Fresh Local Organic Produce!!

Horny Toad Farm has teamed up with Rock Star Boot Camp to provide their own C.S.A (Community Supported Agriculture) program! Pick up is on Saturdays at the Roadrunner Farmers Market. See the flier for all the details (such as how to sign up!) and of course, please feel free to ask questions. Sign up and payment is due by July 7th. Thank you camper Anastasia for putting this together for us! View the Announcements & Events page to stay up to date!

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If haven't already, take a minute to join our Rock Star Boot Camp Fit & Healthy group on Facebook, a place for support, advice and encouragement throughout your fitness journey.

"As an extension of Rock Star Boot Camp, this group will focus on nutrition, over all health, and our daily fitness journey. The group will not berate anyone on their eating habits; nor push one type of diet over another. Suggestions will be made, questions will be answered, and knowledge and experiences will be shared by all - but all aspects will remain positive. If you aren’t meeting your fitness goals, you will know why as you look back on your fitness and nutrition progression. Awareness is a large part of the battle. Be purposeful. Make smart choices and pay attention, day after day. Tracking these decisions will be the “writing on the wall” as to why you are, or are not, meeting your fitness and nutrition goals during this most-tempting time. We will be here to help along the way."

Welcome all new members of Rock Star Boot Camp! If this is the beginning of your weightloss/fitness journey, I encourage you to snap a "before" photo of yourself so in a few weeks you can look back and see how much progress you've made! I will be writing another Before/After picture post in the next few weeks so if you're interested, get snapping!

Conventional vs. Organic: How To Choose

Ever find yourself standing in the produce department of the grocery store deciding between the $.88 carton of conventionally grown strawberries and the $4.99 carton (the SAME SIZE!) of organically grown strawberries? How do you choose? Is it really worth the $4.00 difference to buy organic? For some fruits and vegetables, the answer is yes.

Eating organic isn't as easy for some as it is for others. The price factor alone is hard to get past, but since the "organic era" is a relatively new concept, a lot of people aren't aware of the health factors of eating organic. Let's start at the beginning and hopefully after you're finished reading, you'll have a better understanding of the benefits of eating organic foods vs. non-organic, conventionally grown foods.


What does “organic” mean?
Organic refers to how farmers grow and process food. Organic farming methods differ from conventional farming in several ways:
  • Conventional farming uses chemical fertilizers to promote plant growth, while organic farming employs manure and compost to fertilize the soil.
  • Conventional farming sprays pesticides to get rid of pests, while organic farmers turn to insects and birds, mating disruption, or traps.
  • Conventional farming uses chemical herbicides to manage weeds, while organic farming rotates crops, hand weeds, or mulches.
  • When raising animals, conventional farmers give animals antibiotics, growth hormones, and medications to spur growth and prevent disease. Organic farmers feed their animals organic feed and allow them to roam. They also will make sure the animals have a balanced diet and clean housing.
Why it costs more
The biggest criticism of organic food is its cost. There are several reasons it’s more expensive. Organic farmers pay more for organic animal feed, and the farming is more labor intensive, since farmers avoid chemical fertilizers and pesticides. Because farmers don’t use herbicides, for instance, they rely more on hand weeding. And since they avoid chemical fertilizers, they use compost and animal manure, which is bulkier and more expensive to ship. This also means their crop yield is usually lower. Conventional farming also uses every acre of farmland to grow crops, while organic farmers rotate their crops to keep soil healthy.

All of these production costs mean organic farming tends to be more expensive than conventional farming, and this is reflected in how much you pay at the grocery store. However, when you take into account the true “cost” of food production from conventional farming, including replacement of eroded soils, cleaning up polluted water, health care for farmers who get sick, and environmental costs of pesticide production and disposal, organic farming might actually be cheaper in the end.

In this economy, we would all like to save a few bucks on our groceries. Spend $4 extra on strawberries? No way, that money could be used towards the rent, or car payment, or filling up out gas tanks with these crazy prices! So how do you choose?  I like to approach every big change with baby steps. A change as big as your food type consumption can be very difficult considering you've known one way your whole life.  So your first baby step to leading a healthier, toxic free lifestyle is to eat as much organic as you can. I know it wasn't in my budget to add a few hundred a month (or week!) when we first started eating organic food.. With that, let me introduce you to the Dirty Dozen and the Clean 15.

The Dirty Dozen is a list of fruits and vegetables with the highest percentage of pesticides. Most have a soft penetrable skin and flesh so that when chemicals are sprayed on them, they soak it up like sponges and it seeps deep into the meat of the fruit. Note: although not listed in the dirty dozen, ALL berries should be organic. Print this little cheat sheet off and take it with you to the store next time. If you ONLY buy these 12 items organic, you'll be significantly reducing your pesticide consumption.

On the other side of the chart you see the Clean 15. These are just the opposite of the Dirty Dozen: they have the lowest-zero percentage of pesticides. I read somewhere that onion plants are just not preferred by critters so farmers don't NEED to use chemicals on them. You'll notice that the Clean 15 items have a hard, thicker peel, pesticides can't penetrate down into the fruit so once you removed the peel, you have very little exposure. Lemons and limes are not listed but just note that if you'll be using the peel for zest, buy organic.

