Crazy Sexy Diet: Eat Your Veggies, Ignite Your Spark, and Live Like You Mean It! (23 page)
Read Crazy Sexy Diet: Eat Your Veggies, Ignite Your Spark, and Live Like You Mean It! Online
Authors: Kris Carr,Rory Freedman (Preface),Dean Ornish M.D. (Foreword)
Tags: #Nutrition, #Motivational & Inspirational, #Health & Fitness, #Diets, #Medical, #General, #Women - Health and hygiene, #Health, #Diet Therapy, #Self-Help, #Vegetarianism, #Women
LEAN ON ME:
WEIGHT-BEARING EXERCISEYour bones don’t thrive on calcium alone. One of the best ways to avoid bone loss and build bone density is to do some heavy lifting. Just twelve to twenty minutes of strength-training, weight-bearing, or resistance exercise three days a week, say researchers at the Bone & Joint Injury Prevention & Rehabilitation Center at the University of Michigan, can increase bone density.
Weight-bearing exercise stimulates bone formation and calcium retention. Walking, weight lifting, jogging, hiking, yoga, aerobics, dancing, and working out on the treadmill, elliptical trainer, or stair-stepper are just a few of the fun games you can give your bones. Pick your favorite(s) and commit consistently. If you’re trying something new, find a pro to guide you so you know the proper form. PS: Swimming and biking don’t count. The water and wheels shield you from one very important thing: gravity.
It follows, then, that if we eat less protein and sodium (we consume high levels of both in the course of a day, especially because salt is often hidden in processed foods), we probably don’t need to eat as much calcium. Good plant sources of calcium are dark green vegetables such as broccoli, collard greens, and kale, along with nuts and seeds. A diet rich in these foods and low in animal protein and salt should provide enough calcium to keep your bones strong.
The other side of the equation is the absorption of calcium. It’s better absorbed when eaten along with vitamin C. That means that the vitamin-C-loaded lemon juice on your green leafy vegetable is helping you absorb the vegetable’s calcium (and the vegetable itself has plenty of vitamin C as well).
If you need some added incentive to cut dairy foods from your diet, read on. As a result of the milking process, cows often have mastitis (an infection of the udder), making their milk full of white blood cells, aka pus. This means milk-based foods, such as butter, yogurt, cottage cheese, all kinds of hard cheeses, ice cream, and so on, are often also full of pus.
In addition to the foods you know are made from milk, there are some ingredients you might not know are dairy-based: whey (used in protein powder mixes), casein (used in protein powders and some rice
and soy cheeses), kefir (a fermented milk drink sort of like yogurt), ghee (often used in Indian food), lactalbumin, and lactose. An even longer list of manufactured food additives come from dairy, but once you get into names that are so unfamiliar (and hard to pronounce!), you probably shouldn’t be eating that product.
PLANT FOODS HIGH IN C ALCIUM
| Food | Amount | Protein in grams |
| Almonds, dry-roasted | 1 ounce | 80 |
| Arugula | ½ cup | 16 |
| Black beans | 1 cup | 60 |
| Broccoli, cooked | 1 cup | 42 |
| Cabbage, cooked | ½ cup | 25 |
| Chickpeas | 1 cup | 80 |
| Collard greens, cooked | ½ cup | 113 |
| Cranberry beans | 1 cup | 89 |
| Flaxseeds | 1 ounce | 48 |
| Kale, cooked | ½ cup | 90 |
| Kidney beans | 1 cup | 50 |
| Lentils | 1 cup | 38 |
| Natto | ½ cup | 190 |
| Navy beans | 1 cup | 128 |
| Okra | ½ cup | 50 |
| Peanuts | 1 ounce | 15 |
| Pinto beans | 1 cup | 82 |
| Potato, baked | 1 medium | 20 |
| Quinoa | 1 cup | 102 |
| Spinach, cooked | ½ cup, raw | 30* |
| Sunflower seeds | 1 ounce | 34 |
| Sweet potato, baked | 1 medium | 32 |
| Swiss chard, cooked | ½ cup | 30* |
| Tahini | 1 ounce | 128 |
| Tempeh | 1 cup | 184 |
| Tofu | ½ cup | 130 |
| Turnip greens, cooked | ½ cup | 99 |
* Spinach, chard, beet greens, and rhubarb are not the best sources for calcium, because they contain high amounts of oxalates that bind minerals and make calcium unavailable
For more information, I recommend brendadavisrd.com.
