Nutrition and Whole-Body Wellness for the Maturing Athlete
Author: Jamie
Hey there, I'm Jamie. I am a Nutritional Therapy Practitioner (NTP), former competitive athlete, and Chemical Engineer with a background in nutraceutical and pharmaceutical manufacturing. Through my own health journey and perseverance has allowed me to take back my health and find my energy again. Along the way, I also learned how important it is to find balance in the way I approach food to feel and perform my best!
I would love to work with you and support you in achieving your health goals. Please see my "Work with Me" page for more information on my plans and packages.
This recipe just keeps making the rounds in my house. It’s a simple 1 pot meal and super tasty! I have served it up as-is, with toppings, and in a roasted acorn squash bowl and it’s good every time. It also has the added bonus of being rich and full of flavor without the dairy! I love this for a quick lunch or busy weeknight meal.
I love that you can keep this low carb, or add some carbs by serving it up in a squash bowl or over a baked sweet potato (pro tip – prep these ahead for the week). Serve according to your favorite macro ratios. I personally find that on days I’m more active, my body definitely prefers more carbs versus days where I’m more sedentary and I feel best lower carb. I am all about intuitive eating and I don’t think you have to approach food as an all or nothing mentality (i.e. low carb all the time).
Here is the recipe. I hope you enjoy this as much as my family does!
Ingredients: * 1 Tbsp lard or coconut oil * 1 medium onion, chopped * 2 garlic cloves * 1 lb ground turkey * 1 tsp high quality sea salt * 2 cups frozen or fresh cauliflower rice * 1 can full fat coconut milk * 1 can (14 oz) bone both * 1 tsp dried thyme * 1 – 2 cups chopped swiss chard, kale or spinach
If serving in a squash bowl or potato, get those in the oven and roasting!
For the chili: In a medium sized pot melt the lard and add the onion. Saute until translucent. Add the garlic, ground turkey and salt. Chop the turkey into chunks as it cooks and cook until slightly browned. Add the cauliflower rice and saute for 3-5 mins. Add the coconut milk, bone broth and thyme and simmer for 5-10 mins. Add the greens and stir and simmer until greens are cooked. At this point, it is ready to serve!
Serves 3-4 depending on how hungry you are and if you are serving with a starch.
This is the first part of some educational segments on various systems that have a big impact on their overall health. The first will be on Digestion. I hope you find it helpful!
Do most people truly know what healthy digestion feels and looks like? I’m gonna go with no, not the majority. I wish I could meet my 28 year old self and tell her many things. But, most importantly I’d share what I’ve learned over the past 15 years about digestive imbalances and how to heal it early or prevent it altogether!
I suffered through lactose intolerance for many years without realizing the cause of my numerous bathroom visits. Did I mention we would talk about poo, cause yeah, that’s part of digestion and impossible to leave out of the conversation! Then, after the birth of my son, I had a terrible yeast overgrowth (gut dysbiosis) issue that caused fatigue and brain fog I have never thought possible! All of those burbs, flatulence, and consistencies of stool are all cues our body is sending you about the health of your digestion. However, without the education to translate and decode it, it might feel like your body is speaking to you in another language!
So why is digestion so important? I mean, you eat, you poo…right?! What’s so complicated? As long as you’re eating healthy foods, you should be good. Well…not exactly. See, you are what you absorb, more than you ‘are what you eat’. And every cell in your body depends on the digestive system to provide the nutrients it needs for structure and function. So if there is an imbalance in the digestive process, this can often cause downstream health issues. Not to give a full on biology lesson here, but it truly helps to understand all of the parts of your digestive process and I think pictures help. Below is a simple diagram from Wikipedia that should guide you when I start spouting various organs and sections of organs.
Digestion could be thought of as a north to south process – starting at the brain and ending in elimination. In a healthy digestive process, your body would be in a parasympathetic state (often referred to as rest and digest). This is because digestion actually starts in your BRAIN. What? Ok, before I lose you, this is a real thing. Just thinking about your food, preparing it, smelling it. This all prepares your body to start the digestive process. Your salivary glands even perk up and get ready to receive food into your mouth.
So you have thought about your food, its on your plate in front of you. So now you place the food into your mouth and chew. Yumm! The longer you chew, the better broken down the food particles are before you send them down your esophagus and into your stomach. Additionally, enzymes for carbohydrate digestion start releasing in the MOUTH. So chew those carbs up until its like a smoothie consistency (typically 20-30 times).
Once you swallow, the food travels to your stomach and gets ‘washed’ with HCl (or stomach acid). Something you may not realize is how important protein consumption is for your stomach acid levels to be optimal! Protein stimulates the release of a hormone (gastrin) which tells the body how much HCl to produce and essentially jumpstarts protein digestion. Note that the stomach is not actually absorbing many nutrients. Its mainly preparing the partially digested food (now an acidic liquid called chyme) to go into the small intestines where nutrients will be absorbed into the body.
