Older Bolder Mark

the Older Bolder Life Veg Tuesday: Slow Roasted and Grill Finished Cabbage

March 26, 2019 By Older Bolder Mark

We’re big cabbage fans around our camp; cabbage is incredibly versatile, can either be a supporting player or the star of the show, is hardy, stores well, and readily available for most of us around the country.

When this recipe popped up in Garden and Gun’s feed a few months back, I have to admit I was a bit skeptical at first, though finishing vegetables on the grill, or just plain grilling vegetables is pretty much always a great prep, and done right, wins over even the pickiest eaters.

We cooked this up yesterday afternoon, and it was amazing to say the least. We’re real-wood fire people in our grill and smoker worlds, and using a very good butter also pushes this dish over the top.

1 medium-sized cabbage, loose outer leaves removed, stem trimmed flat
2-3 tbsp good butter
1 medium lemon, quartered

Optional toppings
Finely chopped chives or thinly sliced green onions
Toasted pepitas or sunflower seeds
Your favorite spice mix

Preheat the oven to 300, then roast the cabbage whole on a foil-lined baking sheet until a small knife can easily penetrate to the core, roughly 2 hours.

Remove from the oven, fire your grill, and melt the butter.

When the cabbage is cool enough to handle, peel away the dark outer leaves until down to less-brown layers, cut into quarters, brush with the butter and dust with any spice or spice mix you’re using, and grill until slightly charred and well marked (won’t take long).

Pull from the grill, brush once more with the butter, spritz with the lemon, and go to it.

Enjoy.

Starting a New Series This Week: Pick the Low Hanging Fruit First

March 25, 2019 By Older Bolder Mark

We’re going to start a new series of posts this week on the blog, using the tried and true analogy of picking the easy to reach, low hanging fruit first.

My goal here is to outline a plan of attack for someone wanting to jump into the “improve my health” game, yet is overwhelmed by the number of self-proclaimed experts promising astounding results if one just follows their magical meal plan (available for three easy payments of $49.99 each), reads their book, attends their seminar, takes this array of supplements, drinks these teas or coffees, follows a complex workout routine, eats only meat – oh wait, or is it eats no meat?

Should I eat paleo? Or primal? What about the Whole 30 Plan? Vegan? Pegan? Carnivore? Vegetarian? The grapefruit diet? I’ve overheard a pitch in a local grocery this week for the gummy bear diet plan…

There’s a genuine risk of newcomers to the game being overwhelmed by all the chatter, and all the choices to be made.

So let’s take a walk on the simple side of things over the next couple of weeks looking at implementing some very attainable changes – picking the low hanging fruit – toward a healthier lifestyle, particularly when it comes to your approach to a rational, practical, and enjoyable food plan.

Inquiring Minds Want to Know: Older Bolder Links, Reads, and More 23 March 2019

March 23, 2019 By Older Bolder Mark

Food, Glorious Food

Spicy Cilantro pesto (try this one with pepitas).
Spicy Southern Sausage and Cheese Balls (gluten free and a perfect keto snack/meal on the go).

Michelle Tam scores big with this Moo Shoo Pork.

the Older Bolder Life Friday Feast: Spicy Southern Sausage and Cheese Balls

March 22, 2019 By Older Bolder Mark

Growing up in the South, just about every holiday spent with extended family, or party with friends, included at least plate or platter of some version of these classic sausage cheese balls.

One of my grandmother’s (the scratch baker grandmother) recipe was something along the lines of classic Southern chef Vivian Howard’s; my other grandmother used the (gasp, cough, wheeze) Bisquick-based recipe still floating around out there today.

It didn’t matter, as kids we still stuffed our pockets with these little bite-sized delights and fought over the last two on the plate.

After moving to a primal | paleo food plan years ago, to be honest I’d never even thought about a gluten free, primally-oriented version of these until a friend recently asked me if I’d ever run across one as she was planning a party menu.

