A week of menus from mid spring

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Recently I wrote how our family had implemented a more strict grocery budget and how I was working out the purchase of healthy, mostly organic, frequently local food within the new parameters. (Read here http://wellfedfamily.net/?p=217 ) Here is an example of a week’s worth of dinner menus including links to recipes when available. I just wanted to give you an idea of how we normally eat. Everything is just plain, wholesome real food for the most part. There are occasional instances of a package or can of something, but even then those items are usually single-ingredient items such as canned tomatoes. I’ve been told one of the frustrations of cooking from scratch is the amount of prep time it takes. My advice for getting around that is this: 1) put on some happy music and pour yourself a glass of something (kombucha? wine?) and let the prep time be a relaxing time rather than a stress-filled time 2) practice your knife skills and make sure your knives are always sharp so the chopping and slicing goes easily and quickly. Many people don’t have any knife skills or even know which knife to use in which situation. Thankfully we have You Tube! Here is a favorite chef of mine, Alton Brown, explaining the many different kinds of knives and their uses: ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=4KY42QGD0DQ#! ) and here is Simply Ming showing good knife holding technique ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=MXP85t1bQB4 ) and here is one last one showing how you can put a little skill into good use by making quick work of mincing an onion ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=bXre3lrYICg#! )

List of Menus

Chicken Oreganata ( http://www.myrecipes.com/recipe/chicken-oreganata-10000001036137/ ) I made this with bone-in chicken thighs instead of boneless because bone-in are cheaper and more flavorful. Just extend cooking time another 10 minutes or so. I served it with another Greek-inspired side dish called Fashoulakia which is a green bean and tomato dish flavored with dill and other herbs. You can make the green beans ahead and serve them chilled or room temperature. Here is the green bean link ( http://www.myrecipes.com/recipe/fashoulakia-10000001036202/ )

Salmon Cakes with mashed potatoes and a tossed salad plus some Bubbies fermented sauerkraut was the menu for Tuesday. I used the Salmon Cakes recipe from the Well Fed Family Eating With the Seasons cookbook. I am currently sold out of the cookbook, but hoping to get an e-book version published this summer.

Lemon Rosemary Roast Chicken with Red Potatoes was Wednesday’s dinner. Here is a link for a similar recipe although mine used more garlic, rosemary and melted butter. I doubled the recipe and saved the meat from the extra chicken in the freezer for later, and then put all the carcasses in a big stockpot to make broth. ( http://www.myrecipes.com/recipe/lemon-rosemary-roast-chicken-with-potatoes-10000001185388/ ) I can’t remember what we had along with this, but broccoli or a salad or some kale would go well.

Hotdogs with oven fries and coleslaw was for Thursday. My son makes great spicy oven fries and that is a big help when I’m trying to get a quick dinner on the table before a ballgame. I like to make homemade hotdog and burger buns in big batches and then keep them in the freezer, but in a pinch you can also find sprouted hotdog buns from Ezekiel or Alvarado Bakery in many health food stores and groceries. Homemade is much cheaper! Here is a simple bun recipe from King Arthur ( http://www.kingarthurflour.com/recipes/hamburger-or-hot-dog-buns-recipe )

Chuck roast in the crockpot was an easy supper for Friday. I put quartered onions and several chunked up carrots in the pot first and then put the grass fed chuck roast on top. I sprinkled the whole thing generously with an herb blend from Simply Organic (I think it was the Grilling blend for beef), put on the lid and that was it. That evening we made some smashed potatoes to go with it, sliced up some tomatoes and cucumbers and had an old-fashioned Southern supper. Here’s a similar recipe for how I make mashed potatoes, however I don’t peel the potatoes, and I just mash them right in the cooking pan instead of dirtying another bowl! ( http://www.simplyrecipes.com/recipes/perfect_mashed_potatoes/ )

Each week when I make up my menus I try to have at least one night of beef and one night of fish. When I have access to good pasture-raised pork I also include that. Using homemade bone broth several times a week, whether in a soup or cooking rice with it, is also something I try to do. We work on having fermented and raw foods every day whether at breakfast, lunch or dinner. Sometimes every meal!

Our New Strict Budget for Sequestration

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My husband’s job is with the US government. His boss has informed everyone (about 1,000 employees!) that the whole building will be subject to the upcoming budget sequestration and everyone is going to be furloughed. Not the kind of news anyone wants to hear, but very common news around the U.S.

