Dr. Dan Murphy's Airport Game

Dan looks at butt to belly ratios. He says that your belly should be 80% the size of your butt. If your belly is bigger than your butt, it means you have inflammation and are at risk for any number of diseases: heart attack, stroke, Alzheimer's, cancer, etc. Foods that are high on the glycemic index increase belly fat. So it's best to avoid those. Here's an article in support of limiting grain consumption by Dr. Mercola. He's a lot like Dan Murphy; siting more references than the average person has time to read. ;-) This is my intro into What DO you eat? There were docs joking that they knew Dan wasn't sneaking twinkies behind the organic apple curtain. He really does eat this way.

Eat a salad everyday. Grand Reserve cherrywood-aged, balsamic vinegar. He kept repeating "Grand Reserve, cherrywood-aged, balsamic vinegar." He told a v. cute story about a classmate of his daughter's staying over for dinner. She said, "I don't do salad." He said something like, "This is what we eat. Try it." And then he said, "Grand Reserve, cherrywood-aged, balsamic vinegar. She asked my daughter for a bottle for her birthday. It was her favourite gift at the party. Imagine an eleven-year-old girl getting excited about . . . Grand Reserve, cherrywood-aged, balsamic vinegar."

Dan says we should be eating 2 lbs. of fruits & veggies everyday. TWO pounds! Everyday! 25% fruits (rich in anti-oxidents), 75% veggies. So: eat a salad everyday. BTW, tomatoes are high in lycopene (excellent for prostate health) but watermelons have even more.

Wild Alaskan salmon. High in Omega 3 fatty acids (separate post later). He didn't say this, but in a pinch you can get canned. I used to feed it to Barkley & Remi.

Protein: Nuts~walnuts, almonds, etc. organic (but not "corned up" meat. He'll do grass fed beef or wild game). Omega 3 eggs. He says that you should have a 2:1 protein to carb ratio in your meals, and that you need at least 20 grams at breakfast. He does a smoothie every a.m. for breakfast, but I'll go into that in another post. Mmmm. . . smooooothie . . .

Guidelines for eating:
1) No food after dinner
2) 3 meals a day
3) No snacks
4) Eat s-l-o-w-l-y
5)Every meal should have protein

I think I pretty much do this--except for the snack thing. But a snack for me is an apple or Total Green. It's not like I'm wolfing down oreos or what Dan calls "cancer sticks" (french fries). So there you go. I think it's easy to eat this way once you get rid of food addictions & allergies (a separate post).

But What CAN I Eat???

Yesterday's post reviewed food additives. Today is about food. There are a few books Dan Murphy recommends:

Milk: The Deadly Poison
The Paleo Diet
Health & Nutrition Secrets That Can Save Your Life
The Cortisol Connection: Why Stress Makes You Fat & Ruins Your Health

There are a few foods that Dr. Murphy says we should eliminate:
*Soy~ except tofu is OK. Here are some articles from Dr. Mercola about the health risks of soy.
*Dairy
*Anything refined~ breads, pastas, white-anything including rice
*Peanut butter products~ peanuts grow a mold that is an aflotoxin (corn is #2). Peanuts are OK to eat from their shell if they look blemish-free, but those aren't the ones that go into peanut butter.
*Anything genetically modified. Unless it says "organic," it's most likely a GMO-- especially if it it's corn or soy.
*Farm-raised Salmon--toxic!!! Get WILD.
*Factory farmed meat. Get organic. They feed chickens arsenic as an appetite enhancer. Not to mention the drugs, hormones, pesticides in their food, and the inhumane living conditions for the animals. (Read the classic Diet for A New America for the whole story).
*Fruit juice (too much sugar)

Limit:
*Grains~ especially wheat. One in 132 people have a gluten intolerance/allergy (from wheat, rye, barley a.k.a. Celiac's Disease) and don't know it. It's not the best choice for food, anyway. Dan says that when we look at our ancestors, they didn't eat the concentrated amounts of grains that we do in our modern society.
*High glycemic index foods, like . . . potatoes. NOOOOOOO!!!! One of my faves. :-(

Tomorrow, I'll answer the question: So what DO you eat????

