TheBalanced Power Mix

Looks pretty tasty, right? Well, truth be told….it is. It’s delicious. The perfect blend of sweet and savory, while being nutrient-dense and full of energy. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you TheBalanced Power Mix.

I used to call this ‘Trail Mix’, but I never went on a trail with it, so I decided to rename it. It’s now Power Mix, as that is its intended purpose. It provides concentrated fuel and energy to your body. It’s perfect for on the go, for travel in the car, for an afternoon snack, or even quick pre/post workout nourishment. It’s satiating, meaning it fills you up and it keeps you feeling full while it works its magic on your insides.

The Ingredients:

• Roasted raw almonds (2 cups)
• Roasted raw walnuts, halved (2 cups)
• Roasted raw pecans, halved (1 cup)
• Roasted salted cashews, halved (2 cups)
• Roasted raw pumpkin seeds (1/2 cup)
• Roasted raw sunflower seeds (1/2 cup)
• Dried cranberries (1 cup)
• Raisins (1 cup)
• Dark chocolate bits (2 cups)

The Tools:

• Cookie sheet
• Extra virgin olive oil
• Spatula
• Plates on which to cool the nuts
• Bowl to mix everything together

The Preparation:

1. Preheat your oven to 325. You’ll be baking (what I called ‘roasting’) these nuts for 10 minutes @ 325, or alternatively you could do approx. 20 minutes @ 225.
2. Spray a cookie sheet with a thin layer of olive oil, or low fat cooking spray.
3. Spread out 2 of your types of nuts on the cookie sheet evenly so that each nut is in contact with the cookie sheet. You can do this in any order you like. I did my almonds and walnuts, then cashews and pecans, then pumpkin seeds and sunflower seeds.
4. Place the cookie sheet in the oven and bake for the time mentioned above. You should be able to smell the nuts as you near the oven. Be careful not to burn the nuts, as they retain that burn flavor after they’ve cooled.
5. Once the batch of nuts is done, place each type of nut on its own individual plate for cooling.
6. Repeat Steps 2-5 for the next two types of nuts. You may not need to repeat Step 2 if there is still plenty of oil on the cookie sheet.
7. Repeat Steps 2-5 for the pumpkin seeds and sunflower seeds. You may not need to repeat Step 2 if there is still plenty of oil on the cookie sheet.
8. Make sure all the nuts and seeds have cooled completely before mixing everything together. If you do not, the heat from the nuts and seeds will melt the dark chocolate and give you quite the gooey mess.
9. In a large bowl, combine all the nuts, the seeds, the dried cranberries, the raisins and the dark chocolate bits. Get your hands in there and start mixing everything up! It’s like being a kid again.

Once you’re done, throw it all in a bag or bowl and viola! What you have left is a great, savory, salty mix that is healthy and choc full of good energy and nutrients.
The Serving Size: 1/2 cup

Closing Thoughts:

This stuff is addictive, so be careful! The use of salted cashews is the coup de grace in this recipe. It created the balance between sweet and savory. As such, be careful and don’t just sit there with a bag of this and eat until you’re stuffed! While it is incredibly nutrient dense, it also incredibly calorie dense! It’s intended purpose – energy for USE – should not be taken lightly.

Some say, unequivocally, that breakfast is the most important meal of the day. And for good reason. There are many benefits to getting up a few minutes early and having something to eat.

Others often tout that lunch is indeed critical to proper nutrition, while the vast majority of people always eat dinner, yet disregard it’s importance, how it should be viewed, and don’t think about it in relation to the other meals of the day.

Let’s not forget about good old-fashioned snacks either. How many snacks are good in a day? How big should they be? Should we even snack at all?

Well, I’m glad you asked. Let’s begin today’s lesson:

Before we hit some specifics, let’s talk first about an overall question: Is it better to eat 3 meals/day or 6 meals/day?

Traditional thought suggests eating 3 square meals in a  day is all you need, and for a long time i think that really worked. Even 20 years ago the average American was far more active on any given day. How many more people worked manual labor jobs before the advent of the personal computer? In our race for convenience, we’ve started to doom ourselves to making time for fitness rather than our life actually being physical be default.

