“Keep your family goiter free! Or else Norman Rockwell will not want to paint adver-pictures of your family!”

Pop quiz time! Salt: life-giving nutrient or heart attack in a ceramic shaker? If you grew up like I did then you probably think of salt as a no-no for a healthy lifestyle but research is now saying that not only does salt not cause heart attacks like we’ve all been told for the past 20 years, but that slashing salt intake increases incidence of cardiovascular death. Surprised? You shouldn’t be – this”new” research that’s been making headlines over the past few weeks is based on studies over 20 years old. And yet one of the first things people generally do when they’re trying to get healthy is cut back on sodium. Whole diet programs are based almost solely around this one principle.

Me being me, I took this advice to heart and removed almost all salt from diet several years ago. I never added even a smidgen of salt to foods and if a recipe called for it I just omitted it (yet another reason my cookies turned out like turds?). My self righteousness knew no bounds as I handed the salt shaker back to the waiter telling him we wouldn’t be needing that murderous mineral at our table.

So imagine my surprise when during my Great Over-Exercising Debacle Where ISuppressedMy Thyroid, Gained Ten Pounds and Lost My Freaking Mind one of the first things my doctor told me to do was to eat more salt. Her recommendation was based on the fact I needed more iodine – a nutrient commonly added to table salt – to support my floundering thyroid but when I told her I’d cut all salt out of my diet years before, her jaw dropped. “Why would you do that?” she gasped. “You need salt!”

I should have known that salt wasn’t all evil when my infant son used to get super excited to see me after a hard workout – so he could lick the salty sweat off my shoulder and neck. Yeah, my 10-lb baby boy that I pushed out my nethers and therefore owes me big time for the rest of my life, only loved me as a salt lick. Babies may shoot poop up their backs but they’re not dumb, especially when it comes to feeding. Humans need some salt.

But like anything in nature, salt doesn’t operate in a vacuum. (When I was a kid I thought the adage was “Nature whores avacuum” which if you’ve ever seen a Kirby Vacuum sales presentation, is kinda true.) Sodium needs to be balanced with potassium for our bodies to function properly on a cellular level. This is the idea behind those “electrolyte replacement” drinks sweaty exercisers are pushed to drink and all the banana-pimping at races (wow, could I have made that sound any worse?). Note: while bananas are a good source of potassium they’re not dietary rockstars in that nutrient. Apricots, tomato puree, raisins and figs take top honors with apricots containing more than 3 times the amount of potassium.

And yet, research still shows that salt can increase blood pressure and that some people are genetically sensitive to the white stuff. In addition, conventional medical wisdom still advises all adults to cut sodium intake. Plus salt makes you bloat and that’s the last thing we girls need. Even more confusing are all the different types of salt with their different medicinal properties and how table salt is processed into impotency. So which is it? And if we do eat salt, what kind? And how much? And isn’t it kinda gross andunhygienicto let your baby lick you after a workout?

For myself I have decided that salt has long been considered essential for humans and I’m going to eat it and not worry about limiting it in my foods. I also make sure to eat plenty of potassium as well. My only caveat is that I try to only eat salt I add myself rather than buying sodium laden processed foods. I trust my Celtic sea salt. I don’t trust that can of soup giving me the evil eye on aisle 13.

What’s your opinion on salt? Were you as surprised by these findings as I was? Anyone want to educate me on which type of salt I should be using??

As you may recall, I got to interview Tony Horton, founder of P90X and P90X 2 (due out in December). (How many times can I name-drop this before it just starts looking pathetic? I don’t care. I talked to Tony! And he said I could call him “Tony”! Or “Friend”! Whatever that means! Squeee!)Near the end of our interview he said, “Well you sound like you’re pretty strong.”

Even though I’m well aware of the limitations of the telephone, I still gushed, “Thank yooouuuu!”

To which he replied, “Do you want a real challenge?” He said the magic word! He said challenge! To me! That’s like asking Lindsay Lohan if she’d like to go shopping or Charlie Sheen if he’d like his own reality show or Rick Astley if he’s never gonna give you up!

“Do I ever!”

“It’s a move called The Impossible and I have to warn you, most men can only do about three.” I immediately fixated on the number 3. Must. Beat. Men. “All you have to do is put your feet on an exercise ball and your hands on a basketball and do a push-up!”

Me, out loud: “Oh thank you! I am totally going to try this!” Me, in my head: “That’s it?! We’ll knock this one out of the park!”

It turns out that The Impossible is the gym equivalent of that circus trick where the elephant rolls around on that little ball. After working on it for a solid week, we all got it but it did not come without a lot of bumps, falls, rug burns, bruises and knocks to the head.

First, check out Shape.com to read the second part of my interview with Tony about how to get the most out of P90X2 and watch the video Gym Buddy Allison and I made of how to do The Impossible. After you are all impressed with how coordinated and strong we are (and how we still act like totals nerds on camera), you must come back here and check out this blooper reel.

And if that didn’t have you laughing hard enough (Kegels! Think kegels!), here’s what we did after our New Rules of Lifting for Women workout this morning:

First we checked out Krista’s gnarly bruise that she got when she tripped over Allison who had just tripped over me while we were playing basketball. There were only 4 people on the court and yet 3 of us ended up in a heap with poor Krista taking the brunt of it. But do we give her any sympathy? No, we’ve been mocking her Hypercolor arm for a week now.