The Chemicals We Eat

We have become a nation that eats non-food. It comes in pretty packaging that gluts up our landfills and we are left tired, sick, fat and addicted. Happy Tuesday! This is Part 2 in my report of Dan Murphy's seminar & today is about food additives.

Many experts agree that the disease process begins with inflammation in the body. If you are in chronic pain, you have inflammation. If you eat food additives, you have inflammation. It's the precurser to Alzheimer's, heart disease, cancer, asthma--fill-in-the-blank. The following food additives promote inflammation:

Glutamates~ MSG: not just for Chinese food. It's in all fast food, processed foods, restaurants and has many names. It's what makes this food taste good. You can go to this site for more information on its effects.

Aspartame~ toxic! Gulf War Syndrome is now being linked to soldiers having drunk previously heated up diet sodas. Aspartame is even more dangerous when warmed up. Dan recommends: Fight for Your Health: Exposing the FDA's Betrayal of America.

Sucralose~ 70% of people who eat it have symptoms of cramps/bloating, mood swings, brain fog, nausea, headaches, joint pain, depression & dizziness. Yikes! Recommended book: Splenda: Is It Safe Or Not? by Janet Starr Hull, Ph.D.

High Fructose Corn Syrup~ another fat-enhancing, addictive substance that has found its way into the food trough thanks to politics. [Interesting side note: if you go to Mexican food markets, you can still get Coke made with sugar (I am not advocating it, I'm just saying). The reason is that Hispanics as a group have something in their biochemical make-up that doesn't like HFCS.] Dan recommends Fat Land: How Americans Became the Fattest People in the World for more info.

Anything that says "Natural" prolly isn't. Natural flavoring could be a real fruit--most likely it's a glutamate. You have to call that 800 number and ask. The company might say it's a "proprietary secret" to which you can say you are allergic to MSG, etc. and make sure that it's not in there. Natural coloring is from ground up insects, specifically the cock roach family. Eeeewwwww! If it says "carmine," that's code for cockroach. Fruit flavored punch, anyone?

Sugar Is there anyone out there who still thinks sugar is good for you??? Really? BTW, fruit juice, even 100%, is sugar.

Transfats anything partially hydrogenated. Margarine was originally used in machine shops as axle grease. Crisco threw in some coloring & flavoring & voila! It became a food product. It is not.

What does all this mean? It means stop drinking soda. NOW. Drink water. Stop eating fast food. Stop eating processed food. Dan pointed out that the cheaper the food, the more additives there are in it to make it taste good. The cheaper the food, the fatter you get.

For more information on any of these substances, go to Mercola and google. You'll get a wealth of information about why they are toxic to your body. He also has a really great newsletter. While you're there, you can also look up Bruce Lipton. Back tomorrow with the *foods* that are non-foods. Yay!

Mighty Mitochondria

I'm back from blogging vacation and do I have many blog-worthy tales-to-tell! I'm starting with Dan Murphy, tho, because this past weekend seminar was my most recent adventure. WOW! He makes me want to be a doctor. I think I'll take a topic a day for the week or rest-of-the-month because otherwise this post would be way long. So here goes:

MITOCHONDRIA
Essentially, the mitochondria of your cells are the factories that produce energy. I know a little about cells from massage school and of course, Bruce Lipton. Here's what I missed: you don't just have a single mitochondria in your cell. You can have MANY. Not only that, you can create more. What does this mean in practical terms? It means more energy. So this is the part where those who know me are going to laugh: one of the easiest ways to create more mitochondria is to exercise. Regularly. That's why when you exercise, you get more energy even tho you're expending energy. [The only caveat to that is that if you get wiped out from exercising or have chronic fatigue, then you have to get evaluated for adrenal exhaustion.] The next part of the equation is diet. Which is tomorrow's topic. What Dan says will blow your mind. Think you know what's healthy? Stay tuned....in the meantime, I'm going for a walk.