Monday, July 23, 2012

Why Do You Train/Exercise?

Have you ever asked yourself this question or thought about it: Why do I train/exercise?
Is it for weight lose, building muscles mass or lean muscle, to looked good in your bikini or swim suite, to build strong bones, and joints. What is your reason?  Do you train with purpose or just go do whatever someone else is going?

The reason I train, is to survive. It is also my drug, I have to admit. I really enjoy working out, in my blood from having been a competitive gymnast. Back to why I train, for survival. I know this sounds crazy, it is not the reason we are told to exercise or have really thought of probably. We are told to exercise to lose weight, but this is really not the best way to lose weight. I eat for fat lose, weight maintenance, to have a nutrient rich, dense diet for optimum gene expression, to maintain my health. Having the stores my body needs in case of long periods of fasting, sickness or getting pregnant. I want to give my children the best possible start and nutrition is the best way to do this. I want to make sure my stores are high so the baby would pull from my stores of vitamins and minerals, have all they need and not take them from my bones, brain and other organs. This is why I eat the way I do. I train though, to survive.

What does training to survive look like and why would I do this?
The reason is simple, God forbid the worst should happen, I want to make it out alive and help the person next to me survive as well. Say my house catching on fire and my Hublet and two dogs are unconscious, I want to have the ability to drag Hublet out of the house and be able to run back in and get Mungo and Otto out as well, weighing 20 and 65 lbs. I could need to do this in an oxygen depleted enviorment as well. Once they are out, I want to be able to resuscitate any of them and have the oxygen and energy I need to do this. Maybe things like, jumping out of the way of something, sprinting across the street to make sure a child does not get hit, pull myself out of situation, whatever it is, I want to make it, as well as the person next to me.
How do I train? Most of my training is body weight, functional training. Reason why, another time. Things like pull ups on my Total Gym, loads of squats and lunges, all forms of them. Regular squats, deep squats, summo, squat jumps, jumps onto varying heights of blocks. For lunges, walking, side, single leg, Bulgarian split lunges, jumping, I think you get the point, all forms of leg work. I sprint, short and long distances. The newest addiction to my work out regime, running up and down my stairs with a 35 lb bag of dog food on my shoulder. Killer, great workout. I also do long distance walking, you never know when you might need to walk 10 miles to get help. I train not to build a lot of "show muscle", I train to build a lot of "go muscle".

The great thing about training for survival as well is, you build a pretty strong, sexy lean physic. If you saw me, you might not think I am packing the kind of muscle around I am, that is because I do not have loads of big muscle. It is muscle which is strong, dense and lean, it gets the job done! Even with one hand, I can pick things up and move them that you might not suspect. For survival, I do not need a lot of big showy muscle, I need functional muscle that I can be quick on my feet with.

What do you train for?

Saving the world one stick of butter at a time.
God's many and gracious blessings be upon you,
Jenn












Tuesday, July 17, 2012

Tuesday Recipe: Tacos and Kebabs

For today's recipe, I am going to link to two recipes from Mark's Daily Apple. Over the last week or so, I made both of these recipes and they were VERY yummy. They are both on our recipe list and will be made again soon, maybe next week.

The first one is a taco bowel. We did not have the crispy kale chips along with it. I am going to make them this week because I bought kale.
The other ingredient I added was cayenne pepper to the seasoning mix. We like things pretty spices, it needed this kick for our tastes.



This is very tasty, quick and easy to make. I can not wait for our peppers to be ready to make with this dish. Fresh peppers picked and put right into the pan will make this dish even better. The same goes for the next dish.


The next one is lime and basil kebabs.



These were so delicious! I did not make any changes to this one, gasp, I know.
My only suggestion would be in the prep, well, what I am going to do the next time I make them.
Instead of putting the coconut oil in while the meat is marinating, I would mix it in just before putting the meat on the grill, or just coat the grill with the oil. When you put all the cold ingredients together, the oil hardens and clumps. Something to mess around with.
The other thing I did was put all the veggies in a grill basket instead of on the skewers. We always find that having the mix of meat and veggies on the same skewer does not work well for grilling, the veggies seem well done and the meat is just right or vice verse. So, I put the meat on the skewers and the veggies in my basket, which I love by the way. I highly recommend a basket because grilled veggies are SOOOOO yummy.
That is it. Very good and again easy to make.
Hope you enjoy both of them.