We have been doing some serious reflection on our household budget lately. As a result one of the things that has changed is the way I buy groceries. I now have a to last me each two-week pay period. From that envelope comes anything purchased at Publix, Target, Hoover’s Essential Health, Chamberlins, Fresh Market or WalMart. It also has to cover my twice-monthly purchases from the organic veggie co-op, anything I order from our Frontier co-op, and the quarterly grain and honey order from The Bread Beckers. We don’t buy our raw milk from this envelope because, frankly, it’s too expensive to fit within our grocery budget! We are still buying it, however, because it is a deposit on the health of our children and so as long as we can swing it we will still include it. (Florida’s raw milk prices are higher than a lot of other states simply because it is harder to raise healthy dairy cows here through the long hot summers and the very dry winters.)

When my husband first approached me with this new budget I was afraid things were going to have to change a lot, and we were going to be eating less healthfully with lower quality ingredients. I am surprised and pleased to say that for the most part I was wrong! We can still afford to buy organic vegetables because the co-op prices are better than the grocery store prices. We can still buy our more natural body care products because, again, the co-op prices are so much better than the retail prices! I do have to plan purchases much more carefully and be sure to set aside money each week in order to have enough to make the bulk orders, but that is something I should have been doing all along. I still buy nutritional supplements like probiotics, cod liver oil and vitamins but now I wait for sales and I have discovered a place that will give me 10% discount for being a regular customer.

That is the reason I’m taking time to write all this because it is important that people understand eating healthfully and being on a budget are not mutually exclusive propositions! In fact we would probably be able to fit the raw milk into this budget situation more easily if I could manage to do one more thing, and that is to find a source for a half of a grassfed beef. I’ve been calling around and every place that has reasonable prices also has a waiting list. The up-front cost to bulk beef purchasing is daunting. You have to be able to fork over several hundred dollars but in return you have enough high-quality meat to last you six months to a year depending on how much you buy. My local Publix sells grassfed ground beef at $7.99/lb. With a bulk beef purchase I can eat steak, roasts, short ribs and filets as well as ground beef for less per pound than the grocery store grassfed beef price. The same can be said for pasture-raised chickens, lamb and pork.

I am thankful for all the years that I have spent building up my local food resources. When we first transitioned our diet from SAD (Standard American Diet) to a whole foods, traditional diet I had no idea where to find much of the things I now buy. I started out by going to farmer’s markets and just asking anyone and everyone things like “where can I find eggs from hens living on pasture?” or “where can I find someone who will sell me raw milk?”. My persistence paid off and now I try to help others who are just starting out find the healthy foods they need.

The other key to making this budget work is diligence in weekly menu planning. I homeschool a 14 year old and a 12 year old who both play ball, both are involved in the church youth group, both play musical instruments and both participated on a robotics team. We are busy! I was letting the busy-ness be an excuse to plan less when I should have been planning more! Over the last six weeks of this new budget we’ve eaten better and spent less money on food than we have in a long time.

Don’t let your budget be a stumbling block to eating well. Take time to plan, be committed to cooking at home, look for local resources, join or start a co-op for things you buy regularly and you will be surprised how much you can afford!

Regaining Balance Means Healthy Metabolism and Healthy Weight (series part 6)

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This article is part of a multi-part series on weight loss, metabolism and general health. Please choose Healthy Living – Weight Loss from the category links to the right to find the entire series from the beginning.

The previous article gave a look at many of the health issues that can cause our bodies to lose homeostasis or balance. Low-calorie dieting, unrecognized hormonal issues, unidentified food allergies, yeast overgrowth, and vitamin deficiencies caused by low-fat diets are major reasons why we lost homeostasis and gain unwanted weight. I have said before, but it bears repeating, that being overweight is a symptom of an unhealthy body and NOT the primary problem. If you didn’t have any health issues your metabolism would be keeping you at the right weight for your body. So how can we regain our balance?

Begin by addressing your leptin resistance. Recall that leptin is one of those major hormones that keeps everything else in line. When leptin is out of whack everything else begins to fall over like a long line of dominoes. In Byron & Mary Richards’ book, Mastering Leptin (http://astore.amazon.com/welfedfam-20/detail/1933927259) they give five steps to follow to regain leptin’s correct function.

5 Rules to Overcome Leptin Resistance

http://www.wellnessresources.com/weight/articles/the_five_rules_of_the_leptin_diet/

1. Never eat after dinner. Finishing eating dinner at least three hours before bed.

2. Eat three meals a day. Allow 5-6 hours between meals. Do not snack!

3. Do not eat large meals. Eat slowly, chew well. Finish a meal when slightly less than full.

4. Eat a high protein breakfast. Aim for 25g or more of protein.

5. Reduce the amount of carbs you eat. Don’t eliminate carbs, just cut back. (Especially cut back on processed carbs like soda, bread, chips, etc.)

What often happens when people begin following these five rules is they find they begin to sleep better, they are not hungry all the time, their cravings begin to diminish, and they begin to lose a few pounds without really trying. The longer you continue with these five rules the easier they will be to follow.

