Good Reads - Emotional Eating

Here are some good book recommendations that deal with Emotional Eating. Check out Amazon.com to buy used books really cheap or check out your local library to possibly check one of these out. Lastly, you could do a book swap with a fellow contestant. Enjoy!

Eating Mindfully by Dr. Susan Albers (http://www.eatingmindfully.com/)
Mindless Eating by Brian Wansink (http://mindlesseating.org/about.php)
The Zen of Eating by R. Kabatznick (http://www.amazon.com/Zen-Eating-R-Kabatznick/dp/0399523820)
The Tao of Eating by Linda R. Harper (http://www.amazon.com/Tao-Eating-Feeding-Everyday-Experiences/dp/188091333X)
The Miracle of Mindfulness by Thich Nhat Hanh (http://www.amazon.com/Miracle-Mindfulness-Thich-Nhat-Hanh/dp/0807012394)
When Food is Love by Geneen Roth (http://www.geneenroth.com/books.php)
Women Food and God by Geneen Roth (http://www.geneenroth.com/books.php)
Appetities - On the Search of True Nourishment by Geneen Roth (http://www.amazon.com/Appetites-Search-Nourishment-Geneen-Roth/dp/0452276799)
Wherever You Go, There You Are Jon Kabat-Zinn (http://www.amazon.com/Wherever-You-There-Are-ROUGH/dp/1401307787)

Make Ahead Mondays

Here are two Make Ahead Monday ideas for you – one is for breakfast and one is for lunch or dinner. From start to finish, making both of these dishes simultaneously took me 1 hour and 15 minutes to prepare. Not too bad considering it will only take 3 minutes during the week to heat up and be ready to eat!

Southwest Breakfast Burritos - makes 6 burritos

(6) La Tortilla Factory (Low Carb High Fiber) Large Size Tortillas
(6) Wedges Laughing Cow Cheese – I used Sun Dried Tomato
1 ½ cups shredded Cheddar or Colby Jack Cheese (or whatever cheese you like or have on hand)
1 can black beans, drained and rinsed

I can chopped green chilies

½ cup chopped red onion

1 ½ cups chopped fresh tomato (canned would work, too)

18 tbs Egg Beaters

6 whole eggs
Salt and pepper


Directions: heat skillet and sauté red onion (I used non stick spray to sauté with). While red onion is sautéing beat together Egg Beaters and whole eggs – add a little salt and pepper. When onion is translucent add egg mixture to the skillet. Scramble and cook eggs through. Set eggs aside.
Spread a wedge of cheese on each tortilla. Make an assembly line of the rest of the ingredients, and evenly place on each tortilla. Beans – then tomatoes, then chilies, then egg, then sprinkle with shredded cheese.

Now it’s time to fold the burritos! To properly fold the burrito – check out these step by step directions on this website: http://mexicanfood.about.com/od/techniques/ss/burritofold.htm Don’t worry, the burritos will be packed full of breakfast delight and may be difficult to fold perfectly. Just do the best you can.

I placed these in quart size freezer bags and stacked in the freezer for those mornings I am in a pinch and need a great breakfast. You could split these burritos in half and get two servings out of them or serve two of your kiddos. If you have time to sit down and eat these – you could have a side of salsa with the burrito and get even more veggies in for the day.

Approximatel nutritional breakdown (per burrito)

375 calories

18.75g fat

570mg sodium

34.5g carbohydrates

15g fiber

31.5g protein
2.5g sugar




Fettuccine with broccoli and tomato sauce


1 package Hodgson Mill Whole Wheat Whole Grain Fettuccine
1 can NO Sugar Added Hunts Pasta Sauce
1.5 pounds lean ground beef, browned
1 head of broccoli, chopped and rinsed
Directions: While the ground beef is browning, heat a pot of water to boil the fettuccine. Once ground beef is browned, drain and rinse fat off. Place back in skillet and add pasta sauce and broccoli. Cover and let simmer for 15 minutes. In the meantime, boil the pasta according to the package directions. Once pasta is finished, drain and allow cooling. Take the meat sauce off the heat and allow cooling as well.
Once everything has cooled, portion out 1/6 of the pasta (ended up being 5oz worth of noodles on my food scale – may be different for yours) and place in a quart size freezer bag. Portion out the pasta sauce into 1/6 portions, and place one portion on top of each bag of noodles. Once everything is cool you can place the bags in freezer. If you flatten the bags of pasta down before placing them in the freezer you can stack the bags on top of each other saving some room in the freezer.

Approximate Nutritional Breakdown:

425 calories

9.7g fat

665mg sodium

54g carbohydrates

11.4g fiber

4g sugar

29.3g protein



6 breakfasts and 6 lunches/dinners prepared in until 90 minutes.

Lunch or Dinner Idea - Pepperoni Pizza Wraps

Here is a great (and easy) idea for lunch or dinner. You could even prepare it ahead of time and reheat it.

