Some 'Splainin to Do

July 2009

As Faith has mentioned before, we have made some pretty significant changes in our home. (Here, here, and here.) We spend a lot more time and money at Whole Foods, wear toe shoes, and are keeping the chickpea industry afloat.

All this may or may not be some sort of early mid-life crisis, possibly brought on by the fact that we will both be 29 soon and still in school. But mid-life crisis or not, we both feel like we are in a very good place physically, emotionally and spiritually.

I have considered writing this post for a while, not to brag, but in the hopes of helping to motivate someone else to make changes. Just looking at that picture of us in 2009 makes me realize how far we both have come. It is embarrassing for me personally to think what I let happen to my health.

For me, the change started in July 2010, when rotations began. The first 2 years of medical school are just books and lectures with very little clinical experience. Rotations, for years 3 and 4, are mostly clinical with some lectures here and there. My first rotation in July '10 was Internal Medicine. I spent 10-12 hours a day in the hospital. The majority of the patients were sick in the hospital because they did not take care of themselves. Most of them were overweight, if not obese. Years of neglect and food abuse brought them to that point. For me, it was a wake-up call. My family history is not riddled with Octogenarians. My Dad will be the first Cotterell man to see the age of 63 in 3 generations. I felt like a hypocrite talking to these patients about their health when I was not exactly taking care of mine. These feelings started small but grew until I decided to do something about it. So on August 18, 2010, I began paying attention.

I started with what I knew. (When considering it was after 2 years of medical education, it is sad to see what little is taught in medical school regarding nutrition and health.) Conventional Wisdom says that in order to lose weight, you need to decrease your intake and increase your output. I decided I needed to limit my food portions. I made a conscious effort to eat less and just by paying attention, I started to lose weight. Soon after my decision to do something, I read this and it helped solidify my commitment. I lost 10 pounds in 2 weeks. It was amazing to see how much weight I was maintaining just by overeating.

At this time, I didn't so much change what I was eating, I just changed how much I was eating. I was eating what I thought was a "healthy" diet. Lean meats, whole wheat bread/cereal/pasta, low-fat everything. I of course was also eating desserts and treats and whatnot. I just ate less of everything. Instead of eating 4 cookies, I would eat 2.

This tactic worked for 30 pounds. I tapered off by April and thought I was in a pretty good place. I had more energy and started exercising more. I started running and was running about 9 miles a week. People I hadn't seen in a while were complimenting me and, though it was embarrassing, it was nice to know I had changed enough for others to notice.

In the back of my mind I thought I could do even better, but I had hit a wall. I didn't lose much if any more weight from April to July.

Then in July Faith read the book Eat to Live and made changes outlined in this post. I was a little skeptical (because, hey, I am going to be a doctor. I know everything.) at first. But I read the book at the urging of Faith and started eating humble pie. Humble pie and lots of fruits and vegetables. I recommend the book to everyone because:

1. It is not a "diet" book. It is a book about how to live a more healthy life. The "problem" is that even though it is not a diet book, if you follow the principles in it, you will lose a ton of weight as you improve your overall health.
2. The book teaches well and the knowledge gained from it is incredibly empowering. You gain tools that allow you to filter out all the mis-information that is out there in regards to health and nutrition.
3. There are a whole lot of studies cited in the book. Dr Fuhrman manages to sort through a lot of data and presents it in a way that is clear and easy to understand.

*Side note. If you don't have time for the book, watch the documentary Forks Over Knives on Netflix. It is pretty much a 1.5 hour summary of the book.*

So after making these changes, I lost another 20 pounds from August to the end of the year. None of my clothes fit anymore. It is a nice problem to have. More than the weight loss though, I feel healthier than I ever have. Even looking back at the time I was playing Lacrosse at BYU, I feel I am healthier now. I have more energy. I am running a lot more than 9 miles a week (I ran 9 this morning). I have more energy to play with the kids and be the kind of dad I want to be. I have visions of a future where I will be keeping up with them and roughhousing the crud out of them.

Like I said at the beginning of the post. I do not want this to come across as bragging. I do this in the hope that at least one person will read and decide to make changes.

The picture at the beginning of the post is one we have hanging in our room. Before August 2010, I would see it next to our engagement picture and long to be "me" again.

Now I see it as a reminder that people can change.

As cheesy as it sounds, Faith and I decided to try to recreate the picture for an "after" picture. We wore the same shirts for effect. (Of course the above picture was taken by a professional. The picture below was our point and shoot with the timer set.) I still can't believe the difference.

