“Back to Basics” Edition — May 12, 2020
In this week’s IF Insider:
Getting back on track by going back to the intermittent fasting basics, nutritional studies you need to know about right now; what we are reading, and how to become a member of our exclusive Fast Factor Circle Community.
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This is your briefing on the week’s most compelling developments in intermittent fasting as well as innovation in practices that can be stacked with IF, such as plant-based eating, sleep hacks, natural nootropics, brain training and more, all curated by our team of entrepreneurs and ‘future-think’ scouts.
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Getting Back On Track
What’s this?
In our last IF Insider (IF Insider №5–4/28/20), we focused on finding fun in your life by cultivating the Big 10 positive emotions and provided you with resources to explore for more fun, interest, and happiness. If you haven’t had a chance to take a look at those, please do so!
This issue’s focus is on getting back to basics, which for us here at the IF Insider, is our daily practice of intermittent fasting combined with healthy eating.
The last couple of months have been tough for everyone, even for those of us who have naturally optimistic personalities. Denise and I have been seeing more and more conversations in our larger free Facebook group, Intermittent Fasting for Entrepreneurs, about people feeling the need to get back on track with their daily practice. Many people said they temporarily gave in to some emotional eating and perhaps not making the best food choices over the past few weeks, and those decisions are beginning to take their toll…
In the form of weight gain, decreased energy, less focus, and just a loss of a general sense of well being.
Intermittent fasting is NOT about denying yourself pleasurable foods, but neither is it a license to stuff yourself with a half dozen chocolate doughnuts every day! Making better, healthier food choices combined with putting practical, effective stress reduction strategies in place for yourself and getting back to (or beginning!) your daily fasting practice will make all the difference in how you feel, both physically and emotionally.
Healthy Foods — One of the very best things you can do to amp up your nutrition is to add more whole, unprocessed, plant-based foods into your diet. And, one of the easiest ways to do this is to make what is known as “Buddha bowls” several times a week.
A Buddha bowl supposedly came from when Gautama Buddha walked the earth with his bowl and people would fill it with whatever they had on hand. Some say the overturned bowl is the shape of a Buddha's belly.
A Buddha bowl is a one-bowl meal and it can be eaten hot or cold or it can have a combination of hot and cold ingredients, plus there is no one recipe. We are going to give you the building blocks here so you can make your own but the combinations are endless.
Buddha bowls can be made with breakfast type food or for lunch or supper, however you like. The beauty of these bowls is that the ingredients if they need to be cooked, can be made ahead of time and stored in the fridge, so all you have to do is take it out, warm it up and assemble with your desired ingredients.
Here’s what to do and some ideas for ingredients -
Whole grains are the building blocks of a Buddha bowl: quinoa, oats, brown rice, millet, cracked wheat, etc. Quinoa is technically a seed but here at the IF Insider, it is our go-to as it cooks rapidly, keeps well for several days in a covered container in the refrigerator, and reheats nicely. Additionally, quinoa has far fewer calories and carbohydrates than white rice, which contains 40 more calories and 15 times the carbohydrates per cup than the same amount of quinoa. A cup of quinoa will also provide twice the protein and about 5 grams more fiber than the same amount of white rice.
Beans are another building block of the Buddha: black beans, chickpeas, pinto beans, kidney beans, black-eyed peas, lentils, and more. Lentils are very quick cooking, otherwise, you can use canned. Beans are loaded with protein, iron, and zinc plus folate, fiber, and potassium.
Vegetables: cooked and/or raw vegetables such as beets, sweet potatoes, butternut squash, carrots, brussels sprouts, red/yellow/orange peppers, mushrooms (always cook), cauliflower, broccoli, broccoli rabe, grape tomatoes/tomatoes are just a few of many. Cut up vegetables then coat with a little olive oil and roast in the oven on a sheet pan. Store these in the fridge to make preparing a meal easy.
Greens — Spring mix greens, kale, lettuce, spinach, and sprouts. You can choose to cook these or not.