As the chyme moves into the small intestine, the gallbladder releases bile and the pancreas releases pancreatic juices which help to further break down the macronutrients into nutrients that the body can absorb into the bloodstream. The small intestine is surprisingly long, averaging 20 feet and covered with villi and microvilli which create a type of brush boarder which helps to increase the area in which to absorb nutrients from the chyme.
The large intestine absorbs the few remaining nutrients, but mostly it is absorbing water. The microbiota in the large intestine have been sitting there patiently waiting for prebiotic fibers (from your fruits and veggies) to make valuable nutrients like B vitamins and some important amino acids. A balanced microbiome is critical to optimal digestion, so keeping these “bugs” happy is important! Any sort of imbalance and your body will send you signals through digestive upset and sometimes even skin irritations (like acne or eczema). As for what’s left, well, its the remaining waste (toxins, fiber, and dead microbes) that’s eliminated (yep, poo).
Still reading? All of this is to explain how things SHOULD work. If you’re not properly digesting and breaking down your foods, the undigested macronutrients in the chyme will irritate the small intestinal lining and over time cause what many refer to as “leaky gut”. This is because the junctions of the lining, which should be tight, open up due to inflammation and allow undigested food particles into the blood stream. This can cause inflammation throughout the body and present in many different ways.
The overall take away is that if every upstream (northern) digestive system is out of whack, then everything downstream (south) will suffer. And if your digestive system is under stress, your entire body will feel the effects via inflammation. It may not be right away, but over time, they can add up to many common health concerns. Your digestion is paramount to your overall health!
I’m currently studying to be a NTP (Nutritional Therapy Practitioner) and will graduate in late fall 2020! I am so Excited to pursue my passion in this way. And as an NTP I can help you address your digestive concerns and teach you ways to support your body. Around the holidays, I’ll be taking on a limited number of clients but feel free to reach out on my social media outlets if you want to learn more!
Today I want to talk about how we can make some small changes to “tune up” our kitchen and our health. You don’t need a big overhaul to make impactful changes to you and your families health!
The 3 things I want to cover today are:
Selection of high quality foods
Preparation of foods to improve nutrients and digestibility
Sourcing high quality meats and vegetables are paramount to our health and to the sustainability of our natural resources. Its easy to gravitate towards very cheap meats to feed you and your family, it feels like kids are a never ending pit after all! But those low cost meats are loaded with chemicals (from the animal having eaten grains sprayed with fertilizers and pesticides) as well as hormones and antibiotics. These directly affect our health when we eat the meat of these animals. By sourcing grass-fed beef and pastured chicken and pork, you will be eating much more nutrient dense meats since those animals were allowed to eat wild grasses, bugs, and are not living in such close proximity to each other. Selecting fruits and vegetables which are organic or not sprayed with synthetic pesticides is also important. Even better, eating foods that are seasonally grown in your area will provide the biggest nutrient punch. Produce shipped from other countries are picked when they are not yet ripe in order to get it to you around the time it is ripe. If allowed to ripen fully prior to picking, our fruits and veggies are able to uptake and develop the most about of vitamins and minerals.
The best sources of sustainable meats and vegetables can be found at a local farmers market or a butcher shop that sources from small local farms. You might even sign up for a CSA (Community Sharing Agriculture) or CCSA (Combined CSA) which works with one or many local farmers and provides you a box, or share, of food each week. This allows you to support your local economy and help to pay local farmers a fair wage. For those in the St. Louis area, I love Fair Shares CCSA because of the variety you get in a share. There are other options as well, such as meat delivery services that work with small farms to supply high quality meats, right to your door. Two worth mentioning are Crowd Cow and Butcher Box. You can typically find vegetable delivery in your local area as well. Or, look for an open produce stand, or maybe experiment with growing some of your own!
Preparation of Foods to Improve Nutrients and Digestibility
Not only is sourcing important, but how you prepare the foods is also key to getting the most nutrients as you can. Plus, some foods, are more difficult to digest than others, so there are preparation techniques that can help start to breakdown the foods prior to consuming to help with this.
Let me give some examples of a good, better, best approach. Depending on where you are right now, you can select an entry point that is an improvement to your current approach, but not so much that you feel overwhelmed.
Dairy: Dairy can be difficult for many to digest, but there are some ways to make it easier to digest.
Good: Instead of drinking conventional milk, you could switch to organic milk and try to purchase brands that come in a paper carton or glass over plastic jugs. This would apply to cheese, yogurt, and all other dairy products as well. Try to switch all of these products to organic sources.
