The Cook & The Coach Blog

4 Simple Rules!

10/22/2014

Well it's actually 7 rules...because I'm going to share a few more!!

Try to drink enough water!
There are SO many benefits to drinking water, but visually, this women's story is pretty stunning. She drank 3 liters of water every day for 4 weeks. Check out the difference! More here about her story! Basically I try to drink half my body weight in ounces....so if you weigh 200 lbs you should be drinking 100 ounces of water every day. Grab a gallon jug and try to drink the entire thing throughout the day. Set reminders in your phone, set small goals throughout the day...whatever you need to, just start guzzling!!

Having a positive attitude no matter the situation.
It's so easy to let life and your circumstances get to you...but you are NOT defined by your circumstances or what's happening to you right now. You get to make a choice about your attitude and how you're going to respond to crappy situations and cranky people...so make the choice. DECIDE to be happy.

Stress less and SMILE more.
Stress can have detrimental effects on your health if you let it linger. Stress free living looks different for each person...figure out what works for you and focus on finding PEACE somewhere! For me, prayer is where it's at. I trust that God is in control which takes all the stress off of me to figure things out. Lastly, just SMILE. It's amazing what it can do to change your outlook and the outlook and attitude of the people around you!

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Southwest Bowl with Avocado Cream Sauce

10/22/2014

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This meal is brought to you by the Suedbeck pantry!!! One thing that has changed around our house is having quality ingredients around so that we can throw together healthy meals from things we have laying around. Yeah it might take a little more creativity but that's fun right. This recipe was actually inspired by a recipe we have on our 5 Day Clean Eating Guide that we use with our Clean Eating Groups. If you want more information about those feel free to click CONNECT and reach out to us whichever way you feel the most comfortable.

Ingredients

2 cups cooked Quinoa
Pulled chicken from a rotisserie chicken
Bell peppers, use any combination you want, roughly 1 cup once diced
1 medium onion, diced
1 tbsp diced garlic, 2 cloves roughly
1/2 tsp red chili flakes, feel free to adjust up or down depending on your spice tolerance, this amount had a good heat too it.
1 15 oz can of black beans, liquid drained and rinsed

Avocado Cream Sauce

1 avocado
1 cups cilantro
1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
1/4 water, may need more depending on the size of your avocado and desired thickness of the sauce
1 tbsp lemon or lime juice
1 tbsp apple cider vinegar
1 tbsp honey
1 tsp cumin
1 tsp garlic powder
1/4 tsp cayenne pepper

Directions

If you quinoa is not cooked, do so according to package directions. Quinoa roughly doubles in volume so to get 2 cups of cooked you will need 1 cup of uncooked.
In a skillet, add 1 tbsp of some sort of fat (coconut oil, butter, lard, bacon fat) add peppers, onions, and chili flakes and cook for 5 minutes, then add garlic and cook for additional 5 minutes until onions and peppers are softened.
Add drained beans, and chicken to warm them through. Should only take 2-3 minutes.
Meanwhile in a blender or food processor, add all the ingredients for the avocado cream sauce and blend until smooth. As noted in the ingredients you may want to add more water to the mixture depending on the thickness. I wanted it a bit on the thicker side.
To serve, pile the chicken, veggie, and bean mixture on top of the quinoa and spoon/pour avocado cream on top of that. Garnish with some chopped cilantro and enjoy!!!

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Stop eating LESS and exercising MORE!

10/13/2014

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So I have a very selfish reason for writing this blog post. We work with a lot of people and chances are if you are reading this, you are one of them. One of the most common mistakes we see from people in our challenge groups is that they do not eat ENOUGH food. Yeah you heard that right, people in our groups that want to lose weight, aren't eating enough. Crazy right?? Honestly, it's no secret that most people believe that the best way to lose weight is to exercise more and eat less.

You may have heard that a pound of fat is the equivalent to 3,500 calories. So based on the that figure, if you ate 250 less calories per day and exercised enough to burn 250 more calories you would lose 1 pound per week. Carry that out over a year and you have an amazing 52 pounds lost. Seems pretty simple, but unfortunately our metabolism doesn't work like a math equation.

