Health Habits

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Posts Tagged ‘fat’

The Making of the Health Habits Diet

February 2nd, 2010

Tomorrow, I will be sharing with the Health Habits Facebook Group one of the most effective fat-burning, muscle building, health improving diets I have ever designed.

But, before I do that, I thought I would show everybody the 3 central rules that I used to create the Health Habits Diet.

It’s Not Only What You Eat
It’s When You Eat It
And How Much Of It That You Eat

Simple, right?

Let’s take a closer look.

What You Eat

There are a lot of diets that restrict the types of food you can and can’t eat:

Low-Fat Diets
Low-Carb Diets
Vegetarian/Vegan Diets
High Fiber Diets
Liquid Diets
Organic Food Diets
Whole Grain Diets
and the list goes on and on and on…

The fact is, certain foods improve your health and certain foods don’t.

Certain foods are high in nutrients and low in calories
Other foods are high in calories and low in nutrients
Certain foods make you hungry
Certain foods cause inflammation (that’s bad)
Certain foods make you fat

Based upon the most recent research, I have put together my list of the foods that improve your health and the ones that wreck your health.

When You Eat It

What makes more sense:

Drinking all of your daily fluid intake at one sitting (think Big Gulp)?
Or spreading it out over the course of the day?

Skipping breakfast and lunch and then eating a huge dinner?
Spacing your food intake out evenly over the whole day?

Eating all of your carbs for breakfast, fats for lunch and proteins for dinner?
Eating meals balanced in macro-nutrients (carb, fat, pro)?

It’s not just the types of food you eat that’s important, it’s when you eat those foods.

And tomorrow, I will tell the Facebook Group about two incredibly powerful meal timing techniques.

How Much You Eat

This one is a no-brainer.

10,000 calories of the healthiest health food per day is still going to make you fat.

It’s just too bad that most dieters see calories as the end-all and be-all of successful weight loss. If the weight isn’t coming off fast enough, they just drop the calories a little more. And then a little more. And then just a little bit more.

Until 1 of 2 things happens:

They achieve their weight loss goal and then have to maintain their skinny-fat physiques on 1000 calories per day for the rest of their miserable calorie deprived lives, or
Their body revolts and forces them (via hormones, brain chemicals, etc) to eat and eat and eat.

Neither scenario works.

That’s why focusing solely on calories is the worst thing you can do if you’re trying to lose weight.

Conclusion

Tomorrow, I will be sharing with the Health Habits Facebook Group my latest fat-burning, muscle building, health improving diet.

It’s based on these 3 rules and it works better than anything I have ever seen.

Hope you like it.

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What you DON’T want in a personal trainer

January 12th, 2010

Here’s a little story for anyone out there thinking of hiring a personal trainer….

Earlier today, I was meeting with a potential new client.

For the last six months, she had been working out on her own and was less than pleased with the results. Previous to that, she had worked with a personal trainer for four months.

She was even less pleased with that experience.

Here’s why:

Over the four months, she spent $4800 ($100 per session x 3 sessions per week x 16 weeks)
Her weight yo-yo’d during this experience – eventually settling at 11 lbs lost
Her initial goal was 40 lbs

When her initial personal training package expired (48 sessions), she was asked to renew for another 48 sessions at the same rate.

At this time, she expressed her concerns about her lack of progress. She thought she should have lost more weight and was hesitant to renew based upon her results after 16 weeks.

This is what her trainer said:

He was also disappointed with her results
He was surprised that she didn’t do better, because all of his clients that follow his program achieve their goals.
The clients that don’t achieve their goals are unsuccessful because they don’t follow his program.
They cheat on their diet or they don’t do their self-directed cardio sessions.

and here’s my favorite…

He’s only with her 3 hours per week. That leaves 165 hours (24 x 7 – 3) in the week for her to sabotage his plan.
His responsibility is to design & deliver the program.
Her responsibility is to follow his direction.

And, you know what, he’s right.

He can’t follow her around and make sure she doesn’t follow the prescribed diet or do her “self-directed” cardio sessions.

But, for $4800, doesn’t she deserve more than a training program and 48 hours of counting reps and stretching her hamstrings?