Have you ever seen such a bruise?!

And then because of an argument on Facebook about who has the longer tongue – I know, do we have to compete over everything?! – Allison brought her ruler to the gym today so Krista and I could duke it out.

Krista’s tongue was 7.25 cm long! And pointy!!

Megan’s was only 4.5cm long. Poor child. However will she pick her nose if she looses both hands in a tragic accident?

See, Krista and I have that covered. So what was the verdict? My tongue was 7.25 cm… exactly as long as Krista’s. Tie!

Anyone who thinks working out is boring just hasn’t worked out with us! So – have I convinced you to try The Impossible? If you do, please let me know how it goes! (Video is even awesomer!) Do you have a freakishly long tongue too? Can you touch your tongue to your nose?

P.S. Don’t forget, you can still enter to win $100 from Unilever!

Is she not the cutest baby ever?! I kinda want to sneak into her room and kiss those little chubby hands right now… (Gym Buddy Allison took this pic!)

Jelly Bean is of the opinion that if she can’t see vegetables then I can’t make her eat them. Little does she know that even though I nicknamed her after a candy, I’ve been sneaking in the good stuff to her since the day I first decided that eating an entire watermelon with a huge baby doing jumping jacks on my bladder was a good idea. And really I can’t complain – she may regurgitate even the tiniest piece of onion into my hand but she ate a whole bowl of spinach with miso dressing at dinner tonight.

The miso dressing was just one of many new recipes I’ve been trying out lately. Something about fall always makes me want to cook more and so I’ve been stocking our freezer full of beef and barley stew, chili, 15 bean soup and enough whole wheat zucchini bread to make Bunnicula cool again. But nothing says fall to me like homemade applesauce! The warm cinnamon-y smell, the fresh taste, the little bits of chewy peel stuck between my teeth… Yeah, I health up my applesauce just like I do everything else. In the past leaving all the nutritious peels on has made my applesauce the leper of the lunchbox but this year I was determined it was going to be different!

First stop, the local, organic apple farm down the road! Fresh air, fresh fruit, fresh kids – what could go wrong?

They were out of apples. Yes, the apple farm was out of apples.Trees were picked bare; saw it with my own eyes! But all was not lost – the farm had porcupines and a pot-bellied pig to entertain the children (nothing says fun like a barbed quill in your eye!) plus a free hayride.

The hayride took us to their new corn maze! Which was super fun as long as I didn’t consider how much money we’d just paid to wander around a dessicated field for an hour. Here we are at the entrance to the maze.

And here we are at the exit! The boys were feeling pretty proud of themselves for making it out alive. I told Gym Hubby we officially have children of the corn. He said he could have told me that years ago.

On the walk back to the farm house (where they conveniently had bags of expensive apples for sale) Jelly Bean discovered that while the trees no longer had fruit, the ground sure did! And yes I let her eat those. The fun of being the 4th kid!

Being a cheapskate I refused to pay for the overpriced apples at the farm so we stopped and got some cheap apples at Target – which I suppose you could say I “picked” myself, har, har.

After cutting them quickly into large chunks, I stuck them peel and all (what? I didn’t want to waste all the good store-boughten vitamins!) into my beloved Vitamix and pureed the living crap out of those things. Thanks to the magic of Google, I discovered this is the secret to making homemade peel-on applesauce. Puree then cook.

I added the pureed apples to my supa-fly 80′s crockpot (it works, don’t judge) along with some cinnamon and a small bag of frozen raspberries that someone had left out on the counter earlier in the day causing them to become unfrozen. (Which is why it has the color and texture of bloody entrails.) That’s it! No sugar, no gelatin, nothing else! (Although I found out later I was supposed to add a smidge of lemon juice. I don’t know why but I skipped that and it tastes fine anyhow.) After letting it cook on low overnight, we had it for breakfast the next morning with whole yogurt and the kids couldn’t get enough! Easiest recipe ever.

We will now take a small break from our cooking show to bring you the newest member of the Andersen family: Bubbles the Beta fish! I finally caved this week and let my kids get their first pet. Heck yes Bubbles gets Brita-filtered water!

Applesauce may be my favorite fall recipe but baking is one of my favorite fall activities. Over the past week the New York Times health blog has been featuring healthy cookie recipes and I have made them all. Yes, you read that right. And I’m not sorry – whether we shared them with friends (like the cookie bowls filled with flavored whole cream above) or kept them for ourselves, every single one has turned out fab*. Plus they’re already healthy-ish so I don’t have to monkey with them too much!

I left out the sugar in these Whole Wheat Seeded Scones and they were fab with some butter and a drizzle of local honey.

I halved the sugar in these Sesame Coconut Bars and added a couple scoops of unflavored protein powder and served them for breakfast. They were the hit of the week.

These Peanut Butter Sandwich Cookies were a delicious after-school treat that we shared with the neighbors.

After subbing coconut oil and adding some protein powder, these Coconut Granola Bars were my kids’ most requested “dessert” for their lunches. I love that they don’t have any flours or refined sugars.

Chocolate Pecan Bars are definitely a dessert, whole wheat flour or no, but these were so tasty I didn’t feel like I was having healthified treats.

And for all of you just-learning cooks out there like me, Reader Jasmine sent me the coolest article: The Most Common Cooking Mistakes from Cooking Light magazine. Must read!

Have you tried any new recipes lately? What is your favorite fall food?

