Get the body you’ve always wanted, TRULY.
The GET SKINNY cookbook is about achieving your best body through good nutrition. The ultimate goal is to get you HEALTHY so that you can get the lean, toned, muscular, athletic, vibrant, and beautiful body that you have always wanted. This is the way your body wants to be and how you were created to be. We were meant to eat food as close to nature as possible: whole, fresh, organic. The following recipes are intended for adults, children, seniors, and anyone who wants to achieve health in its truest form. It is a new way of living that will lead you to not only loving the way you look, but the way you feel.
For the best results, make the recipes as described or use them as guidelines to make your own. Feel free to add a little more of this or less of that, and to make them your own. Just make them healthy by using the highest quality fresh, local, organic ingredients that you can find. By choosing natural ingredients, you are benefitting your health, your digestive system, your metabolism and the Earth that gave us all of these wonderful things to eat and enjoy.
Being a Nutritionist, a Certified Personal Trainer, Strength and Conditioning Specialist, I created these recipes for true results no matter what your goals are. These are close to the recipes that I make professionally for clients. Over the years I have refined them to obtain the perfect balance of nutrition to achieve their goals.
We want this cookbook to introduce you to a world of cooking and creating healthy food that once was a part of everyone’s lives. We want to help you take charge of what you choose to eat and to take ownership in how it’s prepared. This will empower us to get the best out of our minds and bodies. Cook for yourself, your family, and loved ones, and give the gift of your time and health to yourself and others! GET SKINNY! The Organic Way.
To Get Skinny—We Need To Get Healthy
It’s really not about getting skinny but getting healthy. “Getting Skinny” is a byproduct of being healthy. Over the years, society has conditioned us to be lazy when it comes to food, slaves to convenience, being sold tasty food and treats with little to no real nutritional value. This reality is impairing the health of this wonderful creation that is the truly amazing human body. We are designed to be strong, vibrant and healthy, able to withstand illness and disease and able to thrive under almost any condition.
As a health professional working in this field for many years as a Nutritionist and Holistic Healthcare Practitioner, I believe that half of our diseases can be cured by our diet. Talented physicians, from Dr. Weston Price, Dr. Mercola, Dr. Hyman, Dr. Day, Jordan Rubin, and even Hippocrates and Pythagorus, to name a few, all understood that nutrition is the key and the foundation to health and wellbeing. Food with little to no nutritional value has caused our country to become the leader in obesity, heart disease, cancer and diabetes, now commonly known as “Western diseases.” We are suffering from preventable diseases in this country because we are entrusting our health to the food industry and restaurants, but they are more interested in your dollar than in your health. They spend billions of dollars to get you hooked on their fast, convenient, highly addictive junk food. Modern day convenience foods are extremely low in nutritional value and are designed to “hook” you at first bite, so that you will keep coming back. Before you know it, it’s an unhealthy habit that is not easy to break. Convenience gets you in the door, and the high fat, sugar and salt keeps you coming back for more—until you get the news about your obesity, high cholesterol, blood pressure, heart disease, diabetes, and even cancer. We must be vigilant about our health, learn about our bodies and what they need to be healthy, learn more about our food, and how it is grown and prepared. By planning, shopping, experimenting and cooking, you will be creating new habits that will lead you to amazing results and a stronger, healthier you over time.
To Get Skinny - Eat Organic
I have clients who have lost significant amounts of weight simply by starting to eat organic. Your body desires real food – properly balanced, fresh, whole, unprocessed, and as close to nature as possible. This book gives you what your body needs to achieve what’s been eluding you, true health and real results. The more pure, natural and wholesome the food you eat, the more it raises your metabolism. Processed foods are stripped of nutrients and are difficult for your body to digest, lowering your metabolism making it hard to lose weight. Worst of all, they are designed to make you want more of the same creating an unhealthy, unhappy habit that keeps you from getting results. Digestion is how your body absorbs and assimilates nutrients. Up to 65% of your daily energy is devoted to digestion. Fresh, organic, wholesome foods are easier for your body to digest and more nutritionally dense. You will absorb more nutrients from these higher quality foods. Natural, wholesome foods do not create the unnatural cravings that processed foods do. Giving your body what it really wants and needs from properly balanced organic foods as close to nature as possible, in the proper balance, will yield tremendous results, both in how you look and how you feel.
Do you know what your grandparents called organic food? Food.
Non-organic foods starve your body of nutrients and load your system with unnatural toxins. The toxic pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, hormones, antibiotics, genetically modified organisms (GMO’s), artificial colors and flavors, and processed foods lead to the most prevalent diseases and disorders in the country, ruin your digestive system, slow your metabolism and make you FAT.
In the last few decades our food has changed significantly. The modern American diet is filled with processed foods that have all sorts of chemicals, pesticides, growth hormones, antibiotics, and pollutants. These toxins are not good for the environment or for our bodies, and they are causing you to be overweight. The toxins in your food contribute to weight issues and obesity, and disrupt the function of our hormonal system leading to disorders such as heart disease, diabetes, obesity, and high cholesterol. Recently the American Medical Association has finally come out in support of the idea that these toxins and pollutants play a significant role in our national obesity crisis.
What qualifies as organic?