Feb 2012

And here is a nice picture Faith's sister took of us last week.

Here are some blogs I have found recently that I like:

No Meat Athlete

Nerd Fitness

Christopher McDougall

iRunFar.com

The Science of Running

Barefoot Running University

What we eat

Well, a lot of people have asked to see what we eat. I thought I'd go ahead and just post that here for anyone who's interested.

By the way, I'm officially in the "I've lost over 30 pounds!" bracket - and I'm thrilled!

Breakfast. Two to three times a week I make steel cut oats. They are delicious. Much more healthy - and much better tasting - than rolled oats. If you try them out, start them the night before. Boil the water, turn the stove off when the water bubbles. When the bubbles stop, pour in the oats, cover and let sit over night (you can leave them on the warm burner). In the morning, heat them up to bubbling. I eat around one cup of cooked oats with a full chopped apple, 4 big strawberries, and a handful of blueberries with cinnamon. The kids have one or two of the above (sometimes with raisins as well) with cinnamon and about 1/2 tsp brown sugar. I try to remember to add flax seed to it. I love this breakfast. The kids love this breakfast. Lilia sometimes cries when we're not having this breakfast.
About once a week we have 100% whole wheat pancakes or waffles with ground flax seed added. We just use the recipe for buttermilk pancakes or waffles in the Better Homes and Gardens cookbook. We use almond milk now, but we still add lemon juice. Not exactly "buttermilk," but they're very good.
The other mornings I let the kids have rice chex, cheerios, or life and we have a lot of fruit. I usually cut up a bunch of strawberries, grapes, a kiwi (if we've got them), and an apple or two.
*I have a very similar bowl of fruit almost every night for "dessert." I usually save the raspberries for my night time bowl. Makes it a little more treat-like.

Yes, for lunch and dinner our main dish is salad. Every day. We love it. And you better believe that each of us has a salad that puts Elaine's to shame.
The most important thing for us to have is our big bag of salad veggies. I almost always have a big gallon bag of chopped veggies in the fridge (it's lasting fewer and fewer days since the kids now request a "big salad" from time to time). We usually use 1 to 2 crowns of broccoli, 1/2 head cauliflower, 3 bell peppers, 1 celery heart, 5 to 7 mushrooms (pretty big), a whole lot of baby carrots, 2 to 3 red apples and 1 green apple (I really enjoy the occasional bite of tart green apple, it's delicious) Yes, I know apples aren't a vegetable (although our kids think so because they're in the veggie bag!), but I really like the taste and the crunch in a salad. This usually fills up our big mixing bowl. There have been a few times that I have out-done myself and have had to switch over to our really big bowl in order to get everything mixed up. I think it's about time for me to invest in some kind of food chopper because I do all of this by hand.

For my lunch and dinner, I get a decent-sized salad bowl and fill it up with mixed salad greens and baby spinach (we get a 1-pound tub of each from Sam's Club) and cut it up so it's easier to eat. Then I dish out a generous portion of my veggies on top. Now, a lot of you might find it boring to eat a big salad for lunch and dinner every day. There are, however, some things you can do to mix things up. Tomatoes, cucumbers, beans (any kind, really), avocados, sunflower seeds, cashews, and whole wheat croutons are some of the things that I will mix up - strawberries are delicious, also. Different combinations can really give you a different taste. I used to include cucumbers in our "salad veggies," but once we kept getting a whole bunch of water at the bottom of our bag and until I noticed the small pieces of dark green peel, I didn't realize the cucumbers were liquifying. It still tasted fine, but I didn't want to risk it, so now I often add 1/2 a cucumber on top of everything else. Also, we enjoy salad dressings. If you look in our fridge, it looks like we probably have stock in Brianna's dressings. We have really enjoyed almost all that we've tried. I have been putting less and less dressing on my salads, though. Mostly it's a way to moisten things up a bit for me.
*I have only added kale once to a salad, but I wish I got it more often to add. It's delicious and gives a kind-of lemony taste. I need to remember more often how much I enjoyed it.

Now the other dishes.

Bean Burritos - just wrapped up at the table and not baked. Black beans and refried beans w/ olives, tomatoes, etc.

Veggie stir fry - cabbage, onions, zucchini, sometimes eggplant, bell peppers, mushrooms, pineapple tidbits with the juice, julienne carrots (really taste so much better than chopped), sometimes tofu. Can flavor with rice vinegar, Mrs. Dash, whatever you like.
We have used a frozen bag of stir fry before, but I don't use the sauce. I added bell peppers and mushrooms to freshen it up a little bit. We've gotten spoiled with so many fresh vegetables, it just wasn't quite as good.