*Except those pink blob-y cookie cups – I didn’t add any sugar to the raspberry cream filling and they were tart.I didn’t realize how bad they were until after all our guests had left and everyone’s plates still had piles of pink filling left on them. Whoops!

I bet this little guy pees when he’s excited too! Like when he sees his Precious…

SHAPE magazine just came out with their list of Top 20 Blogs for Fitness Junkies! That alone is fabulous news for both me and my Google Reader. (Did you know Jamie fromCranky Fitnessis back and crabbier (i.e. funnier) than ever? Or thatTricia from Every Gym’s Nightmare is blogging again?) The Fit Bottomed Girls,Lisa of Workout Mommy, Tricia of Endurance Isn’t Only Physical, and Jess of Fit Chick in the Cityalso represent!

With so many fantastic bloggers out there (both on the list and not), I am so so honored to be nominated (and that’s where the pageant queen-y part ends because when I heard the news I squeeeee’d and while you may see a pageant girl squeal – although I think technically they’re not supposed to make animal noises – I doubt one’s ever peed herself a little in joy. Maybe if it’s a Donald Trump pageant?)

But I’m not voting for me. I’m voting for this lady:

If you’ve never met Carla/MizFit online (and I find that hard to believe because girlfriend is everywhere in the fit-o-sphere!) then let me tell you why she deserves your votes:

1. She is unfailingly kind.

2. She is a true professional, both in the fitness and the business sense.

3. She cares about people before she cares about anything else.

4. She’s the friend who not only remembers your birthday but remembers that book you mentioned you wanted like 6 months ago and that your kid has a tonsillectomy in a week and that you’re afraid of those gigantic bumblebees because they do not look aerodynamic enough to fly and anything that literally bumbles through the air cannot be up to any good. (Seriously, they’re creepy right??)

5. But my favorite thing about Carla: she is unapologetically herself. She lives everything she preaches and she teaches it every day to her equally amazing daughter. She is a rare voice of sanity in what can sometimes be a very insane industry.

So, voting starts now! I believe you can vote every day. There are so many fantastic bloggers on this list, I couldn’t presume to tell you who to vote for but if you want a suggestion: I’m voting for MizFit:) Every day.

Thank you so much to SHAPE for the honor of including me and congratulations to all the other nominees – you are an amazing group and I’m proud to know (most of) you!

Hope all of you are having a great weekend!

To see more strange children’s Halloween costumes, check out this HuffPo slideshow. If you go, let me know what you think of this one. I almost threw up.

Leaves are falling, apples are everywhere, it’s a balmy 86 degrees here – all signs point to fall! (Ok, except the last one. We are having some freaky weather up here but I am definitely not complaining.) And fall means the return of the Halloween Grinch! Yay! As you may recall from my whining in years past, I really don’t like Halloween. It’s gross and I don’t do well with gross. I know that for tons of you Halloween is your favorite holiday and I’m totally cool with you liking it but please do not try to convert me to your brain-eating ways. I do not need a horror movie to make me pee my pants; after 5 children I do that just fine all on my own.

But as I explained in my post for Redbook, there is one part of Halloween I do love: teeny little children dressed in costumes going door-to-door holding out plastic pumpkins in their dimpled fists. I adore trick-or-treaters. I only have two trick-or-treat rules: they can’t be old enough to grow real stubble for their hobo costumes and, also, they have to have a costume. As long as the children meet those two criteria, I will pour sugared confections into their buckets all night long while cooing mom-isms like, “Aren’t you the prettiest little princessever?”

Last year, as you may recall, I had a crisis of conscience. With the obesity crisis growing (or at least the reporting of it growing) and a child culture already inundated with treat-giving occasions, is it truly in the little Tinkerbells’ and pirates’ best interests to hand out Pixi Stix which, if you think about it, are simply straight sugar packed into a tube so you don’t have to even bother chewing it? (And I’ll be honest, I don’t want bags of Halloween candy sitting around my house singing their siren call of sugar come 4 0′clock every afternoon.)

What are the options? If you’ve been in a grocery store lately, you will note that alongside the 5,000 different bags of candy lining the shelves, there are a few non-food items, like really expensive stuffed animals, marginally expensive Play-Doh tubs, and cheap pencil erasers. But what child wants a pencil eraser for Halloween? They don’t even erase! They just crumble!

So last Halloween, I went online to one of those cheap party sites and ordered dozens of plastic rings, glow-in-the-dark bouncy balls, and glittery tattoos. I threw one bag of sugar-free bubblegum in the bowl for variety’s sake. When the trick-or-treaters came knocking Halloween night, it was unmitigated disaster. The bubblegum was gone in 10 minutes, and I had to endure children whining, “No candy left??” for the rest of the evening. Eventually, I just locked the front door and left the bowl on the front porch. Come morning, it was still three-fourths full. All of which leaves me stymied as to what to do this year.

The commenters on my Redbook post made an interesting point that I hadn’t thought of before. Basically they asked why I felt like it was my responsibility to take care of other people’s kids. Shouldn’t their parents be policing their sugar intake? If they didn’t want their kids coming home with a 5-lb bag of sweet, sweet loot then wouldn’t they keep their little pirates home? Well, huh. I guess I do kind of feel responsible for other people’s kids. But is that a problem? Shouldn’t we all be looking out for the little guys? Does nixing the candy inherently mean I’m telling other adults that I don’t trust their parenting? I honestly don’t know.

