NutritionTrainer

Drink Some Water Already

I have trained for over 12 years and one thing I have learned above all else is that we make things so complicated when it comes to our health.  We won’t do the little things that will give us long lasting vitality but we will wake up and go workout on an empty stomach and still tired or hung over from the night before because we think it will burn a few extra fat calories.  In the mean time our bodies are screaming at us and we don’t listen.  I’m going to give you the number one thing that I think will make the biggest difference in your lives and health.  Ready…… DRINK MORE WATER.  That’s it.  Here’s why. 

            In the book “your bodies many cries for water’  Dr Batmanghelidj,MD writes a great book on how we are not sick we are thirsty.  Here are a few ailments that he describes in d great detail in his book.  Rheumatoid arthritis, Lower back pain, Neck Pain, Anginal Pain, Head aches, Stress and depression, High Blood pressure, High Cholesterol, Excess body weight, Asthma and allergies.  It sounds too good to be true but how about we try it before we get on so many medications that we can’t sleep properly. 

            Nothing substitutes for water, not any sugar laced water, not coffee, not tea, nothing substitutes for water.  I’ve seen many people with dehydration symptoms from achne to headaches to fatigue, and I can say with no ego that as soon as they started hydrating the way they we supposed to most of their ailments went away in the first 10 day’s.  Nothing substitutes for water. 

            Here is what happens when you get dehydrated.  Not in any order, you will stop sweating, then your body will recirculate your remaining water from your bladder, kidneys, joints, and intestines (feces).  When it has gotten all it can from those sources your left with sore joints, no need to urinate because you don’t have a full bladder, no way to detoxify your body because your constipated and you have stopped sweating.  When you get to a severe case you will feel like you have a hangover.  What’s actually happening is that your body is dying.  No B.S.  Your body is dying.  You can go without water for 3 day’s.  What if the air is really dry from the cold weather and for 12 hours a day you are exhaling water vapor and inhaling dry air. You’re getting more and more dehydrated as you go.  What if you have a severe sun burn?  You body has to sweat to keep your skin cool, however it evaporates so fast that you don’t realize that your sweating.  Where does that water come from?   After your body gets all the water it can from your organs, the next thing that happens is it starts taking the water from your blood.  Then your heart has to start pumping thicker blood.  That means it has to pump faster to get the same amount of blood to where it needs to go, and now you have high blood pressure and are hypertensive.  Sounds easy but there are no substitutes for water. 

            Here is what you should be drinking, ½ your body weight in ounces, minimum.  If you have any of the ailments listed above you need to super hydrate for a long period of time.  For better results you should add a pinch of unbleached sea salt to your water so you can maintain you electrolyte balance.  Not tale salt, Celtic Sea Salt is the best.  It actually should look grey not white.  Stay hydrated and stay healthy. 

 

Aerobic Training

Not a big fan of Aerobic training.  Here is what I mean Aerobic training.  Cardio, long distance training, Long distance cycling etc…  Having seen hundreds of stressed people in my career I can say without a doubt that your body can tell the difference between Chemical stress, physical stress, mental stress, spiritual stress, etc…  All your body knows is that you are stressed.  The response is the same for all stress.  You will release cortisol and stimulate the sympathetic nervous system, the fight or flight system.  Well I do cardio so I can lose fat.  Really???  Lets analyze that: the following is a calculation that was done in a NSCA journal. 

 

Calories burned for 1 mile run @ 6 Miles per hour = Approximately 300 kcal/mile

Calories in one pound of fat = 4082kcal

If we take these 2 things into account we can easily calculate how many miles it would take to burn 1 lbs of fat.  Hear is the kicker, out of the 300 kcal/mile, not all of them are from fat calories.  About 10-15% is from fat.  But for the sake of this article lets round that number to 20%.  So out of the 300kcal you’ll burn about 60 kcal from fat. Lets calculate: 60kcal (fat)/mile / 4082kcal/lbs of fat = 68.03 miles for 1 pound of fat loss. 

 

My question is this, who the hell wants to run 68 miles to lose a pound of fat per week?

So, are we really exercising more efficient or are we doing what everyone else is doing and hoping that some day it will work?  I also hear this, I run 45 minutes to an hour a day for my heart.  Really?? After about 3 weeks of intensive cardiovascular exercise your cardio enzymes are at their optimal.  That means you can triple the amount of miles you run and your enzymes will still be at their max.  There is a point that your body become optimal at its efficiency, then it can’t do anymore.  What most people don’t take into account is that the body chemistry has more to do with cardio health than the exercise you can do.  What I mean is that if you’re doing intensive cardio for more than 30 minutes, you're doing if for some other reason than cardiovascular health.  Can it be done a different way?  Yes!  Just buy my book for $29.95 and it tells you what to do.  Just kidding I don’t have a book.  Yes, you can do more weight training with little or no rest.  The biggest difference being that you will stimulate your anabolic (tissue Building) hormones, and not beat down your body with all that cortisol. 