“But I thought we were supposed to eat lots of ‘mini-meals’ throughout the day!” I can hear you thinking this. Truthfully, this only works if you’re younger than 30, or an Olympic athlete, or have trouble controlling your blood sugar. For us older, non-Olympians it is better for our bodies to have rest cycles of non-eating to allow all of the other body functions time to deal with each meal, rest and get ready for the next one. Constantly eating means no rest for the pancreas, liver and other digestion-related organs. Without rest they can’t operate in peak condition. Things start to falter, and then here we go – we’re out of balance! If your blood sugar is so out of control that you must eat constantly then you have more serious metabolic issues than can be fixed by the 5 Rules. You are not without hope! You just have more work to do.

Ok, so Five Rules. CHECK! What next?……..

Field Trip: Seminole County’s 2013 Farm Tour

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Someone needs to remind the Extension Service that whenever they need it to rain they should schedule a Farm Tour day. It seems like every time I’ve participated in the Seminole County Farm Tour it rains the whole day. The rain didn’t stop the crowds, however. This was the most heavily attended Farm Tour I can remember! I think attendance was higher than the good farmers had counted on. I wondered if we didn’t seem like stampeding herds or swarming locust to some of the smaller venues.

The day started appropriately for a wet and soggy morning at a farm near the edge of Lake Jesup in Winter Springs. Soggy Acres Pomelo Farm at 100 Tuskawilla Road seemed in danger of being swallowed up by the encroaching “urban lifestyle” Winter Springs Town Center. But as soon as you took a few steps down the dirt driveway and passed through the tree-tangled entrance you could forget you were within spitting distance of eight restaurants, three salons, law offices, medical offices, realtors and a Publix.

Soggy Acres Pomelo Farm is a slice of old Florida. The pomelo is the great-great grandmother of our modern grapefruit, but without the bitterness that can accompany the grapefruit. We missed prime pomelo season which occurs in late winter and early spring along with most of the rest of the citrus fruits. Soggy Acres is a U-Pick pomelo grove that runs on the honor system. The family farmstead sits at the end of the long dirt driveway that bisects the grove. Near the front is a large wooden platform and a big metal mailbox. Sometimes pomelos are picked and left on the platform for customers to buy, or you can bring a basket and wander through the pleasant green trees and pick your own. Either way be sure to leave your payment (cash only) inside the big metal mailbox. Although we didn’t get to taste a pomelo this time, we did get to try mulberries. Soggy Acres is home to more than just pomelos. The farmer has a soft spot for all kinds of fruit trees. In addition to the mulberry trees there were also lychees and a few other exotic tropical residents. Apparently the squirrels and raccoons love them all so harvests are slim on those and reserved for the farm family only.

We left Soggy Acres and headed south on Tuskawilla Road about five miles to Gabriella Lane in Oviedo.

Gabriella Growers, 4875 Gabriella Lane, was stop #2 on the Farm Tour. It was my least favorite of the stops simply because Gabriella Growers was a) a wholesale nursery rather than retail and b) selling only foliage plants for home and office. Sorry, but ferns and pothos just don’t thrill me. I was much more intrigued by the things living and growing on the outside of the greenhouse. The greenhouse was just a vast wasteland of pampered potted plants. Outside we found some very friendly horses, a chicken coop and a nicely tended vegetable garden filled with leeks, cabbage, kale and onions.

Stop #3 took us six miles east to the edge of Seminole County where Red Bug Lake becomes Mitchell Hammock Road. But even that far out we couldn’t shake suburbia as block after block of gated communities stretched on into the horizon. Just past the east campus of Seminole State College is Red Ember Road. The paved highway ends and a wide dirt highway continues on past five acre single-family homesteads. One homestead sported a dazzling male peacock on its roof. The peacock was quite alarmed at the onslaught of cars and pedestrians and spent the whole time screeching his dire warning call. Sundew Gardens, 2212 Red Ember Road, Oviedo, was a few driveways past the peacock and through a leafy arched entrance drive. Sundew Gardens is a U-Pick Vegetable Farm open only to members. It’s really a twist on the popular CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) idea. For a $100 membership fee you get access to the organic vegetable garden, cage-free (but not, it appears, free range) hens’ eggs, and some citrus. The gardens are beautifully maintained with organic compost and worm-casting tea. If you live on the east side of Orlando this place is definitely worth your consideration as an alternative to grocery store produce.