(BTW, I saw the program, and I was unimpressed to say the least)

This is what she should have got for $4800

They should have spent time during every session discussion discussing what happened to her in between sessions.
He should have known if she was having trouble sticking to the plan
They should have discussed motivational techniques
He should have asked questions to find her triggers for poor eating.
He should have taught her how to look inside herself and identify the thoughts and emotions attached to her poor eating habits
He should have known she wasn’t doing as well as she should have
He should have worked harder to find the buttons that needed pushing

For $4800, he should have mustered up some personal & professional pride and made change happen.

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But enough about her ex-trainer douche-bag. Here’s what happened during our meeting

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After some initial pleasantries, we go down to the question & answer period of our meeting. I asked her all of the questions that I typically ask potential clients.

And after 30 minutes or so, I was pretty sure that her eating problems are tied up in her emotions.

We talked about her life. We talked about her eating patterns. We talked about some of the tricks I have picked up through the years. I watched her get agitated while talking about certain topics. I watched her body relax and her mood lift when she talked about her kids. When we talked about her friend’s weight loss success (a former client of mine), I could see the combination of hope and doubt in her eyes.

And this is just the beginning.

I barely know the woman.

Hopefully that changes. Hopefully, she gives me the chance to help her make her life a little bit better.

And yes, I know this sounds all new-agey and sensitive.

But, if I want her to achieve lasting results and not just a short term (Biggest Loser) change, we’ve got to identify the emotions behind the obesity. When we do that, the workout & nutrition plan will work as advertised.

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BTW, if anyone wants a kick-butt weight loss fitness program, check out the Health Habits Facebook Page. Become a fan and have free access to a workout plan designed to burn fat fast.

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Posted in Attractiveness / Sexuality, Diet/Nutrition, Exercise, I Wanna Be Healthy, I Wanna Look Great, fat, fat loss, fitness, health, nutrition, obesity, personal trainer, toronto, weight loss, working out

Tags: diet fat fitness food health nutrition obesity personal trainer personal trainer toronto weight loss

Childhood Obesity: A Cruel Kindness

January 11th, 2010

Waaaaayyy back in 1967, medical experts were concerned about the growing threat of childhood obesity.

Little did they know that the “fat kids” from their time would be considered “normal” in 2010.

Don’t believe me?

I recently came across the following olde-tyme educational film from Great Britain (c 1967). The film documents the typical home life for Brits in the late 60s…including their attitudes towards food and meal times. It also addresses obesity in children.

A female GP narrates the story of three children who are overweight for their age stressing that although there may be some inherited causes of their obesity, it is mostly due to over-feeding on the part of the parents, what the GP calls a cruel kindness.

Cruel Kindness

What a great description.

Why do we feed our kids pizza instead of broccoli?
Why do we let them play hours & hours of XBox instead of kicking them outside to get some exercise (and a real life)?
Why have we let fast food become the largest food group?

Cruel Kindness

It’s easier to give them what they want, instead of what they need.

But that isn’t parenting…is it?

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Enjoy the film.

Or better yet, talk to your children’s school about screening the film during phys. ed or science or during an assembly.

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Type 1 Diabetes: The New Lifestyle Epidemic

January 7th, 2010

You can’t watch the news today without hearing about the “obesity epidemic”.

In fact, recent research has shown that obesity is a bigger health threat than smoking.

But wait, it gets worse.

Now, we learn that our lifestyle has lead to an unprecedented increase in the rates of Type 1 Diabetes.

According to medical journalist Dan Hurley, “the incidence of type 1 diabetes is now twice as high among children as it was in the 1980s, and 10 to 20 times more common than 100 years ago.”

While rising levels of type 2 diabetes are well known (and typically linked to increasing obesity), the corresponding rise in type 1, or “juvenile,” diabetes has rarely if ever been described in the news media, despite a substantial body of scientific evidence.

While widely accepted by leading diabetes researchers, the increase in type 1 has as yet received scant attention from leading diabetes advocacy organizations.

Scant attention???

I had no idea that the rates of Type 1 Diabetes had increased one iota.

Did you?

Hurley thinks that “the media has given so little coverage to the rise of type 1 because it simply doesn’t fit with the conventional wisdom that it’s supposed to be a super-rare disease caused by a genetic predisposition. Obviously, genes haven’t changed, so something in our environment or lifestyle has.”