Better: Instead of pasteurized and homogenized milk, you might try to find a source of raw milk and see if that changes the way you feel after drinking it. Again, apply this to all of your dairy products. Many people who do not digest pasteurized dairy very well, can do well on raw dairy products since pasteurization destroys the enzymes that help us to break down the lactose in these foods.
Best: Forgo any diary that is not fermented or cultured. Focus on milk products like kefir, yogurt, or cottage cheese that is loaded with probiotics which help balance your gut microbiome and improve digestion. Eventually, you might experiment with making your own fermented and cultured dairy!
If you find that you still do not tolerate dairy very well, then you might try goat or sheeps milk, or eliminate it from your diet for a period of time, and use non-dairy milks instead.
Beans and Legumes (Pluses): Beans and legumes (like lentils) can also be difficult to digest, but if you haven’t tried some of the suggestions below, you may be surprised at how well your body can tolerate them. Pluses can be an economical way to add protein and fiber into your diet and can be used to complement meat dishes or have the occasional vegetable-based meal.
Good: Focus on buying organic canned beans over conventional in order to avoid synthetic pesticide residue that is present on non-organically grown veggies.
Better: Purchase organic canned beans that come in BPA free cans, like Eden Foods brand who soak their beans before cooking. Soaking beans is an great way to start to break down the beans and make them more digestible.
Best: Try soaking and/or sprouting your own dry pulses. One way that soaking helps improve digestion is by minimizing raffinose in beans. Raffinose is a complex carbohydrate that is difficult to break down and can lead to bloating and/or gas after consuming beans. Soaking your dried beans in water with baking soda can help to break it down and make beans easier to digest. “To further reduce the gas-producing properties of beans, add a large strip of dried kombu seaweed to the pot of beans and water prior to boiling.” (www.drweil.com) Beans can be made in large batches and frozen for future use. And as an added bonus, dried beans are a fraction of the cost of ready-to-eat canned beans. Here is a great reference guide by the Nutritional Therapy Association on the best ways to soak and sprout your grains, legumes, nuts, and seeds.
Above, I gave just two examples of how you can baby step your way into better preparations of your foods to make them more nutrient dense and digestible. With every food, you can find a good/better/best approach. Take your time, be patient, and soon you will have incorporated a number of these approaches into your daily food prep!
One final and simple way to improve your kitchen is through your selection of cookware and storage containers. Pots and pans with non-stick coatings as well as plastic storage containers both utilize plastics which can leach (or leak) chemicals from the plastic into your food. This is more prone to happen when the plastics are heated, which is why cookware is of particular concern and why you never want to microwave food in plastic containers.
This can be an expensive endeavor, but don’t feel like you need to do it all at once. In terms of priorities, here are the top three swamps you can make with minimal cost to greatly reduce the chemical load on your body.
Buy one cast iron skillet and a good knife.
You can buy one new, but I have also found some nicely seasoned previously owned pans at antique shops for around $20. These pans will last more than your lifetime if properly cared for.
Your knife should be forged from a single piece of steel (avoid those screwed at the top to a handle). These knives can be sharpened over and over.
Be sure to cool your food prior to storing in plastic containers.
This minimizes the “leaching” effect from hot food in the container.
Along these lines, transfer food to a non-plastic container to reheat it.
Over time, replace your plastic containers with glass.
Swap out foil with unbleached parchment paper
Foil will leach aluminum into your foods.
If you commonly wrap baked potatoes in foil, wrap fish or other meats in foil for baking, try swapping to parchment paper instead.
As you can see, there are a number of simple, and affordable ways to upgrade your kitchen game! Try some of these simple swaps and see if you notice a difference in your body.
If you like this content and want to learn more, please comment below or drop me a dm on Instagram @dailybagofgoodness and Ill focus more on topics like these on future posts.
Curry – I think folks either love it or hate it! Its a powerful mix of spices with a lot of depth and sometimes a punch of heat. I’m a fan! I love a good curry. Unfortunately many Indian recipes and restaurants use cream or yogurt (dairy) in their recipes and I dont tolerate it well. Sometimes Ill “cheat” and take the digestive enzymes and throw caution to the wind, but that usually results in regret. Fortunately, I love to cook and experiment and so I make a lot of my Indian style recipes at home. I recently got a free sample of a Maharajah Curry from Seasonality Spices in exchange for a post in my IG feed (full disclosure). How could I say no to testing out their premium quality, fair trade spice blend? I went ahead and created a recipe and blog post because I was so impressed .
The good news is that YOU CAN GET IT FREE TOO! Just go to the link above or HERE, and select a 1 oz sample and use the code “KINGOFSPICES” at checkout. All you pay for is shipping!
If you get some and try it, Id love to hear what you made! Tag me on Instagram or Facebook (@dailybagofgoodness) so I can see your creations! 🙂
When I first received the package, I had to chuckle at their marketing. Possibly not for the masses? But really funny if you know who Kimbo Slice is!
