Ruper Stefani - Coconuts & kettlebells: a personalized 4-week food and fitness program for long-term health, happiness, and freedom

Contents

Contents

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This book contains advice and information relating to health care. It should be used to supplement rather than replace the advice of your doctor or another trained health professional. If you know or suspect you have a health problem, it is recommended that you seek your physicians advice before embarking on any medical program or treatment. All efforts have been made to assure the accuracy of the information contained in this book as of the date of publication. This publisher and the author disclaim liability for any medical outcomes that may occur as a result of applying the methods suggested in this book.

COCONUTS AND KETTLEBELLS. Copyright 2018 by Coconuts and Kettlebells, LLC and Stefani Ruper Enterprises, LLC. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

FIRST EDITION

Cover design by Mumtaz Mustafa

Front and back cover photographs by Alena Haurylik

Stefani Ruper photograph by AJP Photography

Noelle Tarr photograph by Morgan Renee Photography

Fitness photography by Matt Godfrey

Food photography by Alena Haurylik

Lifestyle photography by Teresa Robertson

Digital Edition AUGUST 2018 ISBN: 978-0-06-269030-2

Version 07262018

Print ISBN: 978-0-06-269029-6

For Ken

Thank you for all the late-night grocery

store runs to get more ingredients,

for testing (and retesting) workouts,

and for supporting Stella and me so I

could pursue my dreams. You are the best

thing that has ever happened to me.

Noelle

For Dorothy

Stef

B ack in 2008, we were both struggling with a number of health conditions, including anxiety, fatigue, digestive issues, weight fluctuations, infertility, and hormonal imbalancesto name a few. Despite doing everything right, our health continued to decline. We did detoxes and cleanses, tracked calories, and never missed workouts. It seemed the more we followed the conventional health and fitness advice to eat less and exercise more, the worse things got. According to all the experts, we should have been the happiest, fittest, healthiest women on the planet.

But we were not.

Both of us were lost in a sea of frustration, confusion, and doubt. Instead of finding freedom in each new diet we tried, we felt more and more restricted. We assumed there must be something wrong with our bodies and were desperate to figure out what we were missing. After years of obsessively trying to maintain the perfect diet, we hit our breaking points. There had to be more to the storyand we were determined to figure it out.

This was well before the two of us had met and become besties, so we carried out our searches independently. We spent months deep in research looking at medical journals and textbooks, exploring the evolution of the human diet, and scrutinizing the weight-loss and dieting industry. Eventually, we both came to discover one important, life-changing truth: todays culture demands that we eat less. But that is backward. What we really need to do is eat more.

The more we learned about the biochemistry of human bodiesand especially female bodiesthe more we realized what we needed was totally opposite from what society had been telling us. We had been told we needed to eat less to be healthy. We had been told 1,200 calories a day was a magical number that would make the pounds melt off and our worries melt away. We had been told we needed to restrict the quantity of food we ate in order to make our bodies lean, energetic, beautiful, and healthy.

But this advice was completely detrimental to our well-being. After all of our research, we realized we needed to stop obsessing over the quantity of food we ate and instead shift our focus to the quality. In fact, the more we erred on the side of eating more rather than less, the healthier we got. So instead of setting maximum limits on the amount of food we ate, we set minimums. No longer did we force ourselves to follow dieting rules. Instead, we made sure to eat at least 2,000 calories a day and filled our plates with nutrient-dense foods that worked best for our bodies. Even better, we dropped the guilt and shame that so often accompany weight-loss diets and stopped associating our worth with our ability to cut calories and restrict certain foods.

And we got better.

Once we ditched the diets and gave our bodies the nourishment they needed to heal, we felt happy, healthy, and free. Our mental and emotional health improved, our fertility returned, our hormones rebalanced, and we were no longer obsessed with tracking our food or fearful of what would happen if we didnt follow all the rules. We learned how to eat with freedom, with peace, and with joy. We developed plans for ourselves that not only made us feel amazing, but ended up being sustainable in the long run.

What weve discovered isnt rocket science. While weve both spent many, many years conducting experiments on our own bodies, the strategies we developedand still followare quite simple. After making our discoveries, we were eager to spread the word. We left our jobs, started our own blogs, and began writing articles that challenged conventional health and fitness advice. Eventually, we were not only helping hundreds of thousands of people through our websites, we were also working with countless clients one-on-one to help them restore their health, happiness, and relationships with their bodies.

In 2013, we met through the community of health bloggers online and decided to join forces. We started our podcast, Well-Fed Women (formerly known as The Paleo Women Podcast), which quickly rose to the top of the charts, and launched a number of successful programs that took the holistic health world by storm. It became readily apparent that people were desperate to ditch diet dogma and pursue health with an entirely different mind-set.