It’s not just me, they’re everywhere, right? What a time to be alive! Now I can just take a pill and eat whatever I want! Wait… it’s not a pill? You have to inject yourself? Oh, but it’s like an insulin injection where a plastic gizmo does it for you with a little snap. Well, that’s still pretty easy, isn’t it?

So how do these drugs work? What’s it actually doing in my body? What even is a ‘GLP-1’?

Effectively, these drugs work by curbing your hunger, and / or slowing your digestion. What does that mean? In the case of drugs like semaglutide, it mimics the effects of hormones that signal your brain that you’re full. GLP-1 stands for glucagon-like peptide-1, and is an intestinal hormone that helps your body regulate blood sugar levels. The GLP-1 drugs, then, are classes of drugs that mimic natural GLP-1 in your system and stimulate the pancreas to release insulin, which slows digestion and reduces appetite.

Some of these drugs take it one step further and release chemicals that block the intestines from absorbing dietary fat. The fine print says something like, “a portion of the fat consumed is not absorbed and will be eliminated through bowel movement.” I don’t know about you, but ‘fat in my poop’ does not sound like a pleasant evening.

What is all of this really saying? Basically, these drugs are either tricking your brain into feeling full, or messing with your digestive processes, or a combination thereof.

Do we know the long-term results of taking these drugs? These drugs are all brand-new, and are an off-shoot from diabetes medications. In fact, the weight loss is a side-effect of the diabetes medication. And that’s the thing with drugs, they always have side-effects.

Don’t get me wrong. For some people these weight loss drugs are a Godsend.

For the first time, these weight loss drugs are allowing people who were looking at a future of insulin injections and diabetic amputation to instead lead a relatively ‘normal’ life. I recently stepped on a nail that impaled my foot. It got infected and I needed surgery. My Podiatrist told me had I been diabetic, I would have lost the foot and possibly my whole leg from the knee down!

Facing the possibility of losing limbs simply from poor circulation is not how anyone wants to live. If I was pre-diabetic I would absolutely jump on these weight loss drugs RIGHT NOW. But does that mean I’d have to be on them forever? What happens when someone is on one of these drugs for 5 years? What about 10 years later? We just don’t know yet.

Will you see advertisements in the 2040’s with the voiceover saying, “IF YOU TOOK GLP-1 MEDICATIONS IN THE 2020’s YOU MAY BE ENTITLED TO COMPENSATION”?

That remains to be seen. My gut feeling is that you probably don’t want to be on these drugs for the rest of your life.
Of course, I am not pre-diabetic so I’m not considering these weight loss drugs at the moment. I am not pre-diabetic because following the initial ‘panic eating’ phase of the covid lockdown, I decided to get serious about my health. Within around 6 months, I went from weighing about 230 to 168. Without weight loss drugs.

That’s how I know it’s possible. You see, during the pandemic, I learned the 9 Core Competencies that everyone needs to know in order to effectively manage their health. Portion control is one of those Core Competencies.

Unfortunately, it’s also the only one the weight loss drugs are helping you with. If you stop and think about it, that’s the bottom-line with these drugs: They help you to eat less.

Eating less is important. That’s why it’s one of the nine. But if all you’re ever doing is controlling your portion sizes, you could still be missing out in the other eight areas.

What are those other Core Competencies?

Learning to take care of yourself by setting goals and moving toward them. Getting in touch with your body and learning to recognize your hunger, fullness and thirst cues. Ensuring that you’re matching energy intake with energy output. Learning the difference between higher-quality foods and lesser-quality foods and choosing the former more often. Giving your body the nutrients it needs. Moving often and well. Resting and recovering. And learning to manage emotions without food.

And that’s where I come in. As a Health Coach, I help people to learn those 9 Core Competencies and engrain them into their lives. I help people who are on these weight loss drugs to master the other aspects of their health so that they won’t need to be on the drugs long-term. I help people to take charge of their health so they get the results they want.

Would you like me to help you? Get started by getting your Personal Comprehensive Eating guide delivered to your inbox by answering a few simple questions here: https://www.eclecticwellbeing.com/myeatingguidequestionaire

To your health,

Mark

The post Should I try Weight Loss Drugs? appeared first on Eclectic Well-Being.

It’s like as soon as we learn something health-related about food, something new comes along to contradict the thing we just learned. Who’s right? Who’s wrong? What gives?

Like most things, there’s usually a grain of truth to something, but then it gets taken to extreme absurdity.

Let’s take butter, for example. Is butter bad for you? No. Would it be bad for you to eat only butter, and nothing else? Absolutely, but who’s doing that?

The truth hides in the middle.

A little butter isn’t going to hurt you. Eating it a stick at a time? Probably not the best idea.

Now it is true that in my personal health journey from 240 pounds down to 168 pounds, I made a lot of changes to my eating and exercise choices. But when I tell people that most of that difference resulted from cutting out processed foods, it starts to sound like a Conspiracy Theory.

Look, it’s not that “Big Food” is trying to kill us. There’s no evil plan where all of the food manufacturers got together and said, “Mwha-ha-ha-ha! If we add these specific ingredients to our products, it will make our customers sick and fat so our friends, Big Pharma, can profit from them! [Maniacal Laughter ensues]”

The reality is more like, “hmm, these less-expensive ingredients and fillers make the product cheaper while still tasting good so I can sell more product and make more money!” (If you don’t know what “fillers” are, check out grated cheese: https://www.golomblegal.com/blog/2016/march/what-is-the-real-problem-with-having-wood-pulp-i/ )

And the problem there is that those less-expensive ingredients and fillers also have less or zero nutritive value to them: they’re empty calories.

You see, those “artificial flavors and fragrances” are chemicals that mimic the chemicals naturally present in our foods that give that food its taste and smell. But that’s all it is: the chemical that causes the flavor or scent. The rest of the food that has the nutritive value isn’t there, only the flavor molecules.

That’s what we mean when we say, “empty calories.”

There’s nothing there your body can use for fuel. Your body runs on glucose, not chemical flavor molecules (or wood pulp for that matter).

What’s the problem with empty calories? You think you’re eating food, but you’re not. You’re eating a food-like substance, which fills your stomach and makes you feel “full.”

But when your body breaks down that substance into molecular form that it can use to repair your body and make new tissues, there’s nothing there for it to actually use. There’s no building material amid the filler. It’s just junk. So, your body removes the moisture content and passes the rest on to the colon for elimination.

Now your body is exhausted. It’s performed an entire digestive cycle, and it hasn’t gotten what it needs. Resources are becoming depleted. What does it do?

“Release the Ghrelin!” decrees the brain.

Ghrelin, of course, is the “hunger hormone.” Once released, you start to feel hungry again.

If you’re like I was, munching away on empty calories all day long because you’re hungry all day long, you might now be starting to understand why that is.

Yes, you are going to continue to feel hunger until your body is satisfied, nutritionally. You need to give your body what it wants. And it doesn’t want those empty calories.

What does your body want? I’ll be happy to tell you, but first I need to ask you a few questions. Click the link below to register for a free Comprehensive Eating Guide.

Answer a few questions on the form, and when you’re done, I’ll email you a personalized guide telling you how and what you want to eat to meet your specific health goals.