Stop #4 was another place I wasn’t looking forward to. In years past the lunch at Yarborough Ranch left an awful lot to be desired. Frozen Bubba burgers from box to grill and plated up with white bread buns, Fritos and canned sodas are just not my idea of a great farm-to-table experience. Thankfully this year someone had the good sense to make a few changes. It was still grilled burgers but this time the meat came from nearby Geneva Beef Company, an all grass-fed/grass-finished operation. You could taste the difference in the burgers! Instead of GMO-filled snack chips we feasted on fresh corn on the cob with melted butter, locally grown tomatoes, onions, homemade slaw and slow-cooked collard greens. Ok, so they still had white bread buns and HFCS ketchup, but I was happy to go bunless (less carbs for me) and avoid the ketchup. I had a nice conversation with the Geneva Beef Company folks who are proud of their pasture-raised beef. You can find them online with a quick web search to learn how to order their meat. I inquired about bulk quarter, half and whole purchases but for now they only do retail cuts. They hope to add the bulk purchases into their offerings later as they grow the company. I hope it is soon! We need more grassfed beef options in this area. Yarborough Ranch still hasn’t gotten the message. They are still a cow/calf operation. I’m sure most of the Farm Tour folk didn’t realize the beautiful pastures providing the picturesque setting for their lunch were only temporary homes for the young calves who were destined to be shipped across the country to big CAFOs for fast finishing on GMO grain. I couldn’t stomach sitting around for the after-lunch speaker. It was too hard not to get angry and frustrated with the idiot on the microphone telling the crowd how wonderful the Food Safety Modernization Act was. He completely missed telling them how the FSMA was going to be responsible for shutting down four out of the six farms on that very Farm Tour due to the oppressive restraints and industrially focused regulations. The very grassfed burgers, hydroponic tomatoes and organic cabbage they were munching – so much safer and nutritious, and much more delicious, than the CAFO beef and Fritos served in years past – were going to become a thing of the past when the small family farms close their gates under crushing over-regulation. Nope, I couldn’t listen to his lies any longer, so we left early and went on to the next stop.

U-Pick Blackberries and Blueberries, a simple name telling exactly what to expect, is just a mile or two down Snow Hill Road from Yarborough Ranch. 500 Snow Hill Road, Geneva, is the farm address. Blueberries are setting and due to ripen as soon as our nights warm up. Blackberries will follow in late May and early June. Call ahead for picking days and times. Blueberries are $4/lb as I recall. The blackberries hadn’t gotten any leaves or blossoms yet due to the cold weather lately. Hopefully they will catch up – I’m looking forward to a blackberry cobbler soon!

Last stop was one place that really hadn’t anticipated the huge turnout for this year’s Farm Tour. Rest Haven Farm, 381 Rest Haven Road, Geneva, was still in a flurry of preparation activity when the first of the tour-goers trickled up their driveway. The young son, sporting a day-glo orange safety vest, eagerly pointed cars to the few parking spaces available and then panicked trying to figure out where to put everyone else. The crowds quickly overwhelmed the small table set up to sell tomatoes and I heard several disgruntled retirees complaining about the pushing and shoving and elbowing as tired tourists jostled each other for bags of ripe red tomatoes. Tours of the beautiful lettuce tables and the large tomato greenhouse quickly filled to overflowing. We had hoped to buy some of the gorgeous heads of lettuce but there were just too many people and not enough farm family members to go around. I was thankful to slip away from the greenhouse crowd and get back to a calmer, emptier tomato tent. I bought a bowl full of the most delicious tomatoes I’ve had in a long time and happily headed home.

How Did We Lose Our Balance? (Weight Loss Series Part 5)

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Last blog in this series we introduced leptin. Leptin is a major player in the hormone family; it is kind of like the CEO of hormones. Leptin-related problems start happening when communication breaks down between the CEO Leptin and the company owner Hypothalamus and the shareholders which are the rest of the hormones and the body’s hormone receptor sites. A great majority of overweight people have too much leptin. The hypothalamus in our brain is the main target for leptin messages. Too much leptin causes imbalances like insulin and adrenaline resistance, like doctors blasting mega-doses of antibiotics at super bacteria our liver, pancreas, adrenals and thyroid start blasting out mega-doses of hormones in an attempt to break through the communications block. Consequently we burn out these organs and fall prey to fatigue, disease and more.

Reed Davis, founder of Functional Diagnostic Nutrition (http://bonesandhormones.com/fdn/), uses the acronym HIDDEN to teach us how we got out of balance in the first place. HIDDEN stands for Hormones, Immune system, Digestion disorders, Detoxification systems, Elimination, and Neurotransmitter systems. Julia Ross covers very similar topics in her book The Diet Cure (http://astore.amazon.com/welfedfam-20/detail/0143120859). Ms Ross’ list includes depleted brain chemistry, malnutrition, unstable blood sugar, unrecognized low thyroid function, food addictions and allergies, hormonal issues, yeast overgrowth, and fatty acid deficiencies.

