Oprah endorsed Shakeology!

Shakeology – The following is an article written by Susan Casey, O’s Editor in Chief.  It is so wonderful to see Oprah’s team of credibility shedding light on this fabulous superfood.  As usual, she and her team align themselves with the best.  Don’t take my word.  Read it for yourself.  If this doesn’t say it all…

By Susan Casey

Apr 05, 2011

O’s editor in chief travels to Peru to experience a trove of life-giving superfoods that just might revolutionize your view of nutrition.

Around 4 o’clock on any given morning, Darin Olien will walk into his Malibu, California, kitchen and make himself a smoothie. This will not be an ordinary drink. The other day, for example, he tossed the following into his blender: coconut water, fermented sprouted brown rice, maca, aloe vera juice, barley grass powder, kamut juice powder, almond butter, camu camu, avocado, goji, lucuma powder, noni juice, cacao nibs, MSM, maqui, bee pollen, sacha inchi oil, omega-3-DHA/EPA oil, Hawaiian deepwater salt, chia seeds, nopal, goat yogurt, luo han guo, and a powder called Shakeology.

If you’ve never heard of many of these ingredients, you’re not alone. But stay with me here, because they’re among the most powerful nutrients on Earth. Olien’s specialty is what’s known as “formulating,” taking wildly beneficial substances and combining them into something even more potent: a supplement, a snack, a tea, a medicine, a smoothie. Every food in nature contains a mix of proteins, fats, and carbohydrates, along with noncaloric vitamins, minerals, fibers-all of which fuel our cells-and each one has unique abilities that we really don’t understand, but it is now clear that some foods pack an extra biochemical punch. Camu camu fruit, for instance, provides the richest source of vitamin C known to exist. Maca, a hearty root that grows only in the high Andes, comes in yellow, red, and black varieties, boosts fertility, is said to balance hormones, and dispenses a day’s worth of kick-ass energy. Sacha inchi is another South American treasure, a protein-rich, metabolism-revving nut that delivers an omega-3 bonanza. Olien’s final ingredient, Shakeology, contains more than 70 components itself, a crazy cornucopia of good.

No one understands Shakeology better than Olien, who created it in 2008, after Carl Daikeler, CEO of the fitness company Beachbody, challenged him to come up with a supplement to match the tagline The Healthiest Meal of the Day. His customer was someone who wanted optimum wellness, wanted to lose weight, wanted cholesterol levels to drop-but had no intention of eating a platter of broccoli each day. Daikeler gave Olien no limits on quality, no cost/revenue restrictions; the goal was to shoot the moon, to seek out and combine the most extraordinary plants, fruits, nuts, herbs-nature’s secret weapons. And Olien found them: ashwagandha from China, cordyceps from Bhutan, yacon from Peru. An alphabet of vitamins and minerals from the purest sources. Prebiotics. Probiotics. Green tea and grapeseed extracts, chlorella and spirulina and hydrilla, a spectrum of enzymes. Since hitting the market in March 2009, more than 400,000 bags of Shakeology, at $119.95 each, have been sold.

Olien himself is a strapping guy, north of six feet and solid. He looks, in fact, like the steak-fed Midwestern varsity football player that he was, until a back injury derailed his athletic career. From that low point Olien had tried to rehabilitate himself using traditional methods-lots of animal protein, relentless physiotherapy-but it was only when he adopted a radically new diet of superfoods that he was able to regain his strength. This not only improved his health, it revealed his calling. “It was one of the greatest turns in my life,” Olien says, “because it got me into the question, ‘What can I do to fix this?’ I became very curious about the body, switched my major to exercise physiology and nutrition. Then I healed myself.” Over the years he also managed to help many others with their diet and fitness regimens, and Olien’s “concoctions,” his powders and bars and health innovations, began to attract attention.

On the first morning I met Olien I watched him doing squat jumps holding 40-pound weights, while holding his breath underwater. Another workout he likes to do involves harnessing himself to a 150-pound railroad tie and dragging it through thick sand. Whatever he eats needs to fuel these exploits, so people are often surprised to hear that his diet consists mostly of plants. Olien consumes no processed foods, no polysyllabic ingredients invented in labs, no high-fructose corn syrup or trans fats, no artificial flavorings, no antibiotic-laced dairy products, nothing that comes out of a drive-thru. In short, he doesn’t eat what’s generally on offer in the modern food world. “When people find out that I don’t eat this or I don’t eat that, I feel a sense of pity coming from them,” he says, “and I think, ‘Wow! You have no idea. I’m not deprived at all. Come to my kitchen! I’ll blow your mind.’”

Thing is, science is now catching up to something that nature has known all along: the rich greens, the vibrant yellows, the deep indigos of plants are key to our well-being. That meat we love so much? Proven to clog our arteries. Convenience foods-heavily sweetened and salted, laden with fat and chemicals-wreak havoc on everything from our immune systems to our moods to our weight. Here are the facts and they’re not very pretty: Americans are the fattest people ever in history. Obesity, a body composition topping 30 percent fat, is the most pressing health crisis we face, with 34 percent of the adult population falling into that category (plus 29 percent of all children). If you add in the merely overweight it’s closer to 68 percent. In the past 50 years the weight of the typical American citizen has increased, on average, by 25 pounds. If we continue at this rate, by 2050 every last person will have eaten himself into the danger zone.

“Every time you eat processed foods, you exclude from your diet not only the essential nutrients that we are aware of, but hundreds of other undiscovered phytonutrients that are crucial for normal human function,” Joel Fuhrman, MD, writes in his new book, Eat to Live: The Amazing Nutrient-Rich Program for Fast and Sustained Weight Loss, which stresses the importance of a diet full of high-quality produce. Mehmet Oz, MD, who wrote the foreword to Fuhrman’s book, believes that even a slight shift away from meat can improve your health. “What we really want to do is have people nudge themselves in the right direction,” he told me. “If you want to have a few bacon bits on your salad, God bless you, fine. That’s not where we’re losing the battle. We’re losing the battle when you have sausage for breakfast, a big pastrami sandwich for lunch, and pork chops for dinner.”

Yet we live in a mass-produced, big-box culture, where economic interests hold sway. Meat, corn, sugar-they come cheap, and we buy them. Plus, we tend to like the taste. But there are steep hidden costs in a food system that makes calories rather than nutrients-from the factory farms that treat animals like parts on an assembly line to the fact that obesity-related ailments like heart disease, stroke, and diabetes are skyrocketing and account for approximately $150 billion in healthcare expenses each year.

As both Fuhrman and Oz would attest, anyone consuming a steady diet of man-made edibles would benefit even from something as prosaic as lettuce, but far more intriguing foods exist. As Olien began to talk about the vegetables, fruits, grains, herbs, and other plants he was hunting, I realized there was an entire universe out there I didn’t know about. I had never heard of lucuma or sapote or aguaje. What the heck was gac? The list was long.

Learning more requires a passport, because in acquiring these superfoods Olien doesn’t simply call up a supplier with his FedEx number, he goes directly to the source.