Let's think about it the other way too. According to the NY Times the average American is consuming 20% more than they were in 1970. Making a couple of assumptions, if our Basal Metabollic Rate (BMR) stays the same from 1970 and our exercise quantity stays the same the average American male based on this information would weigh 1,372 lbs. Pretty sure the average weight of Americans have gone up but not by over 1,000 lbs.

Graphed based on average calorie consumption of males in 2010 of 2,640 and an increase of 20% since 1970. Assumption was made of a flat 5% increase every 10 years. Information taken from article at http://www.livestrong.com/article/347737-the-average-american-daily-caloric-intake/

So clearly our metabolism isn't just a simple math equation. There are a lot of other things that come into play, the quality of the food we eat, hormones, stress, the balance of macro nutrients that you eat and toxins in your body...to just name a few. I'm not trying to say that quantity doesn't matter, it does, but the reason for this post is to tell you that it's not the only thing that comes into play if you are trying to lose weight.

I like the way the folks over at Metabollic Effect explain our metabolism, that it acts more like a seesaw or thermostat. Our bodies are constantly striving to be in a state of homeostasis and balance. So when we put more energy in, it burns more energy and when we limit the amount of energy that goes in, our body adjusts accordingly to that also. Or as Jonathon Bailor explains: our bodies metabolism/biology doesn't work like math...our bodies biology works like biology.

What happens when you eat a calorie deficit diet?

Let's say a person's goal is to lose 20 lbs. Based on everything that they've ever been told, they should eat a little less, exercise a little more and therefore create a calorie deficit and burn fat. If all other things in your body stayed the same, this strategy would work and the 20 lbs would come off in a matter of a few months. When people employ this strategy some weight will usually come off at first. There is definitely a time during these early days where a person isn't stressed out by the new exercise and the food level is new so it isn't taxing their body as much. It's almost like these people are on an adrenaline high...this new stuff is exciting, they're energized so their mind is riding those emotions and carrying them through.

THEN that newness and adrenaline wears off and you are left with someone that is tired, sore and hungry....Frustration sets in pretty quickly and workouts get spread out a little further and and a few more treats get added back in. All of a sudden, they are back to a calorie neutral diet, but it feels like they are still doing the right things and they aren't losing any weight. So they throw the towel in and go back to old ways. The problem is they pack the original weight back on faster than it came off because during that first couple of weeks their body's metabolism slowed to match up with the level of exercise and calories they were consuming.

How to eat at a calorie deficit but avoid the yo-yo dieting

If weight loss is your goal then yes your body has to burn more energy than it consumes, plain and simple. So how do you burn more calories without running into the problem explained above? The key is pace, quality of food, and body composition.

You can lose weight really fast if you want to, the quickest way to lose 20 lbs would be cut your leg off. You could also starve yourself and lose a lot of weight really fast...it will consist of water, lean tissue, and some fat with the fat being one of the last things to go. Both of those are absurd and obviously not practical.

So the key when undertaking a weight loss journey is to keep the focus on your overall health the entire way. That means getting your daily nutrients no matter what. Even if getting those nutrients means you exceed your calorie consumption number for that day. Depending on how much weight you have to lose, I recommend aiming for 1-1.5 lbs per week. If you were completely extreme with your nutrition and activity level, you might be able to lose 2-3 lbs. But remember these are averages too, so you might lose 5 lbs week one but then not see the scale move a whole lot weeks 2 and 3. As long as you don't add weight, you are still at that 1.5 lbs per week. The key here is steady weight loss and going into it with the right expectations. You won't have a sense of failure if your weight loss stalls out, because you are thinking long term averages, not daily or weekly fluctuations.

Quality of food is so important when making a change also because nutrient composition is key. You are looking for whole foods that are nutrient dense. These are mainly going to be your vegetables. In particular colorful veggies. Look for your greens, reds, oranges, yellows. Color is a sign of phytonutrients in your food, so the wider array of colors the better. The reason I don't mention eating a lot of fruit is that a lot of fruit (bananas, apples, grapes) are loaded with sugar which can have issues with your metabolism). Often times I think people think that because they are eating a ton of fruit, they are being extremely healthy and that isn't always the case. The fruits that are lower in fructose and higher in fiber will be the most beneficial.

