We spoke to Domino about dry January

I spoke with Domino about doing a dry January aka "dry-uary".  A little insight on how our Squeezers feel sans alcohol and what to do when a Cabernet craving hits.
Any of you bypassing the booze this month? Or, have you in the past? What works when you want a cocktail but are trying to avoid have one?

Our best Squeeze program yet and fave new ingredient

 Oh structure we missed you so. We are midway though our Foodtrainers’ September Squeeze fall reset weeks.  Week 1, led by Lauren, concluded Sunday and week 2, my week, is off and running (shout out to our Squeeze achievers doing both weeks).

We design a new program, with new recipes each time (why do less work when you can do more?) but we never really know how it will go until we have a group of all ages, living in all different places, going through it. Many of Lauren’s week 1 squeezers told us it was our best squeeze yet…nice!  We asked our week 1 Squeeze grads to tell us how they felt:

I feel back on track/more confident/able to say no/in control/clear-headed, rested and resolved to continue.

This Squeeze is NO booze, grains, sugar, cheese or scale (yup a full week no weigh ins).  While it sounds like a lot of no’s we have a lot of yes’s too. We select special ingredients and what we call “secret weapons” to spice things up. My favorite this go around is ashwaganda. Ashwagandha is tough to say and tough to drink. Sunpotion politely says it tastes a little “earthy”, we say it tastes like dirt, unless you have it in our OMG Ashwagandha recipe. Why should you “ash”? It’s an Ayurvedic herb, used for over 3000 years, that lowers cortisol, helps body handle stress, balances thyroid hormones and improves body composition and sleep.

Try Ashwaganda and our other new favorites in our Squeeze Bundle 

Squeeze Nightcap: OMG Ashwagandha

We love us some golden milk and this ashwagandha nightcap is a spin on the classic. Don’t stress out about our recipe, if you don’t have all of these it’ll be ok.

And if you are stressing out…all the more reason to try this.

Ingredients:

·      1/4 tsp. Sun Potion Ashwagandha

·      1/2 tsp. Wakaya turmeric

·      1/2 tsp. Wakaya ginger

·      1 cup water

·      Pinch sea salt 

·      Pinch black pepper (pepper increases the effectiveness of turmeric)

·      1 cup almond or coconut milk

·      Optional drops NuStevia (optional)

·      *Add more sea salt or stevia as needed 

Instructions:

1.    Put ashwagandha, turmeric, ginger, pepper and water into a small saucepan, add water and simmer 8-10 minutes or until this mixture reduces and thickens.

2.    Add almond milk and stir, continue until mixture is warm (a few minutes).

3.    Add salt and stevia (if using) and stir again.

4.    Pour into a mug and sip. OMG, you’ve been ashwagandha’d.

If you want a reset, let us know and we’ll put you on the list for January “Whipping Week” info.

So what do you do when you need to reboot? Have you heard of ashwaganda? Any nighttime rituals you’d like to share?

What this Foodtrainer Eats on a Travel Day

Lauren and I have the travel bug in a major way; we are both Semester at Sea alums and plan our lives around our next trip. She’s off to Nicaragua; I’m Moab and Amalfi coast. But first we have a quickie work trip to California this weekend (Expo West, anyone?). Quick trips can actually wreck you more than long ones. There’s little time to recalibrate or workout but there are still restaurant meals -- ok and drinks too. We all can all fall victim to “plane pounds” if not careful.

So here is a sample day or a “walk through” for my travel day tomorrow:

Night before

I’ll pack my Foodtrainers’ Food First Aid Kit. I never go away without it. Contents vary but I always have our nutcase and nuts (current love: Organic Living cinnamon pecans), 1 snack per day away (I’m thinking Yes Bars) probiotics, tea, cocochia, natural calm and green magic.

En route to airport

Water spiked with with apple cider vinegar + coffee, coffee, coffee.

Pre flight fuel: 

2 hard-boiled omega-3 eggs (Lauren will likely force hot sauce packets on me)

Water and we’ll pop our probiotic

Pre-flight shots- green elixir

Beverage cart upgrade

I ask for hot water and lemon and add Wakaya ginger

Plane snack  

I'll grab a Greek yogurt once through security (I’ve even spied my beloved 2% coconut Siggi’s in many airports) and pair with a packet of cocochia

More water and tea, probably a green tea this time

Travel-avo: 

Lauren has taught me the magic of the travel-avocado. If needed we’ll cut it in half; it’s the best snack on the planet (or at least on the plane).

Post flight bite

Gargantuan Greens

We’ll be on the hunt for a great salad, ideally a spinach salad (vitamin B6 is a VIP for trim travel) with salmon or tuna.

Afternoon Ammunition: 

Kombucha or green juice (1 fruit max) + nutcase.

We are hoping to hit up Moon Juice and the Bulletproof mecca, so afternoon snack is up for edits. (but trust me, we don’t skip snacks).

Early Bird Dinner 

Cocktail (ok maybe 2), poke or tartare/sashimi and we’ll likely go for cooked veg, if I’m dreaming there will be asparagus action.

