Evolve: START HERE: Clean Slate

A Supportive and "Clean" Environment:

Once you have wrapped up the holidays its time to give your goodies away or dump them down the garbage disposal. Temptation is something that we have a hard time dealing with. Our bodies, when it comes to food, do not respond to restraint well. The only thing you can do is get those treats out of the house. Next, its time to replace those "bad eats" with healthy, new foods! Go to the store, use the perimeter to be your healthy guide to foods! Most of the processed foods are located in the center aisles! If you can, shop fresh and whole foods! Hoarding bad food choices inside your home will only sabotage your healthy lifestyle. Even if its a kid's favorite snack, its not good for them either- Get it out! Our ancestors never had to "buy" healthy foods, however, in the current world, food technology has created tasty, but unhealthy treats that are available 24/7, thus, we must try our best only to surround ourselves only with healthy foods just like old times.

Evolve: Recipe Box: Celery Root "Mash Potatoes"

Celery root is a type of celery that has a green top and a large white bulb that can be peeled and cut like a potato! This root can be used raw or cook and can be utilized like a potato.

I posted this recipe in a prior Cooking News! I wanted to give you guys a replacement for the holiday potatoes. White potatoes have a high glycemic index (GI), which means that once consumed a person's blood sugar will be impacted at a greater extent than eating a lower GI food. Why is this bad? Well occasionally it is okay for your body to consume high GI foods (sugar, white bread) however, when high GI foods enter the body a chemical called insulin is released from the pancreas so that the the sugar molecules can be removed from the blood and used by the cells, however, too much sugar too often taxes the pancreas and sometimes when there is too much it cannot digest it all. This can cause a build up of excess sugar in the blood, which is turned to fat for storage. Lower GI foods do not create this rapid insulin dump and are digested more slowly. To place celery root in perspective, its GI is 5 and a white potato is 70, which is on the cuff of a HIGH glycemic food :-( Try celery root in 2010!

Check out this site to see more HIGH GI foods to avoid! GlycemicIndex

Ingredients: Serves 4

1-3 bulbs celery root- 2 cups

1/4 cup milk

2 Tablespoons butter

Salt/ Pepper

Directions:

1. Peel the outter skin of the celery root bulb. Cut the top and any excess bottom strings.

2. Cut root up in to 2 inch cubes.

3. Place in a medium pot and cover with water. Bring to a boil.

4. Boil for about 10 minutes until the root is soft when a fork is pressed inside.

5. Strain.

6. Place in a food processor or mixer or use a masher (I use a food processor).

7. Add milk, butter, salt/pepper.

8. Mix/Whip until creamy.

*Reduce fat by using chicken stock instead of milk

*Use cream cheese instead of butter

*Use caesar, ranch, or blue cheese dressing instead of milk

*Use 1/2 cup cheese instead of butter

*Add garlic

Evolve: 2010 Motivation is Key! Let's Kick it off Right!

I hope all of you are well. It feels like it has been ages since I wrote on my site! I have been very busy at school with academics, working out, working at the Wooden Center, and enjoying UCLA!

While sitting at the dinner table on Christmas Eve at my brother’s, we passed a bag of chocolate coins around and we each took a candy out of the mesh baggie and expressed either an upcoming goal or an aspiration, or one thing we are thankful for. Although most of our thoughtful speeches were about family and love, an overall theme of ours was a hoped for good health and happiness in the new-year.

Motivation waxes and wanes over the course of time. I know so many of my friends that desire to get healthy and make exercise and good eating a priority in their life, but indicate that it is easy to start a new program, but hard to maintain. However, when it comes to life-long health and fitness goals, constant dedication and commitment it needed. Just as paying the rent or mortgage for a home and buying groceries is a necessary part of life, up-keeping your body is justly the same.