Hmmmm, ye olde genetics vs epigentics debate.

And, once again, it looks like lifestyle is kicking some genetic butt.

But, what is it about our lifestyle that has caused this spike in Type 1 Diabetes?

In his new book, Diabetes Rising, Hurley examines five leading scientific hypotheses that offer an explanation:

The “accelerator hypothesis,” which asserts that the rising weight and height of children over the past century has “accelerated” their tendency to develop type 1 by putting the insulin-producing beta cells in their pancreases under stress.
The “sunshine hypothesis,” which holds that the increased time spent indoors is reducing children’s exposure to sunlight, which in turn reduces their level of vitamin D (the “sunshine vitamin”). Reduced levels of vitamin D, and reduced exposure to sunshine, have each been linked to an increased risk of type 1 diabetes.
The “hygiene hypothesis,” which holds that lack of exposure to once-prevalent pathogens results in autoimmune hypersensitivity, leading to destruction of the body’s insulin-producing beta cells by rogue white blood cells.
The “cow’s milk hypothesis,” which holds that exposure to cow’s milk in infant formula during the first six months of life wreaks havoc on the immune system and increases the risk to later develop type 1.
The “POP hypothesis,” which holds that exposure to persistent organic pollutants increases the risk of both types of diabetes. “

The book cites recent studies which show that back in 1890, the reported annual death rate from diabetes for children under the age of 15 was 1.3 per 100,000 children in the United States. “Because any death due to diabetes in those days had to be caused by what we now call type 1, researchers consider the 1.3 per 100,000 figure to be a rough estimate of the yearly incidence of new cases at that time,” Hurley writes. “In Denmark, the rate was fairly similar, about 2 per 100,000 at the beginning of the 20th century. From that baseline, things took off.

By the mid-1980s, the yearly incidence of new cases of type 1 had jumped to 14.8 per 100,000 children in Colorado.

By the opening years of the 21st century, the incidence rate in six geographic areas of the United States, as measured in a new study run by the CDC, had climbed to 23.6 per 100,000 among non-Hispanic white children.

The rates were 68 percent higher than those reported in Colorado in the 1980s, and more than twice as high as reported in Philadelphia in the 1990s.”

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Well, that doesn’t sound very good.

Click HERE for articles about diabetes.

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Posted in Diet/Nutrition, I Wanna Be Healthy, diabetes, fat, fitness, nutrition, obesity

Tags: diabetes diet fat fitness health heart disease obesity personal trainer personal trainer toronto

The Mandometer…a cure for obesity, anorexia & bulimia?

January 6th, 2010

There’s a new weapon in the battle against obesity, anorexia and bulimia.

It’s called the Mandometer.

It was developed in 2003 by researchers at the Karolinska Institute to test their theory that restrictive eating behaviors cause psychological disorders (anorexia, bulimia, binge eating, etc).

The Mandometer: A device that teaches you how to eat

Here’s how it works:

Mandometer® consists of a scale that is connected to a computer.

You place your plate on the scale and put food on the plate. The computer registers the decrease in the weight of the plate over the course of the meal and in real time shows a curve for your eating speed in grams per minute. At regular intervals, a satiety scale is shown on the computer screen and you are asked to evaluate your satiety by pointing at the screen.

The computer saves the satiety evaluations and generates another curve that shows your feelings of satiety during the meal compared to that of a normally eating individual. When you practice eating, your disordered eating pattern and the normal eating pattern are shown on the screen simultaneously. You are asked to model both your eating rate and feelings of satiety to more closely conform to the normal patterns.

And for seven years, mandometer clinics in Sweden, Australia & the U.S. have been using this tool to help their anorexic & bulimic patients reclaim their healthy eating patterns.

So, what does this have to do with obesity?

Like anorexics & bulimics, I think we would all agree that there is a strong link between obesity and our disordered eating behaviors and sense of satiety.

And these bad habits are precisely what the Mandometer was designed to correct.

But, when it comes to treating obesity, everything we’re talking about here is theoretical. What about the research?

Glad you asked.

In this paper, published online in the BMJ, the Mandometer has been shown to be more successful in helping obese children and adolescents lose weight than traditional methods.