Probably the best way to acquire your weekly provisions is through a local farmer’s market. The food travels a shorter distance, which means less carbon emissions and food that hasn’t been shipped hundreds of miles or processed to keep it preserved during transport. The food comes from small farms where the farmers are usually conscious of their impact on the earth and care about the food they’re producing. By purchasing food from them, you also support the local food economy and know where your food is coming from. According to the Center for Urban Education about Sustainable Agriculture, food in the United States travels an average of 1,500 miles to make it to your refrigerator. Why take an apple off the truck when you’re a step away from plucking it off the tree?

Rock Star Boot Camp has teamed with Horny Toad Farms in providing a weekly CSA food bag pick up at the Road Runner Park farmer's market. The latest cycle is ending soon but another will be starting again mid-July. I'll make sure to send out more information on that as soon as it is available. The flier and information will also be posted in the Rock Star Boot Camp Fit & Healthy group on Facebook: a great resource of fitness, health, nutrition chit chat and community support and motivation. (JOIN NOW!)

Choosing Healthy Fats

For a few weeks now I've been eating a very low fat diet because of some gallbladder issues I was having (That's here on my blog: Honey, I Shrunk My Butt). I've been struggling with what I should be doing with my diet, I just couldn't wrap my mind around the topic for some reason. I started getting overwhelmed with all the terms.. no-fat, low-fat, trans fat, good fat, bad fat.. fat fat fat. So instead of worrying about it, I basically cut out as much fat as I could, even the "good fat." Then a discussion came up in the Rock Star Boot Camp Fit & Healthy Group on Facebook {JOIN NOW!} that reminded me that I NEED good fat. In order to be successful in weight loss and health, your body needs fat. It's a little hard to swallow because in our society it's hammered into our heads that fat is bad. So I did some asking around and searching on the interwebs. What is good fat and what is bad fat?

I found this article called Choosing Healthy Fat (<--- read that, it has SO much great information!) and I really liked how the author sums up the no fat/low fat debate in my head:

"A walk down the grocery aisle will confirm our obsession with low-fat foods. We’re bombarded with supposedly guilt-free options: baked potato chips, fat-free ice cream, low-fat candies, cookies, and cakes. But while our low-fat options have exploded, so have obesity rates. Clearly, low-fat foods and diets haven’t delivered on their trim, healthy promises.
Despite what you may have been told, fat isn’t always the bad guy in the waistline wars. Bad fats, such as saturated fats and trans fats, are guilty of the unhealthy things all fats have been blamed for—weight gain, clogged arteries, and so forth. But good fats such as the monounsaturated fats, polyunsaturated fats, and omega-3s have the opposite effect.
As a matter of fact, healthy fats play a huge role in helping you manage your moods, stay on top of your mental game, fight fatigue, and even control your weight.
The answer isn’t cutting out the fat—it’s learning to make healthy choices and to replace bad fats with good ones that promote health and well-being."

Another great part of the article is this table (among many, read it!):

Myths and facts about fats

Myth: All fats are equal—and equally bad for you.
Fact: Saturated fats and trans fats are bad for you because they raise your cholesterol and increase your risk for heart disease. But monounsaturated fats and polyunsaturated fats are good for you, lowering cholesterol and reducing your risk of heart disease.
Myth: Lowering the amount of fat you eat is what matters the most.
Fact: The mix of fats that you eat, rather than the total amount in your diet, is what matters most when it comes to your cholesterol and health. The key is to eat more good fats and less bad fats.
Myth: Fat-free means healthy.
Fact: A “fat-free” label doesn’t mean you can eat all you want without consequences to your waistline. Many fat-free foods are high in sugar, refined carbohydrates, and calories.
Myth: Eating a low-fat diet is the key to weight loss.
Fact: The obesity rates for Americans have doubled in the last 20 years, coinciding with the low-fat revolution. Cutting calories is the key to weight loss, and since fats are filling, they can help curb overeating.
Myth: All body fat is the same.
Fact: Where you carry your fat matters. The health risks are greater if you tend to carry your weight around your abdomen, as opposed to your hips and thighs. A lot of belly fat is stored deep below the skin surrounding the abdominal organs and liver, and is closely linked to insulin resistance and diabetes.

After reading this article in it's entirety and then once again, and also reading another from Livestrong.com on how to calculate how much fat I should be getting, I have a much better understanding of the topic. Now begins the journey of putting my knowledge into action to see results.


Remember the Cartwright Fun Run a few weeks ago? Luke Air Force Base was there to volunteer along with many others. The base paper covered the event and take pictures and the article has been published. How exciting to see another perspective on the event! Check it out here at the base paper The Luke Air Force Base Thunderbolt.






A group of campers in the Rock Star Boot Camp Fit & Healthy Group on Facebook have just started a 5 week refocus health program; it's called "Restart, Refocus, Recommit." It started Wednesday May 30th, only yesterday so you can still jump in if you want! Check out the flier below and if it's something you're interested in, make sure to join the Facebook group for support! Click on the image below to make it bigger!



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Rock Star Boot Camp is the official boot camp of the Phoenix Mercury! This is an exciting new partnership and we are proud to be associated with such an amazing sport and group of athletes. Watch for us at all the home games, on the Phoenix Mercury website, on TV and hosting several on-court events. We're also launching a Biggest Transformation Contest in conjunction with the Phoenix Mercury. More details will follow, but needless to say, it's a fabulous time to be a Rock Star!

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