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I stopped eating gluten over 6 years ago after my youngest daughter was born.  I was exhausted all day, always felt like my brain was in a haze, and my stomach was covered with eczema. I just had a baby so I initially thought it was from being overwhelmed taking care of a second child and breastfeeding the baby every 3 hours.  But after months of feeling like this, I knew something was wrong.  After seeing many doctors and going the multiple tests and procedures, I was diagnosed with Hashimoto’s thyroid disease, a thyroid autoimmune disease where my immune system produces antibodies that attack my thyroid.  If you have a gluten sensitivity or celiac disease, your body will launch an autoimmune response, or attack, on the gluten protein in your body.  The gluten protein and thyroid tissue are structurally similar, so when your immune system is attacking, antibodies could accidentally go after the thyroid tissue.  Eliminating gluten from your diet can remove this autoimmune response.  My road to recovery started the day I stopped eating gluten.

What is gluten?
Gluten is a type of protein found in wheat, rye, and barley.  This protein acts like a binder, acting as the glue for baked goods, breads, pastas, and giving them spongy elasticity.

Why does gluten make some people sick?
Contrary to what people believe, GMO white flour has not been approved for sale anywhere in the world.  Wheat has been crossbread over the years to withstand pesticides which some experts believe is the cause of increased inflammation, not the wheat itself.  Factories also develop bread and processed baked goods with a higher percentage of gluten using a stabilizing ingredient called, vital wheat gluten, to develop elasticity much faster, reducing the time from 24 hours to 20 minutes.  People with a gluten sensitivity have been able to digest bread from farmer’s markets and Europe because they were made with traditional methods and high quality, less-processed wheat.

Hope this was helpful, C xo

There will be times, intentionally or unintentionally, where you will celebrate a little to much, drink one or a few too many alcoholic cocktails, and wake up with a hangover.  In case you haven’t experienced a hangover, the symptoms of a hangover include headache, nausea, stomach discomfort, and dehydration. A hangover is a sign your immune system, digestive tract and organs are struggling to remove and filter out excessive toxins from too much alcohol.

As someone who wants your best health, excessive drinking is stressful on your body and it is best to avoid.  But if you find yourself with a hangover, the key to feeling better is supporting the liver and detoxing for the next 12 – 24 hours.

1. Hydrate.  Alcohol dehydrates the body.  Drink water.  Also, drink coconut water and bone broth to restore electrolytes.
2. Naturally relieve your headache.  Skip the aspirin, it can cause liver problems when mixed with the alcohol in your system.  Instead take magnesium for a headache.  If you can remember, take magnesium before you go to bed to help prevent a headache from happening.
3. Settle your stomach and nausea with ginger tea.
4. Take your B-vitamins.  Alcohol depletes vitamins in your body.  The liver’s detox processes rely on B-vitamins to detox effectively.
5. Detox with food.  Eat eggs, they contain L-cysteine, an amino acid responsible for breaking down toxins and releasing them.  Eat cooked broccoli, cauliflower, kale, cabbage, and brussels sprouts because they contain enzymes that support liver detox.
6. Sweat it out.  Exercise and movement stimulates the lymphatic system to excrete toxins and get the blood flowing.  Go for a quick hard workout.  Move through a yoga class or take a brisk walk.
7. Rest. When you have a hangover, your body is crying to rebuild and recover.  The time your body does this is during rest or sleep.

To health and happiness,
Chrissy xo

The potato diet has been around since the 1800’s as a weight loss approach for those living too luxuriously and in need of a digestive system reset.  It has recently become popular through Tim Steele’s website and book, The Potato Hack: Weight Loss Simplified. I decided to try the potato diet or potato hack on myself because I have clients who eat clean, sleep 7-8 hours a day, exercise regularly, and have not been able to lose weight.  Losing weight isn’t easy, if it was, it wouldn’t be a $65 million dollar industry.  My health goals this year were not to lose weight but I’m glad I did because there was weight I needed to lose and even though my diet is pretty clean, there were changes I needed to make to the volume and ratio of foods I was eating.