There are several good ones floating around, and this one isn’t all that different from many you’ll see, save for kicking the spices up quite a bit, and adding additional flavor with alliums and peppers. I’ve added a shallot (or green onions), finely diced, to sauté with the sausage, my grandmother’s dry mustard, cayenne, and red pepper flakes (or minced serranos), and even use Monterrey jack cheese occasionally to mix things up. (In the pic above, we used cheddar on the left and MJ on the right.)

Upping the coconut flour to 1/2 cup (a generous 1/2 cup) makes these a little more bready, though my wife prefers ‘em with less coconut flour. Another tip – portioning out with a cookie scoop (I used a No. 60, about a tbsp; made 7 rows of 5 balls, which just fit on a standard 1/2-sheet) make the prep easier and faster.

These are great for a quick snack and my lovely wife has been grabbing handful for a work lunch on the run.

1 pound spicy ground sausage
1 medium shallot, diced fine OR
2-3 green onions, thinly sliced

4 eggs
4 and 1/2 tbsp butter, melted
2 tbsp sour cream or softened cream cheese
1/3 to 1/2 cup coconut flour (generous measure, see note above)
1/2 tsp dry mustard
1/2 tsp garlic powder
1/2 tsp good salt
1/4 tsp baking powder
1/4 to 1/2 tsp cayenne

2 cups freshly grated sharp cheddar or Monterrey jack cheese

Optional
Toasted red pepper flakes
1-2 minced serrano or jalapeno peppers

Sauté the sausage for several minutes, breaking it up into small pieces. As it’s beginning to brown, throw in the shallot or green onions. Brown the sausage well, and drain in a paper towel-lined bowl.

While the sausage is browning, melt the butter and set aside. Grate the cheese and line a baking sheet with parchment. Preheat the oven to 375.

Now combine the eggs, butter, sour cream/cream cheese, mustard, garlic powder, salt, baking powder, cayenne, and red pepper flakes or minced peppers; whisk to combine well. Now whisk in the coconut flour until well combined.

Stir in the sausage-onion mixture and the cheese until evenly distributed, then form into balls roughly 1-inch in diameter (I used a cookie scoop) and place on the lined baking sheet. Place fairly closely on the sheet in 7 rows of 5 and it’ll just fit a standard 1/2-sheet.

Bake for 16-18 minutes until slightly browned; cool and store in the fridge (should be good for a week or so, though they won’t last that long).

Enjoy.

Question of the Day: How Often Should I Weigh?

March 21, 2019 By Older Bolder Mark

Interesting question from John about how often to check in on the scales…

I’ve just now been converting to a healthy diet (more or less classic paleo) over the past six weeks or so. I’m what most would consider a huge guy – I weigh over 420 pounds – and realize that it’s going to take me months (maybe years) to recover my body. I dropped 15 pounds in the first two week, and now progress is much slower. Weighing every day, and even every week is pretty discouraging given the big challenge facing me, what would you advise?

I’m on the road today, but wanted to share a few quick thoughts with John, given in particular that I personally faced a similar, and at one point, discouraging challenge. (As an aside, I happen to be a data nerd and love tracking all sorts of metrics, but I stopped doing weekly weight checks as I’ll share below.)

That said, several quick thoughts…

Attaboy John, You’ve Made the Right Choice to Get Started

First, an enthusiastic attaboy for making the decision to get started on your journey to recover your health, fitness, and function. Never doubt that it can be done; I weighed over 400 pounds myself a little over three years ago, and am a today few weeks away from having lost half my former body weight.

It’s not a glamorous process, but a very attainable one, and you’ve gotten off to a great start thus far. My first piece of heartfelt advice is this: recognize it’s going to take a months to reach your targets (whatever they might be at this point), focus on working your persistence and patience muscles daily.

Remember that Body Weight is Only One of Many Meaningful Metrics

For those of us facing the daunting challenge of dropping significant excess body weight, using the scale as our only measure of success, especially early on, can be discouraging given the rate of change we see, particularly if weighing daily (which I don’t advise for you), or at this stage in the game, even weekly.