Fruit — Use whatever is in season or use frozen and thawed if fresh is not available. Mandarin orange slices, apple chunks, and blueberries are favorites. Watermelon chunks in the summer are another great choice.
Healthy Fats — avocados, pecans, walnuts, other nuts, and nut butters. toast the nuts to bring out the flavor, especially pecans. Ripe avocados will keep in the fridge for several days.
Extra Protein — Add marinated and pan-fried or baked tofu, tempeh, or plant-based meat crumbles.
Extra Crunch — Top with chia seeds, chopped cilantro or parsley, sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, air-popped popcorn (which is a whole grain), toasted and crumbled nori seaweed crumbled or nutritional yeast.
Dressings — Unlike a regular “salad” which needs a coating of high-calorie creamy oil-based stuff to make it palatable, a Buddha bowl just needs a simple dressing. Whiz kiwi fruit in your blender till liquid and pour over the bowl then add salt and fresh cracked pepper to taste. If it’s too thick add a little water or fresh orange juice. Or make a miso-honey-lime juice dressing which is delicious. Or simply slice open an orange and squeeze the juice from half of it onto your bowl. Strip out the orange flesh and throw that in too.
Buddha Bowl by Ellen Britt
Ideas for Buddha Bowls -
Quinoa and Friends — Sauteed vegetables: sweet potato, cauliflower, onion bok choi, garlic, ginger on a bed of tri-colored quinoa. Top with chopped cilantro and green onion and drizzle with a miso-lime-honey dressing.
Greens and Friends — Bed of spring greens, with quinoa, mandarin orange, and shredded red cabbage. Topped with chia and sunflower seeds and broccoli sprouts and drizzled with a miso-lime-honey dressing.
Sauteed Vegetables — Tri-colored quinoa base with black beans, sauteed red cabbage, bok choi, sweet potato, onion, garlic, ginger, broccoli sprouts avocado and moon drop grapes. Served with ½ Beyond Burger mixed with sage and red pepper and pan-fried.
Breakfast Bowl One — Base of oatmeal cooked till creamy and soft, mixed with peanut butter, topped with sliced banana, apples cooked in plant-based butter and cinnamon, blueberries, strawberries, sprinkled with chia seeds and drizzled with homemade oat milk creamer.
Breakfast Bowl Two — Base of oatmeal with roasted sweet potato and apples cooked with cinnamon. Drizzle oat milk over the oatmeal and top with toasted walnuts and a sprinkling of chia seeds.
Why It Matters — Nutrition is one of the main foundations for a healthy life. Advances in the study of the human gut microbiome highlight profound connections between the beneficial bacteria that live in our digestive tracts and our physical and emotional health. Adding several whole food, plant-based meals to your diet every week can make a real difference.
“In times of life crisis, whether wildfires or smoldering stress, the first thing I do is go back to basics… am I eating right, am I getting enough sleep, am I getting some physical and mental exercise everyday.” ~ Edward Albert
Current Nutritional Studies You Need To Know About Right Now
Vitamin D Deficiency And COVID-19 Mortality
A research team led by Northwestern University has uncovered a strong correlation between Vitamin D deficiency and mortality rates due to COVID-19. The team looked at publically available patient data from hospitals and clinics across the globe including China, France, Germany, Italy, Iran, South Korea, Spain, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
Healthy levels of Vitamin D seem to play two roles: Vitamin D not only enhances the human immune systems but also prevents the immune system from becoming dangerously overactive, causing what the medical profession has labeled the “cytokine storm.” This storm can damage the lungs, leading to acute respiratory distress syndrome. In fact, many researchers believe that most people who die of COVID0–19 do so because of this overactive immune system response.
The researchers emphasize that Vitamin D will not prevent people from getting the virus, but may well reduce complications as well as prevent death in people who become infected.
