Why You Should Be Eating Bison

No grocery store trip is complete without piling your cart full of different kinds of meats. From frozen hamburger patties, to chicken breast, how can you be sure that what your eating is:

A) Safe

B) Healthy

One of my new favorite hobbies is walking around Whole Foods aimlessly looking at all the different things they sell, and  I came across a small little section (separate from the rest of the meat section) and it had all kinds of meat I had not seen at any other grocery store.  They had natural ground bison, ostrich, and other kinds of meat.  So I got curious and decided to pick up a pound of ground bison.  Heck it looked just like the regular ground beef my husband and I picked up religiously every week, why not try it?  The following Friday  I decided to make Bison burgers (recipe coming soon!).  They were amazing!! Not only were they not as greasy, but they actually tasted good!  Little did I know all the health benefits that I was getting out of switching from regular ground beef to bison!

Here are a few KEY POINTS on why you should eat bison:

• Bison meat is 9 times less fat than pork, and 2 times less fat than chicken
• Bison feed mostly on hay and grass making it a healthier option (other red meats are usually pumped with growth hormones)
• For every 100 grams, it contains only 2.42 grams of fat
• Contains more protein per gram than beef
• High in iron
• When comparing bison sirloin steak side by side to a beef sirloin steak, bison contains 80% less fat, and 49% less calories
• Contains conjugated linoleic acid which is a healthy fat that helps fight cancer and lower bad cholesterol
• It cooks quicker!!

From experience, it definitely tastes better (in my opinion) than beef because not only is it less greasy, it doesn't give you that heavy feeling in your stomach that you get from eating beef.  The great thing about it, is you can substitute it into anything you use regular beef in.  One thing you definitely want to make sure you look at when purchasing bison, is whether or not it is organic.  You want natural bison, otherwise there is no way to guarantee that the bison meat you are purchasing wasn't pumped with growth hormones like beef.

One more warning before you rush out to buy your first pound of bison.  It is EXPENSIVE.  Usually we would buy 1 pound of ground beef for $2 (max).  1 pound of ground bison will run you anywhere from $7-$10.  It is more expensive however,  the health benefits outweigh the costs :)


 Here are links to a few recipes.  Hope you like! 


Smoky Buffalo Burger

Sirloin BBQ Kabobs

Bean Free Bison Chili

Easy Tamale Casserole

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My nutrition label says what?

As I wandered down the aisles of my local HEB with my hubby this morning, I realized that it is EXTREMELY confusing to read food labels.   I don’t know if it was my husband asking me after every product he picked up, “Is this good?” Or if it was all the millions of ingredients that made me dizzy just trying to decipher.  So I did a little bit of research on some general guidelines you can follow, as well as some ingredients you should avoid at all costs.

A few things to remember when looking at a nutrition label:

The more ingredients you can’t pronounce, the more you should avoid them.

The ingredients are listed by percent.  Meaning, if whole wheat flour is the first ingredient, than it probably makes up the majority of the product. If you have never heard of the ingredient, the likelihood that the ingredient is a chemical, is high. I’ve put together a quick list of ingredients you should look for.

Some key words to look for:

• Hydrogenated –  This is the process of  making an oil hot, and this causes bubbles to run through it.  When the bubbles run through it, the fat get some hydrogen added, making the oil or fat into a solid.  This means Trans Fat.  Trans fats do all kinds of terrible things to your body like clog your arteries, and raise your cholesterol.  The further up this is on your ingredients list, the more trans fat the product contains. 

• High Fructrose Corn Syrup – it is the most common sweetener in processed foods. Commonly linked with weight gain, insulin resistance and high blood pressure. A study done shows that the type of fat that high fructose corn syrup causes is belly fat as well as a fatty liver.

• Artificial Colors – cause allergies, fatigue, asthma, skin rashes, hyperactivity and headaches.

• Artificial Flavors – causes allergic reactions, eczema, dermatitis, and can affect your thyroid (meaning it affects your metabolism meaning it can cause you to gain weight).

• Artificial Sugars (Aspartame, Succralose, Saccharin, Sorbitol, Maltodextrin, ends with “ose” or “itol” means its a sugar.  – causes CANCER dizziness, hallucinations and headaches.

• MSG – Monosodium Glutamate (yeast extract, glutamate, soy protein isolate, barley malt, malt extract)– increases your appetite (i.e. gain weight), headaches, nausea, change in heart rate

• Potassium Bromate  (bromic acid, potassium salt) – has been shown to cause cancer in animals.

