Month: June 2010

June 18, 2010

My After: BW

After 3 babies, and a 3 fingerwidth diastasis all the way down:

June 14, 2010

The latest results on closing the diastasis recti!!

So the bad news is I don’t have any pics this round, just stats.    The good news is the stats are pretty darn great!  However I am posting my own “after” for the first time.   Scroll down to see!

CLIENT A:  I have a pregnant client in her 30s right now that at 28 weeks first pregnancy measured 5 fingerwidths in the middle, 4 1/2 on the top, and 3 on the bottom.  You can imagine what that would have been POSTPARTUM as her bellly continued to expand, especially if that was combined with jacknifing in and out of bed, and incorrect abs.  Lucky for her, she started rehabbing her diastasis mid pregnancy.

TWO AND A HALF WEEKS LATER:  At 30 1/2 weeks (her belly growing), she measured 3 in the middle, 2 3/4 at the top and 2 fingerwidths at the bottom.  For an expanding belly, these are EXCELLENT results!  They would be fantastic WITHOUT the belly expanding in the equation!  What did she do?  Seated Tuplers while relaxing the pelvic floor, elevators, pelvic tilts primarily.

CLIENT B:  I have a client with 3 young kids, she is in her late 20s/early 30s.  She has a excellent fitness background – runs 15 miles a day no problem, does yoga, and is a very healthy eater.  However, she noticed her midsection still did not look right.  She was right – she was 7 1/4 fingerwidths in the middle of her diastasis, 7 at the top, and 4 at the bottom.  A surgeon would have looked at this case and recommended surgery right away.

FOUR WEEKS LATER:  This client returned with fantastic results.  Her diastasis decreased to 2 3/4 Shallow (meaning the the bottom was together but opened slightly at the top. ) She measured just a 3 at the top and a 2 at the bottom.  This is FANTASTIC progress.  Usually when I have someone wider than a 6, they have trouble getting the mind-body connection of the muscle at first.  So these results averaged faster than 1 fingerwidth per week per two of the areas.  Unfortunately I didn’t suggest she do before and after pics.  I really wish I would have!!  Her waist went from a 28 to a 27 inches.  So there is still left to close, but it is nearly “clinically closed” – meaning 2 fingerwidths or smaller all the way down.  But it is easy just to close it the rest of the way.  I am guessing her waist will go down another inch to 2 inches when she is finished in a few weeks.

WHAT DID SHE DO?  She wore a splint everyday, all day.  She did 5 sets of 100 seated tuplers per day at least, did headlifts, and stopped doing the abs in her yoga video that would compromise her results.

CLIENT C:  I have another client who is in her late 20s. She is a mom of 2 very young kids.  She herself is actually VERY slender, very skinny person.  She got everything super trim, except for her darn midsection.  After reading about diastasis, she thought this is what she might have.  She had been so diligent with crunches and typical gym rat obliques.  The results for the diligent crunches?  She was a 7 on the bottom, 7 in the middle, and a 5 at the top.  So that DEFINITELY was what was causing her funky midsection.  Any surgeon would have wanted to whisk her away to surgically and artifically fix this problem.

2 WEEKS LATER:  She measured a 4 in the middle, a 5 on the bottom, and a 3 1/2 on the top.  So she went in about 1 fingerwidth per section of her diastasis per week.  FANTASTIC start!!  She wore her splint and did the seated tupler “consistently the first week” and “not as consistently the 2nd week.”  So imagine how much further she might have progressed had she been diligent the 2nd week.  But still great results to begin.

WHAT DID SHE DO?  Wore the splint consistently night and day.  She also STOPPED her crunches and gym rat obliques.  She did 5 + sets of 100 seated tuplers (the first week) and did 2-3 sets of 100 seated tuplers the 2nd week.

CLIENT D:  This client will be posting pics later and is very excited.  She is a mom in her early 30s and has 2 very young kids -both under 3.  She spent hours and hours researching what was going on on the internet with her belly.  She knew she had a little hernia, and felt that she possibly had a diastasis after all her research.  Her last C section was 18 months ago.  She measured a 5 in the middle, 4 on the bottom, and 3 on the top. 

TWO WEEKS LATER:  This client brought in her measurements fantastically.  She brought the middle in by 2 fingerwidths to measure now at a 3.  Her top measures 2 shallow, and her bottom measures 1 1/2 shallow. Her pants are fitting looser and she can tell a huge difference.  Still room to go, but its fun to look to see what is possible by doing these exercises.

WHAT DID SHE DO?  She did her 5+ sets of 100 seated tuplers per day, pelvic tilts and wore her Splint  night and day “except when she went swimming.” 

So to come?  PICTURES – SOON!  I am exciting to encourage more of my clients to take pictures because they can be so powerful!

Here is my OWN “after” taken just the other night.  Just know I was a 32 inch waist after my 3rd baby, and I did 10 sets a day of seated tuplers until I became a 25 inch waist again.  I also closed a 3 fingerwidths diastasis in all three places.

June 7, 2010

My favorite (and NOT so favorite) books on Nutrition. What about you?

After reading The China Study  
I thought it would be interesting to note OTHER nutrition books that are worth reading and have a discussion.  I would LOVE to hear your comments and suggestions on this one.  And since I am going to give my opinion on some of the books, I will probably ruffle some feathers.  People tend to be VERY passionate about their favorite nutrition books.  