Help me out – what do you do for Halloween? And do you think we should take a littleresponsibilityfor the health of children that are not our own? Or is that me being bossy again?

Not feeling Halloween-ish yet? (Costco already has all their Christmas stuff out!) Check out my other posts this week:

Ten Weird Things Toddlers Get Attached To (Writing this and reading all the comments has had me grinning all day. When adults chase you down just so they can sniff your socks it’s freaky but when a baby does it it’s a-d-o-r-b-s? Yes.)

Mom Teaches Child to Beer Funnel: When do parents cross the line? (Is it fair to judge a person’s parenting skills based solely on a 30-second YouTube clip? And yet… it’s a beer funnel.)

Did You Have a Celebrity Pregnancy Buddy? (Mine was Heidi Klum – I still feel strangely bonded to her.)

While I don’t use numbers and do not remotely condone, excuse or justify my disordered behaviors past or present, please be aware that some of the following may be triggering to certain readers. Take gentle care of yourselves; you know what you need today.

photo credit

Recently I’ve been getting a lot of questions from people about how I’m doing in my eating disorder recovery now. Usually people ask because they’re curious or are struggling with similar demons themselves – truly I never had any idea how prevalent disordered eating and thought patterns are until I started blogging/writing about it – but I got a couple of e-mails this past weekend that I want to specifically address, especially as they seem to be recurring criticisms of my book.

Am I Still A Compulsive Over Exerciser?

The gist of the first e-mail was along the lines of “You say you’re recovered from exercise addiction [compulsive over-exercising*] but I don’t believe you. You still obviously work out a ton.” Other people have asked this question in a slightly different way by saying, “Is it really a good idea for you to continue writing about fitness when you know you have this issue?” One sweet reader even suggested that I rename my blog The Great Charlotte Experiment and then I wouldn’t have to blog about fitness as much. (Love you Annie!!)

Quoth the inimitable Kurt Vonnegut, “We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.”

I try to be very careful with the words I choose in talking about my struggles with various eating disorders. (In the past I’ve been anorexic, orthorexic and, obviously, a compulsive over-exerciser. And while I’ve never been bulimic I’m going to confess that it wasn’t for lack of trying. Apparently I don’t have a very sensitive gag reflex.) So I would never say – and hope I’ve never led you to believe – that I am “recovered.” I don’t know that I will ever say that. I prefer to tell people I am recoverING. And doing really well with it.

Here are the facts: I am at a healthy weight (nope, still not weighing myself but I was healthy the last time I weighed myself and my clothes still fit the same), one that I’ve been at for about a year now so I think my body is happy with it. I’m at a healthy body fat percentage. I’m menstruating every month (and also PMS’ing every month, sigh). My thyroid is no longer whacked out. I workout one hour a day (sometimes less), once a day, six days a week and the Gym Buddies hold me to it if my workouts start to creep up. These are all the numbers.

While there is no formal definition of exercise addiction as an eating disorder (it’s classified in the DSM either as a symptom of bulimia as a purging tactic or as a symptom of obsessive compulsive disorder as a compulsion), according to most accepted standards I do not now fit the criteria. Yay!

But the real story goes far beyond the numbers and official definition: I am light-years happier than I was three years ago (the time span covered in my book). Not a day goes by that I don’t sit down to eat something and am overwhelmed with immense gratitude that I get to eat this yummy food. It is such a gift. Also, I am better about listening to my body with the exercise thing. After feedback from you guys, I dropped doing any measurements for my Experiments and now evaluate everything purely on if I think it is fun and effective. Yes, it’s subjective but I’m cool with it and seems like you guys aren’t bothered by it either (not that any of you are under the delusion that my “experiments” are very scientific anyhow, right?).

Yesterday: We were running Tabata intervals and six into it, I suddenly felt queasy. The old Charlotte would have pushed through and finished – juuust twooo moorrre! – even if she puked. But instead I hopped off, turned off the treadmill and said I was done. Gym Buddy Krista even prompted, “Come on you can do two more!” (She was being encouraging, not pushy) and I still said, “Nope, not feeling it today. I’m done.” And that was it. We used the rest of our time playing a hilarious game of 2-on-2 basketball in the gym during which I learned that you CAN foul people even if they’re not holding the ball. (How was I supposed to know that holding Allison’s hand wasn’t allowed?!)

This is a huge deal to me and I like to talk about it for two reasons: First, it took a lot of hard work to get to where I am now and I’m proud of myself for doing this. I honestly never thought I could live my life every day without counting calories, tracking macronutrients, clocking workouts and weighing myself. And yet here I am, not just hanging by my fingernails off the cliff’s edge but really genuinely happy with myself and my life. Second, I want to give other people hope that they too can overcome the worst of this. (And thirdly, I want my kids, when they’re old enough to read all this stuff, to know how much I love them and how hard I’m fighting to be the mom they need me to be.)

Now for the bad news. I still care too much about my perceived weight. I still have a lot of ED’ed thoughts. They’ve been a part of my thinking for so many years that they are almost second nature. All bad things still manifest as “fat days” in my mind. Sometimes I still mentally calculate the caloric “cost” of meals. Sometimes I still cry in my closet because I can’t find anything to wear even after trying on 70 outfits. Sometimes I still complain about my thighs. But the difference now is that I don’t let these thoughts define my behavior. I think it sometimes, yes, but I don’t act on it. And I try not to beat myself up for thinking them.

