Nutrient Density for the New Year

Have you ever heard the term "Nutrient Density?" Dr. Joel Furhman defines nutrient density in his "Eat for Health" book in this way: "What makes a food healthy is how many nutrients is delivers to your body. In other words, for optimal health we must eat foods that are rich in nutrients, in particular, foods that deliver the maximum nutrients in each calorie."

Often people equate health food or healthy eating with eating foods that have some nutritional value. Or they just call the food healthy if it isn't a dessert or processed snack. Others determine if the food is healthy or not by how many calories, fat grams or carbohydrates it has. With all the diet crazes over the past few decades, that might seem like the rational thing to do. But when you hear how Dr. Fuhrman determines the nutritional value of food, nothing else seems to seems to make much sense.

Dr. Furhman has a formula he uses to determine nutrient density. It's lists the most nutritious foods by how many vitamins, minerals, and phytochemicals (which are called micronutrients) are in a food divided by the number of calories. The more nutrient dense foods you eat, the better your health will be. The formula looks like some simple Einstein equation. It's H=N/C, which means your future Health = Nutrients divided by Calories in each bite you take.

When we choose food by this nutrient density equation in mind, it changes the focus from all our usual patterns of thinking, such as:

"What do I feel like eating?"
"What sounds good?"
"What's in the fridge, pantry, on the menu?"
"What am I in the habit of eating and don't possibly think I could ever live without?"
"What am I celebrating and what foods traditionally go along with that celebration?"
"What am I craving right this very second?"

Instead we stock our fridge and pantry with foods that are naturally packed with nutrients and learn to eat and enjoy those foods just like we have with the other foods for so many years. Old habits are hard to break -- they are EXTREMELY hard to break -- it's not a trite phrase I just write to fill up space. It's hard and many don't succeed especially when it comes to food. However, the other phrase that you must replace an old habit with a new one is true too. I'll add that if you think more about the new habit than the one you are leaving behind, you will not feel like a matryr and whine that you can't eat like you used to. You'll be so thrilled and fulfilled with the new foods you are eating that you won't even care about those other foods. You might romanticize at times about how yummy something was (all the good memories of the times attached), but truthfully, your body won't have enough room to eat those foods once you build your diet around nutrient dense foods, so you'll be just fine without them.

If you think you can get these micronutrients from supplements and continue eating the nutrient-sparse foods, you're fooling yourself. Just look around at all the other people doing this with diabetes, heart problems, and a host of other modern diseases. My dad spend Christmas morning in the hospital this year after having a stent put in his heart on Christmas eve. He was telling me the day before that the doctor told him not to fear this procedure -- it was such a common procedure that it was routine -- they did it all the time. I told my dad that could either give him comfort that it's not a risky procedure or it could sound awfully scaryto know that so much of our population is having to have stents put in their heart valves to stay alive. Supplements will not cut it. Nutritional excellence is what we need for excellent health.

We can find the most nutrients per calorie from unrefined plant foods, such as fruits, vegetables, beans, nuts, and seeds. What percentage of these foods do you think the average American consumes? Less than 7 per cent! With Dr. Fuhrman's Eat for Health (or former book Eat to Live) approach, you'll be eating at least 90% of these nutrient dense foods.

You'll need to get Dr. Fuhrman's books to see his list of the high nutrients foods, but basically the very highest (surprise, surprise) are the Leafy Green Vegetables, with kale and collard greens being at the very top (score of 1000). Spinach is a little lower with a score of 739 and then when you drop into the next group of Solid Green Vegetables. Foods like cabbage, broccoli, and asparagus have scores of 420, 376, and 234, respectively. That doesn't mean that they aren't healthy - -they are! It just shows you how incredibly nutritious and essential those leafy greens are! The other high nutrient, non-starchy, non-green Vegetables (all vegetables that aren't green and that aren't potatoes or corn, which are more like a grain to your body)

Off to be a mom for a bit -- will finish up later. Until then, here's a video of Dr. Furhman explaining Nutrient Density.