Ingredients:

(1) Flatout Wrap (http://www.flatoutbread.com/)
(9) Turkey Pepperoni Slices
1/3c Pizza Sauce
1/2 cup Cheese (Pizza Blend)

Assemble ingredients on Flatout Wrap: sauce, cheese, pepperoni. Place under broiler until cheese is melted and ingredients are heated through. Roll up and serve immediately or place in refridgerator to reheat later.

Makes one. 380 calories per serving.

Serve with a side of raw pepper sticks or broccoli and cauliflower with a side of "ranch" (greek yogurt with ranch seasoning).

5 weeks later

and here is the progress with my neck.

Before                             Progress

You can tell a notable difference just in the photos, but I can tell just walking around too! I have gotten taller because I can now see all the dust and crumbs on top of the refridgerator - something I was oblivious to prior. So, with Dr. Jamey making my neck healthy... looks like my house is going to become cleaner. Yay.

This progress is just after 5 weeks. I have been going 3x a week - sometimes in the morning and sometimes in the evening as his hours are very flexible.

I take my two little girls with me and they run straight to the playroom and always are excited to recieve their sticker from Jennifer before we leave. As a parent of two young children it's so nice to go to a doctor's office that the kids are exicted to visit. Dr. Jamey and his wife Jennifer are always happy to see the girls, and the girls are always happy to go to the office. In fact, they have started getting adjusted now, too. As well as my husband! This healthy living venture is a family wide effort, because really, no one is immune to benefitting from taking care of their body.

Each time I go into the office I do a few exercises before I get adjusted. These exercises are kind of hard to describe, but they are just movements and stretches that increase the health of my spine. After getting adjusted I then wear a "crown" of weight and stand on a machine that vibrates. The purpose of the weights on your head is to pull your head back instead of slouching forward and there are many benefits to the vibration of the machine; increased balance, calorie burn, etc.

I asked Dr. Jamey to tell me in detail everything that was wrong with me, so I could understand why exactly I was doing what I was doing each time I came in to see him. Rather than trying to put it into my own words, here are Jamey's:

"The two lines up top that need to be parallel, looking at how your skull sits on top of your first vertebra. Yours is locked in extension, or tipped backwards (that's why they're coming together in the back). This is called the initiating event - it's what starts people to lose the curve in their spines and all other bad things in motion. First, one's skull gets locked in extension. Next, you get anterior head carriage (the vertical line). This needs to be over the front part of the 4th vertebra. For every cm forward that it goes, it adds additional pounds of pressure to the spine. Yours was around 4 cm = 16 extra pounds of pressure, so we definitely want to fix that asap.

On your front to back film, you had a head tilt. That's known as posture number one and happens after you lose the curve in your neck. Next, your body will fixes the head tilt by lowering a shoulder. Finally, to fix the low shoulder, you compensate and put a sideways curve (scoliosis) in the spine. All these things are caused by improper motion of the individual vertebra in the spine. Actually, proper motion of the spine is responsible for 90% of the nutrition that goes to your brain (proper food, nutrients, and Oxygen).

The curve in your spine is called the arc of life. This is neat to me (I like numbers). Your curve should be 43 degrees (4+3=7, which is a very biblical number). When you lose the curve in your spine, it actually takes 20 years off of your life, if it reverses, it takes even more. Reason why, when your spine straightens, it actually elongates, or stretches the spine, creating a greater distance that a nerve impulse must travel. The stretching, too, will slow down a nerve impluse, causing improper communication between the brain the rest of the body. In addition, the stretch can cause part of the brain stem to protrude slightly through the skull, and the top vertebra can push on it, affecting every autonomic function in the body.

Losing this curve causes: decreased intestinal motility (digestion problems), 30% decrease in vital lung capacity (amount of air you can fill your lungs with, essentially, you can't oxygenate your blood as well by 1/3, high blood pressure, as well as other problems I can discuss later).

The main premise behind chiropractic is that your body is a self healing and self regulating organism, or basically, that you have the capability to heal yourself. As long as nerve flow is optimal, you heal at 100%. This doesn't mean that you don't get sick, it means you fight things off quicker...

So, essentially, I have two goals for you in mind. First, I want to fix the structure of your spine. I want to put the arc of life back into your neck. This will take some time. This will in turn fix the function of your nerves. It will create less of the static between the brain and the rest of your body, allowing better communication between your brain and tissue cells.

Essentially, what I do boils down to a few things. Your body heals itself. Stress (physical, chemical, or emotional) causes structural changes in your spine, that in turn affects the brain's ability to coordinate and control every function of your body. This is called the vertebral subluxation complex, or just subluxation. Chiropractic adjustments remove this nerve interference, allowing the body to function optimally.

The scans gave you a number of how your nerves are flowing. Optimal is between 89-100. You were at 71.33. I'd like to see that get up to 80 in a few months, and eventually between 89-100."

I have learned so much about spinal health and overall health in the month I have known Dr. Jamey. I look forward to having Dr. Jamey share some great information with all of the WFMH contestants next week.

-Sara