We are sprinters by nature.  We were hunter-gatherers, we didn’t chase a rabbit 26.2 miles until it died from exhaustion, we sprinted until we caught something or we didn’t eat.  That is still engrained in us today but we train the exact opposite of how we lived for the last 3000+ years. 

What should I do??  If your not sleeping to well you probably have an over exaggerated stress response.  You need to slow down and work in, instead of work out, a little bit. Try doing 15-20 minutes at a higher intensity for a few weeks and see if it makes a difference.  I don’t mean 15 -20 minutes on the bike and then an hour of weights, then 10 minutes of abs training and then you go get a sugary drink from the café.  15 to 20 minutes all out and then you are done.  You’re more likely to get a heart attack from eating like crap then not doing enough cardio training.  

 

The most important thing you can do for your health

There is no way I could do this subject justice in one article.  I’m going to give you a background and a couple of things to look for to see if you are sleep.  First, you will not lose body fat if you are not sleeping.  I hope that gets you attention.  If you are not following the principles that I’m going to tell you about in this first article then you are not going to lose body fat, not even if you exercise.  Not only that, you will accumulate fat around your bellybutton.  It’s a tell tail sign that your body is stressed and is not repairing properly.  The average person gets 7hr/night of sleep.  Research shows that less than a hundred years ago we slept on average 11-12hours/night.  One of the reasons is that we were more dependent on the rise and fall of the sun, we were more engrained to the sun and moon cycles.  Now with TV’s computer screens and light everywhere your body thinks it’s endless summer.  But as I’ll show you later there is a high price we are paying for that. 

What happens to the body when we get to sleep?  Let’s say you are on the correct sleep  schedule, which most of you probably aren’t.  What happens to your body when you get to sleep?  First, most of your critical functions slows down tremendously so your immune system can go around and clean up the entire body.  This physical repair usually goes from 10pm to around 2am.  Then you go through Neurogenic repair from 2am to 6am.  That is where you get your brain nerves and nervous system repaired.  So if you are going to bed late or waking up too early you are missing these times of repair, which are extremely important to our health.  Some ways you can tell if you aren’t getting enough sleep is that you will start to crave sugar and caffine.  You will start getting sick more often.  You will get viral infections more often.  You will get headaches when you don’t usually get headaches, and your overall vitality goes down. 

So, most people will tell me when I ask them about there sleep that they are fine because they get there 7-8 hours a night.  However, what they don’t realize is that when they go to bed at midnight after being n front of a computer screen all night, or in front of the TV watching Fox New, and Glen Beck etc, that they have still missed the physical repair that the body usually goes through.  Then I get the Question, “How is that Possible if  I’m getting 7-8 hours of sleep.  The reason is because the earth, sun and moon don’t care how busy your life is, or that you have kids that stay up late, or that you go to the bar every weekend.  Here is what I mean.  Our body’s go through natural cycles, Circadian Rhythms(24 Hour Cycle), Lunar Cycle(28 Day Cycle), Solar Cycle(Winter Spring Summer Fall Cycle).  These cycles are engrained in your DNA whether you believe it or not.  Here is an example: most people know when the sun comes up in the morning even if the can see it, this is because we can feel the energy of the sun every morning, also women have a 28 day cycle that should be pretty consistent for years of there life, and we all have different moods that come with the seasons.  I feel worse if the winter than I do in the spring.  Less than 100 years ago we were dependant on the sun rising to get our work done and when the sun went down we went to sleep shortly after that.  These cycles are so engrained in us that we are sensitive to even the slightest change.  When we get away from our rhythms and start getting more and more tired the body thinks we are stressed or in danger.  What hormone do we release when we are stressed? Cortisol!!!  I’ll be writing on Cortisol in the weeks to come.  Cortisol is a stress hormone that your body needs; however when we are secreting too much we start to run into problems. 

So if you don’t get to bed by 10:30 at the latest you consistently will not repair the body and if you get up before 6am you can’t complete your nerogenic repair.  Both can have a devastating effect on the body over the long term.  SO WHAT DO I DO????  That’s easy get to bed on time.  Try this for 5 nights and see if you feel better.  Get to Bed by 10pm and sleep 8 Hour. Stop drinking caffine or sugar late in the day.  Increase you fat intake during your daily meals and see if you can notice a difference in your health.  Or you could read this article over and over that might put you to sleep as well.  Sweat dreams J

 

Vegans beware

This is a great link to a article on vegetarianism.  It answers all the questions about is it better than eating meat.  Take a minute and really look at it because this applies to most people as well.  enjoy.  