Wow! I just watched the whole video and I love the info he gives. He's so knowledgeable about nutrition -- it's wonderful to learn from him. I hesitated before to write his whole ANDI (Aggregate Nutrient Density Index) list, but since he shows it there on YouTube, I'll go ahead and list it here on my next post (so you don't have to push "pause" to read the whole thing). That way you can get a good picture of which foods are the most vital to eat for your health and see how useless so many other foods that we usually base our diet on are for good health. It becomes evident that eating high nutrient, healthful foods like green vegetables, berries, and seeds and less animal products, sugar, white flour, processed oil, and processed foods is truly the key to excellent health and well-being.

Christmas Weight Gain -- Inevitable?

A few years ago I taught a workshop for women at my church on eating healthy through the holidays. I told them the statistics for weight gain in our country between Thanksgiving and New Year's Day -- 8 pounds of fat. That means while some are staying just the same or could even be losing weight, others gain as much as 15 pounds or more! I've been one of those upper statistics, year after year.

When I was in college, I gained the freshman 10 (at least) and creeped up here and there as the years (and finals) continued on. Each time I prepared to go home for the holidays, I'd crash diet, not wanting my friends to see how much weight I'd gained. Sometimes I'd lose weight, but I'd always gain when I went home. I'd bake and bake -- it was my passion to cook in the kitchen and eat 1/2 the sugary treats that came out of that yummy smelling oven. I felt like such a failure when I'd go back to school, heavier than when I started my crash diet.

As I've learned more about eating healthy and managing my weight, I've still struggled with keeping it all under control over the holidays. There are so many occasions to celebrate (which for some reason means to overeat -- especially with sugar) that I felt like a Scrooge to not participate fully. I mean, isn't that what Christmas is all about? Baking for others, getting plates of cookies dropped off by friends, picking and choosing through big boxes of See's candies, eating stuff that you're not even sure why anyone would make, but after a few bites, it tastes good so you keep eating.

Some years I'd find that I was only eating sugar throughout the day. I'd start by eating somethign on the counter that I'd baked the day before. Once I got that sugar in my system, I didn't want any real food. I'd keep going from cookie, to chocolate, to muffins, to hopefully some ice cream, back to cookies, cookies, and more cookies. Cap that off with some hot chocolate at the end of the day (seems like such the wintery thing to do) and I'd go to bed with a big headache and no desire to get out of bed the next day.

I finally convinced myself that this wasn't doing my body any favors. At first I had to peel myself away from the sugar. I'd play mental games like telling myself that the cookies on the Snowman plate someone dropped off were a week old and tasted awful. It worked. Sometimes I'd just smell them for a bit of satisfaction. It was never tempting. I knew that I was better off without them.

I'd also keep myself away from the baking aisle at the store. If I didn't see those Guittard chocolate chips on sale during the month of December, I wouldn't buy any and couldn't bake with them either. If I didn't buy any molasses, I couldn't make gingerbread. I could, however, buy up oranges and pomegranates and kiwi (oh my!) I also would buy lots of veggies for warm soup to have simmering on the stove. I found that if I cut up fruit or vegetables and left them on the counter, my kids would eat them. They'd eat whatever was there.

I finally broke the trend of gaining 8-10 pounds over the holidays. I stopped feeling sluggish, heavy, and worse of all, out of control when the New Year began. My problem never ended at New Year's. I'd continue on at least through Valentine's Day and sometimes onto Easter. It took at least until June to get that holiday weight off. But now I seem to manage it. I don't look at all that sugar with longing like I did before. I do still bake from time to time, but I use more natural ingredients and don't bake as often or by quadrupling the recipe. I'm not writing this to brag, but to tell you that it is possible.

After 25 years of yo-yoing through the holidays myself, I've learned to keep my weight stagnant by continuing to eat nutrient dense foods and keeping even the healthy sweets to a minimum. After seeing so many friends pass away this year (even just in the past few weeks) from various diseases, I can see there's much more to this that just weight gain. I wish you all a healthy holiday. You don't need to feel deprived -- you'll be richly blessed.

Dr. Joel Furhman Video

I have so much that I want to share about Dr. Furhman and his latest book, "Eat for Health." I'd planned to write a post about what he calls Nutrient Density last week, but my computer broke (still broken -- on my husbands for a bit right now) so I haven't been on much at all. It's an NTLDR boot problem if anyone wants to come to my rescue :).

For now, I want to show you a video Dr. Furham put on YouTube to explain "Eat for Health" a bit. Hmm, now if I could only remember how to embed a video! It's been awhile.