As for the blogging/writing aspect, fitness is my passion. I have so much fun doing it. I never get tired of learning about it. I love everything about it and the thought of losing that aspect of my personality feels like an immense loss. Exercise is important. Telling me to not ever exercise again is just as unhealthy as me telling myself I have to workout 6 hours a day. And I want to show people that you can have a healthy relationship with exercise, even if it wasn’t always so. This may not always be the case with me and this blog – I’ve really been enjoying all the parenting writing I’ve been doing for Redbook and Yahoo this past year – but for now this balance works. (Annnnd let’s be honest, I blog about way more things than fitness on here anyhow.)

Using Humor to Discuss Eating Disorders

The second e-mail I got was from a very, very upset girl who feels like I trivialize the seriousness of eating disorders by using humor in my writing about them. This is a personal thing and I believe her feelings are legitimate but for myself, using humor is a way for me to talk about very painful subjects in a way that I wouldn’t be able to without it. I try not to cross the line but since the line is so individual I know I sometimes offend people. And for this I’m very sorry. Eating disorders are often started as a way to protect that fragile inner part of us and when we’re in recovery we’re cracked wide open, sometimes before we’ve had the chance to develop other, better, coping techniques. I never intend to hurt or offend but all I can do is say that I’m doing my best and offer my apologies. The only story I can tell is my own.

And please, if you think I’m being callous leave me a comment! The only way I’ll ever learn is if people tell me what helps them and what hurts them. In the entire 5 years I’ve been blogging I have only deleted two comments and neither was a criticism of me (one was a stomach-churning comment from a trolling pedophile and one was a comment saying my ex-boyfriend should have killed me and shut me up when he had the chance). As long as you’re not a pedophile or a murderer, your comment will stand. All I ask is that you try and be respectful – I am a real human being:)

Where I Am Now

I’m not perfect. (So so so not perfect!) And eating disorder recovery is not a straight line. But I’m definitely moving forward. And I have so many of you to thank for this. I cannot even tell you how many times an e-mail or comment has come offering just the right words or resources when I needed them. Feeling accountable to you guys has kept me from some serious back-sliding (like the day I bought the diet pills and then returned them because I didn’t want to have to write the post explaining that insanity). I thank you for your love, kindness, support and especially for your gentle criticisms. I appreciate every one of you who has cared enough about me to write me and say, “Girl, you’re getting all crazy up in here again. Find a therapist who’s not in prison.” And thank you most of all for your patience as I find my way through this. I never anticipated that my eating disorders and my recovery process would be so public but in the end it’s been a gift.

Do you have any other questions for me about my eating disorders past, (less) present and (hopefully gone) future? Anyone else make it all the way through high school and still not know the rules to basketball? (Did you know that every shot is worth an arbitrary 2 points?? Why not just say 1 point and save on math?)

*After trying out all the various names for this affliction – exercise addiction, compulsive exercise, exercise bulimia, excessive exercise, exercising done wrong – the one that I ended up settling on is “compulsive over-exercise” because it best describes how this disorder feels to me. While I have used it as a way to control my caloric balance, the majority of the time it’s been a compulsion that I’ve used to ameliorate the seriously high anxiety I have from my obsessive thinking. Even when over-exercising started to make me gain weight I didn’t want to stop because I found it so temporarily soothing. When I went to ED therapy, the diagnosis I got was “Anxiety disorder, subtype: OCD”

“Honey?” The other morning my darling husband rolled over in bed, looked me in straight in the eyes and with one hand on my cheek whispered, “Why don’t you ever getsick?! It’s not fair!!” Our pillow talk has really suffered since we’ve had children. While everything must be said in a whisper – they have a sex-0-meter so fine tuned that it still amazes me they have siblings – those whispers are usually more along the lines of “Why is it so hot here?!” than “Is it just me or is it hot in here? *wink wink*” (Gotta keep the thermostat up, see, since all our wee ones kick off their blankets off every five minutes and the last thing I need are little penguin toes wriggling into bed with me.) Considering that my husband was in the throes of a bad flu episode, I lovingly looked back at him and replied, “It’s all that healthy living crap I do, sucka! And no you can’t kiss me!”

Kidding. What I actually said was, “All those vegetables I eat, I guess? And no you can’t kiss me!” But it turns out that my great immune system may have less to do with my smug chia-swilling, Tabata-running ways and more with my gender. This week scientists discovered that some micro-RNA on the X chromosomes are partly responsible for silencing immunity genes. At first glance you’d think women would be worse off since we have the double X thing going on but apparently the micro-RNAs don’t gang up and so if one is doing it’s immunosuppressing thing then other one isn’t, leaving us healthier than our XY counterparts who only have one shot.

I have to admit that this natural health advantage pleases me. I’ve long been jealous of my husband’s ability to lose 10 pounds just by cutting out his nightly bowl of ice cream and how he can outlift me on the weight floor even though he only lifts on a bi-monthly basis. And a strong immune system is like the gold medal of health! And the grand prize is my very own flu shot! I win again! (Seriously am I competing on a cellular level now? I need help.)

Honestly though I do think there’s more to it than just my XX-iness. I’ve found that when I can stick to eating mostly healthy food, getting enough sleep and exercising (moderately, natch) that I get sick less often and when I am stricken, it’s much less severe than it seems to be for other people. When you live with 4 tiny disease carriers like I do, this is a big deal.