Sleep Secret Weapon

Natural calm and BED! 7+ hours so we don’t get those “munchieZZZ”

IF you’re traveling any time soon, check out our latest newsletter and pick up our beach bundle but 3/10 (today) is the last day orders will go out until 3/21. 

What’s your typical travel routine?  Any travel trouble or potential "plane pounds"?

The MUNCHIES: What too little sleep and marijuana have in common

If you read our manifesto, The Little Book of Thin, from cover to cover like you better have (wink wink), you know sleep is one of Lauren’s 10 Steps to Svelte. When you sleep your hunger hormones recalibrate. We’ve known that less sleep generally means more hunger but a recent study found that sleep deprivation could trigger eating similar to the “marijuana munchies”.  Uh oh. 

In the study, participants slept for different amounts of time (8.5 hours vs 4.5 hours). On the 4.5-hour nights, subjects report significantly higher scores for hunger and a stronger desire to eat. On the sleep-deprived nights, they ate about 400 more calories and almost twice as much fat when they were given access to a buffet full of cookies, chips and candy.

What does this have to do with POT?

Sleep deprivation produces higher peaks of a lipid in our bloodstream known as an endocannabinoid that seems to make eating more pleasurable – our endocannabinoid system is the same one targeted by the active ingredient in weed. “Sleep restriction boosts a signal that may increasethe hedonic aspect of food intake”… Yup, too little sleep and you’re basically stoney baloney … without the fun.

So what should you do? Aim for 7+ hours of sleep per night and turn off those screens to avoid the “MunchieZZZZ” (props to the NY Post for that pun). And for our Non-religious lent, Lauren’s committed to going to bed earlier, join us for #NRL, it’s not too late!

How much sleep do you typically get a night? Have you noticed “munchieZZZ” when you sleep suffers? Do you still  get stoney baloney?

Lent feels sort of like an anniversary for me at Foodtrainers; Lauren had posted a great blog years (omg .. many years) ago on Non-Religious Lent that introduced us. The rest is Foodtrainers history (appropriate that it’s Valentines day too L, xx).

There’s something really powerful about fully committing and giving something up for a period of time. I’m reading this book The Power of Habit (one of my new years resolutions: read more, insta less) and it turns out you really can rewire your brain but you have to start with a single thing. Don’t try to tackle on 15 changes at once.

I tried Dry January and in total honesty I failed (not miserably!).  So for our annual non-religious lent, I’d rather give up something a little outside the box— in the past it has been giving up elevators, plastic water bottles, and dating loser boys. This year I am giving up COMPLAINING, going on Instagram more than once a day, and snacking after dinner. I realize I said to start with one thing but I couldn’t decide.

Lauren is giving up staying up late (or late for her). As our Foodstalkees know, she’s up with the birds. To get her 7 hours she needs to skip the extra Shark Tank episode and hit the sack at 10:30. 

SO here’s your challenge: give up one thing starting this weekend through 3/27. Six weeks to better habits.

What’s it gonna be for #nonreligious lent? Leave us a comment and tweet us @Foodtrainers @carolynbrownRD and we will have your back. Happy #NRL

We’ll circle back when #NRL ends and let you know how we did.

Maybe you don't need fixing

I’m a clipper. Even though everything is available online when I read an article I like, I rip it out of the newspaper or magazine(when it is my newspaper or magazine, I mean I have manners). This weekend, for some reason I was fascinated learning Tupperware parties are huge in Indonesia. Of course I left thinking that I hope the Indonesian women do not microwave in plastic, do they know about BPAs? How can I tell them? Then, I moved to the Style section.  I’m always a sucker for the Modern Love column but this one about a mother and daughter and poems in her shoe? I saved that. But there’s always one article each weekend that is my #1.

I am still thinking about “Medicating Women’s Feelings”.  While the author, Julie Holland, discusses that mood meds are overprescribed, particularly to women, she also explained that part of what makes women women is our moods. “But we are under constant pressure to restrain our emotional lives. We have been taught to apologize for our tears, to suppress our anger and to fear being called hysterical.”

In both my personal and professional life I am a confessed fixer. Fixing sounds like a good thing. If my children have an issue with school or friends, I like to problem solve. And as they are getting older I like helping them problem solve. At work, if a client has a time of day their eating goes off the rails, we’ll strategize. Some of this is good and helpful but perhaps it’s different when it comes to mood and meds?

As Holland says “we need to stop labeling our sadness and anxiety as uncomfortable symptoms and to appreciate them as a healthy, adaptive part of biology.”  Many positive tonics suggested in the article are what we endorse in our office namely sleep, sunshine and nutrients. But even if we aren’t prescribing meds I worry that sometimes important change comes from sitting with feelings that aren’t the best. After all, how do we notice when we feel especially bouncy or confident if we don’t give those other feelings a little airtime? Some things can fix themselves?

Julie Holland has a book with a fantastic title  Moody Bitches: The Truth About the Drugs You’re Taking, The Sleep You’re Misssing, The Sex You’re Not Having and What’s Really Making You Crazy. And I am not anti med at all…hope you got that. I may be suggesting Valerian instead of Ambien but if we’re being really natural perhaps there should be a little more waiting and seeing…and feeling.

Do you think we over-fix negative emotions? How are you feeling today? Anything you read this weekend that stayed with you?