In doing so he often ends up in extreme places, searching out plants that-although they may have been revered by past civilizations-are now largely forgotten. South America, with its jungles and rainforests and mountains, is especially rich. So when I heard that Olien was headed back to Peru, I invited myself along. I wanted to see firsthand what he was up to because it sounded so incredible to me, so mysterious and even magical. I wanted to taste these lost, powerful foods that had fueled warriors and emperors, plants with miraculous properties that had somehow almost vanished, disappearing beneath a sea of fast-food wrappers.

Lima

From the outside, Nicolaza Mendoza’s warehouse looks like any other drab building on the industrial fringe of a sprawling Latin American city. When I walked through the door, however, that impression was washed away by a wave of earthy scent. Colorful sacks were piled high on wooden palettes, each one stuffed with precious plants. Their names-una de gato, achiote, huasca-were written on the sacks in thick black marker. Mendoza, a small-statured woman with a serious face, is one of Peru’s most respected herbalists. She spoke no English; her daughter Luz Maria, a striking 32-year-old in a short black skirt and lavender eyeshadow, was there to translate.

“How do you say, ‘Hit the jackpot’ in Spanish?” Olien asked, smiling. He was carrying a list of substances he wanted to investigate, and it was a good bet that many were on the premises. Standing beside him, Bernd Neugebauer, PhD, surveyed the warehouse and nodded. At 59, with a mane of white hair and vivid blue eyes, Neugebauer has a distinguished air, bolstered by the four languages he speaks fluently and his provenance from one of Germany’s oldest forestry families. Neugebauer’s accomplishments and interests include cultivating organic aloe vera, beekeeping, shamanism training, and studying ancient farming methods. Currently he is restoring an entire Mayan village in the Yucatan. But his primary interest is soil. Only healthy, mineral-rich soil produces healthy, mineral-rich food, and the world’s topsoil is under great stress these days, overused, undernourished, and (due to increasing deforestation) prone to erode into the sea. Though he is an organic farming expert, Neugebauer has gone even beyond that, reaching into history to discover how past agricultural empires-Maya, Aztec, Inca-treated the land, and what we can learn from them. In 2006 Olien read an academic paper by Neugebauer about creating holistic and sustainable agricultural practices, and sought him out as a kindred spirit. Now the two team up often, with Neugebauer helping the farmers who grow Olien’s raw materials get the most out of their crops without pesticides or chemical fertilizers.

Olien’s relationship to his suppliers is a deeply personal one. He believes in cultivating relationships first, supporting indigenous practices, seeking the highest-quality products and paying generously for them. The farmers he works with have become his close friends. “It’s fair trade on steroids,” he says of his approach. To that end, every last leaf that now sat in Mendoza’s warehouse met this gold standard. The herbs here were locally grown and carefully harvested. Her collection was all the more impressive when you considered Peru’s outlandish biodiversity. Luz explained how her mother traversed the country constantly, from one extreme to another, from the Amazon to the Andes to the Pacific Coast and everywhere in between, seeking out each region’s botanical treasures. The stakes were high: Billion-dollar drugs had been obtained in the rapidly dwindling rainforest-antimicrobial, antipain, anticancer medications, among countless others-and yet scientists agreed that only a small fraction of nature’s pharmacopoeia had ever been studied. “I’m amazed by what she knows,” Luz said, shaking her head.

I walked down the aisles behind Mendoza and Olien, leaning over the herbs to examine them. Una de gato, or cat’s claw, was a vine that had been chopped into little shingles; it was adobe red and smelled like the primeval forest. I had seen it referenced in a number of books as an antiaging “superherb.” Recently scientists have discovered that the most prized plants and herbs in native cultures contain high levels of nutrients that contribute ferociously to cellular health in ways we are only beginning to understand; cat’s claw has been shown to fight infection, decrease inflammation, and repair DNA. “This is the real pharmacy,” Olien said, gesturing at the sacks. “Hippocrates said, ‘Let food be your medicine’-and there’s a lot of medicine out there.”

There was a row dedicated entirely to teas, lush manzanilla (chamomile), lemony cedron, eucalyptus, and menta blanca-white mint so strong it was as though an entire field had been squeezed into a teacup. Every smell was amplified. “Stand here for three minutes and just breathe deeply,” Neugebauer advised, “and you will be in wonderful condition.” The intensity of these substances was striking, given that we live in a diluted world, willing to eat a tomato that only vaguely tastes like a tomato, or an orange that looks orange only because it’s been shot full of dye.

One sack had frayed at the ends and its contents spilled out, revealing a root that looked like a thick, spiral cinnamon stick. I was examining it when Miguel Berumen, another member of Olien’s team, came over. Berumen was a walking superfoods encyclopedia, and the learning had started early. As a boy growing up outside Mexico City, he’d watched his grandmother heal family members with plants from her garden. “I’d get sick,” he recalled, “and she’d come over and brew up some herbs and say some prayers. That was just the logical thing to do.” When Berumen was asked a question about, say, sarsaparilla, the knowledge poured out, streams of words rushing and tumbling over themselves in excitement. “In ancient times they used this herb to make root beer. They also used sassafras. And manioc root to generate the bubbles!”

“Can you ask Nicolaza about kaniwa?” Olien asked Berumen. He’d mentioned kaniwa, a grain I’d never heard of, several times today.

“Kaniwa is a beautiful plant,” Neugebauer said, with admiration in his voice.

“It bounced off the page to me this morning,” Olien said, pointing to his notes. New quinoa, high Andes, he’d written in the margin. “We could sprout it. Make it a little more bioactive.”

Olien had explained to me how his formulas come together first by instinct, a gut knowing that eventually leads him into the lab, where everything will be rigorously tested. “I start with a question,” he said. “For Shakeology it was, ‘What do people need to thrive?’” From that point the different ingredients pop into his mind, inspirations bubble up, ideas appear-”and then I back into the science.” Once a product has been fine-tuned, Olien uses himself and his friends as guinea pigs. “That’s the ultimate test,” he said. “In your own body.”

The intricate synergies that keep our livers humming and our eyes focused and our brains remembering where we put the car keys are mirrored in the plant world. Each organism contains a universe within itself, countless components working together seamlessly to keep things in perfect balance. When Olien combines his raw materials-all of them functional foods-he’s seeking this same effect, in which the whole adds up to more than the sum of its parts. When we supplement our diets with specific vitamins-a vitamin D capsule, a CoQ10 pill-we’re doing the opposite: breaking nature’s systems apart. “The best example of this is the work that’s been done on vitamin A,” Oz had told me. “When you eat vitamin-A-rich foods like carrots, you reduce the risk of lung cancer. When you take vitamin A as a pill you increase the risk of lung cancer. How is that possible? It’s possible because when you take a carrot and put it into your mouth you don’t just get vitamin A, you get all the retinols. The different subtypes of all these different phytonutrients. And they’re in the perfect mix for us. Literally dozens of them in the right combinations-they’re the key that unlocks the cells’ abilities to defend themselves against cancer. If you take only a massive pharmaceutical dose of vitamin A, then you actually block the body’s ability to absorb the other components of the carrot.” The way these things operate, Oz said, is like a band playing in perfect tune: “The true benefit doesn’t come from just having the drum banging. You need the guitar, a little trumpet, a singer. That’s what makes the music.”