It’s free! Click now 😊 https://www.eclecticwellbeing.com/myeatingguidequestionaire

Why would you want a personalized eating guide? It’s your roadmap to success! The guide takes all the guesswork out of eating. You will know that what you’re eating is what your body wants and needs, AND in the proper portion sizes for you!

Once you start giving your body what it’s looking for, wonderful things start to happen. You start to realize that those decades you’ve spent trying to get your health under control are over. You’ve done it!

Take control of your life, now.

Click to get your Free Comprehensive Eating Guide and start seeing that scale swing in your favor.

https://www.eclecticwellbeing.com/myeatingguidequestionaire

The post What am I Supposed to Eat?! appeared first on Eclectic Well-Being.

For some of us, the Halloween season might as well be called Candy Season. At least, that’s how I used to look at it. Candy Season led up to Gluttony Season, otherwise known as Thanksgiving. Which then, of course, leads right to Charitable Season, or maybe, “Tons of Homemade Pies, Breads, & Cookies Season.” Our family called that Christmas Time, but families of all different traditions tend to be doing the same types of things right around the Winter Solstice.

Now I know, for me, candy snacking started before Halloween actually arrived. At first it was days before. Then half a month. Then it crept up to the point that October was official Candy Month, with a steady crescendo of candy consumption climaxing on Consume Mass Candy Day.

After Halloween there seem to be more and more backed goods showing up as we approach Thanksgiving. It’s almost like we just need pie in November. And then on the Big Day, OMG there’s SO MUCH FOOD! If you’re leaving Thanksgiving Dinner and you haven’t had to loosen your pants, you did it wrong.

I don’t know about your family, but it seems like in mine, once we got used to eating sugar, more sugar-containing foods started to hang around. Like between Halloween and Thanksgiving, if we weren’t baking pies or cookies, we were buying Oreos and Chips Ahoy.

Between Thanksgiving and Christmas, we went through a lot of ice cream, pies, cakes, Entenmann’s-style coffee cakes and such.

And puddings! I can’t believe I almost forgot about pudding. My favorite was the stove-top kind where you had to cook it in a pot, then pour it into the “pudding glasses” then pop those into the fridge without spilling them.

I loved the chocolate flavor and that skin that would develop on top. 🤤Mmm… I might have to make some pudding now… Do you have pudding glasses? I honestly don’t know what the proper use for those glasses was. They were just perfect little single-serving size glasses that Mom always got out for pudding. 🤔Do I have pudding glasses?

After Christmas the sugar fest tended to continue through February, with Lesser Candy Day in the middle. Somehow the sugar train slowed itself down. By March, St Patrick’s Day was more about corned beef and cabbage and less about the sweets. From there sugary snacks started to wane.

But during that brief period of darkness, I would put on 10 to 15 pounds. And I know I’m not alone. That cycle, from late October through mid-March is when most of us tend to put on weight. It’s also, quite literally, the darkest part of the year.

It’s also the part of the year where nothing grows. We are biologically wired to want to put on some extra fat to get us through the darkness, so we’ll survive to see the next spring. The only problem with that is, we no longer live in a world that is season dependent.

Refrigeration is pretty new!

We can go to the supermarket and get fruit year-round. That’s a relatively new thing. Frigidaire released the first residential refrigerator in 1923! Before that, if you wanted to keep something cool, you needed ice.

Why do we have so many different traditions that all involve making fruit pies? Because our ancestors needed to do something with the harvest. Without refrigeration, fruits and vegetables don’t last very long. So, they canned what they could and cooked off the rest.

Perhaps uncoincidentally, we are also hard-wired to crave sugar. This is because in nature, sugary fruits tend to ripen in Fall, conveniently right before winter sets in. We crave the sugar because it’s a fleeting resource. We need to eat it to fatten ourselves up to prepare for the lean winter to come.

But again, we don’t live in a world where that cycle really matters any more. We have just as much access to food in winter as we do any other time of the year. Why then, do we continue to live as if we do?

More importantly, what can we do about it?

Are we destined to pack on 10-15 pounds each year just because we’re predisposed to it? No, of course not. Must we succumb to sugar’s siren call and eat it from Halloween through Valentines? No, but we absolutely will if we allow it.

Sugar is absolutely the hardest addiction to break. One reason being, it’s in everything.

Manufacturers can be sneaky!

Product makers know that people want to avoid sugar, so they often list it as other things. If you see dextrose, fructose, glucose, lactose, maltose, sucrose, or galactose, in the ingredients list, those are all different types of sugar.

Sometimes they try to give it the Health Halo of friendly-sounding names like: beet sugar, brown sugar, cane sugar, cane juice, (I love this next one) cane juice crystals (sugar!), coconut sugar, confectioner’s or powdered sugar, castor sugar, date sugar, grape sugar, golden sugar, demerara sugar, muscovado sugar, panela sugar, raw sugar, turbinado sugar, or yellow sugar. They might sound healthier, but they’re still sugar.

They might try to confuse you with names like: corn syrup solids, crystalline fructose, dextrin, ethyl maltol, diastatic malt, glucose syrup solids, icing sugar, Florida crystals, maltodextrin, or sucanat.

Or they might be using liquid sugars with names like: agave nectar or syrup, barley malt, blackstrap molasses, brown rice syrup, buttered sugar or buttercream, caramel, carob syrup, corn syrup, evaporated cane juice, fruit juice concentrate, golden syrup, high-fructose corn syrup or HFCS, invert sugar, malt syrup, maple syrup, molasses, rice syrup, refiner’s syrup, sorghum syrup, or treacle.

To your brain, all 54 of the things I just listed count as sugar and will make your brain prefer that product, because remember, we are hard-wired to seek sugar. As much as possible, avoid products with added sugar.

So how do you cut out sugar completely? You don’t. But, you do limit your intake of it.

For example, I love chocolate, but if I eat candy bars like I used to, I know what the result will be. I’ve seen that. I have evidence to support that. Instead then, I buy bags of little individually-wrapped dark chocolate pieces. Or, I buy a big dark chocolate bar. Not a candy bar, like a Mounds or Almond Joy Dark. I mean a solid bar of 60 – 92% cocoa. Dark and a bit bitter.

Dark chocolate is the way to go for two reasons. One, it’s actually a beneficial saturated fat is small quantities. And two, since it is a bit on the bitter side, we’re much less likely to mindlessly much away on it.

My other really big one was ice cream. I used to eat a huge bowl with at least four scoops of chocolate chip cookie dough or chocolate chip mint (sometimes two scoops of each), chocolate syrup, AND butterscotch syrup, topped with cool whip or Redi-whip spray.

Again, I know from experience what happens when I allow myself to do that regularly. I still have size 40 fat pants that I now use for yardwork with a belt cinched up so much it looks absurd. I keep them to remind me that at one point these were tight on me and I was contemplating moving up to 42’s.

So now my ice cream consumption is still daily. But I eat one or two little mini ice cream cones. Just enough to satisfy my sweet tooth. I do that so that on the rare occasion that we’re hanging out on the Bluff, I can have that Sundae at the Chocolate Café without worrying about it.

What about Thanksgiving, I know you’re wondering?