Using Food To Heal and Strengthen Your Immune System

Of course this whole immune system thing is a very delicate balancing act with many factors that affect how well you can ward off illnesses both small and serious. But science has shown that food is powerful medicine and there are particular foods that are known to help strengthen your immune system. And these foods may surprise you.

Sure fruits, vegetables, protein and anything not labeled “serving size: 1/4 pint” are known to help build healthy immune systems but the real power players are basically the whole category of foods known as “The ones that give you awful farts.” Beans, cruciferous veggies, cabbage and mushrooms are all great for your immune system, if not your social life. In addition, one of the best things you can do for your immune system is to support your gut by populating it with healthy bacteria, like the kind that come in fermented foods.

Think beyond yogurt though and learn to love sauerkraut, kefir and kimchi. (Apparently you can make your own fermented foods pretty easily but somehow I think it involves more than just putting a pile of cabbage in a jar to rot in your cabinet for 6 months. It’s on my list of things to try…sometime.) This works out well for me since I’ve adored sauerkraut since childhood when I used to sit on my mom’s lap and inhale an entire jar with her in one sitting. She’s of German descent. Sauerkraut (the kind with caraway seeds is the best!) and pickled beets are my comfort food. I think I was 20 before I realized that other people don’t love to sit down with a big bowl of kraut and a spoon every evening. I also love kefir but you have to be careful with the sweetened varieties since sugar is a known immunosuppressant.

So what’s your verdict: Do you get sick less often than most people and if so what’s your secret? Anyone else love farty foods but fear eating them unless you know for sure that you are staying in for the rest of the day? Anyone ever tried kimchi??

You remember how bad I sweat? My poor kids have inherited my overactive pits.

Sweat is a hot topic (hee!) around my house. Usually it revolves around how much I sweat (buckets), how quickly I can pit out my workout top (5 seconds), how to get the sweat smell out of my workout clothes (vinegar) and how to get Gym Hubby to quit putting his sweat-soaked Ultimate Frisbee duds in the same pile as the baby’s rainbow-scented pink clothing. Needless to say there has been many a Gym Buddy conversation about which kind of deodorant is best and what it makes us smell like and how best to apply it. Is all over my body an option? No?

Gym Buddy Allison has a very complicated routine involving two separate deodorants applied at different times of day which she swears keeps her totally pit-stain free. Krista despises roll-ons and recently spent an entire workout complaining about her shirt being “super glued” to her pits. I buy whatever’s on clearance which is why my armpits currently sparkle (I use it to psych people out on the weight floor – I just flash ‘em my pit and then grab the kettlebell while they’re distracted! Ooh shiny!). Megan…I actually don’t know what she does for deodorant which seems odd because we’re all so weirdly tight that we know each other’s feminine hygeine preference, bra size and poop timing among other invasive things. Meg – call me!

But lately sweat has been coming up in a way I had not anticipated. (Wow, that made it sound grosser than it is.) Anyhow, I’ve long appreciated the ability of my kids to make me sweat but until now I’d underestimated their ability to produce it. My oldest son is 9. He is officially a tween, complete with eye-rolling, sarcasm and, oh yes, body odor. But how does one talk to a tween about personalhygiene? Am I allowed to use eye-rolling and sarcasm too? Because if so, I’ve totally got this one covered.

He’s too cute to smell funny, right?? Also, I love that he chose to eat a carrot alongside his birthday cake and ice cream bar. Maybe they do listen to me? Sometimes??

Seriously though, I just hadn’t thought this one out. I’m totally prepared for the sex talk – in fact, we’ve been having it with them in stages ever since my then 3-year-old said “Daddy put a baby in your tummy? Can it be my turn next?” – but I hadn’t considered how I was going to teach my boys about proper showering, hair-gelling, cologne-wearing (one tiny spray is plenty), and deodorant applying. After all, it seems like just yesterday I was teaching them how to properly wipe their own butts. Oh wait, that’s because it was yesterday. And it involved the instruction, “No you cannot wipe and watch TV at the same time.”

In an effort to keep everyone “cool, calm and confident throughout the day especially during lifes sweat-inducing moments” Unilever is offering one GFE reader a $100 Visa gift card plus a Don’t Fret The Sweat gift pack (yes I just called deodorant cool). Here’s how to enter:

No duplicate comments.

You may receive (2) total entries by selecting from the following entry
methods:

a) Leave a comment telling me about your deodorant routine OR your first experience with deodorant (how old you were, who told you, if you licked it to see if it tastes as good as it smells – just me? – or whatever).

b) Tweet about this promotion and leave the URL to that tweet in a comment
on this post

c) Blog about this promotion and leave the URL to that post in a comment on
this post

d) For those with no Twitter or blog, read the official rules to learn about
an alternate form of entry.

This giveaway is open to US Residents age 18 or older

Contest runs from 10/4 to 11/4

Winners will be selected via random draw, and will be notified by e-mail.

You have 72 hours to get back to me, otherwise a new winner will be
selected.