This vast, emerging alchemy was the most exciting part of his work, Olien agreed, stepping out of Mendoza’s warehouse into the hazy afternoon heat: “I’m not a fan of isolating. Who are we to separate things out? All of these herbs and vitamins have their buddies, and they want to come together.” He walked toward the bus that would take us from Lima into the wild folds of Peru. “It never ceases to amaze me,” he added, “watching the magic.”

Tarma

Fresh cacao is a strange and wonderful fruit. Outside, it’s a tough vermilion pod the size and shape of a toy football, but inside it contains another set of textures: a mass of wonky-shaped cubes nestled in a 3-D jigsaw puzzle, each with a furry white covering and a chewy bean in the center. When you bite into cacao the sensation is sexy and silky and delicious, kind of bitter and kind of sweet, with a darkly complex flavor that only hints at the chocolate it will eventually become.

“They called it the Food of the Gods,” Olien said, handing me another cube. “And it truly is.” He was wearing a pair of black shoes that slipped on like gloves, all five toes outlined, giving his feet the appearance of paws. It was perfect jungle footwear. We stood on the slippery hillside with three men from the small, organic cacao plantation where these fruit trees had been planted. Olien was always on the lookout for good sources of cacao, a key ingredient.

Botanists and herbalists-and superfood hunters-tend to get very worked up when describing cacao; its health attributes seem almost too good to be true. Cacao has more protective antioxidants than red wine, pomegranates, and blueberries combined. It’s a huge source of magnesium, a critical mineral for heart health, bone strength, and brainpower that many of us could use more of. These little beans contain a rainbow of minerals, a wallop of vitamin C, many essential fats, and the calming amino acid tryptophan, which in turn elevates levels of the happiness-inducing neurotransmitter serotonin. “Cacao is an absolutely perfect mood stabilizer,” Olien said. And more: The beans are rich in a wonderful substance called phenylethyl-amine (PEA) that our bodies produce when we fall in love; PEA also acts as a natural appetite suppressant. An aphrodisiac that helps you lose weight is so precious, in fact, that the Maya and Aztecs used cacao beans as currency, valuing them above gold.

“I want to make a convenient medicinal chocolate,” Olien said, holding up one of the pods. “As pure and raw as possible, all hand grown. It’d be like handing out delicious antidepressants to people!” To be honest, it was quite an idea: What if the foods we loved also happened to be incredibly good for us? What if, instead of doughnuts and nachos, we craved nature’s most exquisite gifts? What would the world look like if everyone functioned at peak energy, tipped the scales at their ideal weight, and ran around in a good mood? What if we didn’t need to take drugs to be happy or keep our hearts running smoothly or get a decent night’s sleep?

Neugebauer began to talk to the farmers, giving them some new ideas to fend off a fungus known as Monilia that was reducing their harvest. I watched him speaking to them in Spanish, kneeling down next to the trees and examining the soil. A walnut-skinned man in black rubber boots listened intently, a curved machete hanging from his belt. Standing at the edge of the path, Olien and Berumen were deep in conversation. “It can’t help but propel me into neurotransmitters,” I heard Olien say. His face was still smeared with red achiote dye from a stop we’d made earlier at a lowland jungle village called Pampa Miche, where we’d visited a tribe called the Ashaninka, renowned for their knowledge of local plants. Olien had stood by good-naturedly as a group of village women painted his face with scarlet stripes, looped boa constrictors around his neck, and dressed him in a native outfit consisting of a loose caftan, an elaborate sash of beads, and a jaunty straw hat.

Later, on an exploratory walk through the rainforest, he had downed a murky brown drink with a bitter flavor and the texture of phlegm. “What are the medicinals in this?” he asked Nuria, a sturdy woman in a red headscarf. She responded in a gale of Spanish, gesturing at the towering trees.

“Five different tree barks,” Neugebauer translated.

“Para potencia!” Nuria stressed. The women erupted in giggles.

Olien went on to sample wild cashew nut, a reddish fruit shaped like a small bell pepper. The shell of the nut contains a burning acid (something Olien had learned the hard way in Mexico last year, and ended up having the skin of his lips peel off). Stepping off the path, one of the Ashaninka men, who happened to be carrying a small monkey, reached up with a long knife and cut into the trunk of a nearby tree. A thick red sap began to ooze out. “Sangre de grado,” Berumen said, leaning over to examine it. “Dragon’s blood!”

This was a sighting: Sangre de grado is a substance so valuable and rare that counterfeit versions often show up in the markets. Used externally as a salve, it acts as a second skin to close wounds and stop infection; taken internally it heals ulcers and other stomach ailments. Dragon’s blood also exhibits antitumor and antiviral activity, qualities that have captured the pharmaceutical industry’s attention.

Nuria rubbed a few drops onto Olien’s forearm. The sap first looked red, then quickly turned a shimmery golden, before morphing again to a soapy white. “It’s sticky,” he said, touching it. “That’s how you know it’s really good,” Berumen said. “When it gets creamy like that.”

The visual effect was startling. The dark red liquid stood out against the light bark, as though the tree really were bleeding. It looked eerily like a human arm or leg. Olien traced the wound, letting the liquid drip onto his fingers. He was completely transfixed, and he stood there for several minutes, oblivious to anything else around him, even the scampering monkeys.

Junin

At 14,000 feet in the Andes, not much grows in Junin. There is one noteworthy exception: maca. This windblasted place is the maca capital of the world, and for that Olien loves it. “Ah, yeahhh,” he said as the lunar vistas rolled by, dust-colored barren hillsides dotted with the tiny figures of llamas and vicunas. The more I’d heard about maca, the more fantastic this little tuber seemed: A relative of the radish, it has been cultivated for 2,000 years in these parts. Maca is an adaptogen, Olien said, explaining how the brutal terrain had bred into the plant a kind of survivors’ guile that enabled it to respond to any conditions. In the body it helps balance whatever’s out of whack, particularly hormones. It boosts endurance, allowing people (and animals) to work long days at high altitude. Incan warriors liked to take maca before going into battle. In Junin, the local people ate it roasted, stewed, marinated, dried, fermented, made into tea. But for all its benefits, maca had flirted with extinction. In 1979 only 70 acres of it could be found in Peru. Since then its stock as a superfood has been steadily rising, and small farmers have started planting it again, realizing it’s worth far more in the marketplace than potatoes.

We were headed to visit Dina Guere Vega, a maca farmer whom Olien had been working with for six years. She and her family lived in a jumbled compound of low buildings that included a warehouse filled with maca bulbs. Guere Vega was a pocket-size woman with large brown eyes and a brilliant smile, bundled in a hand-knit alpaca sweater, and she greeted Olien, Berumen, and Neugebauer like family. Her husband stood beside her, wearing a wool hat with earflaps. Outside the wind howled, shaking the roof.

The smell of maca is intense and unique, like earth meets nuts meets a wood fire with undertones of licorice and wasabi, and it filled the warehouse-sacks of maca lined the walls. On one side of the building two women sorted through a sea of bulbs spread across a tarp. Olien reached into an open bag and pulled out a handful. The root looked like a petrified fig. “Powerful stuff,” he said. “This is dried. Takes about three months.” After that it would be carefully powdered and shipped to the United States. Maca’s strong odor (and that of other pungent herbs) had challenged Olien when it came to perfecting Shakeology’s taste without resorting to artificial ingredients. “I spent a year trying to get it right,” he said, describing the two flavors that resulted, chocolate and greenberry. “Because if I didn’t, no one in Middle America would drink it. You have to meet them in the place where they can receive it.”