If you buy the whole food, you don’t have to worry about what’s been added to it. Some people argue that raw dairy is much healthier than milk that has been pasteurized and homogenized. Not really—lactose is lactose and pus is pus. And although it is uncommon, people can also get sick from the bacteria in raw milk.
It’s been ten years since I’ve had dairy of any kind, and at this point I no longer even miss the cheese that sits on top of my former favorite food: pizza. But if you think you need some milk or cheese substitutes, at least during the transition period of your diet change, there are plenty of good vegan (soy-, rice-, or tapioca-based) and raw (nut- or seed-based) options to satisfy your palate.
Lilli B. Link, MD, MS
, is a boardcertified internist currently practicing as a nutritional counselor in New York City. She specializes in raw foods and integrative nutrition. Visit her at
www.llinkmd.com
.
HORMONES
I don’t know about you,
but I’m a child of the ’70s. Back in my groovy day, girls requested training bras for their newly sprouted titties at around thirteen or fourteen years of age. I’ll never forget my “period party” celebration dinner at the Ming Hoy Chinese restaurant (just me and my parents, ugh). Today kids as young as eight are developing into Pam Anderson–stacked rugby players. Not only is it unnatural, it’s dangerous. Let’s look at some possible reasons.
Steroids are widely—and legally—used in the beef, pork, and poultry industries, because they make the animals grow bigger faster. How about hormones? You betcha! In order to make milk all year round, Bessie the cow gets dosed with hormones so she’ll stay constantly knocked up and lactating—a living milk machine. (Damn, I would be such an uncomfortable wench!)
She’s also injected with recombinant bovine growth hormone (rBGH) to double her milk production. This synthetic cocktail increases another hormone, IGF-1, which, as you learned in chapter 3, is linked to the big C. Because she’s a baby factory, a cow makes way more estrogen than nature intended—and it comes out in her milk. In the United States dairy products account for 60 to 80 percent of estrogens consumed!
In 2008 Harvard researchers studied the effect of giving US commercial milk to third-graders in Mongolia. After drinking it for a month, their growth hormone levels shot up 40 percent. The children actually grew about 1 centimeter during the month, a significant statistical change, according to the researchers. Those bright Harvard minds are currently studying whether growth spurts from milk will affect sexual maturity and puberty age. What do you think?
According to researchers at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in Westernized societies, girls who get their periods before the age of twelve and who have the most menstrual cycles over a lifetime have a higher risk of dying from ovarian cancer than women with fewer period cycles. The same seems to be true of breast cancer. Earlier puberty means more menstrual cycles—and hormone-laced milk, meat, and poultry are associated with bringing on the acne years at a younger age. Childhood obesity also triggers puberty sooner—and kids who consume dairy products and meat tend to be overweight. You can see the way industrial protein production can lead to a disease spiral that starts in childhood.
When I follow the trail, it sure seems like conventional dairy products are more harmful than helpful. My fear is that by the time science has it figured out, we’ll have lost too many of our mothers, sisters, and wives. If you’re only willing to give up one thing, put dairy at the top of the list. Ya think the boys are off the hook? Not so fast, Frankie. Excess estrogen not only makes boys mature later and have man-boobs, but it can also delay emotional development … let the dating disasters begin! And if they make it into the backseat, not to worry: Estrogen is being examined as a possible culprit in declining sperm counts.
Okay, one more hormone rant and I swear I’m done. Got rage? Speaking from experience, I know what it’s like when stress hormones like adrenaline and cortisol explode through my body. I have plenty
of work to do controlling my fear and white-hot temper tantrums. I don’t need any additional stress, thank you very much! When cows are being forced into kill chutes at the slaughterhouse, you better believe they know what’s about to happen. The absolute panic forces their bodies to release tons of fight-or-flight hormones, which flood their tissues. When you eat their meat, you’re getting those hormones as well. Not good. I call it chemical karma.
