Recently I was inspired to take an ALCAT test to check for food sensitivities that may be hindering my immune system. It has been two years since I broke out in dry psoriasis on my right hand and no amount of acupuncture, Chinese herbs, super supplements, Epson salt soaks, natural creams have touched it.  Google tells me that psoriasis is an “over active immune system,” so I was curious as to what I could possibly doing to stress my body out so much.  Turns out at least part of the answer was…eating!

And it wasn’t like I was eating junk either. Nope, it turns out eating many of the healthy foods I consume daily was sending my immune system over the edge.  (How these sensitivities develop is for another article.)  What the ALCAT test aims to do is identify any foods that are causing an inflammatory immune response (i.e. inflaming my gut and allowing it to leak various food particles, toxins, and pathogenic strains into my bloodstream), and give me the tools to temporarily eliminate them thereby allowing the gut to heal.   In short, by giving my system a break and creating an internal healing environment, I may be able to fix my skin.  Turns out this approach has been proven to work for most autoimmune disorders and also for asthma, obesity, IBS, migraines ADD and ADHD, and arthritis.  Made sense to give it a try!

When I got my ALCAT test results back the short of it was many of my go-to foods were a problem. Turns out I am severely intolerant to apples, beets and chicken.  What?  I’m a trainer; and what trainer doesn’t preach the apple and peanut butter snack?  Besides you may have read of my love of beet Kvass, and you may know me as the girl who always has a huge pot of chicken stock on the stove to use in all my grains and soups.  How do I just cut these out?  Exhale.  After a deep breath, I thought I could handle that…but then the worst part: reaction to casein, whey, gluten, gliadin and Candida. Translation: no dairy, no grains and no sugar.  UGH!  Longer exhale.

This is Going to be a Long Six Months

As I write this it has been a long TWO months! Following the rotation diet is one of the most difficult and time consuming culinary endeavors I have ever embarked upon.  But here comes my competitive voice within myself:  I can totally do this!  And so far, (with the occasional grumbling and complaining, a few too many rice cakes, and tears fought back when walking past a Starbucks), I have. And here are some of my tips and reflections I would love to share with you:

My first observation, which happens to be my biggest struggle with all of this, is that food simply has to be simple.  Whatever I eat has to be prepared in my kitchen, unfussy, and unprocessed.  I love food, and I love cooking with complex flavors, spices and textures…but for this season with so many restrictions it is just better to be basic, and I have found that basic, although boring, is still satisfying.  And come to think of it, the idea of whole, recognizable foods is not a bad idea.  Isn’t that how most people ate throughout human history, you know, before all the degenerative diseases of industrialized nations?

My Sweet Tooth

Really…let’s be serious.  I am a girl with a sweet tooth, so what do I do?  We’ll, I try to find something on my approved foods list that is my escape hatch—something that will satisfy the craving and not get my gut into trouble.  I would share all my recipes with you, but unless you are off sugar like me, I can pretty much guarantee that my stuff would taste totally bland.  My taste buds have adapted to a much less intense ‘sweet’ so much so that I am sure my first cupcake off this diet will send me into cardiac arrest!  But who knows, maybe this article will inspire you to go off sugar and you will enjoy the following recipe as much as I do!

Here is one thing I’ve come up with that I call my “total bliss” (it’s basically hot cocoa).  Try some out yourself and see if you can’t satisfy your own sweet tooth.

• 1 cup of coconut milk (unsweetened) or unsweetened hazelnut milk
• 1 TBS raw cocoa powder
• 1-2TBS of coconut nectar,
• dash of sea salt and
• dash of vanilla extract

In case you want an alternative:

I also found this website that has given me almond coconut cookies (pictured) and chocolate cookies. The pancakes and the coconut bread aren’t so bad either! Try them out!