Dina and her husband reappeared holding trays of a golden liquid. “Liquor de maca!” Neugebauer said, reaching for a glass with a somewhat shaky hand. Since our arrival we’d been chewing coca leaves, the native remedy for altitude sickness, but he was feeling the elevation, and hoped that a little maca toddy would clear that up. We had three rounds of the stuff and later we would drink more maca, blended with dark beer and papaya. Its effect was smooth and kicky, like stepping on the accelerator of a fine sports car. As Olien said, it was an easy plant to love. The locals felt the same way and had even installed a 70-foot-high, shocking purple maca monument in the nearby town of Huayre.

But the picture wasn’t entirely rosy. Part of Neugebauer’s task here was to solve a pressing problem: Over the past year Dina’s fields had been producing far less maca, and the plants that were growing had shrunk dramatically in size. Dina thought that climate change was the culprit, erratic weather patterns bringing warmer temperatures and rain out of season. Neugebauer, however, believed a change in planting methods would not only restore her maca yield but double it. The two of them hunkered on a couch in the drafty room with wool caps pulled low over their heads. “He wants her to use a crane rather than a tractor,” Berumen translated. “To reach out and loosen a little area without turning the soil over. And he doesn’t think she’s digging deep enough.” Neugebauer also explained how he had resurrected the chaquitaclla, an Incan maca-planting tool shaped like a spear gun: “I took it into a machinedesign shop in Germany and told them, ‘Please mechanize this.’”

As old as maca’s tradition was, I could see that much of what was happening here was new. “Five years ago, none of this existed,” Olien said, surveying Dina’s compound, where a 2,000-year-old crop was being reintroduced to the world. Though we tend to think of progress as a straight charge ahead-more, new, bigger, faster-in maca’s case, moving forward required going back in time. I recalled a conversation I’d had with William Li, a Harvard-trained MD and the cofounder of the Angiogenesis Foundation, a vanguard group that’s proving how, at the molecular level, the foods we eat have a direct impact on whether our bodies are vulnerable to cancer. “Today we’re at a very awkward moment, I think, in human existence as it relates to food and health,” Li had said, “where we know intrinsically that there’s more to these things than we concretely recognize. And there’s a lot of historical stuff that’s been lost. How do we rediscover that? How do we take ourselves out of this cereal box?”

“I mean, why not think about trying to replace wheat with maca, for example,” Neugebauer had mused earlier. “Maca is the absolute superfood. Wheat has all sorts of problems.” On the surface this sounds preposterous-but is it? Considering that we’ve adopted a food system that’s created massive increases in both obesity and hunger, where prices are spiraling out of control, and monoculture and genetic modification work in opposition to nature’s strategy of endless diversity, what these maca fields really represented, I thought, were ancient yet urgent ideas about how to live.

Huanco

“What does this look like?” Berumen asked, holding up the aguaje fruit in the open-air market.

“A hand grenade?” I said. Because it did.

“An ovary!”

The aguaje is a huge source of phyto-estrogens, Berumen said, and a perfect example of biomimicry in action. In other words, even before there were textbooks and search engines, nature had given us very clear directions. It’s no accident that walnuts, with their squiggly oval hemispheres, are the ultimate brain food. Or that a plant the rainforest natives call chanca piedra (“stone breaker” in English), which produces tiny green balls, is a natural remedy for kidney stones. Or that dragon’s blood, the sap that acts as a coagulant, actually bleeds out of the tree.

We stood in an aisle of the Huanuco market, squeezing aside as people bustled past. A short woman in a flouncy skirt walked by with a pig on a leash; another woman crouched on the ground next to a net bag writhing with tiny chicks. Fruits and vegetables were heaped everywhere. A light rain drizzled outside. Huanuco is a midsize city in central Peru, usefully located between the sierra and the high jungle. If you’re a farmer, there’s a lot of business to do here.

“The phytoestrogenic property of aguaje is different than soy,” Berumen continued, citing another plant with strong hormonal effects. “It actually assists the body in making estrogen.” He cut into the aguaje and handed me a piece. The fruit was bright orange, with the dry texture of cheese. The vivid colors in fruits and vegetables-created by chemicals called flavonoids-signal power. So far scientists have identified about 6,000 of these compounds-names like peonidin, kaempferol, apigenin, hesperitin, quercetin-but undoubtedly, thousands more exist. Flavonoids have been shown to improve brain function, motor skills, blood flow; they protect cells from inflammation and potential damage that can lead to cancer.

Eating a variety of plants is the best way to assure your body a wide array of flavonoids; in Peru, I’d discovered, this wasn’t a problem. Since my arrival I’d been presented with a steady stream of unknown foods. Along with cacao, maca, and aguaje I’d tried granadilla, a fruit that cracks open with a snap, revealing a fist-size mass of seeds, each covered in a translucent membrane. The seeds were crunchy and sour, the membrane was soft and sweet, the combination was sublime. Olien had produced a bag full of dried aguaymanto, raisinlike fruits with a sharp citrusy tang. Berumen had talked about “monster fruit”-a corncob-shaped plant that tasted like a cross between a guava and a pineapple-and declared it “the most delicious thing ever.” But Monstera deliciosa (its Latin name) had to be carefully ripened and prepared, he warned: “If you bite into it fresh, it’s like eating razors. It cuts up your whole mouth.” There was black sapote, a fruit that tasted like chocolate pudding, and the succinctly named peanut butter fruit. In the market we had also come across lucuma, a fruit Olien likes for its mild, butterscotchy taste (in Peru, lucuma-flavored ice cream is as popular as chocolate or vanilla). “It blends well,” he said, slicing the skin off like that of a mango. “Balances out the astringents.” The fruit had a soft, cakey texture. “It’s one of the most mineral-rich foods in the world,” Berumen added.

We walked past rows of fish on ice, midsize animal carcasses dangling from hooks, rafts of flowers and sheaves of herbs. A heavyset woman in fuchsia lipstick presided over bushels of coca leaves. In a back corner, a group of older ladies had gathered around two large pots. One of them, an Indian woman with a long braid, ladled something that looked like porridge into a metal bowl. “Medicina!” she said, pointing at Olien and then handing the bowl to him. Then she pointed to her stomach: “Medicina!” she stressed again, flashing a smile that revealed many missing teeth.

“Ah, the gringo needs some medicine,” Olien said, raising an eyebrow. “What is this?” he asked Berumen to inquire. The stuff in the bowl smelled acrid, even rotten. Berumen spoke to the women in Spanish and then after a moment he turned to us. “It’s called tocosh,” he said. “A traditional Andean food made from fermented potatoes.” The process, he translated, involved burying the potatoes in river soil for up to two years. Amazingly, this produced a natural penicillin.

Olien raised a gloopy spoonful to his mouth, hesitated for a moment, and then bravely swallowed it. Even from three feet away the aroma made my eyes water. “It’s a lot better than it smells,” he said, delivering the verdict. “It’s actually good.” I tried it, and agreed. The tocosh was warm and subtly sweet, with hints of vanilla. There was something comforting about it, and I could feel my body wanting more. Later I would learn that tocosh had been an Incan delicacy, and that even in sophisticated cities like Lima, Peruvian doctors still prescribed it for stomach disorders, and for its overall healthful effects.