We did a whole Thanksgiving-themed blog post here: https://eclecticwell-being.com/tips-and-tricks-for-a-deliciously-healthy-thanksgiving/

The short story with Turkey Day is go ahead and indulge; but maybe don’t take a weeks’ worth of leftovers home (or give yours away if you host!) I’m still going to bake my cheese bread this year. And I’m going to really enjoy eating it. Once it’s gone though, I’m not baking anything else until Christmas rolls around.

For Christmas, we’ll probably bake some chocolate chip cookies and some kifli. Or kolaczki for the Polish side of the family. Whatever you call it, they’re those little powdered sugar covered white cookies and are typically filled with fruit preserves or nut butter. They’re good, but not something I could eat year-round.

Which works out well for our plan of only indulging a little bit around the holidays. Yes, I have been known to eat one slice of all four pies in one sitting before and I’ll happily do it again. (My stomach might not be so happy with me afterwards, and that is something else you’ll want to learn to listen to, but not in this article today.)

And that’s the key, right there.

We need to understand that as humans, we are wired to seek sugar and consume it, but we can control how much we ingest. We must be aware that we’re prone to packing on the pounds in winter and take active steps to avoid it.

One of those active steps should be getting in some exercise. We’re much more active in the bright, warmer months than we are in the cold, dark months. There’s simply more to do outside in the nice weather. Once things cool off, we don’t want to take our activity level down to: couch potato.

So there’s something you can do: Join a local gym. Go there and do something. Literally anything is better than laying on the couch in front of the tv. If you don’t know what to do, find a gym that offers instructor-led classes.

Getting healthy starts in your mind. You need to make a decision that this is something you want to do, and then start taking action on that decision. Life will never change otherwise.

Are you ready?

The post Transitioning Smoothly into Autumn appeared first on Eclectic Well-Being.

I’ve been thinking about programming lately and realized that computer programming is a lot like baking. With regular cooking, there’s a pretty wide margin of error. There are a lot of mistakes you can make and still have your meal come out fairly decently. With baking, not so much.

Baking is more of applied chemistry. There are reactions that need to happen. For those reactions to happen in the way you want, you have to be very specific with your measurements. In order for your baked goods to come out consistently the same, you need to follow a recipe.

We could call that recipe an algorithm; a logical series of steps that must be performed exactly as laid out to get reproducible results every time. Well that sure sounds a lot like a computer program.

You could even compare a computer programmer to the chef who develops the recipe for others to follow. In both cases, a recipe or algorithm is being created that future people will use to replicate the results of the original. Pretty cool!

Ok, so how does that relate to health?

We’re almost there, I need to give you some more background information.

When developing a program, the first thing you encounter before you can run it is the debugging process. There are two kinds of errors you might find: syntax, and logical.

A syntax error means the computer can’t understand what you want it to do. These are usually spelling errors. Looking at it from a baking perspective, let’s say you’ve misread 4 Tbs for 4 C of water. You might immediately notice that your batter is entirely too loose.

Just like a computer syntax error, you will need to fix your batter before you can attempt to bake it. Of course with baking, that might mean you need to start over, whereas with a computer program, it means looking for the misspelling and correcting it.

A logic error might be harder to find. Logic errors mean that all of your code was spelled correctly, but what you told the computer to do was not actually what you wanted it to do. The way you know you have a logic error is to look at the output and realize it’s wrong.

With baking, maybe you used 2/3 cup of salt instead of sugar. Your muffins might come out looking ok, but they’ll probably be too salty to eat. Or, maybe you forgot to add the butter and now they’re super dry. We know we made a mistake, but we won’t know what mistake until we’ve tried the muffins.

Have we made the crossover to health yet?

That’s where we’re going now. The thing is, every single day, we’re programming our bodies, whether we realize it or not. We give ourselves input, in the form of food and drink, and we get the energy to power ourselves through the day as output, with a couple of waste products that we’re not going to discuss in this article.

With programming our bodies, the syntax errors are pretty obvious. If you’ve ever tried to siphon gasoline from one container to another with a hose that you primed with your mouth, you know that spitting out the gasoline is pretty intuitive.

As soon as you taste it, your body screams at you not to swallow it. Likewise, if you put hard objects like rocks in your mouth and try to chew them, you’ll experience quite a bit of pain from your teeth. These are analogous to syntax errors. You’re trying to get your body to do something and it’s rejecting your efforts.

Logic errors, though, are much more difficult to find. Most people deal with logic errors for decades before realizing that they are the cause of their own issues.

Your body is giving you feedback all the time.

The problem is, we ignore that feedback, or start taking a pill to make it go away. Case in point, my Uncle Bill. Here we have a man who suffered from chronic heart burn for years. The solution? Over-the-counter heartburn relief drugs. The result? He died of esophageal cancer.

That heartburn was feedback! But rather than listen to his body, he took a drug to numb the pain. That’s the thing with logic errors in health programming: they’re subtle. An odd pain here, stiff back there, trouble taking a full and deep breath, these are all little things that your body is telling you, something’s wrong.

But what would happen if we took a different approach? Instead of providing random input and stimulus, what if we got specific? What if we followed a recipe? What if someone else created an algorithm for us that we could follow to reproduce desired results?

Do you think getting healthy could be as easy as baking a cake?

Well you’re in luck because that’s just what we’ve combined with Cultivus Fitness to bring to you. Eight weeks of programming, in fact, including the nine core competencies that everyone must master to achieve great health, along with personal-trainer led classes that show you how to move in your workouts to get fit without injury. All without breaking the bank.

Is this the right program for you? Absolutely! Click here for more info: https://www.cultivusfitness.com/

The post Can we Program our Health? appeared first on Eclectic Well-Being.

We probably think in terms like this because it’s been drilled into our heads that having an overabundance of body fat is a bad thing. They even gave us a handy little metric we can use to gauge how dangerous our body fat levels have become: The BMI scale.

BMI stands for Body Mass Index, and is the ratio of your weight in kilograms divided by your height in meters squared, giving you a number like 26.3. You then take that number and compare it to the provided scale, where:

     Underweight = <18.5
     “Normal” weight = 18.5 – 24.9
     Overweight = 25-29.9 and
     Obesity = 30+

And now you will see that at 183 and 5’10 with a BMI score of 26.3, I am overweight for my height, even though I’m sitting around 15% body fat, which is extremely healthy for a 52-year-old man. What gives?

That’s the problem with the BMI table. It only works for average people. For example, in High School I was the same height at 135 pounds. Most people would have called me “scrawny” (and they did back then), yet BMI-wise, that’s considered “normal weight.” BMI typically goes out the window for anyone with an athletic build.

So why do we even care about weight in the first place?

Who really cares if I weigh 135, 240, 168, or 183? Well, I should. The heavier I am, the more strain there is on my heart, and the more stress there is on my joints.

But, it works the other way, too. When we have too little body fat, we can’t properly regulate our hormone levels. It’s more challenging to maintain body temperature. Vitamins and minerals don’t absorb properly. When we’re under-fat, we might have lower energy levels and lower resistance to disease.

A healthy body fat range for men is between 10-22%, and for women 20-32%. That percentage can come at any body weight and height, though, so BMI isn’t really our best indicator of health.