Taking excessive doses of Vitamin D can be dangerous, and likely provides no benefit in those who are not deficient. However, Vitamin D deficiency is quite common and it’s estimated that nearly one billion people globally are deficient, including 41.6% of U.S. adults. Even more so if you are Hispanic (69.2%) or African-American (82.1%)
Many physicians recommend 2,000 IU of Vitamin D daily in the form of Vitamin D3 (cholecalciferol), although there have been no adverse ill effects from doses as high as 5,000 up to 10,000 IU daily.
Photo by MJ Tangonan on Unsplash
Green Tea And Obesity
Past studies of the effect of green tea on weight loss have been a mixed bag, with some studies showing a positive effect, and others contradicting those findings.
But a new study led by Dr. Richard Bruno of the Ohio State University in Columbus looks promising. The researchers looked at male mice and fed half the group a standard diet with the other half fed a high calorie, high-fat diet. The researchers put green tea extract into half of each group’s food for the eight weeks of the study.
The results? The mice that were fed the high-fat diet plus the green tea extract gained 20% less weight than the mice that ate the same diet without the extract, plus they had lower levels of insulin resistance, a factor in developing diabetes. These mice also had reduced levels of endotoxins in their blood, had a healthier gut microbe community, and were affected by “leaky gut” to a lesser degree.
Also, the group of mice who were fed the standard diet and got the green tea extract also showed benefits, just not as much as the mice who were fed the high-fat diet.
The researchers point out that for you to get the equivalent of the amount of green tea in your diet as the mice in the study, you would have to drink about ten cups of green tea a day. Although that sounds like a lot, in some parts of the world that would not be that unusual.
Also, a recent review of the scientific literature underscores the dose-dependent relationship between green tea and it’s benefits. These studies used whole leaf green tea and not extracts.
Here at the IF Insider, we are big fans of traditional Japanese matcha tea, made with the whole tea leaf painstakingly ground into a fine powder. Matcha delivers more in terms of a better phytonutrient profile than does regular green tea. (This is the ceremonial matcha Denise enjoys!)
What We Are Reading
Each issue, both Denise Wakeman and I bring you a short blurb on what we are currently reading, listening to, or watching, including books, articles, videos, movies and research papers of value. This week:
Denise — Scrolling through headlines one day I came across an article about Mushroom Coffee. I was a bit taken aback by the thought of putting mushroom powder in my coffee but decided to check it out. The article touts the health benefits of various mushrooms which has been known by food scientists for some time.
I decided it was a good time for an experiment so I did some research and found Laird Superfood Performance Mushrooms in powder form for putting in coffee among other things like tea and smoothies. I received my order a couple of days ago and will report back soon on my verdict.
Ellen — I am sort of a “research junkie” as I love to track down the lastest studies backing up the information we bring you here at the IF Insider. The latest info I’m reading has to do with a type of brain cell known as microglia. For years, the function of these cells was unknown, but they were then discovered to have the role of scavengers, clearing cellular debris as well as dead neurons from nervous tissue through a process known as phagocytosis (literally “cellular eating”).
But now, new research is shedding even more light on these “white blood cells of the central nervous system” and they have been found to be important in maintaining brainwave homeostasis and they communicate via the gut-brain axis. When they are healthy, they may help to prevent the cognitive decline seen in Alzheimer’s and other dementias.
But unhealthy microglia can also contribute to diseases, especially those involving inflammation and also auto-immune disorders, such as some mental health disorders, multiple sclerosis rheumatoid arthritis, and metabolic syndromes.
Here’s the good news: Research suggests that fasting may encourage microglia to “reset” from an unhealthy overactive state enabling them to become healthy again so they begin doing their job of protecting neurons and clearing debris.
If you would like to get a look at some of the research on microglia that is being done, particularly on the interrelationship between microglia and autophagy (which is increased by fasting) you can read the scientific article here.
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Our Mission: We bring together entrepreneurs to learn how to combine the extraordinary power of intermittent fasting with research-based practices both ancient and modern so that as we support, encourage and inspire one another, we can each expand our focus, confidence and productivity as well as exponentially increase our well being, and through us, the well being of our families, friends, colleagues, and communities.
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Published by Dr. Ellen Britt & Denise Wakeman, Fast Factor Community
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