Image from www.telegraph.co.uk

On top of vegetables and selected fruits it is also important to get high quality proteins. A few of our favorites are organic chicken breasts, wild caught salmon, ground turkey, and pork tenderloin. Obviously when you can buy organic meats that is preferred but sometimes they aren't available or sometimes you just don't have the money. So a rule of thumb that we use is the fattier the meat the more important it is to be organic. Toxins tend to get stored in fat cells. So bacon, hamburger, steaks, fattier cuts of pork are going to be better to get organic. Leaner proteins like fish if wild caught, turkey, pork tenderloin are things you can potentially go the regular route.

The last thing that is important for long term weight loss is focusing on your body composition (that is the balance of body fat to lean tissue). Our skeletal structure is pretty much a fixed number barring any amputations or severe osteoporosis. Something that tends to happen when someone begins working out and eating better is that some weight comes off right away, usually water weight, then people plateau for a brief stint. What most likely is happening here is a person is losing body fat, but gaining muscle. Muscle is quite a bit more dense than fat so rather than look at the scale a better measure would be either measurements or body fat %. Your goal should be fat loss more so than weight loss. Change your thinking and your journey will be quite a bit more peaceful.

Before explaining this last piece I want to quickly explain what metabolism actually is. Your metabolism is very simply the energy your body burns at the cellular level to perform the daily tasks that you are doing. The more cells, the more activity, the higher your BMR. This is why a bigger guy needs more calories than petite women. Another reason guys need more calories than women is due to the fact that most guys have a higher % of muscle tissue to fat tissue. See where I'm going with this...

The higher % of lean muscle tissue = More calories burned

So when you begin your fat (weight) loss journey focus on building muscle rather than burning calories. Although cardio activities can build a little bit of muscle, you will plateau and so will your BMR. This is where strength training, whether it be with body weight exercises or lifting weights is important.

Now we addressed how your body can balance your calories in versus calories out so that you can successfully burn fat and lose weight. There were a few other things that I mentioned earlier that also play a role in how our bodies burn calories: stress, hormones, balance of macro nutrients, and toxicity of our body. I would love to go farther in depth into each of these rather than just skim the surface, so look for a future blog post that touches on these areas. In the meantime focus on quality of food, quality of exercise that results in muscle development and have a lot of patience. A lot of times if you focus on those things the rest of our body's biology figures out a way to manage hormones and eliminate toxins. Our bodies are pretty amazing!

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Paleo "Pumpkin" Chocolate Chip Bars

10/8/2014

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Does anyone else use the app Timehop? Yep...I do and it's so much fun. I love to see what I was posting about 1 year ago, 2 years ago or even 6 years ago on Facebook or Instagram.

I think I saw this recipe from Elana's Pantry on Pinterest last year so I made them and LOVED them...and then forgot about them. Thank goodness for Timehop...it reminded me about making these last year so I was able to go and try them again.

Paleo Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Bars

1/3 cup Coconut Flour
1/4 tsp sea salt
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp pumpkin pie spice
4 large eggs
1 cup fresh roasted pumpkin or squash (I used kabocha squash)
1/3 cup honey
1/4 cupcoconut oil
1/2 cup dark chocolate chips

In a food processor, combine coconut flour, salt, baking soda and cinnamon. Pulse in eggs, squash or pumpkin, honey and oil until well combined. Stir in the chocolate chips.

Transfer batter to an 8x8 inch baking dish.
Bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes.
Cool and serve!

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Change your MIND, Change your BODY!

10/8/2014

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I wanted to share a little bit of my experience and my transformation in the hopes that someone out there can relate and make a change for a healthier lifestyle too.

I have always been super active with working out, playing volleyball and golf and other miscellaneous sports. Like most, I had my periods over the past 10-15 years where I didn't do as much but I always bounced back and got active again. My goal albeit a superficial one was always to get ripped, have a six pack and have big arms. How lame, right? I worked extremely hard at times in the gym to get to that perfect body but I never got there. I researched, I learned different lifts, I watched videos and talked to guys in the gym, but the progress was slow, if any.

