What Is A Healthy Meal?

I know the title of this post sounds silly.  We all know what healthy is right?  When you see a meal you will just know if it is healthy or not.  Ok you might not know every ingredient or how it was prepared, but you would think we could look at a meal and say this is healthy or this is not healthy.

The problem is depending on who you talk to, there are inconsistencies with what "healthy" is.  Let's look at my breakfast this morning.  I had 6 whole eggs, kale, mushrooms, tomatoes, cooked as a scramble with coconut oil.  I also had two pieces of whole wheat toast with a little butter and jelly.  This is actually what I ate.  Well, Davis had some too, but I ate most of it.  So is this a healthy meal?  Well if you talk to a vegan, then no this is not healthy.  If you talk to someone who is anti-gluten then again I'm eating an unhealthy meal.  How about the 6 whole eggs?  Many will say this is unhealthy too.  And butter?  What was I thinking?

So how do we tell if a meal is healthy?  This is harder than it sounds.  This is why nutrition is such a complex topic.  There are so many unknowns (even though most are convinced they know everything) so it is hard to make a healthy decision.  I have always been a middle of the road fitness coach.  Maybe I'm more boring, but until I'm definitely proven wrong I will be stubborn here.  You will love this next point.  There really are no bad or unhealthy foods.  The problem arises when we consume too much of certain foods.

I sent an article out in our newsletter a few weeks ago on detoxes and cleanses.  One point was made that if you consume enough bok choy it can be toxic.  Does that mean bok choy is unhealthy?  Of course not.  But if that was all you ate all day, then yes you will have problems.  Instead of thinking of good vs. bad or healthy vs unhealthy, think if you have meet your limit for certain foods.

Start with your macronutrients.  These are your fats, carbs, and proteins.  You may have to play around with this some depending on what your fitness goal is, but you should have an idea of what much of each you should be consuming.  For example, if you are trying to lose weight you may want to try eating 40% of your diet from carbs, 30% from protein, and 30% from fat.  Once you have gotten your macronutrient ratios correct, then you can look at micronutrients.  These are things like vitamins and minerals.  If you are following certain diets you may be deficient in certain micronutrients, and over consuming others.  Then you will want to focus on foods higher in the micronutrients you are missing.

And finally we want to see how you are feeling after consumption of certain foods.  If you ate the same breakfast I had this morning and felt great, then this may be a good breakfast choice for you.  If you felt terrible, then maybe there is something you should be avoiding like gluten or eggs.  But you can't say something is definitely healthy or unhealthy just by looking at the meal and nothing else.

Hopefully this changed your perspective a bit on how you eat.  Here is a "healthy" recipe that Emily and I came across.  See if it fits your healthy nutritional habits.

Sweet Potato, Black Bean, and Goat Cheese Quesadilla:

Ingredients:
2 teaspoons olive oil, divided
1 cup onion, chopped
2 garlic cloves, minced
1/2 cup salsa, your choice of heat
1/4 teaspoon ground cumin
1 (19 ounce) can black beans, undrained
1/3 cup fresh cilantro, minced
4 ounces goat cheese, crumbled
8 (8 inch) flour tortillas

Directions:
1
Heat 1 teaspoon olive oil in a large nonstick skillet over medium-high heat. Add the onion and garlic, and saute for 3 minutes.
2
Stir in 1/2 cup salsa, cumin, and beans, and bring to a boil. Reduce heat, and simmer for 5 minutes or until thick.
3
Mash the bean mixture slightly with a potato masher.
4
Remove from heat; stir in the cilantro and goat cheese.
5
Spread the bean mixture evenly over 4 tortillas; top each with 1 tortilla, pressing gently.
6
Heat 1/4 teaspoon olive oil in pan over medium-high heat. Add 1 quesadilla, and cook for 2 minutes on each side. Repeat the procedure with the remaining olive oil and quesadillas.
7
Cut each quesadilla into 6 wedges. Serve with fat-free sour cream and 1/2 cup salsa.


You Stay Healthy San Diego,

Mike Deibler MS, CSCS

San Diego Premier Training

Fix Knee Pain For Running, Probiotics, & Diet Deficiencies.

Sorry for the long title to this blog post.  Unfortunately I was very creative today while writing this.  But I did have a few random things I wanted to post for our readers.  I wasn't sure each one would be enough for a post of its own, but hopefully you can get some good information from these topics.

Quick Fix For Runners With Knee Pain:



First up is a simple fix for those who experience knee pain while running.  If you are a serious runner or recreational runner, there is a good chance that you have had knee problems at some point. You may even be still dealing with this problem.  Now this pain may be coming from a number of different issues from your sneakers, muscle imbalances, improper gait pattern, orthopedic issues, and many other possible causes.  If this pain has been chronic, I always recommend getting it checked out.  A medical professional will be much better at diagnosing your problem than a blog post can.

That being said it won't hurt to try this one simple thing.  Try increasing your step rate or step frequency.  A study from Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, showed that when step rate is increased in will decrease the forces placed on the knee.  There was also less forces placed on the muscles as well, which may reduce risk of injury to the muscles involved in running like the hamstrings, quads, and calves.  So if you are trying to run faster take shorter, quicker steps instead of longer ones.