Do you know what your body fat percentage is currently? Probably not. Most of us have bathroom scales to tell us what we weigh, but nothing to tell us what our body composition is.

Body composition, you’ve probably surmised, is how much of what tissues make up our overall total body mass. For example: total weight, body fat, muscle mass, bone mass, visceral fat, and water percentage. (Ok, water isn’t a tissue type, but it does account for a good chunk of overall weight.)

How do we get this information? There are a few different methods.

The absolute most accurate measure of body composition is an autopsy. This is also an incredibly invasive procedure as it requires that the patient already be post-mortem.

As for things we can use while we’re still alive, calipers can be used to pinch the skin to determine how much fat is present. You take samples from several different specific locations on the body, then run a little math equation to get your average.

Caliper testing is pretty accurate, but it can be challenging to pinch yourself in the right spots to get accurate readings. It helps to have a friend or coach do it for you.

Along the same lines as caliper pinch testing is circumference measurements, where you use a flexible tape measure to take readings from specific areas of the body. This tends to be less accurate as people with larger muscles also will have larger measurements.

There are more “automated” methods as well.

Hydrostatic weighing is also fairly accurate. Basically you fill a bathtub with water all the way to the rim, then get in and measure how much water your body displaced. (In other words, how much water dumped over the edge once you submerged yourself completely.)

There’s something called Bodpod which is essentially the same as hydrostatic weighing, except you’re doing it in a sealed air chamber. The technical name for this is “air displacement plethysmography,” and it’s also pretty accurate.

Systems also exist that will take a 3D scan of your body with dual energy x-ray absorptiometry. Here, low-level x-rays at different frequencies are passed through your body. The rays slow differently in response to the different tissues through which they pass, giving you a clear look at your body composition. The machine must be expertly calibrated for the best results.

My favorite method, and the one that I use, is bioelectric impedance. There are different types and some are more expensive than others. The highest degree of accuracy comes from segmental scales. These pass a low DC electrical signal through your feet and your hands at the same time. Like the x-rays, different tissues slow the electrical signal at different rates, giving you an overall picture of your personal composition.

I personally use the Tanita Ironman RD-901 InnerScan Pro for this. [Not a paid advertisement.] It’s a non-segmental version of the scale, so it’s not quite as accurate. But it’s half the cost, making it the winner in my book.

Body composition isn’t everything though.

At Eclectic Well-being, we like to look at what we call, “deep health.” We want our clients to thrive in all aspects of the human condition. We focus on the whole person and their whole life.

That means we’re looking at multiple aspects of their health. We focus on physical health, how our bodies feel, function, and perform. But we don’t stop there.

We also look at mental and cognitive health. How well we can think, learn, and remember. What is our client’s outlook and perspective on life and the world? How much capacity do we have for insight and conscious awareness? How creative and flexible are we in terms of problem solving?

There’s emotional health, comprising our general mood and our ability to feel and express our emotions. Are we experiencing more positive emotions than negative ones? Do we respond to emotional challenges in a productive, resilient way?

We focus on existential or “purposeful” health. What’s your “why?” Do we have a strong sense of intrinsic self-worth? Do we feel like we’re a part of a larger picture? What is our purpose in life?

Social health also comes to bear. How well do we connect and interact with others? Are we maintaining fulfilling, authentic relationships? Do we feel like we “belong” to something?

And finally we look at environmental health, or the feeling of being safe and secure, feeling supported, and having access to the resources we need to survive and thrive.

That is what “being healthy” means to us.

A deeply healthy person is a person who is leading a well-rounded life. Because once you have that under control, the body fat percentage takes care of itself.

Seriously. Being overweight is a symptom of another area of your life being out-of-whack. Once we get that addressed, everything else falls into place.

So, do you want to keep addressing the wrong problem and try yet another diet? Or do you want to finally get this figured out?

Here’s some great news! Right now, you can get started with the Reboot program we’re partnering with Cultivus Fitness to deliver. It starts on 9/30, so you’ve got time to prepare.

For more information, check out: https://www.facebook.com/photo?fbid=821172910195587&set=a.491199929859555

The post What Does “Getting Healthy” Even Mean? appeared first on Eclectic Well-Being.

This isn’t anything new. You may remember the Slim Fast commercials with Tommy Lasorda. “Give us a week, we’ll take off the weight.”

The only problem with that is Tommy had way more than a week’s worth of extra weight hanging around.

And that’s the same problem with all of these other quick turnaround promises. Most of the time, you’ve got more than 8 weeks’ worth of extra weight.

We don’t become heavy overnight. We’re not going to get lean overnight either.

We’re always in a rush to get there because we now live in the Amazon Age of Instant Gratification. It’s not the 1980’s anymore. We want results now!

But sometimes, there simply aren’t any shortcuts.

If you were constructing a house, you wouldn’t start with the roof. You’d need to lay the foundation, and build up from there.

We aren’t dealing with homes here, though. Instead, we have an already-built body, and now we want to remove an excess of fat, while building up lean mass.

But how often do we ever look at it from this perspective? What do we say most of the time instead?

“Wow, I need to lose some weight!”

Weight. Right off the bat, we’re starting by addressing the wrong problem. Well, heck, if I were to amputate a leg, that’s good for at least 50 pounds right there, yeah?

Ah, so maybe we don’t just want to lose weight. In fact, maybe we don’t want to lose anything at all!

When we lose something, the implication is that it’s something that we would like to find again one day. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to find my missing fat pounds again at some future date.

So, if we don’t actually want to lose weight, what do we want to do? We want to release our fat pounds.

Yes! Release them; let them go! [Cue Elsa singing] We don’t want those fat pounds hanging around, and we certainly don’t want them back again!

Great! Now how do we do that?

We’re going to need a plan. The good news is that the plan is pretty simple: Eat healthy food and exercise.

Wait… Isn’t that exactly what the 8-Week Transformation is going to do? No, probably not.

First off, are they focused on food at all? Or are they just throwing a bunch of cardio at you?

Don’t get me wrong, we do need some form of cardio in our lives if we want to consider ourselves healthy. But if that’s all you’re doing, your efforts will be futile.

A focus on Resistance training is crucial. Resistance training builds muscle tissue, which is metabolically active. That means your muscle mass is always actively burning calories, even while you’re at rest (even while sleeping!)

Resistance Training also changes the internal biology of your cells themselves, adding more mitochondria and nuclei, giving you more available energy.

Is the program focused on mindset with a long-term approach to health? Or is it just a promise of a “quick fix?”

As we’ve discussed already, those quick fixes don’t last.

Are the people who are running the program interested in your ongoing health? Or are they only looking to make some fast cash off of you?

The program you choose should offer accountability and support. I’ve tried some “do it yourself at home” programs in the past. If you’re going to invest in a program, you want experts working with you. You shouldn’t have to go it alone.

Those experts are there to help keep you safe. If you take a person who’s been sitting on the couch for years and isn’t used to exercising outside of basic yardwork, and suddenly expect them to perform the workout routine of an Olympic wrestler 3 days a week for 8 weeks, how long do you think it will take before they become injured?

Experts take these things into account and plan a program that will ramp up the intensity. They will also ensure that the program is balanced, so you’re never overloading any particular areas of the body.

