Nutrition Archives

Recently one of the 215 athletes asked about bowel movements. Apparently he is experiencing a decrease in frequency of bowel movements since beginning the recent challenge. His question, is it OK to take Metamucil as a regular supplement to promote some regular movement? Metamucil is made primarily from Psylium husk. Psylium is a type of grain. The concern being, is Psylium husk OK to eat since it is the husk and not the protein where gluten resides?

It’s a little surprising to get this question. Most people adopting this type of diet find themselves with a significant increase in bowel movement frequency. As for the Psylium. Even though it is the husk that is being utilized in the supplement there is nothing stopping the gluten from contaminating the end product. There is really no way to guarantee that absolutely every molecule of gluten is separated from the husk during the milling processes. From the “clean” perspective the supplement is not necessarily the way you want to go. Also think about it from the lifelong sustainability perspective. Do you really want to rely on taking something like that for the rest of your life?

Suggested alternatives: First eat more kale. Never a bad idea. More to the point would be to eat more leafy greens for carbs. As opposed to relying on squash, and zucchini. While squash and zucchini are totally a good idea. The leafy dark green veggies are going to get things moving a little bit better. Second would be to introduce some more probiotic foods into your diet. That would be a good fermented raw sauerkraut. Be sure it’s raw. Some sauerkraut is cooked. The cooking process kills the enzymes that you are trying to utilize for extra digestion. Third is to try a little magnesium supplementation. Magnesium is a stress reducer. Often times excessive stress can have a dramatic effect on the digestive process. Getting stress, rest, and sleep under control is vitally important. Natural Calm is a magnesium product that you can find at GNC. If you are prone to high stress (which most of us are). Natural Calm before bed can really improve your quality of sleep. It won’t knock you out per say. But once you are out. You are out.

Final Scores

Adler – 53. 32. 40. 56.
Brendan – 49 . 50. 50. 51
Christa – 56 . 56. 56. 56
Dennis – 56 . 56. 52. 56
Elisa – 56. 55. 56. 54
Jana – 54. 52
Jeannine – 55. 52
Kate – 46. 51.
Kyle – 48 . 56. 56. 48
Leah – 56 . 40. 35. 35
Melissa – 56 . 56. 56. 56
Micah – 55 . 55. 52
Perrin – 56 . 56
Sandra – 56. 56. 52. 56
Tim – 50.

As this project was mostly facilitated by both myself and kyle, while having the support of the full team at 215, I thought it was only fitting to have closing statements from both of us. Neither one of us was involved in each others statements so please forgive any redundancy.

-Kyle
Here we are at the end of our challenge. How do you feel? More energy? Slimmer? Stronger? We hope that you are feeling all these things. No doubt most if not all of you have had some form of a cheat. How do you feel after that? Most of the time when these challenges end the participants end up on a huge weekend long bender. The results are always the same. Everyone comes back saying “I feel like I’m hung over and I didn’t even drink!” Well duuuh! You just spent a month cleansing your body of irritants and toxins. Of course re-introducing those poisons is going to wreak havoc on you. The real question is what are you going to do from here? You may have radically altered your habits for a month and seen great results. But really this is just the beginning. As we talked about in the initial intro. We eliminated all these toxins so we could wipe the slate clean. If you had your cheat, got yourself sick, and are now ready to get back in the game here is what you do.

First get back into the routine you kept for the last month. Take a day to get yourself stabilized again. Next take one of the things you eliminated, we are recommending starting with dairy, and re-introduce that into your system. If you try multiple categories you may misconstrue what your body is trying to tell you. This is a scientific approach. We need to control as many variables as possible. Get the highest quality items you can find. In the case of dairy that would be butter from a grass fed cow, raw milk, good quality cheese (grass fed if you can find it), etc. Then try a little bit of these items with A meal. Don’t eat cheese at every meal for the next 4 days. Have some cheese on your salad or some milk in your post work out shake. Then do a gut check (pun intended). After you eat that yogurt how do you feel; gassy, bloated, energized, crampy, satisfied, tired, or completely normal. If all is well. At another meal try a slightly larger serving of that yogurt. Do that gut check again. This is how you are going to figure out what YOUR body is capable of handling.

Remember to pick one thing at a time. Control as many variables as possible. That means quality, quantity, timing, etc. If you have any questions feel free to post on this blog or email us. We’d love to hear about what you are experiencing. Please do post your scores from last week. We will be announcing winners of the challenge soon.

-Micah
So we have come to the conclusion of our 30 day challenge. First thing is, we want to hear how you guys feel. Also, tell us anything that has happened to you, i.e. lost weight, acne, body fat, cloth’s sizes have changed, etc…. This is important because the plan is not for you to just go back to what you were doing before. This 30 day process is designed to do two things.

One, educate you on eating for fuel. Hopefully going through this process, you now understand a little bit more about how the type of fuel we put in us effects the type of engine we get to run. In other words the cleaner we eat, the more time and energy our body has to allocate to other things.

Two, whether you realize it or not, the biggest thing when adjusting your food profile (or habits) is that there are emotional ties to what we eat that have to be broken. There is no doubt that when all of you finished sitting through the intro seminar you understood what we explained to you about what happens when you eat certain things. Many of you may be sitting here today still understanding that you don’t want to eat certain things but you just can’t let go of them. We can still help you with that.

We are constantly evolving here at 215 and looking for new ways to make your experience here better. This is not just when it comes to programming but also with regards to nutrition. As we speak there are new processes being built to work with people on altering their nutritional profiles. If you didn’t quite accomplish your goals throughout this process or you’re concerned that it will not keep going now that the challenge is over let us know. For those that did the challenge and are in this boat we have some other counseling we offer that may help you going forward.

As soon as we get everyone’s week four scores in we will announce the winner. Also, inspired by the Whole 9, I would like to put together a photo project for this. If you succeeded in any way, we want to take your picture with you holding a sign saying what you did. Again, maybe it was a couple pounds, maybe your skin got better, whatever it may be I want to to see it. Also, if you took measurements when we started schedule an appointment with me to re-do those as well.

Scores (After Week 3) (email me if I’m missing any of your scores)

Adler – 53
Anne -
Brendan – 49 . 50. 50
Cathy -
Christa – 56 . 56
Dennis – 56 . 56. 52
Devon
Elisa – 56. 55
Emily -
Evin -
Jana – 54. 52
Jeannine – 55. 52
Kate – 46. 51.
Kyle – 48 . 56. 56
Leah – 56 . 40. 35. 35
Melissa – 56 . 56. 56.
Micah – 55 . 55. 52
Micheal -
Morgan -
Perrin – 56 . 56
Reggie -
Sandra – 56. 56. 52
Sarah -
Tim – 50.