Neurotransmitter depletion – meaning you are missing key neurotransmitters – happens due to prolonged stress; consuming refined sugars, white flours or alcohol; or eating insufficient protein. Neurotransmitters are substances such as tyrosine, glutamine, serotonin, epinephrine, glucagon and endorphins. Without ample neurotransmitters you get insomnia, depression, tendency toward drug addiction and more.

Malnutrition can happen even when we have plenty to eat. For dieters, however, malnutrition often comes as a result of extreme low calorie dieting. The subject of calories deserves a blog post all on its own. For now you just need to realize that low-calorie dieting is the same thing as creating our own personal famine. Yes FAMINE! Your body, your hypothalamus, sees no difference between voluntarily eating Jenny Craig meals and being involuntarily held in a concentration camp. 900 calories/day = famine whether you pay someone for the privilege of starving yourself or you are held prisoner against your will.

Refined and processed carbohydrates (white flour, white sugar, high fructose corn syrup, white rice) lack vitamins, protein, fat and fiber. Soon you get stuck in a carbs-body fat-insulin cycle that can lead to diabetes; or you might burn out your adrenals. Symptoms of hypoglycemia are similar to symptoms of adrenal exhaustion. Both are dangerous.

Thyroid problems also deserve their own blog post. Some causes of thyroid malfunction are genetics, low calorie dieting (there it is again!), vegetarian diets, anorexia, soy (yes, soy!), a physical injury to the gland, a severe illness, unidentified gluten intolerance, certain prescription drugs such as the pill/antibiotics/estrogen/lithium, iodized salt, chemicals in your filling, or change-of-life events such as puberty or menopause.

Food allergies can be obvious, they can also be sneaky. Casein and gluten are especially tricky as they behave like opiates by triggering exorphins which flood opiate receptors in our brain with comfort and pleasure. When this happens you get food addictions. Some symptoms of food allergies seem unrelated to food: joint pain, headaches, earache, postnasal drip, ADHD to name a few. Sometimes it is necessary to go on an elimination diet (http://www.functionalmedicine.org/content_management/files/ifm_Comp_Elim_Diet_091503.pdf) to discover exactly what foods are causing your problem.

American women are frequent targets for hormonal issues. We have more trouble with PMS, infertility and menopause than most women in less developed countries. Women in third world countries don’t have hot flashes and don’t dread menopause. Low-fat dieting, sugar, soy, tobacco, artificial hormones in our meat and dairy, birth control pills, skipping meals and adrenal stress all contribute to hormonal issues in American women. Men get it too, male menopause, from poor diet and stress.

Yeast overgrowth in the gut (imbalanced gut flora – see my blog on digestive disorders and gut flora here http://blog.wellfedfamily.net/2010/06/04/digestive-disorders-part-two.aspx) can take over the body-to-brain connection. Yeast needs sugar to grow soyou get cravings for sugar adn carbs. Side effects of yeast overgrowth are depression, bloating, PMS, painful joints, eczema, sore throat, impaired digestion, urinary problems, shortness of breath, chest pains, sinus infection and ear infections. Yeast can overgrow your digestive system and spill into your bloodstream!

Lastly we get to fatty acid deficiency. We must eat the right kinds of fats in order to have hormone production, cell protection, healthy skin and hair, mental stability and concentration, regularity and to prevent abnormal cravings. Safe, nourishing fats are those highly valued and eaten regularly by the traditional people Weston Price studied who possessed the true definition of health. Those fats are butter, coconut oil, extra virgin olive oil, animal fats from free range and wild caught animals and fish, extra virgin oliv oil, and nut/seed/avocado oil from cold-pressed sources never heated. Healthy fats contain vitamins like A, D, & E, CLA, MCT, cholesterol, precursors for hormone production and most importantly omega-3 fatty acids. Balanced omega-3:omega-6 ratios will help bring balance back to the entire body. Certain people have genetically greater needs for omega-3 fats. If you are descended from Scandinavian, Native American, Native Celtic, Irish, Scottish or Welsh you might not be able to metabolize omega-3 from plants (like flaxseed or chia) and you must get omega-3 from cold water fish, grassfed beef and wild game or fish oil supplements. Depression and alcohol cravings are often signs of omega-3 deficiency.

And there you have it – a lengthy list of how we lose our balance, how we get out of homeostasis, how we run into leptin resistance and become overweight in the first place. Now that you know how imbalance happens you can begin to take steps to correct it. Coming up next are some strategies for restoring balance and regaining a healthy metabolism.

More Recipes and Information Still Available on the Old Blog Site

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Well Fed Family transitioned from HTML format to Word Press a little while ago. During that transition a lot of the content of the main website was lost and we are slowly working to put it back up. In the meantime the Blog page from the old website is still active. There are lots of recipes and good articles there.

