Posts Tagged "80/10/10"

Every now and then I have a cooked ethnic meal and last night my kids and I went out and had Japanese food. For those who are curious as to what I ate, I ordered the following items:

Miso Soup
Cucumber Salad
Seaweed Salad
Veggie Roll w/ Low Sodium Soy Sauce and Wasabi

Now to some people the items I ordered above might look like a pretty healthy meal, but I woke up looking and feeling OFF. I realize it was because of all the sodium in one meal. When you are eating relatively a clean, simple, high raw, high green, low salt diet, a meal like that can really throw you off your game….well, it did for me anyway. This was WAY TOO MUCH SODIUM for me! The cleaner the diet, the more responsive the body becomes. Here is what I experienced:

• I felt salt around the rims of my eyes upon waking up this morning. I normally wake up with nothing around my eyes.
• My face and body looked and felt puffy. I was retaining so much water! I normally wake up with a flat tummy!
• Slight aching in my fingers/ joints (as though they were at the pre-signs of arthritis), they were retaining water!
• A lack of drive to workout. Probably due to the dehydrating effect of sodium.
• My face didn’t look nearly as attractive.

I have talked with a couple other friends who have experienced the same symptoms. It’s as if I aged 10 years overnight! My friend and I joked that salt was an instant ugly pill. We agreed that to hydrate and to stay away from the mirror for the day until the water retention is calmed down.

I knew after reading 80/10/10 that salt was not as healthy to our bodies as we are told it was, but I wanted to refresh my memory a bit more since I was feeling so much discomfort and I wanted to share the information with you!

Did you know that salt is a stress food?

Salt is a stimulant! It stimulates Sympathetic Nervous System and adrenal glands and creates stress arousal. That’s why it comes under the category of stress food. We all know what stress does to the body (first thing that comes to my mind is pre-mature aging).

This was news to me that salt affected the adrenal glands! Being a person who has been diagnosed with a sub-optimally functioning thyroid this caused a red flag for me. Most people who have hypo-thyroidism know that the adrenals are also related to thyroid function.

I know that sodium is important to the proper functioning of the body and many foods naturally contain salt. Actually, there is some salt present in every natural food we eat which is enough to meet the needs of the body under normal circumstances. So there isn’t really a need to shake the salt onto our foods. However, since it is an excito-toxin it can be hard to break the habit.

According to Dr. Douglas Graham it can take about 2 weeks without salt to really lose the craving for salt and to really heighten our ability to taste flavors fully and with a refined palate.

I am inspired to lay off the sodium especially after what I experienced.

TIP: Salt is dehydrating and can really zap your energy! 

If you are noticing more lethargy and are not as inspired to workout you may want to see if it is due to your salt intake.

Today’s Workout
60 min walk at Santa Rosa Plateau w/ Alex
60 min walk in my neighborhood

Until tomorrow,

Lori

I spent the day recently at Glen Ivy Hot Springs and while I was in the steam room the conversation got onto raw food. (gee, imagine that…) As the group was talking about their different experiences or lack of knowledge on the subject completely, someone shared one of their favorite raw recipes. It was so simple I didn’t even need to write it down. I decided to make it and see how I liked it. It was a broccoli salad. Now, I am not a huge fan of raw broccoli, but I knew I had a ton of it in my fridge from last weeks share from my wholesale organic produce buying club. It turned out pretty good so I thought I’d pay it forward. I have no idea what the ratios were so I will post my approximates, and feel free to modify it to your liking.

BTW, I am not a culinary artist or a great photographer, but I thought you’d like to get an idea of what this looks like.

Broccoli Salad
Broccoli (chopped small or food processed) -I used 1 bunch
Dried cranberries -I used one handful
Sunflower seeds- I used 1 handful of walnuts since I was out of sunflower seeds
Apple (chopped or food processed)- I used 2 small apples (one granny smith, one fuji)

Toss with the following dressing

Raspberry Vinaigrette
A couple handfuls of raspberries (mine were frozen from late summer)
2 T lemon juice (I prefer to use lemon or lime rather than vinegar)
1/2 C water
A handful of walnuts (I prefer to use whole foods rather than oil for my fat in dressings)

Blend in the Vita-mix till smooth, toss all ingredients together.

This recipe has a holiday vibe to it with the walnuts, apples, and cranberries. It’s crisp, sweet, tart, crunchy and creamy. Plus the broccoli is in season right now so this makes a perfect winter broccoli coleslaw salad.

This recipe is also in alignment with the 80/10/10 diet if you keep your nuts down to a very small quantity, but there is no salt or vinegar or spices that 811’ers tend to steer clear from.

BTW, this keeps really well in a glass storage container if you are traveling, out working or running errands. There is no mixing or messing with putting things together, just a fork and voila!

If you have any variations of this recipe or if you try it, please let me know how you enjoyed it.