“Oh my God, would I like to see the nutrient content on this,” Olien said, taking another spoonful. “Because that is not a potato anymore. It’s a completely new structure.” Fermenting a food, he explained, was like turbocharging it. This is the process, of course, that turns grapes into wine, milk into cheese. Essentially you’re letting food go bad in a good way, by creating an oxygen-free environment around it. During fermentation, benevolent armies of bacteria break down starches to sugars; those are converted to health-enhancing alcohols and acids. Whole new vitamins, enzymes, and amino acids can spring up. The result is a food with alchemical potency. This technique is so ancient that we don’t have any records of its origin, but historians believe it goes back at least 9,000 years, to China.

“If you look at the history of food, there’s been this tribalism,” William Li had pointed out. “Things are passed down-and there’s so much we don’t know. Space is a frontier. Oceans are a frontier. I think food is a whole other frontier,” he said. “And it’s not something you have to train with NASA for, or put on scuba gear for. It’s sitting in front of us every single day.”

Ambo

The Yacon farm was perched at the top of a road that zigzagged up the mountainside in a series of hairpin turns. The road was narrow and crumbly with scree, its thin ribbon of shoulder edged by sheer cliffs. There were no guardrails. I watched the bus driver hunch over the wheel in tense concentration, muttering under his breath. The view at the top, however, was worth the white-knuckle ride. The farm was tucked in a pristine valley glowing with more shades of green than the spectrum seemed able to hold, ringed by majestic peaks.

“Have I talked to you about yacon?” Olien asked, describing the potato-shaped vegetable that was, improbably, a cousin of the sunflower. “It’s an amazing food, a tuber that has a bunch of different sugars in it.” The most important of these sugars is a rare type known as fructooligosaccharide (FOS), and yacon is the richest known source of it. Although FOS tastes beautifully sweet, it’s not processed in the body like other sugars because we lack the enzymes to digest it (making it perfect for diabetics-and dieters, because few calories are absorbed). But rather than being expelled like some alien substance, on its way through your body yacon does a number of helpful things. It acts as a prebiotic, encouraging healthy bacteria in your intestines and colon, and aids in fat metabolism, cholesterol management, vitamin absorption, blood sugar regulation, even bone density. “It could be a sweetener solution for the entire planet,” Olien said.

The farm’s owner was a local man named Luis Alva, known to his friends as Lucho. He was burly, in his 30s with a wide face that looked both tough and kind. Alva had a quiet gravitas, which made sense when you learned what he’d been through on his family land. Twenty years ago, at a house only a mile away, his father was killed by the Shining Path, the leftist guerrillas who brutalized Peru during the ’80s and ’90s (and remain on the U.S. State Department’s list of terrorist groups). It was not a tragedy that anyone around here had forgotten. But today Lucho was buoyant, glad to see Olien and Berumen again, and to meet the rest of us.

In 2006 Berumen had been trolling the Internet and came across an arcane reference to yacon. He sent it to Olien, who was astonished by the “perfect storm of health benefits” the plant seemed to provide. “I thought, ‘This is an amazing product,’” Olien recalled. “You can’t get it anywhere, not even online. And then I was like a pit bull. I just kept saying, ‘We gotta bring it here.’ And maybe I got ahead of myself. ” He laughed, then added: “But that inspired all of what’s growing here.”

The next morning we headed to the fields in Alva’s truck, driving up a red dirt road that also served as a thoroughfare for Andean shepherdesses and their flocks.

The women wore bright shirts and shawls in magenta, canary, emerald, tangerine, turquoise, along with the traditional pleated wool skirts and black flat-brimmed hats, which they decorated with bits of tinsel. We passed a group of alpacas, shaggy white beasts with unicornfaces and cranky dispositions, and a cow with long eyelashes that was mowing some bushes.

Yacon produces large green leaves that gave Alva’s fields a lush appearance, like a vast carpet of salad. “Historically, yacon was called the apple of the Earth,” Berumen noted. After sitting in the sun, apparently, it literally tastes like an apple, though the tuber itself resembles a yam. “You can dehydrate it, extract juice, or make a syrup out of it,” Berumen said. I watched as a field hand pulled up a plant, its roots caked with soil. Alva peeled the brown skin with a knife. Inside, the yacon was crystal white with tiny violet dots around its perimeter. It had an icy, juicy look and a crisp texture and it tasted fresh and light, like highly delicious air or a ghost carrot. I could have eaten it all day. “No applicacion de herbicida,” Lucho said. “Nada, nada, nada.” He used only organic fertilizer in his fields, no chemicals at all.

The spectacular valley, the happy workers, the mountain air, the bountiful crops-no one could argue against this as an ideal. Earlier I’d asked Olien what I thought was a key question: Is it possible to mass-produce this kind of quality? “I think we’re proving that you can,” he answered without hesitation. He added, “If you get the highest nutritional value from your food, you need less of it. The vacant foods-we need more of them, because they’re posers. They’re empty.”

He was right. It was really that simple: The body with its unknown galaxies of cells, its unseen cogs and wheels, its ropes and coils of DNA, needs to be nourished, and it doesn’t thrive on red dye #40 or propylene glycol or butylated hydroxyanisole with a ciprofloxacin chaser. “These plants you’re writing about have powers that are sacred,” Oz had stressed. “That word belongs in your story.” And these sacred foods do not have to remain in backcountry Peru. They could be available to all if we were willing to think and farm and eat differently.

Alva pulled his truck over to the side of the road and pointed to a field where eight varieties of yacon were growing. He wanted to see which type would do best in this environment, and produce the most FOS. The winner would be a kind of superyacon, a super-superfood. Olien opened the passenger door and got out, walking to the edge of the field. Below he could see the blue rooftops of a tiny school, kids playing soccer in front of it. The workers moved among more yacon, small figures bent in the furrows, and the Arischaca River rushed in the background while the Andean women tended their sheep in the peacefulness and fullness that was now here. The valley stretched out before him, green and red, the vertiginous perfection of it all, the terraced fields, the veins of soil. In the gold afternoon light Olien sat down in the yacon field, among the floppy leaves. And then he lay back and closed his eyes, smiling.

 WANT A FREE SAMPLE?   EMAIL ME AT ERIN4FITNESS@GMAIL.COM

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Willing to step out of the boat for Jesus?

It will be an entirely different way to eat at a restaurant.

A former Baptist pastor by the name of Reggie MacNeal and his Christian Community had a fondness for Starbucks coffee.  And if they stopped at a Starbucks as they went about their daily activities they decided to act on a God given thought of praying for whoever prepared their order.  Their objective was to tell the server, this stranger, what they were going to do … even if he did not exhibit a need … and then to even step out of their boat further and get more personal … and ask him … if there was anything in particular they could pray about for him.

(This story comes from my dad)

So ….. what are the opportunities a restaurant offers you that very few other places do? …………. The answer …… is a captive audience…… Let me explain. Even though sometimes we might not think our server heard what we said ….. it is their job to listen to us. ……… and to keep coming back to us.  Our server……. for the time we spend at their table ……is captive to us. ………………. And it is even in their best interest to be kind to us. …. And so what exactly did Reggie teach me to do with this captive audience…….ASK MY SERVER IF I COULD PRAY FOR THEM!!!