Here is a link to many of the recipes: http://blog.wellfedfamily.net/categories/263/recipe-2.aspx

Here is a link to several articles dealing with the immune system including the 10-part series on “Immunity Boosters”: http://blog.wellfedfamily.net/categories/263/immunity-2.aspx

Here is a link to some of the fascinating books we’ve reviewed: http://blog.wellfedfamily.net/categories/263/book-report-2.aspx

Thanks for your patience as we continue to make this site better!

Leptin – what is it and how does it work?

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This is part four of a continuing series looking at weight loss. To read Part 1 – http://wellfedfamily.net/?p=137 Part 2 - http://wellfedfamily.net/?p=144 Part 3 – http://wellfedfamily.net/?p=157

We used to think our fat cells were just a place to store extra calories. I would guess that the majority of people still think that fat, or adipose tissue, is just a big blob of worthless stuff causing us a lot of grief. In 1994 scientists discovered that in fact our fat cells are very busy, working all the time, AND they even produce a special hormone. This hormone, called leptin, is one of the most powerful hormones we make!

One of the best layman’s explanations of leptin comes from Sean Croxton of Underground Wellness. His video, “Fat Loss for Smart People” is worth a look. You can find it at http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=rhObSu7y2_A

Leptin is like the CEO of hormones. Produced in our adipose tissue (fat), it has a direct influence on metabolism. It is essential for survival.

Leptin works together with two other important hormones, insulin and adrenaline. Leptin, insulin and adrenaline report to and are directed by the hypothalamus, an area in our brain. So we have our hypothalamus (brain) listening to messages from our leptin (fat), insulin (pancreas) and adrenaline (adrenal glands); and making critical decisions on our health status based on these messages. The hypothalamus revs our metabolism up or slows it down depending on the messages it is receiving. A body in balance has good communication between all of these areas. This is one of the key ways we maintain a healthy weight – good communication!

The hypothalamus region of our brain is mostly interested in staying alive, really that’s all it cares about, staying alive at all costs. Like the captain in a big spaceship it says, “How much energy is being used? How long will this last? Do we have enough in reserve to keep this up? I need answers people!!”

Leptin sends out messages at regular intervals keeping the hypothalamus informed. “Everything’s good here. We have plenty of food coming in, we’re setting aside exactly what we need. No worries here, things are fine.” Leptin also sends messages to the pancreas and the adrenals letting them know what is needed.

Hypothalamus stays calm when these messages come in on schedule. “Roger that! Metabolism will remain at optimum energy production. Appetite, you don’t need to be high. Pancreas, thyroid and adrenals you’re doing fine, keep up the good work. Good teamwork everyone!”

During times of famine we are forced to burn our fat stores because food is scarce. The fat stores get smaller and smaller and nothing is coming in to replace them. Leptin sends an emergency message, “Hey, stores are running out. We will soon be burning muscle tissue, there’s not enough food!”

The hypothalamus jumps to action. “Thyroid, slow things down! We’re burning up energy too fast! Appetite, I order you to find us more fuel STAT!” This way we are able to conserve energy through slower metabolism while becoming hungrier and hungrier and thus even more motivated to find food. This is what happens when our bodies encounter starvation or famine.

The trouble is our hypothalamus never looks in the mirror. Our hypothalamus does not care one bit what we look like. It only cares whether or not we are going to die from lack of food. Someone in a war-torn third world country who is truly suffering from a shortage of food has this scenario going on in his body. Someone else in a wealthy western country with grocery and convenience stores on every corner who decides to go on Medifast 800 calorie/day diet will have the exact same reaction in their body. The moment we are no longer in starvation mode our body works as quickly as possible to return to the pre-famine state. If that pre-famine state was a healthy one that’s not a bad thing. But if that pre-famine state was already overweight this means we gain back all of the weight that was lost by starving ourselves on purpose. (self-induced famine) The more often we put ourselves through starvation mode the less our body will trust us for survival. Instead of gaining back only to the original amount we will now gain a little extra “just in case you do something stupid and try to starve us again!” says the hypothalamus.

So how does leptin, insulin, adrenaline and the hypothalamus let us get overweight in the first place?

It all goes back to that balance we talked about in the very first article of this series. Something in our lifestyle pushes us out of balance. When that happens the leptin tries to send messages to the hypothalamus but the lines of communication are down and the message doesn’t go through. This is called leptin resistance. The hypothalamus sends out the alarm, “Oh no! Starvation mode!” Metabolism slows down to conserve energy, appetite increases and fat stores get larger and larger. This gives us even more leptin-producing tissue which puts it out of balance with insulin. We have set the stage for serious health issues. These issues include erratic behavior and strong cravings, mental problems, bone loss, heart disease and cancer. We have also lost the ability to maintain a healthy body weight. This is all because leptin regulates the other hormones including thyroid, adrenal, pancreatic and the sex hormones.

