In this letter:
- being a high school nutrition coach
- recipes for high schoolers
- something weird I ate (drank?) this week
- update on mushrooms in my coffee
Imagine sitting as a parent in a stuffy room and being introduced to your high school athlete’s Nutrition Coach. What in the world is that “coach” gonna say to my child?!
Last night I was introduced as the Nutrition Coach to my daughter’s high school volleyball team parents. For the record, I have zero actual academic nutritional degrees. Just a lot of time in the kitchen.
Here’s what I said to the mommas and the papas:
If you survey a room a people, everyone will have their own definition of healthy.
I thought I was healthy because I was slender, growing up on a farm. My mom hardly bought convenience food and cooked mostly from scratch.
This idea of being healthy was challenged as infertility became a part of my story. After years of trying I wanted answers. Doctors called it “unexplained infertility”. We eventually conceived then experienced a devastating miscarriage in the second trimester.
Adoption was next. As fate would have it, I got pregnant after pursuing a Russian adoption (the agency encouraged us to forego finality). In the second trimester of this pregnancy, I was diagnosed with gestational diabetes. Again, WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME? Per doctor's orders I met with a nutritionist and realized we were eating carb heavy and began to focus on more protein.
Years rolled by and we experienced secondary infertility. God put in my path people who knew more about health than me. One was my next door neighbor, a trainer who worked in a small gym and recommended a book required to work in her gym. Written by an endocrinologist, Dr. Schwarzbein encouraged patients to keep a food journal to record what they ate and how they felt. She refuted the popularized food pyramid (with carbs as the base) and instead encouraged eating from a cube. The four parts on my plate should be: protein, healthy fats, non-starchy carbs (like green veg) and starchy carbs (grains/fruit). The protein piece was a familiar refrain.
I desperately wanted another baby. A friend recommended that I attend a natural health workshop led by her mom. This is where I learned about traditional food.
«My husband and I began to make aggressive baby steps. Some might say radical changes. It started with better choices in the grocery store.»
Enter the cookbook Nourishing Traditions and learning about the work of dentist Dr. Weston A. Price.
In the 1930’s he traveled the globe interviewing isolated traditional peoples and finding commonalities in their diet. He proposed that the people who stayed with their ancestral ways of eating had better health than those who allowed the creep of industrial, modern foods like white flour, white sugar, vegetable oils, canned foods and pasteurized milk.


Modern foods led to the destruction of teeth. He observed a rapid decline in health in one generation when parents replaced their traditional diet with a modern diet. This is recorded in his book Nutrition and Physical Degeneration, your library should have it and the pictures alone are absolutely fascinating!
«It was about nine months of eating this way (plus other holistic treatments and ditching all kinds of toxic things in my home) that I became pregnant with Caroline, the volleyball player.»
Before you freak out and think, “Woah sister. You’re talking voodoo here. What are you expecting of me and how does this translate to volleyball?”
My friend, “Holistic” Hilda Gore, says it so well:
Yes to what is real, no to what is fake.
That’s what I will be encouraging your athlete. I’m not here to shame or blame any way of eating.
At my house we eat 80/20.
Eighty percent of the time my family eats traditional foods but twenty percent of our meals are modern. Life happens and we run through Chick-fil-A (like Monday when my daughter forgot her lunch at home for a 6 hour practice!)
I’m excited to educate your daughter, not just to fuel her body for this short volleyball season but also prepare her for future generations.
On Friday (Head) Coach Jennifer is giving me the first hour of the team building day to talk about nutrition. We will learn how protein is king. I’m going to encourage them to start prepping some nutrition in advance (and exhort them to clean the kitchen!) I’ll give them recipes to try and we will keep a 3-day food journal to track protein intake.
Final note - as a bit of street cred, at the peak of his swimming career, my oldest son was ranked 11th in the nation in 50 freestyle. He was eating about 10K calories a day!
S U P E R E X C I T E D.
Recipes I’m Sharing
I only know a small handful of the 24 families. Even then, I have no idea how they eat. I am assuming most eat a processed high carb breakfast. So that is where I’m starting.
Protein is King
I’m encouraging the athletes to aim for 20-30g protein for breakfast. You can’t get that in a bowl of cereal - or even a bowl of yogurt and granola. These gals are all a few short years from living on their own and being responsible for their nutrition 24/7.
Eggs are nutrient dense and can be prepared a million ways: fried, scrambled, over easy, boiled, quiche. I will demonstrate how to cook a few eggs in a stainless steel skillet to give them tools to make their own breakfast. One egg is 6 grams of protein.