I view my body as my vehicle for every day tasks and jobs. It allows me to work, play, express myself, dress-up, move, and help others. Without the proper care such as feeding my body appropriately, the vehicle (my body) wears out and cannot function the same as it has always has done before. Although the body is very resilient, waning motivation to keep it in shape can leave it with permanent damage, such as cancer, coronary heart disease, diabetes, joint disorders, etc.

As noted before, goals for the up-coming year of wellness and happiness have begun to be created and I want to help you all stay committed and motivated because health is something that you cannot buy from a box and with health you can be happy. Your health must take priority #1 in your life so that you can be all you can be for yourself and family in the year 2010 and beyond.

Advice to Heed for 2010

#1: Consistency you can stick too!

The worst plan of action you can take on Friday, January 1^st, 2010 is to say, “I am going to do a 2-hour workout everyday this week and continue this until I loose these 20 pounds of excess weight!” For a person who has never stepped a foot in to the gym before, to execute this is asking for an injury and burn out within a week. A great goal for a beginner is a workout schedule that they can stick too! It's key to create goal(s) that is/are long-term and can grow, such as I am going to start working out two times this week for about an hour and I am going to stick to less processed foods this week. After choosing the days of your workouts for the week and working on eating a more wholesome diet you can then make goals for week two and slowly increase a workout and eating plan that fits into your schedule. The key is to create habits that can stick, not ones that are radical and extreme right off the bat. This is a long-term journey… Rome was not built in a day!

#2: Variety

It is important that physical activity is something interesting and enjoyable. At most gyms there is a list of classes and activities you can choose to do! Once you find something fun or a workout you like to do stick to it for two weeks and then switch it up! Variety is what keeps the mind stimulated and the body guessing. Our bodies are very efficient machines. When stress is placed upon muscles they adapt and change in order to deal with the stress and make the body strong and more efficient, however, this means once adapted, your body will work less to do the same amount of work and in order to continue to see results, the work load must change (more in up coming issues about this). For example in the gym you can increase the amount of weight, the number of repetitions, or the number of sets in order to increase the intensity of the workout and continue the process of making your muscles guess and change.

#3: Persistance

Keep going. Let’s say you set a goal, such as lose 10 pounds. Well, once you reach that peak the work does not end. Refusing to workout and feeding your body unhealthy food choice again will only restore the weight you have lost. The weight you lost expressed by a scale is merely a number that can be quick to change. It's crucial to educate yourself about your health and figure out what fuels your motivation to maintain healthy habits. Once your healthy weight is reached it is important to begin a maintenance program so that you can continue to maintain over health. Your weight is not the main criteria, here. Adopting a life-long health and well-ness plan is in need and will allow weight to be lost or gained depending on your status.

#4: Accountability

There are few people that can motivate themselves to workout regularly, year-round. That is why asking a friend to embark on a long-term healthy lifestyle program with you is key. A friend cannot only offer you support, but can also encourage you to stick to your plan when you want to quit. Motivation is a tough thing to always have especially when life happens (bad day at the office, a fight with a family member, or bad news). However, like a rent or mortgage payment, a bad day does not make the bill disappear. To save exercise for only those perfect days in the week is not the right mentality, those are merely excuses that can compromise your health. Your workout should be fun and make you feel better and be an hour or more escape from the real-world and a time to focus on yourself, decompress, and put all problems away for a bit. A friend can motivate you to do this and hold you accountable. You can also bounce ideas off each other and create workouts that use partners (more on this in upcoming blogs!) Friends just make it more fun and make it hard to quit!

Evolve: Certified!

Well, an update, I took my test and passed! I am officially an NSCA certified personal trainer!

Got A Track? Use It!

Interval Training

One mode of cardiovascular training is running. Running is a very convenient form of aerobic training because you need little equipment and can do it almost anywhere. However, I will admit running in place on a treadmill for 30+ minutes can be awfully boring. To contrast the monotonous boredom of running in place, a few times a week I like to take my cardio outdoors, to my local track. On the track, I like to perform workouts that include continuous movement with intermittent burst of high intensity action. Ironically, this form of exercise closely mimics patterns of our ancestors. If you think about it, most of their days were spent relaxing, walking, hunting, and gathering, which would have included sprinting after prey or sprinting away from potential threats.