C IS FOR CARCINOGENIC
Let’s move on
to something far more uplifting: carcinogens! Cooked meat increases the risk of developing … what else? You guessed it, cancer! Gold star. Even the National Cancer Institute and the American Institute for Cancer Research (AICR) verify that little gem. It’s because cooking meat, especially at high temperatures like on the barbecue grill, under the broiler, or in the deep fryer, creates nasty substances called heterocyclic amines (HCAs). The more well done the meat, the more HCAs it has, and the more carcinogenic it becomes. HCAs are known to cause stomach cancer and also breast, colon, and pancreatic cancer.
THE SKINNY ON ATKINS
with
Alejandro Junger, MD
It is curious that nutrition,
the most basic of human needs, is the one we often know the least about, doctors included. Until recently, most medical schools did not even offer, let alone require, the study of diets and nutrition. The lack of unified thinking about nutrition is the perfect climate for toxic ideas and urban legends to spread like weeds, and worse—to be put into practice by whole populations. The perfect example of such a phenomenon is the Atkins diet.
In 1972 Dr. Robert Atkins published his book
Dr. Atkins’ Diet Revolution,
the most popular of a subsequent wave of high-protein, low-carb diet titles. The high-protein, low-carb craze that ruled the ’80s and ’90s still lingers, despite ample, unequivocal scientiflc proof that it leads to high acidity and
thus is a contributing factor to heart disease, cancer, and the rest of the chronic diseases.
Understanding the context in which the Atkins diet took over America, and was imported by every other country in the world, may help us avoid repeating such costly mistakes in the future. Here are some of the reasons why Atkins exploded and what they reveal about our culture:
•
HISTORICAL CONTEXT.
In the 1970s America had just been deceived by the first mass diet movement, the low-fat madness. Eliminating fat from our lives promised to be the solution to excess weight, but instead, it resulted in the fattest country in the world. The food industry saturated the market with low-fat and no-fat foods. The calories and flavor missing as a result of fat elimination were replaced with calories from carbohydrates. The result was weight gain, not weight loss. The war on fat was being lost. America needed new generals, but most importantly, it needed a new enemy. Almost overnight we went from no fat to no carbs, the new enemy.
•
THE MD FACTOR.
America loves doctors. We watch them on TV shows obsessively. Dr. Atkins had the most important ingredient when it comes to gaining popular trust, the letters MD after his name. Gullibility is a silent American epidemic.
•
EFFECTIVENESS.
Results rule, and Atkins delivers its promise: weight loss from fat burning. This leads to a leaner body. America’s obsession with being skinny overrides its concerns for being healthy. This of course was strategically marketed by the Atkins brand. Dr. Atkins knew that depriving the body of carbohydrates forces the metabolism to activate its survival mechanisms. Our cells work best when they burn glucose from carbohydrates to generate energy.
If carbs go missing, the body uses stored fat as the next best fuel. When fatty acids are broken down by the liver and kidneys to be used for fuel, ketone bodies are one of the by-products. The presence of ketone bodies results in a condition known as ketosis. A low level of ketosis, created by fasting briefly, by going on a very lowcalorie diet, or even in the morning after not eating overnight, is common. But when large amounts of ketones rapidly accumulate in the blood, as can happen to people with Type 1 diabetes who don’t get their insulin, the condition is called ketoacidosis—a medical emergency. The body is designed to use ketones as a temporary solution to a shortage of glucose. Being constantly in ketosis, however, can make your blood acidic, because the molecular composition of ketones resembles alcohol.
There’s nothing revolutionary about using the ketosis metabolic pathway to burn fat. Bodybuilders were using it decades before Atkins wrote about it as a way to lose weight. The overall systemic acidity that inevitably results from a high-protein, low-carb diet helps you lose weight but has long-term negative consequences, including inflammation, chronic digestive problems, heart disease, and cancer.
If your goal is rapid weight loss, Atkins works well. It’s a short-term approach, however. If your goal is to achieve wellness and longevity, you need a long-term approach that avoids systemic acidity. A diet with no animal products and plenty of fresh vegetables and whole grains avoids acidity and is satisfying while also being high in nutrients and lower in calories. You can lose weight safely while improving, not damaging, your health.