich your active lifestyle!

shelli

“The world has the habit of making room for the man whose actions show that he knows where he is going.”

- Napoleon Hill

While I’m no Napoleon Hill, I do believe that you can’t possibly get to where you’re going if you don’t know where that is!

And in setting a course of action or choosing a goal, you do need to prioritize your actions.

When you look at that statement more closely, it also means that some things in your life will need less of a focus and some things will need more focus.

And some things will need to be eliminated altogether because there’s only so much time and energy in a day!

As an example, let’s say you’ve decided to pay more attention to eating in a healthier and more nutritious way. That’s your number one goal.

So maybe you need to do some reading to educate yourself on what that really means.

Maybe you’ll consult with a nutritionist, shop at different stores, make time to go to a farmer’s market, or do more cooking and food preparation than you’re used to.

All of that will take time, so you’ll need to make adjustments in your schedule.

In creating your new schedule you’ll ask yourself what can I take out of my schedule and what will I need to put into my schedule to reach my goal of a healthier and more nutritious diet.

Take out a sheet of paper and start brainstorming.

Follow this two step process. First identify the goal. Then create the space for the action steps needed to reach your goal.

1. My goal is to ______________________________.

2. I can take out _________________________ and ____________________ to create time and space.

For example:

*My goal is to eat in a healthier and more nutritious way.

I can take out snacking on junky fast food and I can make time at home to prepare healthy snacks and carry them with me.

*My goal is to exercise more.

I can take out watching television after dinner so that I can make room for taking a walk instead.

*My goal is to get more and better sleep.

I can shut off the computer a few hours before bedtime to make room for creating bedtime rituals that will allow me to sleep better.

See how this works?

This may seem overly simplistic, but give it a try.

It’s helpful whether your goals are off track and you need to get them back on track, or if you want to start moving in a new direction.

This give-and-take exercise really gets you thinking about how you’ll better manage your time, and the actions you actually need to take in order to reach your goals.

Let me know how it goes!

shelli

Are you up for success? I sure hope so!

Here are some ideas about how to set yourself up for successful, healthy living.

We are all influenced by our environment when it comes to our levels of physical activity and how much and what we eat. Our environment creates what’s “normal”, and so by changing our environment we can increase success.

Eating junk food, not exercising, sedentary living, hours and hours of TV watching or time on the internet; these take away from healthy living.

Here are some ideas and action steps you can take to help your environment lead you to more success:

1. Use smaller plates and cups. Most of us are used to just filling our dish and eating until the food is gone. The smaller plates strategy is a great one that I have been myself for years. It works!

2. If there’s a food you don’t want to eat, don’t keep it in the house. Make it harder to get. Now while I recognize that we do need to make peace with food and shouldn’t be scared of any particular food, I am also a pragmatist. For me, a box of cookies or salty foods can sit in my cupboards forever and not tempt me. Ice cream is a different story! I don’t keep it in my house, and make eating it a special occasion activity done OUTSIDE my home.

3. The flip side to that is if there’s a food you “should” be eating, make it easier to get.
*Sign up for a CSA (community supported agriculture) box so that fresh, healthy produce and/or organic meat is delivered to you.
*Have fresh, healthy whole foods on hand and prepared. You can buy pre-cut vegetables, if that makes eating them easier for you.
*If you don’t want to cook, hire a personal chef. While on the surface that may seem more costly, if you eat better and choose your foods wisely, it may be cost effective and well worth the money. Check it out.

4. Put the television in an inconvenient place and don’t watch it while you eat. Watching while you eat makes you much less aware of what and how much you’re eating. If you find that you’re watching too much and your healthy living rituals are falling by the wayside, cut your cable package down so you don’t have 100 channels. Or get rid of the television altogether. I haven’t watched television in ten years!

5. Park your car farther away from where you’re going. Walk the extra distance. Or sell the car and get a bike. Or commit to walking when you have errands to run within a close proximity to where you live.

6. Join a social group organized around activity: a class, club, or a group that meets for certain events like hiking. Find a workout buddy. Surround yourself with people who are also working on their health, fitness, and nutrition. Organize your social events around activity; get a bunch of friends together in the park for some games like softball or frisbee.

Notice two things about these strategies:

1. They make problematic behaviours inconvenient.
2. They make healthy behaviours convenient.

Knowing and doing are two very different things.

Environment influences us to DO, and will often win over knowledge when it comes to the choices we make.

If your environment needs a tune-up, then get to it and do it. You will progress along your road to successful, healthy living!

Let me know if you try any of these strategies and how they work.

I always look forward to hearing from you!

shelli

Is drinking milk and eating dairy products a mistake?

The answer can be confusing.

You’ll be better able to decide for yourself when you have accurate information, so let’s see if we can get clear on some Milk Matters!

Here are some points to consider:

1. When looking around the globe for countries that drink high quantities of milk, look no further than the United States. Americans drink the most milk.

They also top another list by having the highest rate of osteoporosis.

One thing that contributes to the high rate of osteoporosis is that pasteurization makes much of the calcium found in milk unusable by your body. Remember that pasteurization (heating milk to high temperatures) is supposed to kill off all sorts of harmful things like bacteria and molds, but it also changes the natural health benefits of milk products as well.

2. Do you suffer from lactose intolerance? If not, you likely know someone who does. Milk comes with its own digestive enzymes that will allow you to properly digest it. However, when milk is pasteurized those enzymes are destroyed, making it difficult to digest. This is what leads to lactose intolerance.

The benefits from milk come from consuming it in its most natural state (unpasteurized). Some states in the United States do allow milk to be sold as raw milk. California is one such state.

Milk is BEST left in its natural state. If you’ve never tasted raw milk, it really is a different product altogether from what we think of as “milk.”

It’s also important to remember that in order for cows to produce the quantities of milk the farmers need, the cows are given excess amounts of growth hormones.

While the topic of dairy farming is too big a topic to cover in this article, it’s not hard to imagine that all these excess hormones, as well as any antibiotics given to the cows when they get sick, end up in their bloodstream.

And guess what?

The hormones and antibiotics also end up in the milk that comes from these cows.

Not a pleasant thought, is it?

Many people are still caught up in the idea that to get enough calcium they NEED to drink milk. If you are one of them then here’s what you need to know.

First, remember that much of the calcium is not absorbed by your body when it comes from milk that’s been treated by pasteurization.

It’s better to get your calcium from foods such as green leafy vegetables, broccoli, sardines and salmon.

Cows eat grass and that’s where their calcium comes from, so eating your leafy greens will give you your calcium too!

Afraid of getting osteoporosis?

Exercise will do you MUCH more good than drinking milk.

Make it weight bearing exercise because putting stress on your skeletal system helps it stay strong and healthy.

So here are some actionable steps to take:

1. Strength train regularly.

2. If and when you consume dairy use raw milk products. If you can’t find raw ones then purchase ones that are certified organic so that they are free of hormones and antibiotics.

3. Get your calcium from food sources like leafy greens and fish.

If you plan to consume milk and dairy products, use these guidelines and make the wisest choices possible!

shelli