Look for other tangible and valuable measures of success; clothes fit better and then you’ll find the need to drop a size or two. As you move more in daily life, walking becomes easier, your endurance will improve, and exercise for strength and endurance will become something you’ll look forward to. Sleep will improve, heartburn will resolve, and I’ll bet the barn your mood and attitude will begin to reshape too.

Numbers on a scale may not end up being the most valuable indicator of progress at all.

How Often to Weigh? Consider This Option With A Long Way to Go…

When it’s all said and done, how often to weigh eventually boils down to a matter of personal preference, and there’s clearly no right or wrong answer as long as the scale doesn’t become an instrument or focus of an obsession.

Let me share a quick story from my own experience; early on in my own recovery journey, I charted weekly weights, though found three or four months in that dropping anywhere from 1-2 pounds per week seemed discouraging, even with an occasional 3 pound week mixed in. Looking at where I was, and comparing to my end goals (>200 pound loss), on some days prompted that voice of self doubt to creep in, usually something along the lines of “who in the hell do you think you are to imagine you could drop this much weight; you’ll never get there, etc…”.

A friend, actually a former 800m Olympic runner back in the day, encouraged me one day to quit focusing so much on the scale, and focus more on my daily process – eating good food that’s been well-prepared in line with my goal macros and that day’s fitness pursuits (whether fun or a grind it out workout). She challenged me to move to monthly weigh-ins, which I did over two years ago and continue to this day. For those of us with goals of dropping a lot of pounds, I still advise considering a trial of at least a couple of months weighing only monthly.

And to be frank, in my own experience, changing my wardrobe has been a hell of lot more gratifying – and reinforcing – than dropping big numbers on the scale.

I’d certainly encourage you to eschew the daily weight checks, and weigh no more often than weekly. If monthly checks leave you feeling a data void, consider twice a month on the first and fifteenth.

More to come…

Best for Fat Loss: HIIT, SIT, or MOD?

March 20, 2019 By Older Bolder Mark

One the most common questions I hear, as do fitness trainers across the fruited plain, is this:

What exercise will make me lose weight fastest?

First Caveat: That’s Sorta’ve a Trick Question

Before looking at some interesting data recently published in the British Medical Journal, it’s worth stating one more time that in my opinion, for most of us, our body composition is by far and away largely a result of what we eat, not how much we exercise.

You can split hairs as to how much diet and exercise each play a role in determining your body composition, and as always, your specifics depend on a host of factors unique to you and you only. From where I sit these days, it’s reasonable to argue (again for most of us) as does Sisson that roughly 80% of your body composition is related to what you eat, roughly 10% to exercise, and 10% to managing stress and sleeping well. Do those exact numbers apply to everyone? Of course not, but it’s a decent conceptual starting point to launch from…

The trick question issue has to do with the fact that exercise is in no way the biggest determinant in “losing weight”; no matter how hard you try to burn calories, you still can’t outrun your fork, particularly if you’re eating along the lines of a standard American diet. Another way to look at it, and one that’s particularly damning to the traditional medicine and nutrition way of thinking, is that in no way does the simple adage of calories in, calories out ring true.

That said, here’s an interesting spin on the issue from the BMJ, first published in Feb 19.

HIIT, Particularly SIT, Beat MOD for Absolute Fat Loss

From the abstract –

Objectives To compare the effects of interval training and moderate-intensity continuous training (MOD) on body adiposity in humans, and to perform subgroup analyses that consider the type and duration of interval training in different groups.

Design Systematic review and meta-analysis.

Data sources English-language, Spanish-language and Portuguese-language searches of the electronic databases PubMed and Scopus were conducted from inception to 11 December 2017.

Eligibility criteria for selecting studies Studies that met the following criteria were included: (1) original articles, (2) human trials, (3) minimum exercise training duration of 4 weeks, and (4) directly or indirectly compared interval training with MOD as the primary or secondary aim.

The Summarized Results: Interestingly, they found that both MOD and HIIT reduced participants’ body fat percentage, with no statistically meaningful difference noted between the groups.