Our physiology is perfectly adapted to be able to run at high speeds and high intensities for short amounts of time. This type of workout is called interval training. Interval training is very challenging and gets the heart rate up to maximal levels, which provides for a fun and hard workout.

This type of training consists the Sprint and the Recovery phases.

Beginners: If you have not started an aerobic training program you may want to start with walking around the track and implementing short bursts of jogging (10-20 seconds at a time) for about 4 laps (1 mile). This will take roughly 15-20 minutes. The goal is to increase the jogging to a run for again (10-30 seconds at a time) for a mile. After a 2-4 weeks of this type of training progress to intermediate.

Intermediate: Now that you are able to walk/run a mile you are ready to start a true interval training program with the Sprint and Recovery phases. The routine I like to perform is the 100 Yard Dash Interval Program. Basically it is running the straights of the track and walking the curves. You should aim for a 1:3 Sprint:Recovery ratio. Run the straight away as fast as you can (e.g. 15 seconds) and then recover by walking the curve 3x the sprint time (45 seconds). This should provide ample recovery time to continue again. Work up to a mile to 1.5 miles of this interval training (4-6 laps).

Advanced: If the program above becomes too easy (doubt it) you can make it more challenging by increasing your sprint speed or jogging the curves and sprinting the straights. This will decrease the work to recovery ratio to 1:2 making it harder! Again aim for (4-6 laps). Another alternative is running 200 meters or half a lap and either walking the second half or walking across the field for a smaller work to recovery ratio.

Check out the video for an illustration! and Remember when starting any sprint interval program stretch in the beginning and run/walk a 2 lap warm-up laps.

Have a Great Time and Workout!

Oh Cardio! How long? How Can I Make it Fun?

Aerobic training is very important for any individual to maintain good health. However, sometimes for a beginner it can be overwhelming when looking at the variety of modes (running, biking, swimming) and types of equipment available in the gym (elliptical, treadmill, bike). This series of posts is going to layout the basics for starting any aerobic training program and describe the utility of different types of cardiovascular training.

The Journey to Health Starts With This Fact

I'd like to offer you a warm welcome to my blog. I intend to make this small addition to the cyberspace a comforting place to learn how to be a healthier you.

I am a UCLA biological anthropology major student and I desire to pursue the fields of nutrition and personal fitness training.

As I have grown up I have seen many of my fellow friends struggle with their weight and health and it has caused me to seek out the answers that will be able to help my friends.

Although I am just embarking on my quest for answers I have become very fond of living a lifestyle of our paleolithic ancestors. Now, I am not suggesting going back on the savanna, wearing animal skin clothing, living in caves, and hunting our meals. I suggest taking elements of that past and implementing them into todays world. The ways that our hunting and gathering ancestors lived and ate allowed them to bypass obesity, heart disease, cancers, tooth decay, and malnutrition.

Ironically, these people lived prior to the invention of modern medicine and science. They relied on common sense and instincts to survive, not the confusing My Pyramid, processed foods, or cubical plague lifestyles humanity lives today.

Fortunately, with technology we have been able to discover that our genes are the same genes that humans 40,000 years ago possess. This means if we can revert our behaviors back to those of yesteryear, we can solve many of these fatal conditions that humanity suffers from today.

And this is what this blog is going to teach you to do! It is going to teach you how to live like a Modern Hunter and Gatherer because it is true we cannot go back to the savannas and hunt everyday, but we can get pretty close!

Up Coming Topics:

• "To flu shot or not to flu shot"- Guest Contributor Dr. Edward Campbell
  
• "A Healthy Dorm Room"
  
• "Got a Track, Use It!"