The “weight loss” industry is rife with people looking to profit from your misery; and those people are all too happy to take your money yet keep you miserable so you’ll keep paying them.

Should all of these “get back into health” 6-8 week programs be avoided? Of course not, but you’ll want to take a look at the program’s specifics.

If all of the advertising is promising you that you’re going to have a miraculous experience in transforming from being an out-of-shape, out-of-practice, eating machine, to a perfectly sculpted demi-god who is the envy of all their peers in only 8 weeks; avoid this program at all costs.

Those are all bright red flags indicating that the creators of the program are trying to manipulate you into joining it by promising you results in “just 8 weeks.” It’s very likely that they are only interested in taking your money and couldn’t care less about your success.

OK, so what does a good program look like then?

You want a program that’s going to define “healthy” for you. What does “healthy” even look like? What foods are healthy foods, and what aren’t? How do you make eating healthy foods palatable? What are healthy activities? What does “being healthy” even mean?

Are you going to become completely, totally healthy in 8 weeks? Probably not. And the program you join should be clear on that.

Your program should help to get you started, and it should be very much aware that the end of the 8 week program, isn’t the end for you. It’s just the beginning.

A good program will give you knowledge and training, and will inspire you to make permanent changes to your life that result in truly life-changing, long-term health.

It will give you the tools and the instructions you need to finally become that healthy individual you’ve been wanting to become for decades now. Not in 8 weeks, but slowly, over the course of many months, change will continue to come from deep inside of you as a result of having done this program.

That is what a good program looks like. Not an 8 week promise to fix all of your problems; but rather an 8 week, expert-designed and led, program to get you going, get you motivated, keep you safe, and get you to stick with it.

Because that’s really the critical piece: Consistency. You want to arm yourself with everything you need to be successful, and then start doing it. Consistently. Not merely for 8 weeks, but in perpetuity.

And that’s what a good program will give you: Things you can start doing now, and keep doing to keep building your health beyond a short 8 weeks.

And that’s exactly what you’ll get with the 8 week fitness Reboot program we’re partnering with Cultivus Fitness to deliver.

You’ll get all the nutrition information you need, access to me as a your Health Coach, instructor-led Yoga sessions and instructor-led workouts.

Reboot your:
👉Thinking » Develop a positive, can-do mindset
👉Habits » Create sustainable, healthy routines
👉Fitness » Achieve the strong, vibrant body you deserve

We like working with Cultivus because they offer no judgement, just support, which pairs well with our philosophy of working with what you have.

This is the program you’ve been waiting for.

Learn more here: https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=817987587180786&set=a.491199929859555

The post Don’t be in a Rush to Get There appeared first on Eclectic Well-Being.

With the same results each time: Lose a little bit of weight on the diet. Get tired of the diet because it’s impossible to maintain for whatever reason. Go back to “normal food” and slowly gain back the weight lost, plus a little bit to add more motivation next year.

It doesn’t really add motivation though, does it? It’s more like adjusting to the new normal and seeing how long it takes before new clothing becomes mandatory because the old clothes are too tight now.

And that’s the whole cycle. Get tired of being too heavy, go on a diet, lose a bit of weight, gain it all back, and try again next year. So many people experience this that there’s even a term for it.

Yo-yo dieting.

So-named because that’s what happens to the weight. It bobs up and down, slowly but steadily climbing a bit higher over the course of the year, until we decide to do something about it, then it drops, and begins to climb all over again.

I suppose we could also have called it “itsy-bitsy spider dieting,” as the spider seems as persistent as that yo-yo.

Regardless of what we call it though, living through it feels demoralizing.

Year after year, sometimes more than once per year, we put ourselves through this. Consistently trying to get onto the other side of the scale, where the numbers go down and stay down.

But they don’t. We watch the mirror in horror as our face swells to the point that we no longer see any family resemblance. We are now the generic “fat person” background character in someone else’s movie.

Why is getting healthy so hard? Why do we have to struggle like this?

Some people can’t take it any longer and resort to drastic medical measures, like having their stomachs stapled so they physically can’t eat as much food. And sometimes that doesn’t work either!

Can you imagine undergoing surgery in an effort to lose weight, and still have it fail?

Now the medical community is even armed with shots to help lose weight. These products are brand-new. Has there been a long-term study on their effects on the body? Will we be watching TV in 2036 and seeing ads for, “If you used MiracleDrug and are now experiencing symptoms of disintegrating liver [or some long list of other possible horrible ailments] YOU MAY BE ENTITLED TO COMPENSATION!” Time will tell.

Why does getting healthy have to be so darned hard?

What if it wasn’t? What if all you needed to do to become the healthy version of yourself is eat and move a bit?

That sounds like fantasy, doesn’t it? Yet for millions of people, it’s reality.

No, there’s no accompanying magic pill to take that makes all of your consumed calories disappear. Likewise, there’s no special food, instant meals, or shake packages. You can literally eat the foods you enjoy, move your body in whatever way you can, and watch the scale go in reverse.

Yes, you do need to move your body. Does that mean hours upon hours of standing-in-place cardio sessions? Nope.

I was skeptical too when I came across this method.

I thought the only way to lose weight and get into shape was to spend a lifetime at the gym, drinking kale smoothies, and eating bland, flavorless “health” food.

Yet I made pork tacos with Spanish Rice for dinner last night, and every Friday night is Pizza Night.

I’m also a chocoholic. I eat chocolate every single day, and I typically end each day with ice cream.

Yet I dropped from 240 down to 168 eating just like this.

Mind you, I didn’t stay at 168 for more than a month or so. People started telling me I was looking “too thin,” so I tweaked my plan a bit and popped up to 183, where I’ve been holding steady since 2020.

So, what do you need to do to make this work for yourself? To answer that, I created a whole year-long immersion program.

During that program, I go over the nine core competencies that everyone must master to live a full and healthy life. None of them are hard, but it’s likely that you’re not doing all nine in the right way at the moment.

I know I sure wasn’t! That’s why, even though I was working out like a madman at the gym, I wasn’t seeing the results I wanted on the scale, or on my body for that matter.

After making these small tweaks, though, everything changed. It really does feel like magic! It took me several decades to pack on all that weight, but once I really got into it, that fat just melted right off in months.

While learning the nine core competencies, I also help my clients to incorporate them into their lives, so that they really start living them and embodying them. After that, I celebrate with them each month as the scale begins to drop, they buy a new outfit in a smaller size, their clothes start to fit how they want them to fit, and they start to admire their own reflection again.

Will it work for you?

Let’s find out! Schedule a call with me to discuss your situation, and if you think it makes sense for us to work together, we will 😊 If not, no worries. I want to work with clients who want my help. Is that you? Click the link below:

Visit: https://www.eclecticwellbeing.com/Mark1-2-1

The post Why is Getting Healthy so Hard? appeared first on Eclectic Well-Being.

I tell myself I’ll get used to it. But I don’t get used to it though. It sucks every time I use it. So I never end up using an exercise bike for more than two weeks.

The treadmill sucks too. Standing in the same place and walking for what seems like eternity. Usually giving into boredom or flaming calves when I decide to put some oomph into it.