The first thing I had to do was smell it. Wow! Beautiful spice with balanced notes of cardamom and cinnamon most prominent on the nose. The blend contains saffron, cardamom, cinnamon, clove, turmeric and pepper – it’s a balanced and versatile blend.
I was trying to dream up a great recipe and lately I’ve been needing simple meals for quick weekday dinners. Also, its been hot outside and the less I heat up the kitchen the better!
I love a good lamb curry and I had some local ground lamb on hand, so I whipped up this one-skillet lamb curry. I’m eating low carb (keto), so I added plenty of cauliflower in lieu of rice. But this would be excellent served over rice. I had extra roasted sweet potatoes and served my husbands curry over sweet potatoes. That works great for a grain-free option. Plus, I think sweet potato and curry go really well together! I need to find a recipe for dairy free Keto naan bread. That would be fantastic!
I’m a big fan of cooking in cast iron. It provides a nice even heat, adds iron to your meal (many women tend to be deficient), and keeps dinner warm for a while if you end up going back for seconds. I was keeping it simple, but onions, garlic and ginger sauteed into the meat would have been really nice in this as well. You could also add more coconut milk, or none at all, depending on what you like.
INGREDIENTS:
1 lb ground lamb ( but if you don’t have any or aren’t a fan, some dark ground turkey meat would work as well.
1 to 1-1/2 tsp Sea salt (being keto, I tend to like more salt)
cauliflower florets from 1/2 a medium head of cauliflower
1 cup frozen or fresh peas
2 large handfuls fresh baby spinach
Approx 3/4 – 1 cup full fat coconut milk
INSTRUCTIONS:
To a large cast iron skillet add the ground lamb. Lamb tends to have plenty of fat to release so you don’t need to add more fat to the pan. However, if using turkey I’d recommend 2 Tbsp of coconut oil to fry it in.
Sauté lamb until it’s just starting to brown and then add salt and sprinkle the curry powder in so that it cooks into the meat.
One the meat is slightly browned, add the cauliflower florets and peas. Stir through the meat and cover.
Every 2-3 mins remove lid and stir.
Cook until cauliflower is steamed but still firm.
Add the spinach, stir in and cover for 1-2 mins more until spinach wilts.
Remove lid and stir in coconut milk.
Stir occasionally and allow to simmer w/ lid off so it can thicken to your liking.
Serve as-is or over a grain or starch of ur choice.
My sugar free journey started about 2 years ago when I went to a Functional Dr who diagnosed me with candida overgrowth. Which, in combination w/ hypothyroidism, was a major cause for some awful fatigue at the time. Getting off sugar and treating the candida made such a big difference in how I felt and functioned on a daily basis. About a year in to the treatment I thought I had it beat, but it flared up again and so I put myself on a super low carb diet for 4 weeks. Around that time, I learned about the ketogenic diet and when I looked at my macros, I was REALLY close already. So I tweaked my fat and protein and easily went into ketosis. I’m eating keto mostly for its promise for hormone healing and it has definitely helped me! My goal is to get fully off my thyroid meds. My levels have already improved so I’m currently at half the dose I was previously! Super excited about that, though my hormones are not super happy about the lower thyroid dose, so my body is currently recalibrating. Its seems that a health journey never truly ends. But, I’m determined to heal my body and I truly believe in food as medicine.
So all of that to say that in the past 2 years, desert has not been a big part of my life. I was never a big dessert person anyway (don’t need it everyday after dinner). But from time to time, I really miss a few things. Especially ice cream in the summer! I’ve been dairy free for around 7 years but I used to be able to eat the store-bought stuff. Since going sugar-free, I just can’t find an ice cream in the store that I can eat!
So I bought an ice cream maker and I’m experimenting! And WOW, I hit the nail on the head w/ this one! Its made completely out of coconut milk, but w/ the vanilla flavoring, you can barely taste the coconut. It’s just YUM!
Tonight I was also really craving something chocolate. I just love Good Dee’s products. Her low carb brownie mix is just fantastic! She uses sunflower seed flour as the base for these. I tried something different and baked them in muffin cups. Actually, it was really just me being lazy and not wanting to cut waxed paper for the brownie pan. 😉 But it worked out great! I should have let them cool more before removing from the paper, but who can resist a hot brownie w/ ice cream??!
I hope you enjoy this ice cream as much as my family and I did. So rich and satisfying! It would be even better w/ real vanilla bean! Feel free to play around w/ other flavors – like cinnamon or pumpkin pie spice. You could even blend in some fresh fruit.
INGREDIENTS:
2 cans (13.66 oz) full fat coconut milk (I used Thai Kitchen b/c its super thick, but if you are avoiding gums, any full fat version should work.