Let me tell you what can happen when you ask a server at a restaurant if you can pray for them … and for what!

• My wife and I were in Cincinnati one day, and when we asked our waitress, whose name is Becky, if we could pray for her … and if she had any requests … she just froze … we didn’t know what to think … and then she burst into tears. It seems her family had just recently buried a nephew who died of cancer. We wept with her, hugged a total stranger and were fed by heavenly food from God that evening … before our meal was even ordered.
• About two months ago our waitress confessed she wasn’t a bad girl but after her church had given her a car because she was a single mother and needed transportation, she had been caught speeding and lost the car. She asked us to pray for her to “not screw up again”
• Various mothers have asked us to pray for their sons or in-laws serving our country in Iraq or Afghanistan.
• Only one has said no. We asked her if we could buy her a Bible and she said she had one. So please pray for Mary at Big Boy in Perrysburg, Ohio to be further watered and fed so someday she opens it and she also is fed.
• And then there was Kelly. When dad and I sat down I told myself to not forget to ask her if we could pray for her. So after we ordered I asked her. We’ve had Kelly as our waitress before so I didn’t need to tell her we were going to ask God to bless our meal and if we could also pray for her, she knew the routine. ….. Well … Kelly looked like she wanted to say something but ….. she walked away; a second later I felt a hand on my shoulder, it was Kelly. She said, “I need you to pray for me to put God in control of my life!” Whoa …. I was a little stunned. Usually I get requests about school … or a surgery for a loved one … or maybe a job for someone they know.  And sometimes the server is just trying to be nice and get on with their job, and has no specific requests ………Kelly’s request surprised me. So after she left, dad and I said our prayer …. which we usually do before the food arrives. Then as soon as we were finished praying she was back again and asked me to also pray, “that her old man would get a job. He’s been off work for a year and I’ve been working two jobs.” Wow! ……. Shortly after that day I gave Kelly a copy of one of my pastor’s sermons. The theme was F R O G  ….. FULLY RELY ON GOD!             Amazing coincidence isn’t it that God gave my pastor, the words for a sermon specifically about what Kelly requested we pray for. This God we worship is just is awesome!!!!!  ……. Or ….. was it …… just a coincidence? ……………Oh, by the way …….. a week or so later … Kelly told me her “old man” got a job.
• And just recently Dad and I sat down at a table at Bob Evans and our server Chris walked up … and she was down-right rude to us because before she even asked us what we wanted to eat …. she told us ……. She didn’t ask ….….. she told us what she wanted us to pray for!

I have not once … carried my Bible into a restaurant …. cleared off a table … jumped up and started preaching. …….. I have not once asked a server about their faith … or even if they go to church! …………. But do you know what I am doing …….…… I’m evangelizing …. I’m planting seeds …… I’m not asking them to believe in Jesus ….. I’m just witnessing …. Who know’s ……. maybe this server …….. never before …….. even had someone pray for them …..

SO YOU READY TO STEP OUT OF THE BOAT?

WHAT  EXACTLY  DO  WE  SAY?

1. Very simply, after our server has taken the food order ….
2. We ask them what their name is, in case we can’t read it on their name tag
3. We call them by name ….. and tell them we are going to ask God to bless our meal
4. And then we ask if we can pray for them.
5. I usually then wait for them to say yes and then ask if they have any requests.

Simply … just those words; nothing more.

***You know what … you don’t even have to worry about being asked any questions you may feel inadequate in answering ….. and why do I say this …. because even though they are captive to us ………..…. they’re still working. They do not have time to be involved in a long discussion. So, while they’re working ….. we’re merely showing the Love of Jesus in a tangible way …… by being concerned about our server ……. by asking if we can pray for them.

Not all of the servers will give you a specific request. But don’t be disappointed. Believe me …….. you are still furthering the kingdom and ….. you’re on the field.

Depending on the request of your server, the amount you tip may be greater than you‘ve ever tipped before.

Your personal walk with the Lord will be closer when you step out of your comfort zone and ask your server if you can pray for them!!!

Tagged: christianchristjesuseatingrestuarantsfoodpraying for othersprayerliving your life for Christhelping others

6 ways to FIRE up your METABOLISM!

By Monica Ciociola

It can be discouraging when your results don’t seem to match the efforts you’re putting into getting in shape. But instead of giving up on your fitness program, or worse, diving into the Twinkies® (trust me, you’ll regret it!), try making just a few easy changes to your diet and your lifestyle. Sometimes the smallest things—like getting more protein in the morning or enough rest at night—can lead to the biggest weight loss surprises.

1. Don’t skip breakfast. Eating lean protein in the morning will help get your metabolism revved up for the day ahead. Protein from egg whites, for instance, will help stabilize your blood sugar, make you feel fuller, and keep you from overeating later in the day.
2. Resistance training. Working out with some form of resistance—resistance bands, weights, or a stability ball—helps build your muscles. And because one pound of muscle burns way more calories than a pound of fat does, the more muscle you have on your body, the higher your metabolic rate will be.
3. Interval training. Short 10-minute explosive cardio sessions followed by less intense cardio for the same amount of time will rev up your metabolism. For some of the best interval training workouts, check out INSANITY® or TurboFire®.
4. Get your beauty rest. Human growth hormone works directly on cells to increase your metabolic rate by 15 to 20 percent and can only be produced during the hours of deep sleep. So make sure you get a good night’s sleep!
5. The magic mix. At mealtime, try consuming lean proteins from chicken and white fish along with complex carbohydrates from fruits and veggies. This magical combination will speed up your metabolic rate as food is transformed into usable nutrients, and you’ll build muscle and burn fat during the digestive process.
6. ¡Ay, caliente! Studies show that hot peppers, spices, green teas, and caffeine can give your metabolism a sudden surge by stimulating the release of stress hormones. If jalapeño and cayenne make you wince, turn to our all-natural Slimming Formula supplement, which contains green tea, for the same metabolism-boosting effect.

Twinkies is a registered trademark of Hostess Brands, Inc.

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Big Breakfasts for Big Results

By Joe Wilkes

Breakfast. It seems like forever since Mom told us breakfast is the most important meal of the day, but one study shows it’s actually true—she wasn’t just nagging us. Breakfast is a key component of weight management: A study presented at the 90th annual meeting of the Endocrine Society showed that participants who consumed large breakfasts high in protein and carbohydrates followed by a low-carb, low calorie diet for the rest of the day lost almost five times as much weight as the participants who followed a low-carb, high-protein diet throughout the day. So what’s the big deal about breakfast? And what is a big breakfast anyway? It doesn’t seem like the lumberjack special at the local diner would do much to get the pounds off, so what should we be eating?

The study supported the idea that when we wake up in the morning, our bodies want food. You’ve burned through all the fuel from the previous day, and now your body’s ready to burn anything—even muscle—to get a jump-start on the day. And if you skip breakfast, muscle is indeed what your body will burn. Later in the day, your brain is still in starvation mode from breakfast (or lack thereof), so your body will store all the calories you eat as adipose tissue, or fat, to save up for the next day when you try to starve it again. This study also found that levels of serotonin, the chemical responsible for controlling cravings, were much higher in the morning, which is why breakfast is the meal so many of us are willing to skip. But if our bodies are left unfed, our serotonin levels drop, and our bodies’ craving for sweets begin to rise throughout the day.