Hopefully this will give you a better idea the next time you are sitting in the middle of the pasta aisle looking completely confused at the 3 million boxes of pasta :) 

Further Reading: 

 10 Worst Food Ingredients to Avoid Like the Plague - Healthier Talk Article

 9 Ingredients to Avoid in Processed Foods - Yahoo Article

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Pineapple Salsa!

This recipe is SO easy and it is really good! I made this Monday night and served it over some chopped up pork loin and turned it into tacos and it was really good :)  I always say my hubby is the hardest person to convince because he's into eating healthy...as long as it tastes good.  So with this whole clean eating, i've had to get a little creative with sauces and spices.  Like i said, i made it with tacos but i'm sure would be great at a party to dip with some pita bread, or over some chicken, get creative!  Enjoy :)



Ingredients:
1 whole pineapple
1 red bell pepper
1 green onion (the smaller ones)
small bunch of spinach
1 lemon
1 jalapeno (optional)

chop the pineapple, bell pepper, green onion, spinach, and jalapeno into really small pieces (can use a food processor if you want).  When chopping the pineapple, don't discard the juice (that gets EVERYWHERE).  Pour it into the container you will be storing your salsa in.  Put all your ingredients in, juice the whole lemon and mix well.  Salsa is done! 

I need to work on getting nutrition facts for these recipes, but I guess since they are all natural I haven't been too concerned with it.  Will work on this!
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Must Read Link!

Must read article! This article was published on Science Daily today and it talks about eating low fat linked to gaining weight. Enjoy!


Fat Substitutes Linked to Weight gain

Coming Soon! PINEAPPLE SALSA! I'll be including the recipe sometime this week.  Stay tuned :)
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THE TRUTH ABOUT DIET COKE!

I know you all know that one person that swears they are eating healthier by choosing a Diet Coke over regular Coke. And you have all heard the commercials for all these diet drinks.  "Tastes just like regular!" So shouldn't people be wondering....hmm so what did you have to do to this diet coke to make it taste JUST LIKE coke?  Here's a list of the ingredients from the Nutrition Connection Website.


INGREDIENTS:

• Carbonated Water,
• Caramel Color,
• Aspartame,
• Phosphoric Acid,
• Potassium Benzoate (to protect taste),
• Natural Flavors,
• Citric Acid,
• Caffeine

Lets just take the first ingredient I can't pronounce.  Aspartame.  The New York Times published an article in February of 2006 stating that Aspartame could be linked to different types of cancers, including Leukemia.  The 7 year long study was done on rats that were injected with the equivalent to a 150 pound person drinking 4 to 5 20 ounce diet cokes per day.  Now I know what you're saying...I don't drink that much.  But why would you want to ingest ANYTHING that is the even remotely associated with the word cancer? I don't know about you but cancer has affected my family more than once and I'm willing to bet every American can say the same.


Another article written by Daniel J. Denoon for WebMD named Drink More Diet Soda, Gain More Weight says that research conducted at the University of Texas Health Center found that drinkers of diet soda had a higher risk of obesity than people who drank regular soda. It goes on to say that there was a 41% increase in the chance of being overweight for EVERY CAN OF DIET SODA A PERSON CONSUMES PER DAY.  41%!??  That means that the Coca Cola Company is selling everyone on their "Diet" Coke being healthier than their regular Coke, yet, research shows that the opposite is actually true!  


One last bit of proof (if you are not already convinced).  I want you to go to Google and type in how to clean your toilet bowl.  I guarantee that you will find an article called How to Remove Stains From Your Toilet on Ehow.com and suggestion number one is:

"Pour a can of Coca-Cola in the toilet bowl and leave it overnight. Diet Coke doesn't have the same effect so make sure it's regular Coca-Cola. In the morning, the toilet should require very little scrubbing for the stain to disappear."

ANYTHING that can clean grime off your toilet bowl, DOES NOT belong in our bodies.  Can you imagine what it does to our system if it cleans gunk off your toilet bowl?  

Now i am a realist.  Ideally, everyone would drink water and green tea all day and we wouldn't have to worry about this soda business.  But let's be realistic. Every once in a while, you want something with some flavor.  Here's a couple of suggestions for substitutions for Diet Coke:

• Whole Foods 365 Organic Soda (it is so good! My husband LOVES soda and i got him to try it and he loved it!  We tried the Orange Creme flavor and it tastes like a Dreamsicle)

                                          

• Any brand carbonated water 
• There are lots of other Organic Sodas that you can find at your local Whole Foods Store or any health food store.  Try them and see which one you like!  Make sure to ALWAYS look at the ingredients though.  If you can't pronounce it, you probably shouldn't eat it.  