My Beloved Bread

Darn gluten—the dreamy stuff that makes yeast rise, bread products gooey and irresistible.  Unfortunately gluten is very difficult for an imbalanced gut to break down and this undigested starch feeds gut pathogens.  This can cause the lining of the small intestines to become inflamed and damaged.  When this happens on top of being in gastrointestinal distress (i.e. bloating, cramping etc.), the body is not able to absorb nutrients.  Thus it made sense that ALCAT took me off of the stuff.  If you have suffered from digestion discomfort in the past, simply going off gluten for a few weeks may help you!  Avoiding gluten means no:

• wheat
• kamut
• rye
• spelt
• barley
• bulgur
• couscous

So what grains and starches can you have eating a gluten free diet?  Well, in light of healing the gut, as little as possible. The following grains are gluten free and can be consumed in moderation:

• quinoa
• corn
• flax
• buckwheat
• brown rice
• millet
  

  Millet

In case you want an alternative: As for starches, potatoes, beans, arrowroot powder, coconut and nut flours usually do a nice job of providing a carbohydrate kick and a substitute for most baked goods, and according to ALCAT should be eaten on rotation one at a time every 4 days.   This means all day, I get to eat as much quinoa or as much sweet potato as I want…which is why I was the lame girl who brought her own yam to brunch on Father’s day when everyone (except my husband) else ate hazelnut glazed sweetbread!  Hey, it was better than feeling sorry for myself (although, there may have been a little of that).

No Dairy – Are you Serious???

“I could never live without dairy!” is the response I hear when ever someone asks me about what foods I have to avoid on this “diet” (well, unless you are consuming raw dairy, you shouldn’t be eating it anyway…but that too is another newsletter article all together.)  Avoiding dairy is hard, and there isn’t a day that has gone by when I haven’t craved it.  Here are some great dairy alternatives I have found:

In place of butter I am using ghee which is butter without the milk solids.  It tastes creamy and I enjoy it wherever I use to use butter…which was on everything!

In case you want an alternative:

• Coconut milk –creamy, rich in healthy, saturated fats and lauric acid.  I drink it in my smoothies and use it in my hot cocoa drink!
• Coconut water (use instead of dairy in protein smoothies)
• Almond milk
• Hazelnut milk
• Rice milk
• Hemp milk

What AM I Eating?

Typical meals include:

Kale: parboiled, drained than pan sautéed in coconut oil

Yam: boiled or baked with nothing but a little sea salt

Beef: ground patty, plain just a touch of salt

Turkey: ground or whole and simply pan sautéed in ghee or coconut oil

Beans and rice, lentils and millet: prepared separately, soaked, boiled in water, adding perhaps some salt and pepper

Nuts: raw, soaked and roasted or dehydrated.

Fish: pan sautéed in just coconut oil with a touch of sea salt

So as you can see, there is no “dash of this” or “smothered in sauce” or “dredged in flour” or “sprinkled with cheese” happening…and you can imagine there is no restaurant that serves anything I can eat (probably because no one would order it!)  So I am back in my kitchen, boiling my gluten free grains by the bowl-full, soaking my beans and lentils by the vat, steaming veggies and eating fruit…and dreaming of being social once again…you know, the occasional restaurant thing.  I am so ready for my babe to take me on a date.  The end of month 6 can’t get here fast enough!

The Good Parts – How It Has Helped!

For about 2 weeks after I started following my test results I found the psoriasis on my hand to basically disappear and my bloated gut shrunk significantly!  Now from what I’ve read and the ALCAT nutritionist I’ve talked to, I am in what I believe to be a detoxifying phase of this whole experience and as you might know, with detoxification can come some pretty unpleasant side-effects.  In other words, things can get worse before they get better.  Stay tuned to hear how my journey continues—more reflections to come.

Final Thoughts

After hearing my experience I know what you may be thinking…“Um, no thanks,” or perhaps, “Wow, I’m not sure I’m ready for that,” or maybe even, “I think I’d rather not know.”  Truth is, your results may be as limiting as mine, or they may not be.  For me, deciding to do this test (and to act on what it said) was not a light decision.  I knew it might cause a bit of an upheaval in my routines.  It did.  But my thinking is/was, if I am going be a good steward of the only body I have, and if my underlying belief is that a dysfunction in my body (in this case my hand) is an indicator that I am out of balance somewhere, then I don’t know how I could live with myself if I did not act on whatever knowledge I have to help bring about the healing my body is looking for.  If I aim to coach others on what it takes to be healthy and I am not willing to take my own advice and put myself in situations that stretch me, then what business do I have recommending things like this to others?  Sure, this ALCAT test was not an easy pill to swallow, but in the end, I think whatever I learn from it will be worth it.  Maybe it would be for you too.