Ellipticals are just as boring, after you get over the initial, “Ooo! It’s like I’m walking on the moon!” phase. Stair steppers make my knees feel like they’re going to explode. I haven’t actually tried the Jacob’s Ladder, but then again I’ve only ever seen it at one gym. It’s like a stair master, but ladder rungs on an angle instead of straight up and down. When I did consider using it, I imagined it becoming monotonous after about the fourth “floor” of climbing.

I have yet to find a cardio machine I’d like to use. What do you do when you hate cardio machines? You don’t use them.

Cardio is not necessary for weight loss.

Seriously. Have you ever looked at the “calories burned” counter on the machine? It’s barely anything. You’re not burning off that jelly donut on the exercise bike. You’re not “burning extra calories,” either. What you’re doing, is strengthening your heart.

That’s why we do cardio, for heart health. If you think you’re going to cardio your way into a beach body, you’re focusing on the wrong variable.

If you want to burn more calories, all the time, even at rest and while sleeping, you’ll want to add muscle tissue. Our muscles are what we call metabolically active tissue, meaning that our muscles are burning calories just by existing.

Because our muscles are always craving energy, our bodies don’t want too much muscle hanging around. If you’re reluctant to start resistance training because you don’t want to bulk up, don’t be. It takes serious effort to build muscle and keep it.

Bodybuilders need to eat a lot of food to maintain that mass. Ronnie Coleman, perhaps one of the worlds most well-known bodybuilders, having won Mr. Olympia from 1998-2005, needed to eat 6,000 calories a day just to keep all of that muscle.

One of the first things our bodies do when we find ourselves in a sustained caloric deficit is to shed muscle in an effort to balance calories consumed to calories burned.

What I’m saying is that you’re not going to “accidentally” look like a bodybuilder just because you’ve added resistance training with weights to your routine. You will put on small amounts of muscle over a large area of your body. A little bit here, a little bit there; more in the areas you really focus on.

That small amount of added muscle is going to do a much more effective job at burning off extra calories than any cardio session could ever hope to achieve.

Does that mean that I never do any cardio? No, it only means that I don’t use cardio machines, unless it’s part of a class I’m taking.

When I do intentional cardio, I prefer to be out in nature. What do you think: Is it better to stand or sit in one place on a piece of gym equipment for half an hour; or would you rather hike up some sand dunes?

I’ll take the sand dunes, or a hike in the woods, a walk along the beach, heck, even walking my dog around the yard is preferable to trodding in place indoors.

Here’s a little trick: You can get extra exercise in during the day by simply parking further away from the store when running errands. If you have a desk job, it’s ok to get up and take a lap around the office. If you work from home and can’t do laps, you can always take a little break and do some Yoga, or breathing squats.

Now, if you read that last line and don’t think Yoga counts as exercise, come take my class 😉

Yard work also counts as great exercise. Maintaining the half-acre garden here on our Eclectic Homestead keeps Kathi and I in shape. Whether it’s pulling weeds, tilling the soil, harvesting produce, planting the plants, or looking after the animals, it’s all exercise.

Repurposing the land is also wonderful exercise. We converted one hillside to wildflowers so far, adding a loose stone pathway leading alongside and curving around the front of the retaining wall, and a slender edibles bed hugging the path to the outside. I love cardio sessions that result in a more beautiful back yard!

At the time of this writing, we’re working on rocking the fire pit. The crushed concrete was delivered this morning, which should pack down nicely for the base. We haven’t looked locally for what we’re going to finish it off with yet, but I’m looking forward to those cardio sessions. Maybe I’ll post some pictures when all is said and done.

If backbreaking landscaping isn’t your thing, how about dancing? Personally, dancing isn’t something I typically do. I wasn’t graced with any sort of rhythm. Even when I’m tapping my fingers to a basic drum beat, there will be a misbeat at random intervals.

We did take lessons for Patrick’s wedding, though. I say, “we,” but the lessons were really for me. Kathi is already quite adept. It was enough training to get me out on the floor instead of plopped in my chair as I spent my brother’s wedding.

Dancing is a fantastic form of cardio!

If you’re fast dancing anyway. Slow dancing isn’t all that energetic in the moment, but it can definitely lead to an enjoyable cardio session later that evening. I’ll let your brain dangle on what that activity might be…

In summary, there are a whole host of activities in which you could be engaging right now to add to your overall health. Which ones are you already doing? Which do you want to add? Do you prefer to get your cardio sessions in at the gym, or out in nature?

The post Do you Really Need Cardio Sessions to be Healthy? appeared first on Eclectic Well-Being.

For me, that was my health.

As a young man, I was actually happy to be putting on weight. I was working out like mad, and attributed the gains to be my workout, working. I was ecstatic when I finally broke 200!

There was that beer gut that developed in the process… But when an older (probably in his 30’s at the time), male bartender told me, “A wise man builds a shed for his tools,” I accepted the gut as a normal part of manhood and pressed on.

It didn’t stop though. I increased the intensity of my workouts, and I got fairly strong, for a nerdy kid who weighed 135 throughout high school. Yet the gut kept growing.

Then it began to spread. Now it wasn’t just my gut that was expanding, fat was spreading into my face. My cheeks and neck began to swell. It got to the point where I felt like I didn’t really have “my” face anymore. There was now more of a generally round, “fat guy” face where mine used to be.

The legs and arms began to fill as well. It didn’t matter how much I worked out. I was still getting stronger, the muscles were still getting bigger; but, there were no “cuts,” no definition to anything. People started telling me, “you look like you used to work out.”

Ouch. No one who works out wants to hear that they look like they used to look good.

I decided that I had done enough bulking, it was time to cut.

So, how do I lose a bunch of fat, really fast? At the time, Dr. Atkins was all the rage, so I jumped on board. Zero-carb, high fat, all protein, all day. I made it about two weeks, but hey, I dropped 15 pounds!

And then 20 pounds crept back on throughout the rest of the year.

I kept thinking, “if only I could keep this up for longer…” so the next year I pushed harder, with about the same results.

I tried again the following year, same thing happened. Diet tech improvements came along. Now they have a powder that “gets you back into ketosis when you fall out of it.”

For the uninitiated, “ketosis” is the target state of the Atkins approach. This means that there will be “ketone bodies” present in the urine that can be detected by peeing on a special test strip. These ketone bodies only show up in the urine under special circumstances.

One of those situations is kidney failure, which we definitely want to avoid.

The other, is when we’ve exhausted our supply of available glucose for fuel to trick our body into thinking we’re starving so it switches to burning off our fat reserves.

If you’ve never done Atkins before, it takes a good 3 days for you to burn off your existing glucose stores before your body reluctantly switches into ketosis (fat-burning mode via simulated starvation). Once you’re in ketosis, your body is constantly burning up your fat reserves. But, any amount of carbs you ingest will throw you out of it, leaving you waiting for your body to burn those carbs off to get back into ketosis.

Ah! But now we have this Miracle Powder that will get you right back into ketosis! Of course I tried it. I don’t really know if it didn’t work, or if I used it as a means to sneak carbs in here and there, but the net result was that it was less effective than Atkins alone.

This is where the “low-carb” craze came from. The idea is that if you can just eat very low carbs, your body will choose to burn off fat. Except that, the body doesn’t work like that. If it has glucose to burn as fuel, it’s going to burn that glucose as fuel. And when it has an excess of glucose, it will store the balance as fat for later use.