The kicker was this, when looking at loss of total absolute fat mass (the magical “weight loss”), HIIT groups, particularly those engaging in SIT (sprint interval training) dropped 28.5% more total fat mass than the MOD groups.

The Take Home: Adding sprinting to your routine offers a host of benefits regardless if weight loss is an objective or not, but it is particularly beneficial if you have pounds to drop.

Granted, for some of us, adding HIIT and in particular SIT (Sprint Interval Training) might see like a long shot given current physical condition, joint or other orthopedic issues, or any number of other things. I get that, and it can be a real challenge to incorporate, but it’s doable with imagination, willingness to experiment a little, and some trial and error.

We’ll revisit the sprinting for the non-sprinter, older wannabe fitness jockey, and the rest of us in the next week or so.

the Older Bolder Life Sauce Tuesday: Spicy Cilantro Pesto

March 19, 2019 By Older Bolder Mark

Here in the Southern tier of the country, the forecast is looking like a genuine turn to spring this week, and count us among those who couldn’t be happier grilling season officially opens now. (We grill year round here in North Texas, which really isn’t brag worthy as the weather is so mild, though we did year round in Montana for years, and that’s another story…).

Nifty grilled proteins call for interesting sauces to drizzle over; last week I posted this House Chimichurri, and like many of you, we have a pile of great guacamole recipes like this Quick Columbian Guacamole. And how about this Columbian Aji Sauce?

Another one we’ve been playing with over the years is this Spicy Cilantro Pesto; our favorite flavors here come with using toasted cashews or pepitas, with a little onion, lime, and a serrano thrown in.

Pestos are a great addition to your table; they’re not only tasty but packed with nutritious, vibrant ingredients, and endlessly customizable to suit your palate and mood of the day.

Try this one with cotija if you can get your hands on some, and don’t forget to add good salt at the end to taste.

2 cups packed cilantro, leaves and tender stems
1/4 cup toasted cashews, pine nuts, pepitas, walnuts, or almonds
2-3 cloves garlic, peeled and roughly chopped
1 tbsp fresh lime juice
1/3 to 2/3 cup oil (avocado or extra virgin olive oil) to desired consistency
1/2 cup grated good parmesan cheese or cotija
Good salt to taste

Optional
2-4 tbsp chopped red onion
1/4 to 1 seeded and chopped serrano chile
1/2 to 1 tsp fresh lime zest

Into your trusty food processor go the cilantro and nuts of choice, pulse several times to finely chop, then add the garlic, onion and pepper if using, and pulse to combine.

At this point, we like to add the lime juice and then dribble in the oil with the processor running until smooth, then pulse in the cheese and lime zest if using. Importantly, salt to taste and stir well.

Enjoy.

Monday’s Question: Do I Have Orthorexia Nervosa?

March 18, 2019 By Older Bolder Mark

Today’s question comes via reader Kathy P. in Austin –

I’ve just had a very unsettling interaction with my new internist, a woman physician I’m guessing in her early 40s (new doctor assigned because of insurance change). She was asking me about my diet, and I told her I’ve been eating paleo now for nearly 4 years, dropping 72 pounds the first year, with my weight stable at 138-139 now for three years. My husband and I love to cook, and share meals with friends several days per week.

I intermittent fast 3-4 days per week and try to spend a month in keto sometime in the first quarter of every year. My standard bloodwork has never looked better.

As a matter of background, I’m a college professor, marathoner and wannabe triathlete, am 51, 5’10” tall, weighed 138 in the office, with a calculated BMI of 19.9.

Despite my weight and fitness status, my new doc launched into an angry tirade about “paleo poison”, asked if I ate whole grains and legumes, and pronounced me as suffering from orthorexia nervosa. She basically stormed out after that interaction and sent her PA in to set me up for counseling, which I refused.