Quinoa salad - a delicious recipe can be found here. We don't like as much grapefruit as it calls for. The last time we made it we did only about 1/2 of one. I probably would have liked it better with 3/4 to a full grapefruit. Spencer was just fine with half.
The quinoa salad we do most often, though, is just one cup of quinoa with a full cucumber, full bell pepper, one can drained and rinsed black beans, and one can drained corn.

Pasta - whole wheat pasta with a dressed up spaghetti sauce. I saute zucchini, onion, peppers, yellow squash, and sometimes broccoli with garlic and spices. I add a can of (or fresh) diced tomatoes and a jar of spaghetti sauce (Classico brand Tomato and Basil doesn't have any sugar, if you're interested).

Pasta Prima Vera - saute broccoli, cauliflower, and bell peppers. Add toward the end some fresh tomatoes and some frozen peas. Before I started avoiding dairy more I would grate a whole bunch of parmesan cheese on top (after tomatoes but before peas - peas go in at the very end) and add some milk to make it more creamy. I would add all of that to the cooked whole wheat pasta onto which I had already poured a jar of alfredo sauce. Without dairy, dress your veggies the way you like. Spencer used rice vinegar and Mrs. Dash when he did it (we're working on branching out a little more :)).

Roasted vegetables - potatoes, sweet potatoes, onions, celery, and sometimes carrots. Some salt and pepper to taste with water in the bottom of the pan (you can use chicken broth or add a bouillon cube if you want). Bake, covered, at 425 for 30-45 minutes (or however long your oven takes).

Sweet Potato Quesadillas (one of my favorites!!) - Find the recipe here. I often do sauteed mushrooms as well as fresh. We use whole wheat tortillas - and I don't put any cheese on at all. They don't stick together, but the sweet potatoes are really good with the crispy tortilla. Also, I don't bake them like the recipe says. I just put them on the griddle and brown both sides of the tortilla until crispy (one tortilla folded in half). Also, I use a lot more filling than in the picture. The kids eat these without complaint. Lilia, who I like to call "the finisher" would eat as many of these as we gave her. She gets so excited when I tell her these are on the menu. She even asked for a wedge that was on my plate and from which I was about to take a bite!

Vegetable Enchiladas - Recipe here. My sister Bethany sent me this one. It calls for 3 quarts of spinach. That's about 1 full pound (it shrinks a lot). I didn't look at the recipe closely enough and didn't have as much spinach as we needed (oh, I had a full pound in the fridge, but I couldn't use it all and still have enough for our salads!). I ended up adding bell pepper and mushrooms to the veggie mix. The mushrooms definitely gave it a different flavor from your traditional enchiladas, but they were so good! The kids all loved these and would probably have cleaned out the 9x13 if we hadn't given them fruit as well! I used the 9x13 variation offered at the end of the recipe and also used a full can of refried beans and a full can of black beans. I might add a second can of one next time I make it. It felt a little lacking to me that way. Also, I made half with the cheese and half without. I think I'll leave it off completely next time.

Beans - I guess it's a bean chili of sorts. Spencer decided one day to throw some black beans (drained and rinsed - is there any other way?), pinto beans, and garbanzo beans together in a pot and added some V8 to it. Since then we've upgraded and start with some garlic with oregano, basil, cilantro, and cumin with the juice and then add the beans and heat through. Occasionally, because I don't like that they add sugar to V8 (isn't the point to have just vegetables?!), we blend up some fresh tomatoes and celery. This is another one the kids just love! I made this just last night and used two cans of each kind of beans thinking we'd have plenty of leftovers for dinner another night. No such luck. With only one fairly small portion for me, the kids devoured it all!!
*We've added kale to this before and I thought it was very good. I think spinach would also be delicious.

Corn - The kids love corn on the cob so we'll just have that with fruit on the side and usually a green salad for the kids as well.

Split pea soup - We haven't had this one yet, but a wonderful friend just sent me home with a bad of dried split peas. If I remember right, just put a bag of split peas, lots of chopped carrots, celery, and onion in your crockpot, cover with water, and cook all day stirring occasionally. I'm looking forward to this one.

When I make my menu for the week, I usually only use three to four dishes because we usually end up with enough leftovers for the other nights. That way we don't cycle through everything too often and the kids don't get tired of anything. Sometimes it can be two weeks before we have another dish again.