But before you hit McDonald’s for their 800-calorie Big Breakfast, or worse, their 1,150-calorie Deluxe Breakfast, or swing by Denny’s for a 740-calorie Grand Slam or 950-calorie All-American Slam with hash browns, keep in mind, these weren’t the breakfasts the study participants consumed. The big-breakfast group had a 610-calorie breakfast as part of a 1,240-calorie day. Breakfasts included milk, lean meat, cheese, whole grains, a serving of healthy fat, and one ounce of chocolate or candy to defray the craving for sweets. The other group’s participants consumed 1,085 calories per day as part of a high-protein, low-carb diet; only 290 of their daily calories were consumed at breakfast. Both groups were on their respective diets for eight months. The high-protein group lost an average of nine pounds, but the big-breakfast group lost an average of 40 pounds. And, perhaps not surprisingly, the big-breakfast group complained less about cravings and hunger.

The big-breakfast group’s breakfast consisted of 58 grams of carbs, 47 grams of protein, and 22 grams of fat. Study reviewers attribute some of the success of the big-breakfast group to the fact that the protein and healthy fats eaten kept the participants full and reduced cravings. They also said that nutritional requirements were well met and that there weren’t empty calories consumed, because the breakfasts included lots of whole grains, fruits, lean proteins, and healthy unsaturated fats. So bad news for the lumberjack-special devotees—a big plate of greasy hash browns, bacon, and biscuits with gravy isn’t going to get the job done, unless the job we’re discussing is clogging your arteries.

Here are some healthy big breakfasts, similar to the ones consumed by the study’s participants.

Chicken and the Egg

2 large eggs, scrambled

2 slices whole wheat toast

1 boneless, skinless chicken breast, grilled

1 grapefruit

589 calories, 52 grams carbohydrates, 48 grams protein, 19 grams fat, 5.5 grams saturated fat, 12 grams fiber.

Oats ‘n’ Berries Breakfast

1 packet plain instant oatmeal, prepared, with 1 scoop Beachbody® Whey Protein Powder

1 cup fresh blueberries

3 oz. roasted turkey breast

1 large hard-boiled egg

1 oz. dark chocolate

631 calories, 62 grams carbohydrates, 47 grams protein, 21 grams fat. 8 grams saturated fat, 10 grams fiber.

Two Egg Sandwiches

2 whole wheat English muffins, toasted

2 large poached eggs

2 slices low-fat Swiss cheese

2 slices Canadian bacon, grilled

597 calories, 57 grams carbohydrates, 45 grams protein, 13 grams fat, 5 grams saturated fat, 8 grams fiber.

Vegetarian Breakfast

1 cup cottage cheese (2% milk fat)

1 cup sliced peaches, canned in juice, not syrup

1 slice whole wheat toast

1/2 avocado

2 vegetarian sausage links, cooked

621 calories, 62.5 grams carbohydrates, 47 grams protein, 26.5 grams fat, 4.5 grams saturated fat, 16.5 grams fiber.

Pescetarian Breakfast

1 6-oz. can light tuna, canned in water, drained

2 Tbsp. mayonnaise (preferably olive oil- or canola oil-based)

2 slices whole wheat toast

1 oz. dark chocolate

592 calories, 45 grams carbohydrates, 51 grams protein, 22 grams fat, 7 grams saturated fat, 10 grams fiber.

Reference http://www.endo-society.org/media/ENDO-08/research/New-weight-loss-diet-recommends-high-carb.cfm

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25 Healthy Snacks for Kids

When a snack attack strikes, refuel with these nutrition-packed snacks.

Easy, Tasty (and Healthy) Snacks

You may need an adult to help with some of these snacks.

1. Peel a banana and dip it in yogurt. Roll in crushed cereal and freeze.

2. Spread celery sticks with peanut butter or low-fat cream cheese. Top with raisins. Enjoy your “ants on a log.”

3. Stuff a whole-grain pita pocket with ricotta cheese and Granny Smith apple slices. Add a dash ofcinnamon.

4. Mix together ready-to-eat cereal, dried fruit and nuts in a sandwich bag for an on-the-go snack.

5. Smear a scoop of frozen yogurt on two graham crackers and add sliced banana to make a yummy sandwich.

6. Top low-fat vanilla yogurt with crunchy granola and sprinkle with blueberries.

7. Microwave a small baked potato. Top with reduced-fat cheddar cheese and salsa.

8. Make snack kabobs. Put cubes of low-fat cheese and grapes on pretzel sticks.

9. Toast a whole grain waffle and top with low-fat yogurt and sliced peaches.

10. Spread peanut butter on apple slices.

11. Blend low-fat milk, frozen strawberries and a banana for thirty seconds for a delicious smoothie.

12. Make a mini-sandwich with tuna or egg salad on a dinner roll.

13. Sprinkle grated Monterey Jack cheese over a corn tortilla; fold in half and microwave for twenty seconds. Top with salsa.

14. Toss dried cranberries and chopped walnuts in instant oatmeal

15. Mix together peanut butter and cornflakes in a bowl. Shape into balls and roll in crushed graham crackers.

16. Microwave a cup of tomato or vegetable soup and enjoy with whole grain crackers.

17. Fill a waffle cone with cut-up fruit and top with low-fat vanilla yogurt.

18. Sprinkle grated Parmesan cheese on hot popcorn.

19. Banana Split: Top a banana with low-fat vanilla and strawberry frozen yogurt. Sprinkle with your favorite whole-grain cereal.

20. Sandwich Cut-Outs: Make a sandwich on whole grain bread. Cut out your favorite

shape using a big cookie cutter. Eat the fun shape and the edges, too!

21. Spread mustard on a flour tortilla. Top with a slice of turkey or ham, low-fat cheese and lettuce. Then roll it up.

22. Mini Pizza: Toast an English muffin, drizzle with pizza sauce and sprinkle with low-fat mozzarella cheese.

23. Rocky Road: Break a graham cracker into bite-size pieces. Add to low-fat chocolate

pudding along with a few miniature marshmallows.

24. Inside-Out Sandwich: Spread mustard on a slice of deli turkey. Wrap around a sesame breadstick.

25. Parfait: Layer vanilla yogurt and mandarin oranges or blueberries in a tall glass. Top with a sprinkle of granola.

Dip it! Bonus Snacks

Dip baby carrots and cherry tomatoes in low-fat ranch dressing.

Dip strawberries or apple slices in low-fat yogurt.

Dip pretzels in mustard.

Dip pita chips in hummus.

Dip graham crackers in applesauce.

Dip baked tortilla chips in bean dip.

Dip animal crackers in low-fat pudding.

Dip bread sticks in salsa.

Dip a granola bar in low-fat yogurt.

Dip mini-toaster waffles in cinnamon applesauce.

Authored by American Dietetic Association staff registered dietitians.