So we’re left with a life that is mostly sedentary, if you’re like me and sit at a desk all day. And if that’s true, we need to do all we can to keep our BMR (basal metabolic rate) up, and our metabolism running like a hot furnace. Eating three meals a day just doesn’t cut it anymore. We need to be eating smaller meals more frequently to encourage our body to always be working with what it’s given. By default the process of digestion has a thermic effect, meaning the process of digestion actually burns calories. If our body is regularly churning and burning, we have a much stronger BMR and a faster, hotter metabolism. And that’s a good thing, right?

So if we’re eating 6 meals/day, how often do we need to be eating them? That window of time is somewhere between 2.5-4 hours. Now, granted, for some of us, eating every 2.5 hours will have us eating 8+ meals in a day. Which is fine if you keep them all pretty small. Or have a few big ones and the rest be small snacks. I usually eat every 3 hours. 3 meals and 3 snacks. It works well because I’m rarely hungry during the day let alone ravenous. No one meal is huge enough to induce Food Coma (3pm naptime anyone?)

So back to the original question…which of these meals makes the most difference?

BREAKFAST
Studies have shown that people who skip breakfast are 400% more likely to become obese than those who have a regular habit of eating breakfast. 400%!!! So many people skip breakfast, but knowing a statistic such as that, how can you not take at least 10 minutes in the morning and enjoy a bowl of oatmeal?

I wonder how many of those who skip breakfast end up ravenous by lunch, binge on fast food or a huge plate at the buffet line on lunch, and end up falling asleep at their desk by 3pm?

There are a couple of things to consider about Breakfast:

• Eating a solid, healthy breakfast gets your metabolism going in the morning. We’re not talking sugary cereal or a snicker’s bar and a can of coke (this was my brother’s daily regimen for years). We’re talking egg, bacon, yogurt, fruit, oatmeal, etc.
• Breakfast gets your body ready for the day, your mind alert for work, and your energy level up so you can do what you need.
• Breakfast is the first time you get to fuel your body, so make it count. Fill it with satiating protein and good fats, and some complex carbs with high fibre so it sticks with you.

MORNING SNACK
Morning snacks are a favorite of mine. Typically mine are large in size, nutrient dense, but very low calorie. I enjoy lunch more than I should, and I always want to to be able to enjoy it and not feel guilty. My morning snacks are often a combination of raw veggies (carrots/broccoli), maybe a small can of low sodium V8, a handful of almonds and a stick of string cheese. All in all, that’s around 250 calories, and it leaves you quite full! Eating enough clean calories can often leave you stuffed!

LUNCH
My second favorite meal of the day. This meal is key because it’s essentially the halfway point of the average work day. This is the your midway rest stop on the road trip of daily business. It is best to use this time to really refuel your body. If I have access to a salad bar, that is always my goto meal. A typical salad for me would look like this: spinach, shredded carrots, pepper slices, kidney beans or chick peas, sunflower seeds, feta cheese, dried cranberries, grilled chicken and perhaps some balsamic vinegar and lemon juice as dressing. So nutrient dense and full of antioxidants, it has good protein, excellent fat, clean complex carbs and it leaves me full, with loads of energy and isn’t heavy on my stomach. No Food Coma after a meal like this.

If I don’t ace access to a salad bar, I’ll typically try to find some grilled chicken, some vegetable soup or some sweet potatoes and broccoli.

Lunch time in the corporate workplace can easily be a crap chute with all the quick, horrible food choices available to the on-the-go corporate types.

AFTERNOON SNACK
This is one of those that I look at as an absolute necessity. Without question, this snack is a bridge between two river banks. Without it, you’ll get to the other side of the river absolutely starving and dinner can easily end up being a binge at the drive-thru.

I know I just got done telling you about the merits of a healthy, sustaining lunch, but often times people get a little rumbly in their tumble in the afternoons, and that’s a good time to pull out an apple and some natural peanut butter.

DINNER
This is the meal that people typically save for last, and they make it huge, and that’s a mistake I think. It’s my belief that, generally, your meals should get smaller in the evenings, and they should be primarily protein based and low-carb, outside of fruits and veggies. Most people aren’t active during the evening and having a high carb meal during periods of inactivity isn’t a smart move if you’re trying to keep that internal engine hot. However, if you workout the evenings, this is a perfect meal to have as a high-carb replenishing meal.

EVENING SNACK (SIXTH MEAL)
Taco Bell has Fourthmeal. I have Sixth Meal. This is an optional meal. If you’re trying to lose weight, the time of night when this meal occurs falls past the time when you need to stop eating before you go to bed. For those trying to maintain and even gain, this is a meal I’d consider necessary, and it is best when it is almost entirely protein based. That way, it would be most satiating overnight, and your body will be using good protein as it should, in recovery, while you sleep!