Bonus Material

One last thing I feel compelled to share with you is about supplements and what I am taking by the fist full in order to help my body with this incredible task of healing.  I went to a great Naturopath and, among other things had my body tested to see what supplements/nutrients my body responds well to.

Anti-inflammatory plants: I choose one of the following to take for a month and then I will switch it up.

• Aloe
• bromelain
• ginger
• ginko
• grape seed
• green tea
• mangosteen
• pomegranate
• turmeric

Inflammatory Modulators:

• Probiotics
• Omega 3 fatty acids (currently taking borage oil)
• GLA (gamma linolaic acid)
• Vitamin B’s (complex)
• Glucosamine and chrondroitin
• MSM and SAMe
• N-acetyl-L-Cysteine

Amino Acid

L-Glutamine (to help curb sugar and carb cravings)

Digestive enzymes (to be taken on an empty stomach before eating in order to aid the body in breaking down the nutrients in the food

New Trainer

We are proud to introduce Dave Shutler to our team. Dave has been involved in the fitness industry now for approximately 5 years, experiencing his own transformation in 2008 going from 255 pounds at 16% bodyfat to 205 at 5% bodyfat. Dave knows what it takes to transform not only your body but your mind as well. He worked for the United States Secret Service for 3+ years, going through some of the most intense of training while training for their SWAT team. He has been a Certified Personal Trainer with ISSA for 3 years and also became a licensed massage therapist through the National Massage Therapy Institute in Falls Church, VA in 2010. Dave has landed several fitness magazine spreads in the past few years and is extremely passionate about coaching and helping people to reach their highest potential through positive reinforcement and work ethic. Dave combines a extensive knowledge of nutrition and training with a humble, confident and “down to earth” attitude.  Come get an appointment with him before his schedule fill up.

New Service – Acupuncture

As part of continuing to grow into our name and bring a holistic approach to health and fitness, we will soon be adding Acupuncture to our list of services!  Having personally experienced the benefits of this powerful healing modality we are excited to be able to offer this service right here on the block.   Studio A is currently being transformed and we aim to have it ready for action next month.   Stay tuned for more details.

Pilates in the Park Continues

A new five-week series start this Saturday June 25^th.  Come enjoy a great workout outdoors and experience Pilates for only $20/class.  You can register for it right on our website.  Just click on “Purchase a Service”.  Hope to see you there!

Health and Wholeness Boot Camp

The next summer Boot Camp session starts bright and early this Independence Day.  Come be challenged by 12 unique workouts with toys you won’t find at any other camp in the area.  Don’t miss out on sprints day either.  Anyone that can beat Christian in a foot race gets a free Personal Training Session!  We expect this camp to fill up so reserve your spot soon.  You can also sign up for this class on our website, just click “Register for Boot Camp”!

New Natural Health Products

We are proud to introduce new natural health products from Dr. Mercola, one of the most reputable and holistic websites/doctors in the natural health arena.  Come try out his excellent Whey Protein, Krill Oil, Whey Chocolate Bars, Toothpaste, Mouthwash and more.  You can also visit mercola.com to find out what make his products so special.

Tough Mudder – Team Health and Wholeness

If you’re looking for an event to train for this may be it.  Come play us in the mud for a 10-mile jaunt through the Wintergreen Ski Resort this October (23^rd).  Be challenged with some of the most fun and toughest obstacles you can imagine.  Work with the rest of your teammates to accomplish something very few ever will, and make a memory that will last a lifetime.  Send us a message if you’d like more details.

Ah summer—the time of year we break out the bathing suits and show off the abdominal muscles we’ve been working hard on all spring.  You’re ready to show yours off, right?   I hope so, but in case you answered “no” however, here are my best tips to shape up your abs for swimsuit season.  Before I even get into a bit about the best exercises for the abs, let me first cover:

Three Important Points:

1. Chiseled abs requires a pretty low body fat percentage.  Think 9-18 percent, depending on your gender.  What you see on the magazine covers are typically professional body builders with 2-10 percent body fat, and although it may look good in pictures it can actually be quite unhealthy to have your body fat that low.