Saving the world one stick of butter at a time.
God bless,
Jenn









Monday, July 9, 2012

The Liver

Ohhh, the liver.... If you talk about detoxing or have heard anything about detoxing, then I am sure you have heard about the importance of the liver. The liver plays a very vital and key role in our bodies ability to detoxify. Detoxing the liver becomes extremely complicated very quickly. This blog is about Thriving on the Basics, not the details of how things work, all of the confusing stuff. If you want to learn more about the liver's detoxing system, Google it!

A doctor explained the importance of the liver in detoxing this way: Your liver is like the oil filter in your car. When the oil filter gets all clogged up and full of crap, your car will not run very well. The longer you allow it to go the worse your car runs. It begins to effect the other systems in your car and your efficiency goes way down, along with your gas mileage.
The same thing happens in our bodies when our liver becomes toxic. The liver does not function properly, ride the body of toxins, begins storing the toxins, then you become toxic. As this is happening, your other systems begin to be compromised and not work well. As long as this is happening, everything gets worse and worse. It is a snow ball effect.
Symptoms of a toxic liver:
Cellulite
Constipation
Weight gain
High cholesterol, your LDL become high and your HDL drops
Sugar cravings
Gas and bloating
Hormonal problems, cycle problems woman
Fatty liver disease, Non Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease
Poor memory, brain fog
Eye sight diminishing
Sleep issues
Skin problems
The list goes on and on, this is by no means exhaustive. Chances are in today's world, you have some degree of liver toxicity. That sucks!



The question then is what do you do about the problem, which is detrimental to your health and life?
First and foremost, take out all processed food from your diet.
Eliminate hydrogenated oils, vegetable oils like canola and soy. Read every label and if it says hydrogenated oils, place it back on the shelf and walk away. Do not cook olive oil to high temps and do not ever cook with flax seed oil. Cook with butter, lard, coconut oil, your stable oils.
On the note of oils and fats, eat fat, butter, coconut oil, the fat on your meat, this will help to clean your liver.
Vitamin A, retonal. High quality code liver oil is a great way to get this, along with eating liver.
Bone broths

Kombucha
Lemon, squeezing some fresh lemon in your water and also drinking warm water with a half a lemon first thing in the morning.
Deep breathing
Working on stress levelsEating real, whole foods
Watch what chemicals you are cleaning your house with. Some of those cleaners and air fresheners are toxic, switch to making your own and airing out your house.
Along with cleaning supplies, your beauty products can be dangerous. Shampoos, conditioner, lotions, make up, face cleaners. For great recipes for cleaning products and self care, check out: Wellness Mama's web page, she has some great stuff on there.

There are many other issue which could be contributing to your toxic liver and ways to cleanse and clean your all important liver. This list is a great place to begin, but if you need more help, let me know.

Saving the world one stick of butter at a time.
God's many blessing,
Jenn



Wednesday, July 4, 2012

Happy 4th of July

I just wanted to wish everyone in the Great U.S. of A. a Happy fourth of July!!!!!! I hope everyone has a wonderful day celebrating the birth of this great nation.
Thank you to all of our military for your sacrifices to give us this freedom.

God bless,
Jenn

Monday, July 2, 2012

Real Food Summit

This is going to be awesome!!!! I am supper excited about what Sean Croxton is doing from Under Ground Wellness He decided to put together and host the Real Food Summit, because eating healthy food should not be complicated. I could not agree with him more. It seems there are SOOOOO many ways of eating out there. They can become very complicated and cumbersome very quickly. Eat this at this time, but not that time, combine this food with that, but not that, or this was bad for you, but it is good for you now and on and on. I am sure most of you have ran into this problem. I know too many people who through their hands in the air and say it is too complicated, I do not understand it and I am going to eat what I  want because it does not matter. Food, supplement, health companies, magazines,  so called experts, they all need things convoluted so you will keep coming back. Remember, the health industry is a multi-billion dollar business a year. If they were straight forward and told you to just eat real food, as God made it, all of your fat, especially animal fat, and move more frequently, they would lose their money. This is Sean's goal with the summit, talking about eating real food and taking the complicated out of eating healthy. Check out the web site and sign up today for this monumental event! realfoodsummit.com

Saving the world one stick of butter at a time!
God bless,
Jenn