Long story short: Atkins doesn’t work! Or rather, it is an effective tool at removing fat very quickly, for a short period of time. Which is exactly what Dr. Atkins intended! He pioneered this method as a means to reduce enough fat in people to allow them to safely undergo surgery.

Atkins was never meant to be used as a long-term approach to overall health.

Great 😧 now what? Looking for a more modern approach, I tried Intermittent Fasting.

Typically, this involves squeezing all of your eating for the day into a narrow window. For example, maybe only eating between the hours of 4 pm to 8 pm. If you’ve never tried this before, you’ll probably be cranky and hungry up until that four o’clock mark, then bloated as you try to compress 3000 calories into one reasonably healthy meal, after which you’ll probably go to bed hungry.

Now, I’m not saying Intermittent Fasting doesn’t work. There are many people who swear by it. And in fact, I found it an excellent means by which to maintain my body composition levels (meaning my lean mass to fat mass ratio.) It wasn’t very effective, for me though, at reducing my existing fat levels.

There are, of course, variations on this theme. I’ve described what many people call the OMAD method, or One Meal A Day. My mother uses this method effectively to maintain her health in her mid-70’s now.

You could also use a larger window and eat two meals a day. This is a great way to go for people who don’t feel hungry in the morning when they wake up. No problem! Skip breakfast and start with lunch.

I’ve done this before myself too, but not to effectively drop fat pounds.

Then there’s the complete opposite approach: Eating numerous, albeit small, meals throughout the day. I’ve done this one as well. The concept here is to not allow yourself to get hungry, keeping your body processing food all day long, and burning up the energy as you go so it won’t get stored as fat.

For me, this was eating small meals every three hours or so. When I say small, I mean a can of tuna fish and some crackers, or a pair of hard-boiled eggs and half a slice of bread. Just enough food to keep you going to your next eating window, spaced about three hours apart.

Basically, you’re eating all day long, maybe as much as seven times a day, depending on when you wake and sleep. It’s a LOT of eating. And if you work in an office, your coworkers may get annoyed with you and your stinky tuna cans. How effective was it? Well, I definitely bulked up, but still had a hard time cutting the fat.

And then I tried the “stupid” diets. You know the ones I mean. Where they sound way too stupid to actually work. Things like, “the all-cabbage diet,” or “the carnivore diet,” or even, the “paleo diet.” Did they work? Meh, they’re basically all variations of the Atkins theme. So yes, they worked in the short term, but were too hard to maintain to make a meaningful difference.

There I was, after literal decades of trying and failing every diet I could think of. My insurmountable task proving itself to be a formidable foe. What do you do when you’ve tried everything you can think of, and NOTHING has worked?

You get help.

In 2020, that’s exactly what I did. I decided to get to the bottom of what the heck I was doing wrong to my health. I paid money to learn how to get healthy.

And you know what? I found out it wasn’t a single really big mistake I was making. There were dozens of little ones. In fact, when I sat down and thought about all of the things that I’m doing now, that I wasn’t doing then, there were over 100 differences!

Now I’ve made it my mission to help as many people as possible to make these little changes in their lives, because it adds up to big results!

No more dieting! I have no need to go on a diet now, because I’m already at my ideal weight. All I need to do is eat and move, and my body composition takes care of itself.

Want to know if I can help you, too? Hit the link below and let’s find out!

Visit: https://www.eclecticwellbeing.com/Mark1-2-1

The post How do I get to Where I Want to Be? appeared first on Eclectic Well-Being.

Kathi and I love hosting Thanksgiving! But it can be stressful since there’s so much food to cook.

One way to take the stress out of it is to think about what you’re going to make, what needs to be cooked in the oven and for how long, what needs to be prepared ahead of time, and in what order you’ll do everything.

Now this blog isn’t going to focus on everything, but it is a bit of a recap of what our Deliciously Healthy Thanksgiving, focusing on a few Deliciously Healthy side dishes:Savory Maple Roasted Butternut Squash and Brussels’ Sprouts, Baked Green Bean Casserole, and Healthy Mashed Potatoes, in that order.

Why that order? Because the Squash and Sprouts take the longest, then the Green Beans, and the Potatoes are relatively quick. Doing it this way, we should be able to plan it so everything is all done at the same time.

START WITH PREPPING

Before we start prepping, the most important thing you can have when making your own food is a very sharp knife. And you want that knife to be a “Chef’s Knife,” with a long, thin blade that’s taller towards the handle and curves down towards the tip. You can cook just about anything with a sharp one of these.

So we start earlier in the day with trimming the ends from the Brussels’ Sprouts and sliced them in halves; peeingl the Butternut Squash trimming the top and bottom and cutting into cubes; trimming the ends from the Green Beans and cutting them into roughly 2-inch segments; clean, trimming, and slicing the Mushrooms to roughly ¼ inch thickness; peeling and trimming our Garlic cloves; cutting our Cauliflower into florets; and peeling our Potatoes, cut them into chunks and placed them in a pot of salted water to keep them from turning purple.

Butternut Squash Tips

This is one veggie that I want to go into detail because so many make it harder than it is and so they buy the pre cubed version at the market. It’s fine, but what do you do when you get it fresh from your farmer? Here’s how to easily prep your butternut squash.

First off, I see a lot of people trying to cut these in half by placing the whole thing sideways down on the cutting board, then trying to sort-of saw it with the knife lengthwise. If you’re having to force the knife through, your knife isn’t sharp enough. This is how people cut themselves, trying to leverage their entire bodyweight down through the knife. Then the knife slips and all of the downward force is redirected laterally, usually into the hand that was holding the food you were trying to cut.

What I like to do instead is chop the ends nice and flat so that I can stand it up on its bottom without it falling over. Now, I place the knife dead-center across the top, perpendicular to the cutting board, angle the blade a bit, then simply slice the whole thing right into two equally sized halves.

Deseeding with ease 

Before we can cut it into cubes, we need to deseed it. I used to joke that you wanted to use the sharpest spoon in your drawer, but Kathi hit upon a brilliant alternative to make this job so easy! Use an Ice Cream Scooper!

Easy to grip handle, angled for digging, perfectly adapted for gouging the seeds from a Butternut Squash.

You can separate the seeds from the stringy mass, roast them and eat them like you would Pumpkin Seeds, set them aside for local wildlife to eat, or add them to your compost. Ours will most likely be consumed by our Chickens.

Cubing

When cubing something like this, I used to cut it into strips, then cut down each fat strip to size, then cut cubes out of each thin strip.

The easy way is to first cut lengthwise making one long strip, then rotate the Squash half so the side you just cut is flat down against the cutting board, then make lengthwise slices in this direction to the size you ultimately want your Cubes. Here we’re going somewhere between half an inch and one inch.

Rotate the Squash back so the original half line cut is back against the board, and reposition the slices you just made back into the Squash shape. Now, make lengthwise cuts again, then rotate 90° and make even side-to-side cuts. When you’re done, you’ll have a Squash half in cubes, but still in the shape of a Squash half. Take your knife and slide the whole thing into a bowl, and repeat with the other side.