So to start off – THE CHINA STUDY.  I found it for the MOST part, very interesting with lots of studies to back up the claims about animal protein, and milk protein being absolutely horrible for the human body, especially when its above 5% of the human diet.  HOWEVER, as I have mentioned before, it does not take into account other indigenous populations, like the Eskimos, who ingest 70-80% of their diet on whale blubber and have some of the lowest incidences of high BP and heart disease on earth.  APART from that, there are quite a few BLANKET statements meant to fluff up the argument that meat is horrible, and that you can get MOST everything you need from fruits and veggies.  He DOES talk about how the soil is depleted, so that makes the above statement much more impossible.  He totally DOGS supplements, but a couple chapters later, talks about how NOT eating meat will deplete your B12 stores and that you will need to supplement that.  He also does not address ANYTHING else but meat and makes meat the SOLE bad guy.  HELLOO-SUGAR should be address a little more than a page or two.  From other sources I have read, that is one of the HUGE fall guys for disease, obesity, blood pressure, bacterial infections, etc.  Its not ALL about meat!  He starts to bring out the benefits of Omega 3s in one of the studies, and then pooh poohed it all in the name of – “The not eating meat must have been what was beneficial” – and not taking into consideration that it could have been BOTH – just BLANKET STATEMENT galore.

PEARL OF WISDOM:  I tend to eat less meat than I did.  I am MUCH more scared of casein, the milk protein, because of it causing 100% incidence of cancer in the rates at 20% and above of the diet.  I eat MORE fruits and veggies than I did, if that even possible. AND I try to embrace oats and quinoa more than I did before.  But most of all, it solidified for me to eat all things in moderation.  AND, it freaked me out about eating store bought peanut butter – I am more motivated to make my own know about the alflatoxin carcinogen found in the nasty nuts used to make peanut butter.

I have mentioned it before, but What Color Is Your Diet? is fantastic.  It talks about how you don’t just need “fruits and veggies” but encourages to be aware that they are separated into catagories depending on the pigment.  The pigment of the fruits and veggies determines the antioxidants and benefits.  On a side note, its my personal peeve when people cut off the peels of their apples and other things, because THAT is the super concentration of the pigment that GIVES most of the antioxidants.  This book is in cancer centers across the US because of its strategy of  decreasing cancer through diet.

The Omega-3 Connection: The Groundbreaking Antidepression Diet and Brain Programis also fantastic to show how important Omega 3s are to humans.  Our ancestors had a 2:1 ratio of foods that gave omega 3’s.  Today it is estimated that we get between 20:1 to a 50:1 ratio of omega 3s because of all the processed junk, lack of veggies, and lack of sea food in our diets.  To replenish the ratio our DNA was programmed with helps a full gamut of issues.

The Omega Rx Zone: The Miracle of the New High-Dose Fish Oil is another one, this one by Barry Sears, that shows how Olympic athletes he worked with increased their performance by restoring the ratio of omega 3s our DNA is accustomed to, along with addressing fertility issues by restoring omega 3 composition, and ADD, menstrual, and hormonal issues.  I personally know someone whose menopause was reversed by Omega 3s (she was 28 and was getting VERY early menopause, and was told she would never have kids.  She got on a PHARMACEUTICAL GRADE high quality Omega 3 and now has 2 young kids – she is in her upper 30s. Since I know her personally and her struggles, her story always stands out to me.

The Crazy Makers: How the Food Industry Is Destroying Our Brains and Harming Our Children The Crazy Makers: How the Food Industry Is Destroying Our Brains and Harming Our Children is a very fascinating book about food’s effect on children.  It makes you think twice about what you feed them, and how it effects behavior, learning, – all things that are brain related.  I don’t look at it as a “guilt-inducer” but rather a way to make INFORMED decisions on what to feed your kids.  

Say Good-Bye to Illness (3rd Edition) 
So this  one is more of alternative view of health book, but it literally has changed the way I view health.  My kids have both utilized NAET with their health (through a medical practitioner) and it had changed their health so dramatically.  So I have to give it props.

Some books I would LIKE TO READ NEXT:
 Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life (P.S.)
I heard about this one from my friend Mary.  Here is what she said about it:

It details their family’s decision to try to live a year eating only what they could buy locally or grow themselves.
At first, the concept seemed fairly radical to me – it definitely was different from the way that I structured our family’s eating, shopping and menus. I had never given a serious thought before to how far my food had traveled to reach me. One of the statistics that Steven Hopp presents is that most of the items on the shelf at a supermarket traveled farther to get there than your family will travel on vacation this year. Once you add up all of those gasoline guzzling groceries, think about how much gasoline we are expending just to eat. The goal is to wring out as much oil from our food chain as possible.
I had already been trying for several years to eat in a healthy way – unprocessed food, organic when possible, and hormone free dairy and meat. After reading the Kingsolver’s book, we started taking a good look at our culinary lives, and how disconnected we were from our food chain, and the farmers who grow the food we eat. I started going to our farmer’s market every week, and buying and eating locally grown, in season produce. The amazing part is how cheap it is, and how much better than anything we can get at the grocery store! We buy our honey at our famer’s market, too, raw and unprocessed.

The next one on my list is Protein Power: The High-Protein/Low-Carbohydrate Way to Lose Weight, Feel Fit, and Boost Your Health–in Just Weeks!  I have been meaning to read this one for awhile – actually about 5 years.  However, after reading The China Study, I think I will go into reading it much more critically.  This particular book has been recommended to me by nutritional experts and doctors.  So, we’ll see.

BUT MOST OF ALL – I would love to hear from YOU!!!  What books have you read that have changed the way you view food, or think of food????????????  I would LOVE to hear!!!