Raw Recipe -- Citrus Green Smoothie

I just came up with this recipe in my kitchen and it's sooooooooo creamy and yummy. I just had to share!

Usually I use my favorite green smoothie formula over and over (with little variations), but tonight I decided to break out of that mold a bit and see how it would go. I took a cooking creations risk and thankfully, it paid off!

Here's what I threw in my blender:

2 tangerines (peeled)
1/4 c. water
1 frozen banana (I'm sure you could use fresh, but frozen made it seem ice-creamy)
1 c. frozen strawberries (I'm guessing on the amount, it may be 1 1/2 c.)
3 handfuls of spinach
2 large chard leaves, broken off the stalk into smaller pieces

I tried it first w/o the water and it just wouldn't blend the frozen stuff. So I added the water after the strawberries to get it to blend. Worked like a charm!

This filled one 8 oz. glass and one much larger (which I froze for tomorrow). Oh, it was dreamy yummy!

Raw Recipe -- Berry Green Smoothies

When I make my green smoothies, I usually use this basic formula. It's always yummy and gives me plenty of dark green leafy greens. Try it!

Berry Green Smoothie Recipe

2 c. juice (I like to juice apples or pineapple but you can use anything --sometimes I put in 2 c. grapes and blend it up for the juice)
2 c. frozen berries (the triple berries are best)
optional -- fresh strawberries, kiwi, peaches, or mango
2 bananas (or 1 if it's really large)
3 big handfuls of washed greens (kale & spinach seem to work best -- if you use kale, make sure you tear it up into spinach leaf size so it doesn't get stuck in the blender -- the kale stems are really coarse and you don't want them in there).

Blend it all up in the order listed. Drink one glass right away, hand another to a friend and freeze the rest (usually another 2 glasses). It's really good thawed out the next day or even up to a week or two later. I've taken them frozen in a cooler when traveling before and it worked great. In the photo I added a few berries whole as a garnish, but it also tastes good to have some berry chunks inside.

Hydrogenated Oil / Saturated Fats -- Shopping for Healthier Eating

Sometimes I stop and think about all the shortening I've eaten in my lifetime and I shudder. I shouldn't look backwards, though. Knowledge has given me an insight to the dangers of hydrogenated oil and I'm excited to know what I know now. You can be too!

Saturated Fat and Hydrogenated Oils are in much of the food we buy -- maybe even in the food we prepare. It's good to learn what they are, the dangers they bring to the body, and how to avoid them completely. Yes, it's possible to avoid them completely!

Let's start with Saturated Fat. (I know in English class those words wouldn't really get to be capitalized, but for the sake of this post and standing out amidst other words, I'm letting it slide). There are healthy Saturated Fats and unhealthy Saturated Fats. Saturated fats from animals are not healthy for your body. These fats are hard (or solid) at room temperature or (or obviously in the cold) -- usually liquid when hot. It's the marbleized fat in meat that you can see (and often can't see) -- is also found in eggs and dairy products. The firmer the dairy product (cheese, butter, cream) the more saturated fat. Healthy saturated fats are found in plant foods like coconuts and raw cacao.

Hydrogenated Oil (or even Partially Hydrogenated Oil) is oil that has been tampered with to be able to have a longer shelf life than oil has in its liquid state. Hydrogenation is the process of heating an oil and passing hydrogen bubbles through it. Think of fluffy shortening or tubs of margarine. Fully hydrogenated oil becomes a solid (a fat), but if the hydrogenation process is stopped part way, the oil is Partially Hydrogenated and has a consistency like butter that's been out of the refrigerator for awhile. These are both trans-fats.

You can look at other websites to see the dangers of Hydrogenated Oil. Just know that they cause a host of serious problems for your body. You can grow up eating them, thinking "This is fine for my body" like someone can smoke for years without any problems. However, the problems will be transpiring within your body and you may not know until it's too late. Over the past decade, however, I think the problems have become more evident, with obesity and heart disease on the rise -- at lower and lower ages.

I'll be back to give you shopping tips on how to avoid these. My kids are needing me now. TTFN!

I'm back! Sorry it took so long. Before I get to the shopping tips, here's a good article on these harmful fats that fill in some of the gaps I may have left open. .........now for the shopping tips.