So what’s the best way to get a evening snack that’s almost entirely protein and not heavy and meaty? Simple: Do a scoop of whey protein in a cup of milk! Low cal. Big blast of protein. Liquid based, so it’s easily digested. it’s a near-perfect evening snack!

THE VERDICT
So now that we’ve talked a little about each possible meal in a day, which is best? The answer, not surprisingly, is simple. EVERY meal is the best meal. Each one is as equally important as the one before and the one after it. Each one is fuel to your engine and each one is providing your body with the nutrients, vitamins and antioxidants it craves. You’re making sure your immune system is at it’s best and your metabolism is running at its hottest. And this ensures that you are healthy – an end results I’m sure we all desire and for which we strive each and every day.

So, I’ve been seeing these commercials on TV lately that have really started to bother me. Not in that, “Oh, this guy’s voice is so irritating.” kind of way. But it’s more of a, “I hate to see how many people get duped into this.” sort of thing.

I’m sure other cities and states have similar businesses offering the same type of services to the same type of people, but the one I’m talking about is a local business here in Kansas City.

It’s called Weight Loss Surgical Center. Their slogan is, “Less of you, more of life. Weight Loss Surgical Center.”

Now, at first glance, this idea sounds potentially inspiring. Some morbidly obese guy is sitting in his living room, sees the commercial and thinks, “That’s it. I’ve had it. I’m changing my life!” That’s a good idea, right? Well, maybe.

If their commercials weren’t targeting almost everybody else BUT that guy, I’d change my answer to “Sure!”. Take this commercial for example: The entire ad has images of a man and his family. Years pass, and the guy keeps getting bigger. His voiceover speaks of his concern for his health and that suddenly he’d had enough. He was going to take care of himself and change his habits…….by going under the knife and getting a LAP-BAND put around his stomach.

Here’s another: A woman’s images are shown on the screen as her voiceover tells a similar story. A lamentation of her health situation. A fear of what lies ahead. A decision point comes in her life when she realizes she’s 70lbs overweight, and the only thing left to do…is get a LAP-BAND procedure.

Really? REALLY? That’s the ONLY thing left to do? I think there are at least a few options left before one chooses to go under the knife.

Besides the obvious options like starting an exercise regimen on a daily basis and changing your diet to a Clean Daily Diet, I can’t help but wonder if there are any viable arguments FOR getting a LAP-BAND procedure outside of extreme cases. It seems that the most natural way to lose weight would be the best way, would it not?

It also seems, then, that a majority of those that opt for the LAP-BAND (like the woman who was only 70lbs overweight*), do so with the same attitude of convenience that got them where they are in the first place.

“How can I do this without having to put any effort into it?” ”
“What’s the easiest way out of this?”
“What is the fastest route?”

There is no discussion of, “If I’m going to do this, it will be for the rest of my life. How do I go about changing my eating habits permanently?”

And it is this mentality that makes my heart sink for our nation. We are in the midst of an epidemic and the producers of our food and the vendors of our food seem to be doing nothing to help us get/be/stay healthy. Instead, their pursuit of money has convinced them that the consumer’s health isn’t important anymore.

But I digress. I must end this rant, before it becomes a different rant – one against the food industry.

I know there is no solid conclusion here. There is no light at the end of the tunnel. Right now, in the midst of my rant, I feel like shouting. I feel like letting people know that there should be no easy way out. The journey is just as important as the destination when it comes to losing weight and getting fit. The journey is knowledge and that knowledge is power. It is taking control and not just knowing things, but living them.

Having said that, I leave you with this jewel from american cinema. I feel it sums up my rant nicely.

http://is.gd/cCK5f

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*Why did I star that remark? I’m glad you asked. I know that some reading this might see my aside comment up there and think, “70lbs is A LOT of weight to lose! Maybe LAP-BAND was the best option.” Let me tell you, LAP-BAND seems to be most effective as a last resort idea for morbidly obese people. And even then, a LAP-BAND should only be a starting point to help them understand how to curb an appetite. At some point, they should be able to hold their own dietarily. As well, I myself have lost 115lbs, and I did not need any surgical procedure. Go do some homework. MANY people online have successfully lost hundreds of pounds without the use of surgery.