2. In large part how nice you want your abs to look really just boils down to choosing your priorities.  Unless you’ve lost a LOT of weight and have a lot of extra skin, most people could have really nice looking abs.  The difficulty comes in deciding that having nice abs is really more important than a lot of our creature comforts.  Like most things worth having, to say yes to something (nice looking abs) means we probably have to say “no” to something else.   In that light, read the suggestions below and do some introspection to find out how important it really is to you.  Some people talk a good game as if they’ll do anything to be happy with their abs (or their body in general), but when it comes down to the lifestyle changes it takes to have nice abs, for a lot of people the lifestyle changes are not worth it.  That’s something you have to decide for yourself.  While it’s nice, there is more to life than a washboard midsection.  If you want it, give yourself time and patience.

3. The majority of the battle for nice abs is the diet and lifestyle end of things.   You may be excited (or disappointed) to know that your diet and lifestyle choices are probably 80% of the battle for nice abs.  You can do crunches till your back goes out, but if you don’t understand the factors below, a defined midsection will always elude you.  Below is the precursor “good stuff” you need to know about getting a set of abs people have a hard time taking their eyes off of.

Lose Fat, Not Health.

Dietary choices are obviously a huge component of sexy abs.  However, if you’ve spent much time talking to me about food you also know I’m not a huge fan of low-fat anything.  Nope I don’t think nature made a mistake when it put fat into things like cream, eggs, avocado, coconut, meats, etc.  Foods that have their fat content altered from the way nature presented them represent to me what I’d call, “nutritionism” (an attempt to use food to manipulate body chemistry for a short term goal)…not real, sustainable nutrition.  With apologies to the Biggest Loser’s dietary advice, while a low fat diet can lead to weight loss, too little fat in the diet also leads to other health problems and is just not worth it.

Many people are surprised to learn that my diet is about 40+ percent fat and (gasp) I always eat the yoke!  Yet, my body fat fluctuates between 9-11%.  So if I’m not crazy (or from another planet) and eating 40% fat does not mean I will be 40% fat, what keeps people from having an aesthetically pleasing set of abs?  In my humble opinion, here are the:

Top Seven Things that Keep People from a Chiseled Midsection:

• Too Many Grains, whole and sprouted grains included, but especially refined ones like white rice, white bread, and white pasta.  If you’re a bread lover this one can be hard to take. Even if your grains are whole or sprouted, they are actually one of the hardest things to digest and can cause a lot of bloating which can make hard to even suck in your tummy.  If you care to, try going off all grains for a solid week and see if your gut does not feel (and look) better.

• Sugar: The list of reasons to avoid sugar is long, but if you’re serious about sexy abs, you can pretty much look at sugar as kryptonite for your abs sculpting efforts (not to mention kryptonite for your immune system).  Staying away from sweets is easier said than done, but once you learn to get away from them I promise they really start to lose their appeal.  If you take a hiatus from sugar, if/when you go back to it you’ll find it is much sweeter than you remember and less enjoyable.  Next time you are tempted by something sweet perhaps you can consider how what your thinking about eating would look if you tucked it just under the skin around your tummy.  That’s probably where it’s headed anyway. What’s the saying…“nothing tastes as good sexy abs feel”?

• Portion Control: Portions have pretty much gotten out of control in our society.  Marry capitalism, mass production, and the food industry and eventually you have the outrageous portion sizes we have today.  Go back and look at portion sizes we had in the 1950s and you’ll know what I mean.  As a general rule: Eat as little as you need to feel full and recognize that if you are eating real food (recognizable, non processed food) it is harder to eat too much.  Eat real food and your body is more likely to have its needs met and less likely to urge you to keep eating so it can find something nourishing.

• Liquid Belly Fat a.k.a. Alcohol: I’m not here to tell you can’t enjoy some alcohol from time to time, but if you are serious about having abs you can be proud of, the short of it is alcohol will do nothing to help you look the way you want.   It is liquid sugar in an amount way beyond anything you’d ever come across in nature.  Drink it with any regularity and your body with think you are asking it to store energy for the future…and guess where it stores it.

• Stress: Cortisol—you’ve probably heard of it.  It is (as far as we know now) your body’s major stress hormone.  One thing cortisol does is signal your body to store fat, particularly fat around the midsection, also known as “visceral fat.”  Cortisol is not necessarily a bad guy.  We need it to overcome stress, but the problem we get into is that most of us live in this state of moderate to high stress called “life.”   The times of low stress are often so infrequent that our bodies don’t get a chance to counterbalance all the cortisol we make and thus we store more fat than we burn.  What can you do to reduce your stress?