The reason why the potato diet has worked for people to lose weight and resets the digestive system is because:

1. Immediately reduces calorie intake which is the reason it leads to significant weight loss.  The theory of food reward is a hard-wired evolutionary mechanism that helps us survive during times of food scarcity.  The more rewarding foods are, the more we will eat them.  We eat a lot when food is bountiful and much is in season because our bodies wants to fill itself with the macronutrients and be satisfied by the variety of tastes and textures in our mouths.  If we only have potato to eat, we will only eat enough to satisfy our hunger but no more.
2. Eating nothing but white potatoes may sound crazy because you would think eating all of that starch would elevate blood sugar.  If you eat potatoes that have been cooked and cooled, the starch is converted to resistant starch.  Resistant starch is a fiber so it is not absorbed by humans, but rather it feeds our good intestinal bacteria and has insignificant effect on blood sugar.  Reheating cooled potatoes is ok because it keeps the potato as a resistant starch.  It’s recommended, especially if you have problems with blood sugar, to check your blood sugar with a glucometer after the first few potato meals and if your blood sugar spikes, switch to eating cook and cooled potatoes.

On the potato diet I ate:

• Boiled 3 – 4 lbs of red, white, or russet potatoes.  This was enough for a days worth of potatoes for me.
• I timed the boiling to complete right before a meal time and then would eat a meal of hot potatoes.  Once the potatoes cooled, I would store them in the refrigerator and would either eat cold potatoes or reheat the potatoes for the rest of the meals during the day.
• Ate potatoes with a little sprinkle of salt.
• Drank hot tea.  This warm drink gave me a sense of fullness.

Week 1: 3 consecutive days on the potato diet, rest of the days ate my regular diet (free of gluten, dairy, added sugar, and processed food)

Week 2: 1 day on the potato diet, rest of the days ate my regular diet (free of gluten, dairy, added sugar, and processed food)

Week 3: 2 days on the potato diet, rest of the day ate my regular diet (free of gluten, dairy, added sugar, and processed food)

I am very happy with my experience on the potato diet.  Even though my health goals this year were not to lose weight, I am happy I lost 4 lbs.  I have been doing a lot of Crossfit the past two years and have more muscle mass and realize I need to lean out.  Most importantly, removing all of the food on the potato diet made me think about the meals I usually eat (but couldn’t). I realized I was eating too much protein and not enough vegetables.  On the days I wasn’t on the potato diet, I made sure my  meals were 3/4 vegetables and 1/4 protein.  I’ve been able to keep the 4lbs off because I’m eating more vegetables and also less because my appetite has decreased from the days I just eat potatoes.

If you are interested in trying the potato diet, here are the guidelines:

C xo

There is a lot of conflicting information about eating legumes, also known as beans, peanuts, alfalfa sprouts.  When I first started to heal myself with food, I followed a strict Paleo diet which eliminated all legumes and beans.  As I’ve come to personalize my nutrition for my body, I’ve found that I can eat some types of beans and peas, and cannot tolerate white beans.  If you are considering adding or eliminating legumes, here are the things to know:

• Legumes are not essential to human health.  Humans only started eating legumes and beans 10,000 years ago.  We started eating meat 2.5 million years ago.
• Legumes are not very nutrient dense and eating a lot of them should not replace more nutrient-dense foods like meat, fish, and shellfish.
• Legumes are a source of protein but plant protein is not as good of a source as animal protein.  Adults are required to eat 60 – 90 grams of protein a day.  To fulfill this requirement, you would have to eat 3 cups of beans with 100 grams of carbs to equal 6 oz of meat with 0 grams of carbs.  Eating this any beans and carbs would require a lot of planning and effort, and would be more then the average person could handle.
• Legumes contain plant proteins which have very little leucine, the amino acid needed to build muscle.  Animal protein is the best source of leucine, and this is very important because as we get older the loss of muscle is a primary cause of accelerated aging and disease.
• Legumes contain proteins called lectins that can cause leaky gut, inflammation, and all kinds of other problems.  Many people can tolerate beans because the majority of these harmful lectins are destroyed by heat and cooking, and lectins also bind to sugar so they are prevented from entering our bloodstream. Peanut lectin is an excption because a lot of people eat peanuts raw and peanut butter. (ex: peanut butter). You will be introducing the foods you have eliminated (gluten, dairy, legumes, etc) one by one after the Whole30 and this is the best way to see if you show symptoms of not tolerating legumes.

Hope this was helpful,
Chrissy xo