And there you have it. I will add a note on how we handle things with our kids. My dad has always said that kids won't let themselves starve. Now, of course, there are exceptions with real medical conditions, but we're talking the average kid. Spencer and I have believed this and we work with that. We know that what our kids eat has to come from us in the first place. We have decided that we're not going to feed our kids certain things. There may have been some nights that a kid or two did not want to eat what was offered to them for dinner. When they woke up in the morning there were leftovers waiting for them at their place at the table. They may have seen the leftovers for lunch, even (I won't go into details here, but if you're interested, ask me some time about Lilia's piece of broccoli from lunch today and how it might have become her dinner and bedtime snack). But, eventually, they eat the food we give them. Sometimes the boys will tell me that they don't like their vegetables, but they eat them because they know that vegetables are good for them. I get so happy when I hear that. I like it even more when I hear "I like vegetables now!" (Believe it or not, I do hear that every once-in-a-while!)

I'm not exactly sure what did it, but I think our kids are starting to find out that Spencer and I are more stubborn than they are. But, mostly, I really think they're starting to discover how good these foods really are!


*If you have any recipes you think I would like, please share! I would love to try some new things.
And if you try any of these, let me know how you like them.

Eating to live

I've had ideas for this post floating around in my mind for a while. It's something I've wanted to share and I think it's time. I just hope it's coherent.

Just over three years ago my mom bought a book for me and all of my siblings. The book is called Eat to Live. At that point in time I was not at all ready to change my eating habits. And I really wasn't interested in a diet. We had just moved to Tulsa, Andy was about 6 months old, and, although I should have, I didn't think there was anything drastic I needed to change. After all, there are times and seasons for everything and it was my time to be carrying baby weight. (4 kids in 4 1/2 years can do that to you.) And, thankfully, I hide my weight pretty well. Or so I thought. It's possible that's not as true as I would like to have believed.

Fast forward to early February of this year. Anne was born. My mom came to visit. My parents have been eating quite healthy for some time, but when my mom was here she made a ton of casseroles and other frozen dinners. It was wonderful. And right in line with how we had always been eating. One thing my mom got for herself while she was here was a bunch of Sobe Life Waters. They were quite tasty. When she left there were about a half dozen left over and she wasn't going to take them on her flight home. She suggested I save them for when I was ready for a healthier treat and wanted to stay away from ice cream but still have something that tastes good. Honestly, I never thought I would get to that point.

The day after my mom left a book came in the mail. My sister Bethany sent my mom a copy of Michael Pollan's Food Rules. Unfortunately, because of all the snow we got that week, deliveries were delayed. Bethany told me to go ahead and keep it - also that I should read it. That became another healthy-eating book that was going to sit on our book shelf and collect dust.

Fast forward, again, to sometime in the spring. Spencer had been watching portion size for some time. Somewhere around August 2010 he decided that he should no longer be eating like a college athlete and he has been doing very well and was looking much healthier. I started feeling like I wanted to "fit" with Spencer. He was a very good example to me of what could be done. Starting around July (or late June) I decided to start eating smaller portions. I didn't change so much what we were eating because I thought it was still pretty healthy. I just needed to eat less. And then the right switch flipped. I knew I wasn't really eating how I should and I needed to change that. Sometime in the second week of July I read Food Rules. This book is quite short and contains 64 rules about how we should eat food. Some of these include eat food, shop on the peripheries of the store, don't eat anything with ingredients your grandmother wouldn't understand, etc. This was a good start for us.

And then came the big change. And it was only a day or two after I finished the book. I read Dr. Joel Fuhrman's Eat to Live. Honestly, this book has been a life changer for all of us. This book contains the benefits of eating mainly a whole plant food diet. He doesn't say you can't ever eat any meat or dairy, but he cites the studies (The China Study in particular) that show the negative effects of eating too much meat and dairy: cancers, heart disease, diabetes, etc. It's amazing what you can avoid by eating the right things. It's not just about avoiding meat and dairy. It's about getting the right protection for our bodies from vegetables, fruits, seeds, nuts, and whole grains. I started to change how I ate immediately. Then I started changing what we were all eating. Spencer, wonderful man that he is, didn't complain about the changes I was making. He knew that he could get something else to eat if he really wanted it. I told him that I really wanted him to read this book after I was finished. I wanted us to be on the same page. This kids have complained at times but we have been able to tell them why we are feeding them the way we are. We want to give them every advantage we can and keep them healthy. They are now so much better at eating all the vegetables we give them. Benny and Andy have even said at different times: "I don't like vegetables, but I eat them because I know they're good for me." And just last night Andy said, "I love vegetables!" Hearing both of those things make me so happy!
I started writing this a couple of weeks ago, and honestly, I rarely hear complaining about all the vegetables they get on their plates. Lilia even knows to just eat what she's given!