First of all, read the labels until you get familiar with what's in your food. Look for the word "hydrogenated" (whether partially or fully) and if you see it, don't buy it. Many items that don't have labels (donuts, fast food, animal products) have harmful fats too. If you want to keep animal products in your diet, treat them like the condiment on the side of plate instead of the main dish (and only have them once a week or better yet, once a month -- you'll be surprised at how well you can live without them).

Here are some foods that commonly are made with hydrogenated fat:

margarine
biscuits / breads
cake
frosting
peanut butter
cookies
donuts
frozen meals
fried foods
processed dairy products.

When I shop for items that normally have hydrogenated fats, I buy them from the health food store (or health food section of the grocery store) because they will tell you right on the box "No hydrogenated fats." Many kinds of breads have hydrogenated fat too. Check the label. So many people are concerned with this now that the food companies are proud to make their "No hydrogenated" claims. Some companies are actually changing how they make their food items. I've recently found this true for high fructose corn syrup in bread (yay!)

Other companies are doing just the opposite. They are hiding their hydrogenated information from you by stating things like "cooked with vegetable oil" when that vegetable oil can be hydrogenated. Some break up the ingredient list and describe the filling or some other component in such detail that by the time you get to the end of the list and see "hydrogenated" you may not think there is very much. Not true. Or they say "0% Trans Fat" which can just mean it has less than 0.5 g. per serving -- not completely void of it. Also, hydrogenated oils are not considered trans-fats, so 0% trans-fat is just pertaining to the partially hydrogenated oil, not the fully hydrogenated oil. So be careful with the companies that are trying to make you think their foods have healthier fats, but they really don't. I find that if I buy organic food, for the most part, they're using healthier sugars and fats. (Not always, but 90+% of the time they do).

Start buying peanut butter that requires refrigeration. You may not like stirring it at first, but the fact that it separates means that they didn't put any hydrogenated fat in it to keep it firm (as well as preservatives to make it okay to leave in the cupboard). Of the health food store brands, my favorite is Marantha, but Costco sells an organic peanut butter now that is creamier and doesn't require much stirring after the very first time. My kids seem to like this one best.

While it's always better just to eat whole foods than to buy processed food, if you are going to buy processed, make it a healthier version. For example, instead of buying Wheat Thins, buy Nature's Path Crispy Wheats. They really do taste the same (if not better). Classic Rounds are the same as Ritz Crackers. I don't buy these often, but my kids love it when I do. Shop the sales. I've found with health food that their specials usually last all month instead of just for a week.

Alternatives to animal milk (almond milk is my favorite) are healthier for you. I still wouldn't drink almond, soy or rice milk as often as I used to drink cow's milk. I use it mainly for cooking or for an occasional bowl of Kashi cereal. It's a processed food and I try to keep those to a minimum. But if you're trying to change one habit at a time, just take your usual versions of fat intake and change it up to save your body the health problems that result from the intake of the bad fats.

Another great idea is to make more of your food in your own kitchen instead of trusting the food companies to do it for you. You can control not only the kind of fat, but also the amount. I've substituted oil in many recipes for butter or shortening and often cut the amount by 1/2 or 1/3 by adding in another form of moisture (fruit).

Stop buying margarine or butter. Butter is the lesser of the evils imho, but butter has saturated fat (or should I say "IS" saturated fat) and margarine is hydrogenated -- both not good for your body. Smart Balance and a few others are made w/o hydrogenated fat, but I think the health food store brands are much better for you -- such as Earth Balance or Canoleo. They don't have all the preservatives that Smart Balance has. Better yet (there's always a better yet, huh? :)), stop using butter altogether or at least cut back on it. No matter how you buy it, it's not a whole food and has no macro-nutritional value. It's much better to get your fats from nuts, seeds, and grains.

That will be my final note. If you can cut out all these unnecessary fats and just have a handful of nuts or add seeds to a salad or something instead, you'll be even better off. There are so many healthy ways to meet your fat needs. Raw cashews are super yummy if you've never tried them. You'll never miss all that other stuff if you have a stash of those nearby.

Workout confusion

I'm not sure why, but for the past few years (I was going to write 2 or 3, but that's a few, right?) I've been sporatic about my workout plans. It's been driving me crazy. Except for a few focused rotations, I'll do some workouts for a few weeks, then will get bored or distracted and move onto another plan (or non-plan, just doing whatever I can talk myself into that morning). The best I did was my periodization plan I did with Cathe's workouts for 6 weeks, and my few Slim Series rotations getting me ready for my trips to Beachbody.