Simply stated, organic produce and other ingredients are grown without the use of pesticides, synthetic fertilizers, sewage sludge, genetically modified organisms, or ionizing radiation. Animals that produce meat, poultry, eggs, and dairy products do not take antibiotics or growth hormones. The USDA National Organic Program (NOP) defines organic as follows:
Organic food is produced by farmers who emphasize the use of renewable resources and the conservation of soil and water to enhance environmental quality for future generations. Organic meat, poultry, eggs, and dairy products come from animals that are given no antibiotics or growth hormones. Organic food is produced without using most conventional pesticides; fertilizers made with synthetic ingredients or sewage sludge; bioengineering; or ionizing radiation. Before a product can be labeled “organic,” a Government-approved inspector inspects the farm where the food is grown to make sure the farmer is following all the rules necessary to meet USDA organic standards. Companies that handle or process organic food before it gets to your local supermarket or restaurant must be certified also.
GMOs are another issue altogether.
Genetically modified organisms, or GMOs, are plants or animals created through the gene splicing techniques of biotechnology (also called genetic engineering, or GE). This experimental technology merges DNA from different species creating unstable combinations of plant, animal, bacterial and viral genes that cannot occur in nature or in traditional crossbreeding. This is not considered safe by 60 other countries in the world, and these countries have completely or substantially banned GMOs.
Asking for organic is why we are seeing more organic items being sold across the United States. Every time you purchase an organic item you are voting. Why vote organic?
By choosing at least one organic product out of every 10 items you purchase…
The Organic Center: www.organic-center.org
Organic is more of an educational challenge, than a financial one.
–Miguel Rivera,
the Organic Farmer
To Get Skinny—Give Your Body What It Needs
The key to health in all things is balance, and your nutrition is no different. The recipes in this book focus on the building blocks of health, giving you the proper balance of fruits and vegetables, protein, carbohydrates, and fats in each meal. My main focus with all of my clients is QUALITY.
This is where you become proactive about your health. We want quality, but we don’t want to pay for it. You may have heard the true saying, “You can pay for your health now, or pay for it later.” Find the best possible resources for food. If your local big box grocer is all you have, make the best choices available there. I travel often and have to do the best I can with what I have. There will be trial and error as you learn, but be cognizant of your choices and always buy the healthiest food you can give your body. What good is Getting Skinny! if you get heart disease, cancer or diabetes? Let’s look at the long haul, not the quick trip to health.
Once you have quality, then we strive for BALANCE. This is not easy today. With Paleo diets, gluten free, vegetarian diets, Atkins, Mediterranean, etc. it is easy to become very confused by focusing on our food rather than on what our bodies actually need. Our bodies desire a balance of carbohydrates, both low and high glycemic, proteins, wild and grass fed, and healthy fats. To purchase a full customized nutritional program which will define what ratios of each macronutrient work best for your gender, age, body size and type and individual goals, visit our website at truelifefitness.us. This program will take your body and your health to the next level!
Every recipe in this book is designed to help you Get Skinny, Build Muscle and Lose the Fat
To Get Skinny—Focus on Foundations Not Fads
As a nutritionist, I see so many people running to the newest supplement, herb, extract, or super food, being promoted by a supposed health professional getting paid a gross amount of money to tout this new and unfound elixir of weight loss, muscle gain, memory enhancer, etc. I teach the basic foundations of health and ask such questions as, are you eating the daily recommended amount of fruits and vegetables? Do you eat whole, unprocessed carbohydrates and high quality wild, grass fed organic proteins? Do you get enough sunlight, sleep and exercise regularly? The answer is always NO. We are all looking for that magical quick fix THAT JUST DOESN’T EXIST. Focus on the foundations. Why spend a tremendous amount of money on a newly found supposed super food that has not been proven? Spend money on what is proven and makes sense, organic food that you were meant to eat. As we learn about preparing quality food and eating it in the proper balance, make sure to get enough water and exercise. Let’s embark on a new path to true health. Now let’s get cooking…
First, my challenge to you. Make health a habit. The required training is below…
To Get Skinny—Get Up and Cook
We have all fallen for modern conveniences and shortcuts, but how convenient are they when they impair your health? What do you think our ancestors would say if they saw how we have succumbed to the cheap and tasty? My grandmother and mother would spend hours cooking for their families, fresh, wholesome healthy foods they would prepare directly from the farm. Learning more about nature, where our food comes from and how to prepare healthy meals is just pages away.
“When you have the best and tastiest ingredients, you can cook very simply and the food will be extraordinary because it tastes like what it is.”
- Chez Panisse
Your Get Skinny Challenge? Making Health and Cooking a Habit
Changing your eating habits will be one of the most important things you’ll ever do for yourself. While processed foods are cheap, quick, and abundant, whole foods require a little more effort but will yield amazing results in both your mind and body. Take the time and do the work, the more you do it the easier it gets, the more you do it the better the result, and you have just created a healthy habit.
Get the bad food out. Get the family and friends involved, it is essential to have good food in the house at all times. Treat bad food as an unwelcome guest. The first thing to do is to rid your kitchen of all of the garbage. If it’s there, you’ll eat it.
Start Here:
Your next step:
Once you cut the toxic, processed foods from the majority of your diet, you will begin to notice how good you look, feel and function. When you go off-plan and eat a bag of chips or a fast food meal you will feel unwell. The interesting thing about this is that you felt that way ALL THE TIME before cutting that food from your diet, but you didn’t realize it because feeling unwell was your normal baseline.
Grab an apron and take charge of your health and your life! (I’ll meet you at your local organic grocer…)
Yours Truly,
Andrew