http://www.paulchek.com/Vegetarianism1.htm

HFCS: High Fructose Corn Syrup

Summer is here and it’s been a little crazy.  This blog is about all the foods we are about to consume under the banner of “The Holidays/ Summer time”.  On man’s food is another man’s poison.   Most everything that you are eating right now that tastes sweet is probably made with corn or HFCS.  Here’s the bad news it’s making us fat and its killing us.   Sorry to be blunt (not really).  Over the last 200 years the rate of HFCS has directly paralleled the rate of obesity in this country.  A study I read done in Colorado at the Denver health sciences center reviewed 4,528 adults with no history of Hypertension. They were given 74 Grams of HFCS per day (2 ½ soft drinks per day).  In all cases, blood pressure increased all due to weight gain.  So the next time you see something with high fructose corn syrup written on the label put it back where you got it.   The problem with Corn Syrup is the way the body absorbs and stores the sugar.  Sugar requires insulin to be absorbed, but HFCS (Fructose mainly) can be absorbed directly thought the digestive tract.  If you’re not burning energy like crazy, what do you think your body does with the excess sugar????  Take a look at your legs, spare tire and butt because that’s where it goes.  It’s not only that you gain weight it is that your body has to compensate for the constant massive amounts of sugar in your blood.  This is what leads to problems, not the sugar itself.  The brain needs sugar (Fuel), so you have to decide when you eat, are you going to give your brain and body high-octane fuel (sugar from Veggies) or Rocket fuel (HFCS).  

Born to Run

This is a guy who is going against conventional wisdom and actually using the body how it's supposed to be used.  He is a runner who runs barefoot.  before you watch this you have to understand that there is not a single study done that says running shoes of any sort diminish or prevent any running injuries.  It's actually the opposite, In some cases the shoes actually cause the injuries.  Watch and enjoy. 

New study links ADHD in children to pesticides

Below is a link to a brand new study published in the "Journal of Pediatrics".  It goes on to say that there is a link between ADHD and pesticides on our food.  Just another argument for eating organic.  

ADHD Link to Pesticides  

Pesticides & ADD

Global Epidemic: Obesity (We're digging our grave with our teeth)

I hate to plagiarize other peoples ideas, however I don't think my friend todd will mind.  I saw this on his website and I thought it was brilliant and sad at the same time.  If you're reading this put your shit down and listen to this video from start to finish.  This guy is going to change the world, I have no doubt.  Good Job again todd.  Love you brother.  

How to create a quality exercise program

This is an article done by a good friend of mine "Todd Stebleton".  I'm plagiarizing it from his website because I think it was brilliantly written and why reinvent the wheel.   His blog address is http://toddstebleton.wordpress.com,  Enjoy, and thanks Todd.  

Millions of programs out there….where to begin? Most people are wrapped up in details and miss the basics. When it comes to exercise, they make the little things the big things, and the big things the little things. Sounds like a bad marriage, doesn’t it?

In terms of priority:

1. Know your outcome. What is your desired goal? How specifically can you create it?

2. Learn to walk before you run. Here is a heirarchy of body function that will create positive changes fast and limit injuries.

a. Flexibility b. Stability c. Strength d. Power

Most people fault greatly on step two. You cannot have good stability (joint function, physical/athletic function, injury prevention) without proper flexibility. Additionally, you cannot have proper strength without proper stability. Get the point? This is why so many “athletes” are good in the weight room, but weak on the field. Think of a lineman in football. Yes, it’s important they have strong chest muscles. But how does increasing weight in a bench press help on a football field? The research shows that it doesn’t! Tell any high school or Division III football coach this and they’d laugh at you because their paradigm in still stuck in the 80s. Quite frankly, I’m tired of seeing low quality trainers working with athletes.

OK, so now you understand the heirarchy. Now, onto the program design.

3. Once you know your flexibility limitations and stability limitations, you can begin to fix them.Choose the right exercises. Once you get a proper and thorough fitness/function assessment, you’ll know what to stretch and what to strengthen.

4. Next, master your frequency. There is no reason to learn the right exercises if you only do them once a month.

5. Understand how long you should exercise. If you aren’t very fit, don’t overdo exercise with a 60 minute spin class. You might be able to mentally push through it, which has some psychological benefit, but physically you’ll create more acid than your body can deal with and thus, slow your metabolism, increase joint dysfunction, and generally disrupt homeostasis.

6. My Dad always said, “If you’re gonna do it, do it right.” Learn the proper technique and zealously seek to do every repetition of every exercise correctly.

Aspartame: The Deadly Poison

Here is a link to a website that is very interesting.  It talks about the bad effects of aspartame.  The funny thing is I was first told about this 12 years ago by Greg Peterson, a nutrition specialist in Minnesota.  I hope this answers some of your questions about sugar free garbage. 

http://www.sweetpoison.com/aspartame-information.html

Must See Video

For those of you who didn't know humans have a sensitivity to electromagnetic stress.  Is can be just as powerful as any other stressor in you life if you have the disposition to be more sensitive to it.  Below is a link that you have to see.  Take it seriously it can be very damaging to your health. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QjDUJVx3W0k&feature=related