FOOD, Recipe of the month

Cauliflower Mash

We all know how important it is to have your vegetables with your meals. It’s easier to enjoy certain vegetables if you don’t realize you’re eating them. For this month’s recipe I selected cauliflower mash because as a child and an adult it wasn’t my favorite until I tried this simple recipe. This is a great
substitute for mashed potatoes, which are very high on the glycemic scale (more about that in another newsletter).

Ingredients:

• 2 cups of Cauliflower lightly chopped or broken apart
• 4 tablespoons real (preferably pastured, organic) Butter
• Sea Salt to taste
• Ground Pepper to taste

Cauliflower Mash is great with turkey meatloaf or any other lean protein. Bon Appétit!

FASHION

Five Finger Shoes

Recently there has been a lot of research around shoes and whether or not they are really good for your feet. The human foot has 26 bones, 33 joints, 107 ligaments, 19 muscles and tendons. The 52 bones in your feet make up about 25 percent of all the bones in your body!

When you wear shoes that don’t allow your toes to splay and constrict your feet, the muscles get weak and that causes imbalances. Everything in your body is connected. If the muscles in your feet are weak, that could cause possible problems with your ankles, then your knees, hips, etc. all up the kinetic chain. If you start to let your toes splay and build the muscles in your feet, it just makes sense that everything up the kinetic chain gets stronger (if you are training correctly).

Which brings me to the Five Finger Shoes, those weird shoes with a space for each individual toe. I’m a fan of the shoes and train in them frequently.

The key is to not wear them for a long period of time at first, maybe an hour or two. I only wear them when I’m training in the gym. Once I ran 3 miles in them and I have to tell you, I felt like I was a gazelle! It was very freeing to run in the shoes even though I’m not a huge fan of running. Yet, I wanted to check them out outside of the gym. You can buy socks with toes to wear in them, or I use Dr. Schools Odor-X foot powder to deal with stinky feet. La gives the Five Finger shoe a big toe up! Let me know your thoughts.

FITNESS, Exercise of the month

Squat

The squat is a very basic exercise. When people tell me that can’t squat I always ask, “Can you sit on the toilet?” If you can sit on the toilet you can squat – but it’s all about squatting properly. Max Mormont, an amazing Olympic lifter who was one of the best coaches I’ve had, would always say “Wiggle your toes when you squat.” I say that to my clients all the time when we train because it’s a great queue to make people understand where all your weight should be distributed. When you squat properly all your weight should be back in your heels and your glutes should be activated. You should stand straight up and push up through the heels. I would recommend starting from a seated position and then eventually squat without the chair.

Note: Remember to foam roll and “grease your knees” before squatting (exercising), this prepares the body for movement and decreases your risk of injuries.

FOCUS

Spirit

The focus portion of my newsletter is spiritual, because I’m a strong believer that what you think about, comes about. So this month’s focus is about finding balance. We teach what we most need to learn. So I selected balance because it’s so easy to lose ourselves taking care of everything and everyone else and neglecting ourselves in the process. This month we are going to focus on creating balance in our lives by taking 15-20 minutes out of the day to meditate, pray or just sit a listen to your favorite song without doing 10 other things at the same time. Book a massage, sit in a steam room for 20 minutes, but unplug from the rest of the world, get quiet and create balance in your life. Taking a timeout for yourself makes you a lot better for everyone else. Stay Focused!