Healthy Eating From A Friend...

I just wanted to share a link to a blog by a friend of mine (Tom Denham).

Whole Life Eating - Easy, Healthy Whole Food Recipes
http://www.wholelifeeating.com/

From His About page…

About

You have a Whole Life. Eating can be an enjoyable and satisfying part of your life. Sharing the enjoyment of eating good food is the purpose of Whole Life Eating. Good food is tasty AND healthy and eating it should be a pleasure. I can’t share a meal with you here, but I can share my recipes for preparing real, healthy foods that taste good and are good for you.

My wife says I am a chef because I make up new recipes all the time. To me, chefs are graduates of culinary schools who know how to combine tastes and textures to achieve an overall eating experience.  I am a cook. In any case, my recipes are simple things that require modest kitchen skills and prep time.

I shifted from eating a normal, “healthy” diet in May 2010 to a squeaky clean eating program called the Whole30 that I learned from Dallas and Melissa Hartwig through their Whole9 website.

The Whole30 approach is to eat real food – meat, fish, eggs, vegetables, fruit, and fats from healthy sources like coconut, olives, nuts, seeds,  and avocado – but no processed foods, no dairy, no grains, no beans, no white potatoes, no sugar, and no alcohol. The idea of the approach is to choose nutrient dense foods with lots of naturally occurring vitamins and minerals over foods that have more calories but less nutrition. And to avoid foods that spike insulin levels, provoke inflammation, and do other bad things to your body.

I adopted the diet because the owners of CrossFit North Fulton had tried it and recommended it to me. The Whole30 demands strict compliance for 30 days, no half measures, no cheating. I started on 14 May 2010. I felt awful over the next 15 days with an upset stomach and over-all achiness. Then I started to feel good, real good. I began to sleep though the night like I had not in years. My performance in the gym increased sharply. I began to set new Personal Records with Back Squats and Dead Lifts almost every week.

I eat more now than ever before, but dropped from weighing 213 pounds in May 2010 to 188 pounds in February 2011. I am still puffy around my gut and think I can lose another 10 pounds, but broke down and bought myself new jeans and dress pants because I couldn’t keep my old ones tight enough with a belt.

My old diet was not a bad one. I frequently ordered vegetable plates in restaurants and rarely ate at McDonalds. I ate a lot of Healthy Choice soups, oatmeal, and Fiber One cereal with soy milk. I got most of my vegetables from the frozen food section of the grocery store and ate a lot of frozen salmon too.

I have worked out regularly for years. I completed a Marathon race (26.2 miles) every month starting in November 1993 and continuing through December 1994. I lifted weights with a personal trainer for several years. I began working out three times per week in a CrossFit gym in 2008. I mention my history to make the point that I am no stranger to high levels of fitness. My biggest results, however, have come from eating good food exclusively.

I have been on cholesterol management drugs for more than 10 years. The doctor called the results of my annual blood work this year “fantastic.” Only one thing had changed over the past year – five months of eating the Whole30 way. Here are the results of my blood work in April 2009 (before Whole30) and in October 2010 (during Whole30):

Blood Work April 2009 October 2010 Healthy Total 157 177 Less than 200 HDL (Good) 49 61 More than 60 Triglycerides 94 66 Less than 150 LDL (Bad) 89 103 Less than 100

My HDL went up 12 points and my Triglycerides went down 28 points and that is good. My total cholesterol went up 20 points and my LDL went up 14 points and that is bad. The reason that some of my numbers went in the wrong direction is probably that I doubled the volume of meat and eggs I was eating. However, my doctor was enthusiastic about the results, so I am not worrying.

I liked the results of living on the Whole30 diet so much that I have adopted it as a lifestyle. I loosened up a bit on my compliance after my first 30 days; I am eating the salad on the buffet at a Greek Restaurant where I meet a friend once per week even though it is sprinkled with feta cheese. That is normally my only variation each week from the Whole30 approach.

You can find the details of the Whole30 approach to eating at http://whole9life.com/2010/12/the-whole30-version-3-11/.

I published my first recipe in elementary school when my class created a cook book. My contribution was Beef Stroganoff. I had never eaten Beef Stroganoff, but thought it sounded cool and so copied the recipe from my mother’s cook book. Fast forward 40 years. A popular fitness blog published my own Pork and Vegetable Stir-Fry recipe in July 2010 and my Stewed Tilapia recipe in September 2010. Next the publisher of my local newspaper asked me to submit three recipes to be published as a special feature. And then my wife, after 15 years of marriage, started calling on her way home from work to ask if I had cooked yet and if she could eat with me. I began to think my approach to cooking and eating was worth sharing.

Please use the comment section of the website to share your thoughts or questions with me, or send me an email through the Contact page. And bon appétit.