Visit the BlogHer Prizes & Promotions sectionfor more chances to win!
Visit the Official Rules

www.toothpastefordinner.com

Friday morning found Gym Buddy Jeni and I shaky, light-headed, nauseated, cold, and mentally foggy. No it wasn’t because we’d just heard that Demi and Ashton might be breaking up. (If they can’t last then what chance do the rest of us have?? Hollywood, hot bods, oodles of money, custom-made kite boards – that’s a recipe for marriage perfection if I ever heard one.) Jeni and I had just finished an hour-long TurboKick class and we had the sugar shakes. Which makes it sound like we’re sugar junkies jonesing for our next hit of the white granulated stuff (confession: I kind of am) but in reality thanks to Jeni skipping breakfast and me eating breakfast but leaving my post-workout shake in the car, our blood sugar was all out of whack.

This was not a new feeling for me as I used to get low blood sugar – or hypoglycemia if you want to get all technical about it – all the time. If you grew up in the 9o’s then surely you’ve heard of hypoglycemia as it’s the condition that killed Shelby (Julia Roberts) in Steel Magnolias and made me do my first-ever ugly cry in public. (Was that not the saddest scene ever done in a movie? I get choked up just remembering it! She was about to get married! Or maybe she’d just been married! She might have had a kid! Or not! Ok, I’m sketchy on the details – forgive me, I was sobbing my guts out. Solidarity, Liz!)When you’re diabetic, having your blood sugar get too low can be fatal. Thankfully for the rest of us who experience a little hypoglcemia thanks to exercise or some other outside factor – called reactive hypoglycemia – it’s not usually deadly, just uncomfortable. And with a little planning the sugar shakes are totally manageable.

I’m not a great planner. Let me back up.

I’ve always been a fainter. Thanks to a propensity for abnormally low blood pressure – it’s normal for me to be 80/55 and even lower when I’m pregnant – if I stand up too quickly, kneel down too long or lock my knees while singing just like my choir teacher always told us not to, I’ll hit the ground. The faint is over as soon as I’m down usually. So it’s really more like swooning?

My most spectacular faint was in college right after a swing dance competition thing (it was our first and if I remember correctly we really kinda sucked) and thanks to nerves – and let’s be honest, my raging eating disorder at the time – I hadn’t eaten anything all day and then we’d danced for 6 hours straight. I don’t remember all the details except that we were walking back to our car and I got dizzy and nauseous and sat down on the curb. I think they left me? And came back for me? Anyhow, I’d fainted clean out on the concrete. Next thing I knew I was at a gas station, my friend friend Janette was pouring orange juice down my throat and my other friend had confiscated my keys and had to drive us all home in my car.

Janette, who was majoring in nutrition, asked me if I was hypoglycemic. I had no idea. So I went to the doctor and after a blood test the verdict was that yes, I am more predisposed to it than most people (yay me!) as my normal blood sugar is 100 mg/dl which apparently is right on the border of low. Did I bother to learn about my new condition? Take steps to prevent it? Dump the stupid boyfriend who left me on the curb for my girlfriends and/or a scary murderer to retrieve? No, no, and I wish. For years afterward, I just kind of muddled through my “episodes” mistakenly carrying candy to fix them. That is, until I got into this whole health and fitness jag I’ve been on for the past 7 years. It turns out lots of people, especially us fit folk, are prone to episodes of low blood sugar and it’s fairly easy to prevent and remedy.

What Is Exercise-Induced Low Blood Sugar?

The primary source of fuel for our muscles is glycogen and when we exercise very hard or very long (or both), both our muscles and our liver – the storage of the all-important glycogen – get depleted. When you’re a little depleted you experience the symptoms I described above: shakiness, dizziness, disorientation, nausea, chills, fatigue etc. When you’re super depleted during an endurance exercise that’s when you “hit the wall” or “bonk” which is an utterly craptastic feeling as anyone who’s been there can tell you. I don’t know that I’ve ever felt worse in my life, frankly. In addition to the above, you may lose the ability to regulate your body temperature, vomit, faint, lose control of your bowels (oh yes), be unable to stand unsupported and have an irregular heart beat among other scary things.

This effect can be exacerbated by how well (or not) you fuel your workouts.

How to Prevent Low Blood Sugar*

As I understand it, our bodies store glycogen as fuel in our muscles and liver. When we need it, it is broken down into glucose (a sugar) and then metabolized into immediate energy via glycolisis. (I could be totally wrong – if I am, feel free to educate me in the comments and I’ll bump your explanation up here!) However, not all glycogen can be immediately accessed and so depending on how much food we’ve eaten, when we last ate and what we ate, we could have quite variable stores. What you want to avoid is the blood sugar roller coaster where you skyrocket your blood sugar up only to have it come crashing down shortly later, starting a vicious cycle.

To prevent this, eat small balanced meals every few hours. Eat something about an hour before you workout and bring something to eat right after your workout. This last piece has been critical for me. If it’s an easy day, I don’t really worry about it but I’m lifting heavy or doing something high intensity, downing the protein/carb smoothie right after I finish is the difference between feeling like crap the rest of the day and bouncing right back. I can’t even tell you how much this has helped me.

If you know you will be exercising longer than an hour, it’s smart to bring something to refuel during. Sport gus (goos), gels, beans, blox and drinks are popular options. (If you’re Gym Buddy Allison you stick a chocolate protein bar down your cleavage only to discover that when you most need it, it has melted into a pile of goo inside your top.)

The practice of “carb loading” before a race – eating a large amount of simple carbohydrates in the few days before the race in order to stockpile glycogen in the muscles – is controversial. I know a lot of runners that swear by the pre-marathon spaghetti feed but the research on its effectiveness is mixed, possibly because many athletes do not do it properly.

