Flux Food Challenge # ... We've lost count!

Here it is.

1. Eat homemade bone broth once a week.
Use it as stock for soup or drink it after a meal as a digestive aid.
Why bone broth? Super economical way to get the most out of an animal carcass. Bone broth is abundant in important minerals and chondroitin. Make it from fish bones, chicken or beef bones.  Throw some cold water in a big pot, put in a couple tablespoons of apple cidar vinegar (Thanks Kathy Lewis for the tip) and let it sit for half an hour. Then boil it for a good 8 hours with some carrots, onion, a bay leaf or two, perhaps some celery.  Let it cool. Skim the top and discard the 1/4 inch of grey film.  There ya go! Read the article below on bone broth.
http://www.westonaprice.org/food-features/broth-is-beautiful 

2. Try, just try, to eat organ meat once a week.  (Jan's headcheese puts him well in the lead I suspect). It doesn't take you out of the challenge if you don't, but please try! It's so good for you! Trust me - I'm your Coach and wouldn't lead you astray!

3. Don't eat any sugar, including agave, stevia, honey...

4. Don't eat grains. Read about the connection between grains and leaky gut syndrome.

 http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2012/01/21/grains-causing-gut-leaks.aspx

5. No processed food from a can.  Unless, like the Ekvall/Sapach household, you do your own canning.

6. Make an effort to eat local, pastured meat. Read about the difference between factory farmed, grain fed animals and animals raised on pasture.  http://www.eatwild.com/healthbenefits.htm

7. Make an effort to eat local, non-pesticide treated vegetables. Your stomach, liver and pancreas will thank you!

8. Dairy. You decide. It's a grey area. Read the measured report on raw dairy below. http://chriskresser.com/raw-milk-reality

Read what the Weston Price Foundation has to say about raw versus pasteurized dairy. http://www.realmilk.com/

Talk to the Flux folks who are drinking raw dairy.  Read about animal care and the pasturing practices of raw dairy farmers versus commercial dairy farmers.

9. Get off the booze for a month.  See how you feel at the end of the 30 days.

10. Train a minimum of 3 hours a week no excuses. Get to the gym and enjoy you're time!

11. Sleep in a room as black as midnight.  Sleep 8-9 hours a night.  Get yourself some high quality magnesium and zinc and take it before you go to bed. Keep track of your sleep and how you feel - this will amaze you.

12. BONUS POINTS- Ferment your own food.  As Hippocrate's writes, " All disease begins in the gut" and nothing is better for the gut than fermented food.

What is Paleo? 

I have attached a great article on the concept of eating paleo by Chris Kresser.  

http://chriskresser.com/is-paleo-even-paleo-and-does-it-even-matter

A Note on Our Ecology
I have always said that food choices is one area of our life where each one of us can have a measured impact on the world we live in.  Our eating practices really do matter.  I urge you to take a look at the readings on modern farming practices and consumer habits. Talk to farmers who are learning and applying sustainable farming practices. Anything by Joel Salatin is a good start, as is the international organization, Holistic Management. http://holisticmanagement.org/ . The complexity of polycultural farming will blow you away!  Listen to my podcast to learn from farmers Sam and Janeen Covlin.  http://www.fluxregina.ca/flux/flux_Podcasts/flux_Podcasts.html

Whether we think about it or not, ethics and food choices go hand in hand. I am by no means prescribing a single ethical pathway to righteousness, but we need to recognize and come to terms with the fact that humans are entangled within a multitude of ecologies, not separate and distant from them.  Eating Paleo shouldn't be a license to devour meat with reckless indifference.  We are fools if we don't think that the health of the animal is linked to the health of the human.

Challenge Details
Start Date: 2 choices - today (Jan. 1, 2013) or (Jan. 7, 2013) set yourself up for success!
End Date: January 31st or February 7th (based on when you started)

Winners: Measure everything - your lost/gained inches depending on your individual goals, performance in the gym, sleep, and your food quality based on the stipulations above.

Prizes

Flux 2-month unlimited membership

Cool Springs Ranch Gift Certificates
1-Hour Massage with Heidi Greutzner, RMT
Flux gear

Good Luck! 
Coach Darci