I hope this will make you think twice about drinking soda :)  

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Coconut Breaded Chicken! (Clean Recipe)

This recipe is DELICIOUS!  I took Oxygen Magazine's Breaded Chicken Strips (in the May 2011 issue) recipe and kind of tweaked it to my taste. Enjoy!

Ingredients:

2 defrosted chicken breasts

¾ cup of Steel cut oats (can use any kind of oats really just not the quick cook kind)

½ of unsweetened coconut

2 eggs

1 tbsp of turbinado sugar

1 tsp of salt

1 tsp of pepper

1 pinch of cayenne pepper (optional)

• You will want to cut your chicken breasts into strips.  You can make them as thin or as thick as you want them. 
• Crack eggs and put in a small bowl
• In a separate bowl combine all your dry ingredients (oats, coconut, sugar, salt, cayenne pepper, pepper).  The spices are really up to you depending on your taste. 
• Take each chicken strip and dip in the bowl with the eggs.  Make sure each strip is coated pretty well with the eggs.
• Then put each chicken strip in your dry ingredients mix and coat.
• Set on non stick cooking sheet.
• Cook in oven at 350 degrees for about 25 minutes, flipping over at the halfway point. 

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The article that changed EVERYTHING

As i said in my introduction, reading Jillian Michael's Master Your Metabolism felt like it opened the world wide open for me!  I'll get into what she goes over in detail in another post but a long story short, your metabolism is driven by your hormones.  Your hormones control whether you gain or lose weight and EVERYTHING we do affects our hormones.  Our hormones are made to work at homeostasis (which is when your hormone levels are balanced).  This means your body is working properly by burning fat the way it should.  This is what makes the difference between the people who naturally do not gain weight, and those of us that smell a muffin and gain 10 pounds.  Our hormones react to everything. They react to what we eat, what we inhale, whether we sleep enough.  EVERYTHING.  So in an attempt to further explain why we should all be PETRIFIED of eating processed foods, Jillian cites this article published in the Chicago Tribune in January of 2006.  Its a little long winded, good reading nonetheless but in summation, the owner of Kraft used some of the same brain research that a tobacco company and alcohol company used in an attempt to make foods more appealing to the masses.  Wait...WHAT?! You mean my little All-American Kraft Singles were produced by researching what appeals to people who smoke?!  

This should freak EVERYONE out.  My first thought is, how is this not illegal?!  Here I am thinking that my good old grilled sandwich is harmless, when the process it endured to come to life came from the same research that caused people to smoke and drink like there's no tomorrow.  After reading this article, I realized I could no longer go on shopping for groceries and making a run to McDonald's or any other fast food place or restaurant for that matter without first investigating more about not only how they cooked their food, but what ingredients were in their food.  


Here's another example.  As i've said before, i'm a true Jillian Michael's fan. I love her training style, her ability to be so blunt about things, and how she is a no BS kind of person.  I don't know how many of you watch Biggest Loser, but I always thought the in-show commercials were always kind of cheesy.  But after finding out that Jillian was very adamant about eating organic natural food whenever possible, I started thinking about those in-show commercials.  And I realized that the only two products I had ever seen Jillian promote were the Brita water filter and Luna Bars.  Bob did most of the other products.  So I decided to do a little experiment.  I picked the Extra Dessert Delights sugar free gum from Wrigley's (Key Lime flavored) and decided to look at the ingredients.  Now before I go on, I just want to remind you that the Biggest Loser show endorsed this gum on the show as a way to curb cravings and promote weight loss. Here goes:


Ingredient #1:  Sorbitol.  I want everyone to click this link (Wikipedia definition of sorbitol) and please read out loud the first sentence to yourself. 


"Sorbitol, also known as glucitol, is a sugar alcohol that the human body metabolizes slowly. "


I don't know about you but "human body metabolizes slowly," sounds a lot like it slows down your metabolism.  Here is this extremely popular, highly viewed show that promotes weight loss to live healthier lives, encouraging me to chew gum that will curb my appetite, but at the same time, slow down my metabolism!  That is just insane.  Now that being said, I highly doubt that one piece of gum every now and then would cause that much damage.  But can you imagine the effect that this had on the people that took what the Biggest Loser (again highly reputable show) encouraged their viewers to use as a tool to help with their weight loss and carried that pack of gum religiously and had one every time they had a craving (don't know about you but that's several times a day)?   That could cause serious damage to their metabolism!  So here are all these people chewing this gum to try and lose weight, when INGREDIENT NUMBER ONE makes your metabolism slow down.  