Wow, and a Quick Suggestion

Kathy, that’s quite a story, though sadly the second time I’ve heard something very similar in the past two weeks. Your high level function professionally and recreationally, lean body mass, and reported evidence of good general health (blood work mentioned above) all support that you’re doing a lot of things right. Perhaps you caught your new doc on a bad day; more likely, you need to petition the insurance gatekeepers to help you select another doc, and I’d encourage you to be very frank if they ask why.

So What is Orthorexia Nervosa?

The term orthorexia nervosa was coined by Drs. Steven Bratman in either 1996 or 1997; here’s his own introduction to the term written on an eating disorder website –

It is good to eat healthy food. We are encouraged to do so by major medical associations, personal physicians, celebrities, schools, employers, the media and even the US government. However, there are a variety of recommendations available regarding what eating healthy means, and some of these are stricter than others. Some people in their quest to be as healthy as possible begin to choose increasingly restricted diets and develop an obsessive, perfectionistic relationship with eating the right foods. This may go so far as to become psychologically and even physically unhealthy. In other words, it can become an eating disorder.

This unhealthy relationship with healthy foods is referred to as orthorexia nervosa from the Greek orthos, meaning “correct or right” and orexia, meaning “appetite.” While orthorexia nervosa is not listed in the DSM-V (the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual used by mental health practitioners to diagnose mental health problems), it is the subject of growing academic research and has become an accepted diagnosis in the mental health community.

A person with orthorexia nervosa has become so fixated on eating healthy food that this one goal begins to squeeze out and diminish other important dimensions of life. Thinking about what to eat replaces relationships, friendships, career goals, hobbies and most other pleasures of being alive. In extreme cases, the obsession with restricting one’s diet can lead to dangerous malnutrition, a truly ironic consequence of what began as a search for improved health.

The remainder of the article is worth a read, particularly as Dr. Bateman describes the progression of orthorexia nervosa in stages, the first of which is “adopting a theory of healthy eating”.

So What Differentiates Orthorexia Nervosa from Healthy Eating?

Here are several common examples of unhealthy behaviors that typify ON –

Fixation over the quality or purity of food.

Inflexible, rigid eating patterns.

Severe emotional turmoil if “the rules” are broken.

Elimination of entire food groups. (Likely the trap that Kathy fell into in the mind of her internist).

Compulsive checking of ingredient lists and nutritional labels.

Increasing concern about the health of food ingredients.

Unusual interest in the health of what others are eating.

Spending hours per day thinking about food to be eaten in the near future.

Obsessive following of food/healthy lifestyle sites on social media.

High distress if “safe or healthy” foods aren’t available.

Compulsive macronutrient tracking.

A focus on weight loss or body image concerns may or may be present.

Detailed behavioral criteria for the diagnosis of orthorexia have been proposed; here’s an example from 2015.

Back to Kathy’s Question….

Three quick thoughts. One, Kathy, given the thumbnail sketch you’ve provided of yourself and your history, and looking through the typical features of orthorexia nervosa (see other approaches to describing typical symptoms here and here), I’d put money on you being a successful paleo foodie and fitness junkie and not suffering from orthorexia. (My purpose here is purely educational, so that’s not a set-in-stone-diagnosis…)

Two, you may have been caught in what some are beginning to describe as an escalation of hostility from some in establishment medicine toward those choosing what appear to be better alternative nutritional paths. It’s time for another new gatekeeper primary care doc, and may your search be fruitful.

Three, in no way is it my intent to belittle orthorexia nervosa here today. There are people suffering mightily from the condition; I saw them as a physician in practice and see them now, more frequently than you might initially think, now as a health coach. From where I sit, a striking percentage are vegans, though I see them in all walks of life, and following any and all sorts of nutritional program approaches you can imagine. Orthorexia can inflict devastating consequences, and if you know someone teetering on the edge of orthorexic behaviors, reach out a caring, helping hand and help them engage with someone who can help.

the Older Bolder Life Veg Tuesday: Slow Roasted and Grill Finished Cabbage

Starting a New Series This Week: Pick the Low Hanging Fruit First