I used to plan out rotations for 4-6 weeks -- or even 12 and would stick with them religiously. Nothing got in my way. Neither rain, nor sleet, nor even a vacation or sickness would keep me from sticking with my workouts. (Okay, maybe a few illnesses did, but even as sick as I'd be, I'll still do a light yoga video or meditation CD so I could feel like I was doing something).

I remember lugging my full-size step and risers into my mother-in-law's house (along with weights) and doing my workouts before anyone else got up. One Christmas vacation day, I slept a little too late and had several nieces and nephews joining me for a Tae Bo workout -- it was pretty fun. I also remember calling a hotel before a family reunion to see if they had a TV and VCR I could use in their fitness room. They didn't, but they told me I could bring mine in (we had a TV/VCR combo we plugged into a car for trips -- long before those little DVD players were so hip -- which btw we've never purchased -- we just make our kids look out the window and enjoy the drive now). But anyway, each morning of this reunion, I'd lug the TV into the fitness room from my car so I could keep up with my rotation.

What ever happened to that dedication? I think I started questioning my sanity at one point - -like does it really matter if I miss a few days? Well, yes and no. No, probably not in the overall scheme of things -- I could pick up where I left off, but sometimes my cardio capacity would have faltered or my strength and flexibility gains. However, mentally, I do think it makes a big difference. Once you break that stride, it's hard to get back into it at the same pace as before, or even to get back into it at all.

I think I broke my stride when my allergies and asthma got really severe 3 1/2 years ago. It was before I learned about raw foods and my allergies were controlling my life. I was frustrated that I couldn't keep up with a rotation, so I learned to be happy with what I could do whether it was light yoga or just a little cardio. That's healthy to learn to go with the flow, but I miss my old pace. I've never really regained it. Even when I did my 16 week periodization Cathe plan, I was regretting it at times. I went through a few slumps of "Do I really have to keep doing this?"

Another contributing factor may be that I have so many workouts to choose from that I'm often wondering if I should switch gears to something else. I have yet to find the perfect plan for incorporating cardio (step, kickboxing, and rebounding), yoga, weights (traditional and functional fitness), and Pilates without spending 2 hours a day doing it (and feeling a bit scattered). I have to narrow it down and that gets frustrating. Yes, I want it all!

I've thought of getting rid of some of my workouts so I'm not longing to do something else once I've started another plan. But whenever I've done that in the past, I end up buying or trading for those workouts again. There's actually a Video Fitness term for that -- it's called trader's remorse or seller's remorse. So I'm better off keeping something I will likely want to do again.

Hmm . . . I really think the key is (think, think, think) to keep my eating on track. When I don't, I get sick or I want to sleep in more. That's the biggest interrupter to my workouts. I get pickier about my workouts and tend to bail on what I'm doing. So I think I'll go with that for now -- come up with a plan that I really think I will love for even just the next 2 weeks (until Thanksgiving), eat my best, get to bed at a 1/2 decent hour and see if that will keep me happy and going for awhile.

My biggest regret over the past few years is that my cardio capacity is nothing like what it used to be. I want to be able to do an hour long advanced step workout without wanting to quit at any point. I want to even go on for another 1/2 hour if I feel like it. And boy do I miss sweating. I just don't sweat as much as I used to because I don't work as hard. So that will be my goal for the next 2 weeks.

My plan will go something like this:

W -- Yoga
Th - Cardio
F -- Weights
S -- Cardio
S -- Rest

M -- Cardio
T -- Yoga
W -- Cardio
Th -- Weights
F -- Cardio
S -- Yoga
S -- Rest

M -- Cardio
T -- Weights
W -- Cardio
Th -- Yoga & a nice walk (Thanksgiving Day)
F -- Yoga & walk
S -- Yoga
S -- Rest

I'm just allowing for keeping it easy while traveling. Gone are the days of bringing my step and weights with me!

I'll be back to report my progress. TTFN!

P.S. (If you want to check out this workout planner program that I have pictured at the top, here's the free trial for Raquel's Workout Log
I downloaded it a few weeks ago, but haven't had a chance to fiddle with it yet. I need to though before my free trial is over! I'll get back and share my impressions later on. So much to talk about, so little time!)