The brain is not the only site that receives messages from leptin. There can be a breakdown in communication between leptin and all the other body receptor sites. We can burn out our livers, pancreas, adrenals and thyroid when our body tries to fight off what is perceived as starvation or famine. The older we get the more likely this is to happen. It happens even faster when we are overstressed.

How do we know if we are leptin resistant? According to the book Mastering Leptin by Byron and Mary Richards http://astore.amazon.com/welfedfam-20/detail/1933927259 there are several signs that indicate leptin resistance:

15 or more pounds overweight, low energy, poor immune response, fatigue, not refreshed by exercise, anorexia, significantly overweight in spite of near-starvation levels of calories.

So how did we get out of balance in the first place? ……..to be continued!…………

Chemicals, Carbo-drugs and the New Normal

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this is the third in a continuing series taking a look at weight loss. Read part one here: http://wellfedfamily.net/?p=137 Read part two here: http://wellfedfamily.net/?p=144

No one WANTS to be obese. People are literally starving themselves in order to get thin and still gain weight. What are we doing wrong?

One answer is that we have abandoned our nutritious foods in favor of foods that are devoid of life, devoid of nutrition, but these foods meet the need in our modern lifestyle for quick, easy, tasty and cheap. This kind of modern diet lacking in nutrition has literally damaged our bodies very badly and yet we are so addicted to them we cannot break free.

“We have stopped eating food here [in the U.S.]; we mostly eat chemicals and carbo-drugs.” -Julie Ross, author of The Diet Cure http://astore.amazon.com/welfedfam-20/detail/0143120859

So let’s take a look at “normal”.

A. We wake up from a sound and restful sleep each morning and spring out of bed with pep and energy ready to meet the day. We eat three nourishing meals a day made of real, nutrient-filled food and we are not tempted by snacks, coffee, sodas or cigarettes. We are refreshed and revitalized when we exercise. We don’t have an afternoon or evening slump requiring any kind of pick-me-up. When bedtime rolls around we are comfortably tired and fall asleep quickly, ready to sleep the full night through. We are not plagued by chronic disease and we easily maintain a healthy weight and a healthy outlook on life well into old age.

B. We hit the snooze button five times before finally rolling out of bed at the very last second still wishing we were back under the covers. If we’re lucky we get toast and coffee, but more likely we get nothing until about midmorning when we dive headfirst into the breakroom donut box. Feeling guilty at lunch we get a diet soda and chewing gum. It’s not January anymore so the gym isn’t part of the afternoon routine. Instead we pick up the kids after school and drive through a fast food place for some nuggets to keep them quiet until we can figure out what’s for supper. Pizza delivery on the speed dial works tonight. It goes well with the glass (or three) of wine that helps you fall asleep by midnight so you can do it all over again the next day.

Which scenario is your normal? Do you know anyone who claims “A” is their normal? Do you remember what it felt like to be a kid at Christmastime? - loads of energy, excited about everything, couldn’t wait to get up in the morning…

Wouldn’t it be great to feel like that again? When your body is in balance that is what your normal can be once more. One key to finding that overall balance is to balance your leptin. Don’t know what that is? Don’t know how that works? ………to be continued!……..

Remembering a Friend

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Roma K. Davis

May 4, 1970 – February 22, 2013

I ask your prayers for the family of Roma Davis who left this earth to be with her Savior on Friday, February 22nd.

It was due in part to Roma’s efforts that I first met Sally Fallon Morell about six years ago. Roma helped the local Auburn chapter of the Weston A. Price Foundation secure the Auburn Church of Christ as the location for a weekend-long seminar featuring Sally Fallon Morell as speaker. It was that weekend I heard The OIling of America ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fvKdYUCUca8 ) and Nourishing Traditional Diets ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p3ehzZ3yNyw ) for the first time. It was that weekend that I made the decision to implement many radical changes in my and my family’s diet.

Since that first weekend with Sally Fallon Morell the Auburn Church of Christ has opened its doors to more workshops/lectures teaching the community about real food including the Nourishing Our Children lecture and traditional foods tasting event last fall.

Over the years Roma has sent e-mails with words of encouragement to me. In my visits to Auburn she would always take time at church to stop, even just for a minute, and chat with me about some new food or method she had just tried, or to ask a question about bread baking. She always had words of praise for me giving my spirits a lift and putting a smile on my face.

Roma’s faith in God as her Creator and Lord was always visible in her life. As we talked via email during the last few months of her life she was always filled with hope and faith in Jesus. She strove to honor God even in the way she chose to seek treatment for her cancer. Even as she grew weaker her spirit remained strong and bright. I am thankful to have known her and look forward to seeing her again one day.

A Brief History of Fat-Free Dieting (series part two)

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This is part two of a series looking at overall health in relation to healthy weight.