• Medications: There are a lot of medications out there that directly cause weight gain, and even if weight gain is not a listed side effect, drugs are still toxic and thus they tend to get stored in your fat cells (doing so keeps them out of your blood).  If you’re taking any medications it may be worth considering what you and your doctor can do to help you get off the medications…for the sake of your abs, but also for other reasons.

• Lack of Sleep: If you’re looking to lose belly fat and you regularly don’t get enough sleep it will be very challenging to have nice looking abs.  Lack of sleep is a stress to the body, which puts you right back to the point above about Cortisol.  If your body does not run on a good night’s sleep then your back up option is Cortisol.

And now that you know about 80% of what is takes to have nice looking abs, let’s talk about the 20% extra you can do in the gym to further define your midsection.

Abdominal Training Reevaluated

Forget crunches.  Forget sit-ups.  These two classics have their place, but they can also put too much strain on the low back and you can do much better when it comes to building abs you are happy with.   To find the best ab exercises let’s start by asking this question: What is the job of the abs? Looking at them from the perspective of how often we use our abs for the purpose of coming up off the floor from lying face up, it’s got to be what, 5% of what the abs do for us?   Not a high percentage right?  Nope.  Rather than helping us up from lying down, most of the time our abs (and low back for that matter) have the duty of holding our midsection stable so the other, more mobile parts (i.e. limbs) can move.  If we take a cue from the everyday movement perspective then perhaps the best way to train our abs is to get them to be exceptionally efficient at holding neutral positions while our limbs do something challenging.   This idea stands in contrast to the idea of doing a lot of flexing and extending of the spine.  To train this way requires us to have relatively strong limbs and a strong back.   Ah, now we’re getting somewhere.

My Top Four Exercises for the Abs

1. Planks – there are lots of different ways to do them, some simple, some complicated.  For many, planks are a low back challenge.  The point is to get planks to be an abdominal exercise, and learning proper alignment is the key to making that happen.  Here are a few options to try out.  Try doing any of these for 1-2 minutes.

2. Ab Wheel – often nicknamed the “Ab Wheel of Death” by many of our clients.  There are very few exercises where you should round your back.  This is one of them.  Here are a few variations.  Try any of these from 5-50+ repetitions.

3. Pilates – You guessed it, Pilates is all about the core, and the precision of the movements you learn from it may be just the step you need to learn how to hold your midsection stable so the rest of you can move efficiently and become a calorie burning machine.

4. Sprints – This is the king of abdominal exercise.  NOTHING can rip up your abdominals like and honest, this-is-as-fast-as-I-can-run, sprint.  A true sprint cannot be sustained for much more than 6-10 seconds and it is the tremendous clamping of your core musculature that occurs in those few seconds that can leave your midsection unbelievable sore the next day.  You will never see an Olympic sprinter who does not have a chiseled set of abs.  Now before you race out the front door and dash 100 yards, recognize that to do a workout like that you have to already be in decent shape.  Sprinting is one of the most challenging exercises out there.  To go from couch potato to sprinting is a bit of a leap.  Build up to this exercise.

Other Honorable Mentions

BOSU Work – There are lots of different things you can do on a BOSU, try a couple of these and let your limbs move while you hold your spine stable.

Ceiling Toe Touch – for those of you who must have a crunch, try this one.  Do it right and you only need about a ½” of movement.  Keep your legs straight (no bending at the knee) and vertical.  Lift (or attempt to lift) your hips and low back off the floor and lower with control.  Hello “lower abs”!

Unstable Push-ups – You’re only limited by your creativity here.   Try different devices, use your limbs differently, but whichever one you choose just remember to keep your spine in neutral.

Body Weight Pull-Ups – from what I’ve read this is the strongest contraction of the lower abdominal region of any exercise…even the dreaded ab wheel.

Dragon Flag – how long can you hold this sucker?  This was Bruce Lee’s favorite abdominal exercise.  Legs and torso should form a straight line.

Final Thoughts

Seeing these in picture and trying them for yourself can lose a little in translation.  If you’d like to be coached through movements like this (or if you’d like to talk about structuring an eating plan) we’d be happy to talk about some Personal Training, Nutrition or Pilates options to help you make sure you are moving safely and efficiently.  Decide how badly you want chiseled abs, make it a priority and get after it.

Here’s to showing off that midsection of yours!

Christian