Tagged: healthy eatinghealthy cookinghealthy snacksgood foodmealsexercisedietingkidschildreneasyquick

The Truth about Cellulite

The Truth about Cellulite from IDEA Fitness Journal 2010 -

Cellulite, a “dimpling” appearance on the thighs, buttocks and sometimes lower abdomen and upper arms of females, is many women’s enemy. Unfortunately, about 85% of postpubertal women have a form of it (Avram 2004; Rawlings 2006). The condition, however, is rarely observed in males.

Below, Len Kravitz, PhD, program coordinator of exercise science and a researcher at the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, and Nicole J. Achenbach, a graduate student in physical therapy, give answers to several questions about cellulite.

What Is Cellulite?

Skin 101: The outermost layer of skin is referred to as the epidermis. Immediately under this is the dermis. The next layer of tissue is the first of two layers of subcutaneous fat—fat beneath the skin (Rawlings 2006). Cellulite originates in this first region of the subcutaneous fat (Rawlings 2006; Avram 2004). According to the scientific explanation, cellulite is caused by small protrusions of fat into the dermis.

Losing Cellulite

Want to improve the look of your cellulite? Consider these suggestions.

1. Healthy eating and exercise are excellent ways to start improving cellulite appearance (Avram 2004); visible cellulite is reduced in females who lose weight (Sadick & Magro 2007). Imple­ment a calorie-restricted diet plan and a comprehensive exercise program (cardiovascular and resistance training) to reduce some underlying body fat.
2. Subcutaneous fat is layered on top of muscle. Therefore, if the muscles in your hips, thighs and buttocks are weak and soft, this will contribute to the “uneven” view on the skin surface (Rossi & Vergnanini 2000). Therefore, resistance training can help minimize the appearance of cellulite.
3. Don’t invest your hopes and money in liposuction, subcision, injectables, skin kneading and manipulation techniques, thermotherapy, topical ointments and herbals for cellulite management, as there is little evidence supporting their effectiveness.
4. Laser therapy is noninvasive, has few side effects and shows great promise for reducing the appearance of cellulite (Avram 2004).

References

Avram, M. 2004. Cellulite: A review of its physiology and treatment. Journal of Cosmetic and Laser Therapy, 6, 181–85.

Del Pino, E., et al. 2006. Effect of controlled volumetric tissue heating with radiofrequency on cellulite and the subcutaneous tissue of the buttocks and thighs. Journal of Drugs in Dermatology, 5 (8), 709–17.

Fink, J.S., et al. 2006. Use of intense pulsed light and a retinyl-based cream as a potential treatment for cellulite: A pilot study. Journal of Cosmetic Dermatology, 5, 254–62.

Rawlings, A.V. 2006. Cellulite and its treatment. International Journal of Cosmetic Science, 28, 175–90.

Rosenbaum, M., et al. 1998. An exploratory investigation of the morphology and biochemistry of cellulite. Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, 101, 1934–39.

Rossi, A.B.R., & Vergnanini, A.L. 2000. Cellulite: A review. Journal of the European Academy of Dermatology and Venereology, 14, 251–62.

Sadick, N., & Magro, C. 2007. A study evaluating the safety and efficacy of the VelaSmooth™ system in the treatment of cellulite. Journal of Cosmetic and Laser Therapy, 9, 15–20.

SIDEBAR: Cellulite Q&A

1. Do slender woman have cellulite?

Yes. Rosenbaum and colleagues (1998) explain that cellulite is often present in slender women; however, the researchers add that weight gain worsens the condition.

2. Why is cellulite more prevalent in the thighs and buttocks of females?

It is well established that women generally have a higher percentage of body fat than men. Plus, there are five times more adipocytes (fat cells) in the thighs, hips and buttocks of women than in other sites of the body (del Pino et al. 2006).

3. Is cellulite hereditary?

Yes. Rossi and Vergnanini (2000) and del Pino et al. (2006) state that there is a clear genetic predisposition for cellulite to develop. This inherent tendency will affect fat distribution and deposition.

4. Will smoking worsen the appearance of cellulite?

Yes. Cigarette smoke has been shown to weaken the formation of collagen, the chief structural protein of connective tissue (Fink et al. 2006). Weakened connective tissue may allow for easier protrusion of fat into the dermis.

IDEA Fitness Journal, Volume 7, Number 9

September 2010

Interested in Becoming a Personal Trainer but don’t know where to Begin?

I got my personal training certificate through AFAA  (http://www.afaa.com/)  It was a 3 day intense weekend program (approximately $400).  They send you a book when you sign up and study guide.  YOu read through the book and fill out the study guide before your weekend course.  Then the 3 days is a class over the material and at the end you take a written and practical test.  You can go to the website to see if they’re holding one near where you live. 

ACE also does a certification similar to this.  And someone else just told me about NASM. 

Before you decide on what certification you want, I  recommend going to the gym where you want to work and ask them what kind of PT certification they want you to have.  It seems every gym has a certain type they want you to have. 

It doesn’t matter if you take classes at a university to get a degree or do one of these programs and you’ll be qualified to do the same thing.  Just depends on how much time and money you want to put in. 

I would recommend shadowing a personal trainer in your area a couple of times before you take the test so you can ask them questions. 
Also for the practical test you need to be able to show exercises and stretches for each muscle group.  So when you take a toning class  or are lifting weights, make sure you know if you’re using your bicep, tricep, shoulder, etc and then know an appropriate stretch for it too.

If you have more questions about this, send me a message Erin4Fitness@gmail.com
Good Luck!
Erin

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Healthy Eating Tips:

Ok some meal plan ideas.   I’m not a nutritionist, but I can give you tricks and trades I’ve found along the way. 

Breakfast:  whole grain cereal, fruit, yogurt, eggs - try to get some protein in

Mid Morning snack: fruit, veggies, almonds, protein bar, peanut butter, low fat cheese, cottage cheese, string cheese,  peanuts

Lunch: protein (beans, baked beans, turkey, tuna, chicken, pork,) and good carbs (fruit, veggies, whole grain bread), salad with lots of veggies light on dressing

Mid Afternoon snack: (see morning snack)

Dinner: similar to lunch. 

Check out Healthy cooking Magazine online.  I get their magazines and I LOVE their recipes b/c their normal, good, easy and they have all the nutritional facts listed!  Here’s one from that magazine  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wiLpWg7RQVY

100 Best Chicken Recipes  http://www.amazon.com/Chicken-Recipes-Editors-Favorite-Brand/dp/0785380523

Favorite Brand Name Cookbook simple 1-2-3 chicken

Tagged: healthy eatingsnacksfoodmealsdinnerlunchbreakfasteating righteating healthysmall mealsprotein

Smart Eating on Thanksgiving!

Suggestions on how to avoid a HUGE calorie over kill with Thanksgiving dinner.
1.  Bring a healthy dish to share and eat it!
2.  Use a smaller plate
3.  There’s usually a large variety of food.  Start off with ONE spoon full of each.  Your plate will be full before you know it.
4.  If someone asks you to try something you don’t want to, tell them that you need to pass, b/c your trainer (me!) told you NO WAY!
5.  No more than 1 roll
6.  Measure gravy into a 1/4 cup and use ONLY that!
7.  Eat slow and stop before your stuffed!  It takes time for your stomach to tell you that you’re full.
8.  Eat the turkey breast (white meat) - it’s better for you
9.  Put veggies & turkey on your plate first