Part One looked at how a body in balance, or homeostasis, is more likely to be a body able to tolerate stress, recover from illness, and maintain a healthy weight. We know entire communities of healthy, balanced people have existed in the recent past and may still exist today. The question remains – why are so many of us still so unhealthy?

Let’s again look at some history. These examples are discussed in Gary Taubes book Good Calories, Bad Calories:

In 1882 at the University of Göttingen in Germany, a professor of medicine, Wilhelm Ebstein, wrote a paper titled “Obesity and Its Treatment”. Professor Ebstein had a famous patient, Prince Otto von Bismark, who was able to lose 60lbs. in less than a year. Prince Otto followed Professor Ebstein’s diet which banned sugar, sweets and potatoes and limited bread. The diet allowed green vegetables and meat of every kind. Professor Ebstein particularly insisted that fatty foods were crucial to weight loss because they increased satisfaction with meals and decreased fatty tissue accumulation in the dieter. Remember, this was still long enough ago that all meats and vegetables were still what we would today classify as “organic”. It was also still early enough in modern history that industrialized vegetable oils had not become mainstream.

In 1951 Dr. Raymond Greene and six other British doctors published a book titled The Practice of Endocrinology. In their book they outlined a diet remarkably similar to the one Dr. Atkins would publish 20 years later. Dr. Greene and colleagues encouraged their patients to eat meat, fish, poultry, all green vegetables, eggs, cheese and fruits with the exception of bananas and grapes. They advised avoiding anything made with flour, breakfast cereals, potatoes and other white root vegetables, all sweets and foods containing a lot of sugar.

In 1957 a German-born American specialist on eating disorders, Dr. Hilde Bruch, wrote the following quote: “The great progress in dietary control of obesity was the recognition that meat was not fat-producing, but that it was the ‘innocent foodstufs’, such as bread and sweets, which lead to obesity.”

In the 1960s and 1970s clinical trials were being conducted in Sweden, England, France and the United States studying carbohydrate-restricting diets. These diets were shown to be extremely effective at producing weight loss.

In the 1980s it suddenly became popular to avoid fat and anything containing fat. Entire cookbooks and television shows were produced centering on this low-fat craze. Bread, potatoes and pasta became the main dish, the darling of the diet world, while meat, especially red meat, became the villain. Even with more than 100 years of study and success using low carbohydrate diets, suddenly the AMA labeled these diets as “fads”. Fat suddenly became the cause of heart disease.

Something that Mr. Taubes doesn’t mention that I personally feel is significant is that during the 1970s and 80s the CAFO, concentrated animal feeding operation, became the norm for beef and pork production rather than the historically traditional and biologically normal pasture or free-range method. It is in the CAFO that the meat we eat gets fattened up as efficiently as possible and as quickly as possible. The feed that our meat eats to get fat quickly? Grain, corn and soy, the very same foods the experts were telling us to eat in order to get thin.

In the 1900s obesity rates in America were very low, less than 1%. By 1960 they had risen to around 12%. This rate stayed fairly steady up to about 1980 when it began rising. By 2010 obesity rates had skyrocketed to 35%. Gary Taubes notes “this parallels the years when we were told to stop eating fat and start eating more breads and grains.”

The federal government, the food industry and many physicians and other public health experts took some studies from the 1940s showing a correlation between a high-fat diet and high cholesterol levels that concluded high-risk heart patients should lower their fat intake and decided that the general population should go ahead and do the same. (Remember, blogger Denise Minger’s favorite mantra “correlation does not prove causation”). These experts assumed that if we ate less fat our weights would go down. They thought this because fats contained densely packed calories. What they did not take into consideration was that the composition of the calorie is far more important than the calorie itself. Instead of weight going down the opposite happened. Weights went up, portion sizes went up (to make up for the small but dense portions of fattier foods), and the actual amount of food eaten also went up since what we were eating was no longer nourishing us very well and we kept craving more. Foods that are lower in fat are naturally higher in carbohydrates. People ate more because without the fat there was no satiety – our bodies didn’t register “full” as easily.

The end result is that now everyone just assumes that fat is bad. More and more fat-free foods became available as the food industry leaped to the forefront to “rescue” us from evil fatty foods. Now we have fat-free ice cream, fat-free cookies, fat-free yogurt, we even have fat-free half & half! (How is this possible? I thought the definition of half & half was half cream half milk!) Still obesity rates have gone up and up while the media and public health experts are accusing us of being lazy and cheating!

This makes me furious! Can you tell me one single person who WANTS to be obese?! Often times it is these people accused of being lazy and cheating who are working the hardest to get thin! They literally starve themselves on diets and liquid-fasts of 700 or fewer calories per day and yet they still gain weight!

What are we doing wrong? ………to be continued………..