How to Treat Low Blood Sugar*

But what if you’re already in swoon city? Do not, I repeat, do not sit down on a concrete curb and wait for your friends to notice you’re missing. Actually, if you just have the sugar shakes taking a rest and eating something right away usually takes care of it in just a few minutes. You do not want to mainline the jelly beans though as straight sugar will fix your low blood sugar but the high is very temporary and may cause an even larger dip – the sugar “crash” – when you come back down. Something with some easily absorbed protein and carbohydrate works well. Chocolate milk has been shown to be particularly effective (although I gotta say that for me, after a long, hard workout milk does not sound at all good). Think of the kinds of things you see in the finishing race chutes: bananas, salted nut rolls, Muscle Milk, bagels etc. I also find it helps me to keep a sweatshirt handy, even on a warm day, as being cold and sweaty seems to make it harder for me to recover.

If however, you are past shaky and all the way to sickville you need to get attention immediately. This is a hard call because from my personal experience, the mental disorientation makes it really hard to make a rational assessment of your situation. If you run with a friend, make a pact to look out for the other one. If you are in a race, there should be medic tents every so often and if you’re in doubt, go ahead and stop. But make a plan in advance of someway you can find help if you need it. Usually the support people will have you lie down, wrap you in blankets, and get you to eat or drink something. If you’re really bad off you may need to go to the hospital. That’s never happened to me (knock on wood) but I have heard of it happening.

Conclusions

From my experience, the best option is to plan ahead. Carry a few gels on you. Bring a protein shake to the gym. Be aware of what your limits are and what your body feels like when you hit them. A little advance planning is totally worth it.

Do any of you get the sugar shakes? Have you ever “bonked”? What’s your method for dealing with low blood sugar? And did anyone else ugly cry through Steel Magnolias?!

*All of this is based off of my own reading and personal experiences. I am in NO way a doctor, nutritionist, chemist or even all that smart-ist so if you think you are prone to hypoglycemia, please go see a medical professional. This is not meant to be medical advice.

Now see, THIS is bad curvy. And also, who knows what asparagus is but not bananas?!

Celebrities may have million dollar mansions and designer clothes and an assistant specifically for carrying their miniature labradoodles but they pay for it in public scrutiny. Gone are the days when a star could quietly retreat to an island and emerge 6 weeks later looking so “refreshed” that their nose looked smaller. Today anyone and everyone is a target – whether it’s contempt for their cellulite, outrage over their weight gain or faux concern over their weight loss, so much is being said about celebrities (especially women) and their bodies that when I started researching this slideshow for Shape.com I ended up with a list of 57 different articles to read. Just to get caught up to a starting point!

Writing this slideshow was an interesting experience for me. Depending on the celeb, I either ended up liking them a lot less or becoming a gushing fan because of what they had to say about their bodies when answering one frequent criticism: CURVY. Just like 10 minutes ago curvy used to be a compliment. Marilyn Monroe was so curvy that she could play slip-n-slide in all the drool of the men that followed her like puppies. (Wow, that was a gross analogy! It’s late, I’m sorry.) But now curvy is an epithet. In most cases people use it as a euphemism for “fat.” I would argue that it really means “not adhering to our very narrow standard of beauty, why can’t you just skinny down like everyone else by golly!”

Despite all being criticized for being curvy, the celebs I profiled had wildly different body shapes. Jessica Biel, for example, was called curvy for being muscular. (And you really need to read her response to that – it was awesome!) While Christina Hendricks was called curvy for having the boobs and hips that have made Joan the standout star on Mad Men. (Her response made me smile and also want to hug her.) Weirdly, even Renee Zellweger made the “too curvy” list and she’s like a size triple zero! (Her response kinda made me want to slap her.) We live in a messed up world.

As I was telling my sister about it (I tell her everything – she not only knows when Jelly Bean last pooped she also usually knows when I last pooped too. Um, yeah.) and gushing about how many body-positive things these famous ladies had to say, she stopped me cold with, “And you actually believe them? Of course they pay lip service but what to they actually do? Most of them go lose a crap ton of weight anyhow.” I hadn’t thought of it that way before (I am also the girl who believed my ex-boyfriend when he swore he wasn’t dating anyone else…even after he showed up to homecoming with another girl.) but now I can’t help but wonder.

Now I have to ask you guys – do you believe what celebrities say about their bodies or do you think all that body-acceptance talk is just a PR stunt? P.S>Just to be perfectly clear, the point of this post and the slideshow is NOT to critique certain celebrity’s bodies or, heaven help me, to compare, but rather to look at the way we talk about body image and to show examples of strong women who have stood up for their healthy bodies.

Check out my full slideshow – 20 Celebrities Criticized for Their Curves - on Shape.com

Not feeling Hollywood today? Check out my post for Redbook on Things to Never Say to a Mom With a Big Family & Our Best Comebacks (people get reallyriled up trying to define what number = “a lot” of kids.)

Do you let your kids attend sleepovers? Check out my post for Shine!Yahoo and see what other parents decided. (My husband and I have talked about this a lot and recently decide that our house is the only one they will be destroying with toilet paper in sugar-fueled fests.)

And just in case you needed another reason to avoid fast food, check out my report on Fast Food PlayLands: Now With Less Fun and More Feces!