Probiotics To Treat Fatty Liver Disease:

I'm sure you have heard at least a minimal amount of probiotics.  Probiotics are microorganisms that help improve the health of their host.  We essentially have good and bad bacteria in our digestive tract.  Probiotics help improve the balance of our intestinal micro flora. There are many potential benefits of taking probiotics including better weight management, improve immune function, relieving constipation, improving digestion, increasing nutrient absorption, and now helping with non-alcoholic fatty liver disease.  I wrote a blog post in the past about this condition that increases your risk of obesity and type II diabetes.  You can read more about it here:  http://premiertraining.blogspot.com/2012/10/is-your-liver-making-you-fat.html.  To sum it up, our liver helps metabolize carbs, fats, and proteins.  When it gets overworked it will get backed up and develop fat deposits.  This will result in slowing down metabolism and reducing insulin sensitivity.

By increasing your probiotic consumption you may be able to help improve this.  There is promising evidence showing that taking probiotics through foods or supplements help with fatty liver disease, reducing the risk of metabolic syndrome, and increases insulin sensitivity.

You can get probiotics in fermented foods with live active cultures like yogurt, sauerkraut, and kefir.  If you don't like those types of foods you can also take a probiotic supplement.  Here is one that we recommend and take ourselves.

Is Your Diet Deficient?:

Often when we are trying to lose weight we get caught up in calories and nothing else seems to matter.  We may pay attention to macronutrients (fats, carbs, proteins), but is that enough?  We often forget about micronutrients and how they help our body function better.  Micronutrients are vitamins and minerals that we must have in order to live, workout, or do anything to our full potential.  When you are deficient in certain vitamins it will lead to a long list of health issues.

If you are currently on a diet or have dieted in the past, there is a pretty good chance that you are deficient somewhere.  Here are four popular diets and how they are deficient (courtesy of aarr):

1. The Mediterranean-type diet is 55% sufficient providing 100% of the recommended levels of 15 our of 27 essential micronutrients.
2. Low fat diets (DASH) was 51% sufficient providing 100% of the recommended levels of 14 out of the 27 essential micronutrients.
3. Low carb (Atkins) was 44% sufficient providing 100% of the recommended levels of 12 out of the 27 essential micronutrients.
4. Low carb (The South Beach Diet) was 22% sufficient providing 100% of the recommended levels of 6 our of the 27 essential micronutrients. 

So the best option was still barely half way to completely sufficient.  So using whole foods sources all four diet programs failed to get all proper levels of essential micronutrients.  Six micronutrients were consistently low or nonexistent in all four diets.  These included biotin, vitamin D, vitamin E, chromium, iodine, and molybdenum.  While you may lose weight on these popular diets, you might be damaging your health in the process.  

No diet will be able to hit 100% of all essential micronutrients without consuming a very high calorie number so vitamin and mineral supplementation may be a good option.  If you do not want to a multi-vitamin, then it is at least a good idea to take these six previously mentioned micronutrients that are lacking in most weight loss diets.  Or you can examine your current diet and find out where you are deficient.  This will take some time and effort though.  Here is a multivitamin that we current recommend and take ourselves.

Our Spartan Run

You may have heard of the obstacle course races out there that are becoming so popular.  I'm not much of a runner and really never plan on being one, but I don't mind doing the occasionally 5K/10K.  I have done a few obstacle courses in the past, but not since the birth of the Spartan Run, Tough Mudder, Warrior Dash, and other crazy races.

The opportunity came up to give the Spartan Run a try, so Emily and I decided to give it a shot.  I have to admit that I was not looking forward to this at all.  Partially due to that fact that I ran only 1 day to train for this race.  But also, I was not looking forward to getting dirty and muddy.  I guess I am just a pretty boy and don't want to get my hands dirty.

I have to admit though it was pretty fun.  I don't enjoy just running, but it was fun to break it up with a few obstacles.  The challenges were hard but not unbearable.  There were only two obstacles that I failed to complete and one that Emily and I decided to skip since the wait was so long for it.  So as penalty we had to perform 80 burpees.  I really don't mind burpees but 80 is pretty much ridiculous.

The race included obstacles like running through muddy water, jumping over/under walls, flipping tires, carrying sand bags up hills, rock climbing-like walls, crawling through mud under barbed wire, rope pulls, rope climbs, spear throws, and probably a few more that I can't remember.  Oh and of course climbing over mud hills and sliding into pools of freezing cold, muddy water.  At the end of the hills you then have to completely submerge under a wall, just to make sure you got muddy from head-to-toe.

It sounds as crazy as it was, but we would both most likely do it again.  It definitely beats the average 5K run.  Below are some pics of us going through a few of the obstacles.

If you ever want to try one out let us know.  I'm sure we can be easily convinced.  

You Stay Healthy San Diego,

Mike Deibler MS, CSCS

San Diego Premier Training