COOKING MULTIPLE ITEMS

So looking at all our recipes here, the Green Beans need to cook at 375°F for about 25 minutes, the Squash for 25 minutes at 450°F, and the Sprouts at 450°F for 18 minutes.

We happen to be graced with multiple ovens. Trying to cook things that need different oven temps and times means you’d have to cook the Beans first, then the Squash and Sprouts, then reheat the Beans right before eating.

But since I have two ovens, I’m pre-heating the upper oven to 450 and the lower oven to 375.

Now that all of our Squash is cubed, we need to get it seasoned and, in the oven, to start cooking.

Savory Maple Roasted Butternut Squash and Brussels’ Sprouts

Into this bowl with our Squash, we drizzle some Olive Oil. Probably about a tablespoon or so. I don’t really measure. I use a big bottle and go by “glugs.” One glug is about a tablespoon. Then we shake some salt in there. And crack some fresh pepper. By the way if you’re looking for something simple to spice up your cooking, a Pepper Mill and some Rainbow Peppercorns. It’s still pepper, but you’ll taste a wider range than black pepper alone will give you.

I like to use a skinny spoon when stirring things up like this. I find that the wider, serving-spoon-size utensils make more of a mess. You want to ensure that all of that Olive Oil is absolutely covering each and every Squash Cube, and you should see pepper flecks evenly distributed throughout the bowl.

Here’s another trick: Wet the pan first.

We want to get some foil on this pan to make cleanup easier later, but we don’t want the foil to stick to the food. Just run some water over the pan, then let it mostly drip off. You don’t want to dry it completely. Take your foil and tear off enough to cover the pan while tucking the ends under the sides. Place it on the pan with the shiny side touching the pan, dull side toward the food. Press the foil down in the center and wipe to the outsides. The water on the pan helps it stick a bit so it won’t bunch up.

Give it one blast of cooking spray, then spread that spray everywhere with a cloth to create a non-stick surface. Add the Squash Cubes and spread them out into a single layer with none touching each other.

We’ll pop this tray into the oven and set the timer to 7 minutes.

The Brussels’ Sprouts

Now we’ll prep another tray the same as we did the first one because our Squash was on the larger side and we’re not going to fit the Sprouts on the same tray.

Take the bowl of Sprouts and dump them into the bowl in which you mixed the Squash Cubes. That bowl is already covered in the same seasonings we’re using, so why dirty two bowls with oil?

Repeat the same Olive Oil, Salt, and Peppering, and dump the Sprouts onto the prepared sheet.

Take the time to place each Sprout half cut-side-down on the sheet. This little step will add loads of flavor that you won’t get otherwise as that flat side browns in the oven.

When that timer goes off, we leave the Cubes in, and add the Sprouts on another rack, then set the timer to 18 minutes (giving the Cubes a full 25 minutes.)

A BIT OF MULTI TASKING

At this point we want to get some heat under the pot of potatoes. I’m setting it to max with the lid on, then I’ll lower it a bit and remove the lid when they start to boil.

We also want to get these beans pre-cooked a bit. The recipe calls for blanching them in boiling water, then transferring to an ice bath. I find it much easier to steam them on the stovetop, so that’s what we’re doing here. They’re done when they turn a Bright Green color; you’ll definitely notice the difference. Once they hit that point, remove from heat and set aside.

I’ve tried multiple methods to cook cauliflower when sneaking it into other things or pretending it’s rice. The trick here is to prevent it from getting watery. The fastest way I’ve found to do that is to microwave it on a plate with a little bit of water, under one of those plastic spatter guard domes. It makes the cauliflower come out cooked, but on the drier side. Super wet cauliflower makes soggy mashed potatoes. So we’re going to pop this in for 5 minutes and then check it.

Mushroom Sauce for the Green Beans

Now, let’s get started on the Mushroom Sauce for the Beans. The recipe we’re using calls for making your own crispy onion topping, but we’re not looking to rock tradition too much, and Kathi and Hana really like French-Fried Onions from a little red and white tub, so we’ll be using those.

For this sauce, melt the butter, then add those Mushrooms and spread them around, rolling them around to get them covered in butter. Let them sit and soak up that butter, stirring occasionally so they don’t burn or stick. After 5 minutes those Shrooms should be ready for the Garlic that I forgot to talk about having copped finely earlier. Again, stirring to get that garlic everywhere and all over those Mushrooms.

Dust the flour over the Shrooms so it’s not all in one big clump, then stir that all up so the flour is everywhere. The flour should cover the Mushrooms and get gummy and drier-looking. If it’s still powdery, you need more butter. If it’s still runny, you need more flour. Stir for about another minute to cook the flour taste out of the flour. Then add your stock.

This recipe calls for ½ cup of Veggie Stock. I made Chicken Stock instead, and I made a bit more, just in case. I’m going to add the stock slowly, stirring as I go, until it starts to look “saucy.” It should be bubbly, wet, and thick looking with no noticeable flour lumps.

Once you’ve hit the right consistency, stir in the Parmesan, then stir in the milk to loosen it back up. Once you’re happy with it, season with salt and pepper, remove from heat and set aside.

Place your beans in your casserole dish, pour the Mushroom Sauce over top, stir it all up, and cover with the Fried Onion Topping of your choice. This one goes into the preheated lower oven at 375 for 25 minutes.

Back to Multi Tasking

When the Potatoes are done we’ll drain off the water and keep the chunks in the same hot pot. I use real butter in my Potatoes. Margarine is a man-made concoction that does not form in the natural world. Butter is the healthier option, and I use about a stick of butter for every 5 pounds of potatoes, which I will now add to these hot potatoes so it melts and soaks in.

While that’s melting we’ll take a look at this cauliflower. Pretty close. We’ll give it another 3 minutes.

The timer is going off on the Squash and Sprouts. The recipe calls for drizzling 4 oz of Maple Syrup over the tray. What I’m doing instead, is dumping both of these trays into an extra-large aluminum bowl, drizzling the Maple Syrup into that, stirring it all up, then spreading it all onto one tray and popping back on the top rack of the oven for another 5 minutes or so to glaze up the Syrup.

Cauliflower Potatoes

Once the Cauliflower is ready, dump it right into the pot with the now melted butter and potatoes, and hand-mash with this hand-masher. You can use electric beaters if you want. I like having some lumps in my potatoes, which the hand-masher gives me nicely.

Mash it up until you can’t tell what’s potato and what’s cauliflower. Add some Greek Yogurt instead of Milk or Sour Cream and mash it until it’s the right consistency. Add salt and pepper to taste and you’re done.

The Big Finish

Now each side dish should be done at almost the same time. The Brussel Sprouts and Butternut Squash get put in a bowl, where we will toss in some craisins and sunflower seeds. The Green Bean Casserole is served right in the baking dish on a hot pad.  Serve the mashed potatoes and the turkey, and we have our Deliciously Healthy Thanksgiving.

For the real Thanksgiving, don’t forget the gravy, stuffing and cranberries! And we forgot to mention that making home-made cranberries is quick and easy!  Kathi uses the recipe found right on the bag, but instead of processed sugar, she uses honey!  Mmm! It tastes delicious!

If after reading this, you have any questions, don’t hesitate to reach out! Cooking and healthy eating are two topics I love to talk about! mark@eclecticwellbeing.com

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