Now i know what you're thinking.  How much damage could all this really cause? I want you to do the experiment for yourself.  The next time you are at home, getting ready to cook, I want you to look at the ingredients and google a couple of them.  Google the ones you can't pronounce.  You will be surprised at what you find and might start thinking twice when you decide whether or not to take that free "harmless" sample of cookie cake when you are walking in the mall.  

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Welcome to my blog!

Hi everyone!! This is my blog! Ok I shall be honest. This is actually my second go at starting my blog.  But in my defense I started a blog in January when my daughter was a mere 2 months old and as every mother knows, that stage is NOT easy.  I decided to write a blog for several reasons but the main reason is that I want to not only share my journey through my weight loss struggles, but I want to share with everyone the information that I find to be helpful among this sea of bad information! 

I can’t really talk much about what I’m doing here without giving any background on myself.  Normally I would say just click the ABOUT ME tab, but lets just start from the beginning. 

My story sounds a lot like many Americans today.  I had a pretty decent childhood, with rewards like McDonald’s Happy Meals for good grades, or Pizza Hut, or any other AMAZING (?) fast food treat within a 5 mile radius of our home.  My mother has always been a bit of a health nut so she would always make sure we ate what she thought was healthy and allowed us to splurge every once in a while.  I was on the swim team for 9 years and I remember after every swim meet, we would head to Cici’s Pizza and devour stacks of pizza and desserts along with the rest of the team.  Occasionally, my dad would stop and buy us ice cream on the way home from a day full of errands as a treat for being well – behaved.  Pretty normal childhood right?  Well I thought all of this was relatively normal until I woke up one morning, looked at myself in the mirror and realized I was 24, 5’3, 215 lbs and 6 weeks from my wedding.  I, naturally, panicked!  I starved myself (literally), worked out like an addict, and made it to my wedding day weighing 189.  Our wedding came and went, and when we got back from our honeymoon, we came back to the real world of Friday night Margaritas and burgers.  So I decided that I was NOT going to go down that path and back to my days of exercising religiously an hour and a half a day, and eating chicken and leaves, literally.  Long story short, 2 months after the honeymoon I realized I was pregnant!  Definitely not planned but she has changed my life J  Our  beautiful baby girl was born November 11^th.

After baby…..

 Needless to say, after I had the baby, I had some weight I wanted to lose.  Now I was lucky (for the first time in my life) and the pregnancy was truly ideal.  I gained 23 lbs and 10 days after I had my baby, I was back down 19 lbs.  But those last lbs!  They stuck to me like glue. No matter how much I starved, no matter how much I worked out, NOTHING made that scale budge.  After trying unsuccessfully for 6 months I decided that I was going to do whatever it took.  I started doing a no-carb diet. That meant  eating no carbs, at all, ever.  And it worked! I lost weight! But don’t let a piece of bread even be within arm’s reach because I would feel my weight increasing.  I had great success with the no-carb diet.  I lost 18 lbs, and I currently weigh 175 to date.  I should be happy right?!  I mean I haven’t been 175 in 3 to 4 years!  But this was when I reached an epiphany.

Epiphany moment….

Here I was, at 175, the lightest I had been in a long time.  But it came at a serious price.  This meant eating no more than 750 calories per day, no carbs and working out like a fiend.  Don’t even mention a “cheat meal” because that in itself would make me gain 4 lbs and I would spend the next week trying to bring that down.  We all know that one person that eats whatever they want and works out little or nothing at all, and doesn’t gain a pound.  That’s what got me thinking.  Why is it that I had to go through all this just to fit in my jeans, and here some people had the luxury of eating what they wanted and the furthest thought from their mind was whether or not their jeans would fit the next day?  I mean, there had to be something they were doing that I was not.  Some memo that they received that I obviously had not been included on.  Now I am a true believer in fate.  I think that was meant to happen will always happen.  I feel like you will always be guided to where you need to be at every moment of the day.  About a month and a half ago, I subscribed to Oxygen Magazine.  For those of you that want serious work outs and health tips, I definitely recommend.  http://www.oxygenmag.com/.   As I was thumbing through one of the issues, I noticed a trend.  I noticed that the recipes had ingredients I had never seen at my local Wal-mart.  Some of the tips on what to eat, were things that I had never heard of.  That day I decided to go to Amazon and order a copy of Jillian Michael’s Master your Metabolism.  Little did I know that Jillian would completely open up my world and completely change the way I thought about health and fitness.  

So whats this blog about again?

This blog is about my journey through discovering what clean eating means, figuring out just how much damage processed foods cause our systems, and giving as much information about what I find that works, and what doesn’t work as well as all kinds of fitness tips.  I want a place where I can share the information that I find such as recipes, quotes, fitness tips, exercises, article reviews and anything else I can find.  Welcome to my blog J

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