My kids have enjoyed Amylu breakfast sausages from Costco and Walmart. Three mini-links equal 12g protein. Bacon is always a crowd fav and I cook an entire package on a sheet pan at 400* until desired crispiness, depends on thickness of strips.
Cottage cheese (I love Good Culture brand/has probiotics) has 24g protein per cup. Add berries and bingo! Breakfast is served.
Other Recipes
Baked Oatmeal I’ve made most weeks for over a decade. Perfect for snacks on the go.
Quinoa Breakfast Bowl - works as quick snack, too
Granola Bar Cookies - esp for tournaments instead of packaged bars
Clafoutis - egg custard with fruit, also dessert
When snacking, choose protein with fat to help satiate and stabilize blood sugars. Buy dairy with all the fat as God created.
Peanut butter in celery or with bananas or apples
Turkey with cheese
Cottage cheese & berries (I love Good Culture brand/has probiotics)
Cheddar /mozzarella with fruit
Hummus with veggies
Hard boiled eggs
Tuna/chicken salad
Olives / nuts
Dinner leftovers make great breakfast and snacks!
Something Weird - Liver Tonic
Liver is King of Nutrient Density and I desperately want to train myself to eat it. Janine of Offally Good Cooking has a recipe for Liver Tonic, calling it a high octane Bloody Mary. When I made the Liver Tonic and thought I could swallow anything. I drank about 3/4 of the glass before I had to stop. Video proof. Later I saw Christine Muldoon of Nourish the Littles use a microplane to grate her liver. I’ll try that and less liver next time. Baby steps!
Mushrooms in My Coffee
In case you missed it, I tried functional mushrooms in my coffee and it rocked my world - in a good way. Lots of you reached out asking to keep you updated. I have such mental clarity in the mornings it’s astonishing.
My husband and I are both hooked.
Chatting with a sister in law on the 4th, she said her husband also had been using mushroom powder in his coffee. I inquired the about brand and bought some from Amazon.
The difference? I really wanted to like it better because of the lower price point.
Maybe if I’d started with this cheaper version, I wouldn’t realize how gritty it was. This brand required more mushroom/volume which translated to more grit. It also had a stronger earthy odor that borders on unpleasant. Probably the reason for the smell was listed under other ingredients, “organic milo (growing substrate)”, aka dirt. The cheaper blend was only 4 mushrooms as compared to the 5 mushroom blend from Arbonne. Lastly, the one from Amazon used “full spectrum” of the mushroom, which is code for fruit and woody stem = not as potent. This morning I couldn’t finish the last swallow of grit.
While the Arbonne mushroom blend is more expensive, the overall experience is better: barely noticed in coffee (way less grit, no smell), there’s third party testing for efficacy and the most potent part of the mushroom - the fruit. The Amazon mushrooms, though lower sticker price, actually have a higher cost if I won’t use them.
John and I will finish the Amazon mushrooms and go back to Arbonne. Get 10% off with code Arbonne10. Or become a Preferred Client and get them free.
Other things I’m enjoying from Arbonne these days: self tanner, shampoo (actually on sale!), mascara (doesn’t smudge or flake like most clean mascaras, also could be free), pea protein powder in morning smoothies, probiotic that tastes like candy called BioticSticks that your kid will remind you to take!, and the super hydrating but not sticky LipOil. I love the citrus taste of the GreenSynergy Elixir and that it has enzymes, pre- and probiotics, a serving of greens, with collagen builders - (most days I make a kefir smoothie and get my probiotics from it but if you want a pleasant tasting greens/probiotic drink that you’ll look forward to this is it).
I appreciate that this company strikes a balance between plant-based, bio-based, and scientifically derived ingredients. The ingredients are high quality and effective while the using science, clinical research, and third-party certifications.
In my cart are these newly released products that come with high reviews: lip serum (always a sucker for plump/moisturizing lip products!) , and this night cream that’s been compared to my fav Supreme Cream by Beautycounter (that’s out of business until at least October).
Starts in the Cart
I’ve been playing a game (in my head) as I grocery shop these days. When standing in the checkout line I review the content of my basket and evaluate how well I’ve navigated the 80/20 rule.
Is 80% of the food I’m buying single ingredient? Are there five ingredients or less? Can I pronounce and identify all ingredients? I really try to keep processed foods out of the cart.
Because if I don’t have the junk in my panty I’m less likely to eat it. Amen?
Life is hard; food doesn’t have to be.
Julie