I want to point out that per calorie there is more protein in green leafy vegetables than meat. Also, more calcium per calorie than cow's milk. We are not lacking for needed nutrients. Dr. Fuhrman points out that there is no way the biggest animals (elephant, giraffe, gorilla) could get so big on a vegetable and fruit diet if there were not adequate protein.

When my sister Eden was working full-time at BYU she took advantage of getting her blood-work done and was amazed at the change after she had been eating more of a whole plant food diet. You can see her results here. I'm not sure how long she had been eating better then, but the improvement in her blood-work is amazing!

After I read Eat to Live, I re-read the Word of Wisdom that was given to Joseph Smith in 1833. The Word of Wisdom is a modern-day revelation on what we should eat (fruits in their seasons, herbs, grains) and from what we should abstain (wine, alcohol, tea, coffee, cigarettes, drugs). Since reading Dr. Fuhrman's book, I have been so grateful to have found something to help me to live the Word of Wisdom better than I did before. I feel so much healthier and I feel like Spencer and I are able to help our kids in ways I never thought about. It really has been a blessing to all of us.

Now I am reading Dr. Fuhrman's Disease-Proof Your Child. I highly recommend it. I'm not through it yet, but it is getting me more and more motivated to feed our kids well.

One of the most surprising feelings I've had in this whole process is a wonderful sense of control. I posted some time ago about discovering a lack of control. I wrote: "other than my own choices, I don't have control over anything." (See that whole post here.) I think my view of control is beginning to shift. I still remind myself that there are so many things I cannot control, but the overriding feeling these days is that I am in control of myself. Instead of thinking I only have control over myself, I think: I get to control who I am. I get to make choices that will determine the kind of person I become. I am choosing now to no longer be a slave to my appetites. By being in control of what goes into my body, I have gained more of a sense of power. I am choosing to take care of my body in the way God wants me to. It's a wonderful feeling to know that the choices I am making are going to impact me the rest of my life. And it's a nice feeling to have that sense of control visualized when I walk past a mirror.

I have gone through waves of focusing more on the weight I'm losing and just being grateful I'm being more healthy (even if the weight-loss slows down). I will tell you, though, that since I really started losing weight I have lost 29 pounds! 21 of those pounds have been since my birthday on 21 July. I am fitting into clothes that I haven't for a long time. It has been wonderful in a lot of ways. I've even started running. I've never been one to love running. Getting out and walking has been a major feat for me at times. But, after I lost the first 10-15 pounds, I started having more energy and I decided that I should be exercising to add that element of health. And if you're interested in another life-changing book, go pick up Born to Run by Christopher McDougall. I started with 2 miles and I'm now running over 4.

What I really love about these changes is that it's about a lifestyle. Spencer and I feel different. We want to eat better because it feels better. I love that Spencer was mistaken for a vegetarian his first week in Dallas this month. No, we are not vegetarians or vegans. We just eat mainly a whole plant food diet. It's not about the numbers. The fact is there are many people with a fast metabolism and can maintain a low weight even though they eat horribly. That is not a great way to live and it won't prevent illness in the future. It doesn't matter what size you are. By eating the foods we should, we are protecting ourselves from future problems.

If you interested in what we've been eating, let me know.

And now the current "after" picture.
I only wish I had a picture of Spencer. He looks fantastic!!

I love half of Anne down in the corner.

going strong

i went walking today for the second day in a row. it's been really nice to get out. i was sure i was going to wait for school to be over to start walking, but thanks to my sister bethany, i am participating in a healthy habits challenge. spencer and i both are. one of the habits is getting 30 minutes of exercise. spencer goes out in the morning and i leave when he comes back.
this is a competition, so of course, if i'm in, i'm in all the way. i'm eating my vegetables and fruit and avoiding sweets (that's one that's a little harder for me). i'm really glad to have the motivation to get walking. i'm already reaping the benefits, which (unfortunately) include being really tired in the afternoon and getting closer to a waddle in the evenings (thankfully i've been able to avoid the waddle in public).

here's to being healthier!