Why???

Although I was doing the physical stuff, I never fully embraced the lifestyle that would get me the results that I was hoping for. I was working hard in the gym but I was also working hard at the bar and fast food joints. On top of that, my mind was all about the physical, I could care less about my health, I just wanted abs!!!

As you can see all of my "hard work" didn't lead to the abs that I had always wanted. The picture above was taken January 2013 before I really committed to the lifestyle of living a healthy life. My turning point was about 1 month prior to this picture when I had to go to the doctor for extreme back pain and she told me that based on my BMI I was obese. Part of me laughed it off, how could I be obese, I'm athletic? After really thinking about it I wasn't in a good place. I remember at night sitting on our couch eating my ice cream and my stomach would pop out of the bottom of my shirt. Yeah it was just Laura and I around but it was still embarrassing.

So as the title of this post suggests, before I made any changes to my lifestyle I first had to change the way I looked at food and a healthy living and to some degree, exercise. I'll start with exercise because that is the easy one. Prior to all of this, even though I was working towards that 6 pack, kind of, I often justified my crappy food binges by saying I worked out or I will work out. Working out was a way to offset something. It was to burn calories. When I started looking at exercise as something that made me feel awesome, rather than something I needed to do to offset a cheeseburger or pizza I ate, my world changed!! (Yeah I would eat entire pizzas!!!)

With food, I found out really fast what could happen when you ate right. The picture above is actually taken the morning of Day 2 of the Ultimate Rest, which is a 21 day cleanse that Beachbody sells. I remember this vividly because I burnt the crap out of my hand making chicken breast at 6:30 in the morning for Laura and I's salads that we were supposed to have for lunch that day. This program laid out exactly what I was going to eat daily, and after 18 days, (yeah I stopped 3 days short due to a work trip) I lost 15 lbs. I still didn't have my abs but I saw what eating the right foods could do and I felt incredible after that. I was ALL IN!!!

My mindset shifted from needing to workout to counteract an unhealthy eating lifestyle to wanting to eat clean and workout because it made me feel awesome. I no longer was trying to play catch up. My goals changed from 6 pack abs to overall health. I won't lie and say I didn't want the abs still but that wasn't my focus. Low and behold, once my focus changed the abs came. It's amazing the correlation between your body getting stronger and your mind getting stronger...and for me my confidence. I was a new man inside and out!!!

You've all heard the concept out there, what came first, the chicken or egg? That can be debated around and around. In the health and fitness world, what comes first: a healthy mind or healthy body?? Without a doubt, I can say your mind has to be right first. Without the right mindset you will likely be influenced by magazine covers and stay in a state of constant self doubt and insecurities.

How do you change your mindset then?

You need to forget what others think and learn to love yourself for where you are in that moment. You have to stop thinking that you are stuck the way you are and there's no changing that. Tear down the walls that you have built up that have stopped you from becoming the person you and I know you can be.

The person you are right now is not the person you always have to be. You have to understand that being healthy and fit isn't for someone else out there, it can be yours too!

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There is STRENGTH in starting over

10/1/2014

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Starting over sucks...but quitting sucks worse.

After 9+ months of not being able to workout at full intensity, I'm now back at it and I could NOT be happier!! However...that doesn't change the fact that it's REALLY hard.

I can't do things that used to be simple for me. I'm struggling with actually knowing how to push myself when that used to just come naturally. It's frustrating and a huge part of me wishes it would all just come back overnight but then I remember THIS:

The WORK is where the beauty happens...the struggle, the sweat, the frustrations, the tears all make you STRONGER and change you from the inside out!!

So the next time you want to wish away a certain stage of your life...or maybe just to make it go faster....STOP and pay attention to what you're learning and what you're becoming. There's probably a lot more going on inside of you than you even realize!

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4 Simple Rules!

Southwest Bowl with Avocado Cream Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Stop eating LESS and exercising MORE!

What happens when you eat a calorie deficit diet?

How to eat at a calorie deficit but avoid the yo-yo dieting

Paleo "Pumpkin" Chocolate Chip Bars

Paleo Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Bars

Change your MIND, Change your BODY!

There is STRENGTH in starting over