At the end of the 12 month study, the Mandometer group not only had a significantly lower average body mass index and body fat score than the standard care group, but their portion size was smaller and their speed of eating was reduced by 11% compared with a gain of 4% in the other group.

Obviously, more research needs to be done – different settings, different patients, different control methods…

However, the idea of using the Mandometer to help people retrain the eating behavior and re-set their satiety level seems pretty exciting to me.

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Genetics & Obesity – Prader-Willi Syndrome

December 23rd, 2009

A few days ago, I met a woman whose young child has been diagnosed with Prader-Willi Syndrome.

And while I am no expert on Prader-Willi, I have a general idea of the associated symptoms.

These include:

low levels of testosterone
sleep disorders
strabismus (mis-aligned eyes)
scoliosis
delayed puberty
weak muscles
extreme flexibility
learning disabilities
various

and an insatiable desire to eat which leads to compulsive overeating, morbid obesity and an increased risk of diabetes and various other obesity related conditions

The cause of PWS is genetic.

Although the exact genes responsible for Prader-Willi syndrome haven’t been identified, the problem is known to lie in a particular region of chromosome 15.

This defect in chromosome 15 leads to a malfunctioning hypothalamus.

This results in a flaw in the hypothalamus part of their brain, which normally registers feelings of hunger and satiety. The number of oxytocin neurones–the putative satiety neurones–in the hypothalamic paraventricular nucleus is markedly decreased in Prader-Willi syndrome. This is presumed to be the basis of the insatiable hunger and obesity of patients with the syndrome.

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This means that people with this flaw never feel full; they have a continuous urge to eat that they cannot learn to control. To compound this problem, people with PWS need less food than their peers without the syndrome because their bodies have less muscle and tend to burn fewer calories.

Doesn’t sound very nice, does it?

So, maybe that explains my irritation the very next day when I had a chat with someone who told me that the reason they are fat is their genetics. His mom is overweight and so is his father.

Never mind that he was drinking a Starbucks Venti Mocha Frappucino and munching on some sort of scone while we had this brief conversation.

Arrrrgggghhhhh

So, like the shit-disturber I am (pardon my French), I asked him if he suffered from Prader-Willi or some other form of genetic disorder.

[blank stare]

The moral of the story….the next time you are feeling sorry for your obviously fat genetics, think about the little guy in that Prader-Willi video….feeling hungry all the time.

If you’re overweight, odds are it ain’t your genetics.

And if it ain’t your genetics, you can do something about it.

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You Will NEVER Drink Soda Again

December 15th, 2009

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Transformation #2 – Me

December 2nd, 2009

Doug...happy & sweaty @ the gym

Every autumn, I dedicate my workouts to strength & power.

I set myself a goal, hit the gym and unleash the beast.

This year, my goal was to press 350 lbs overhead.

And, as that stupid grin on my face can attest to, not only did I achieve my goal, I crushed it by pressing 365 lbs overhead. Woo Hoo!

Unfortunately, along with all this superhuman strength comes some superhuman eating and a wee bit of extra body-fat.

As of this morning, I weighed in at 252.2 lbs @ 15.4% body-fat.

doug's body composition Dec 2

Way too p-p-porky for my liking.

So, as I do every winter, I clean up my diet and start a new training program similar to the one I gave to the Healthy Irishman.

The goal being that I drop my body-fat down to 10% without losing much muscle mass.

doug's body composition goal

What is new for this year is that I will be doing this transformation in front of my millions and millions of readers.

In the next few days, I will post an outline of workout & nutrition plans.

I will also post my daily workouts here. Feel free to sign up for email updates if you want to follow along.

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Posted in Exercise, I Wanna Be Healthy, I Wanna Look Great, Mental/Emotional, fat loss, fitness, obesity, weight loss, working out

Tags: diet Exercise fat fat loss fitness health healthy cooking healthy food nutrition obese obesity paleo primal transformation weight loss workout

Words of Wisdom

November 30th, 2009

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“If hunger is not the problem, then eating is not the solution”

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Posted in obesity, weight loss

Tags: emotional eating fat obesity quotation quote weight loss

What the Diet Gurus Won’t Tell You

November 12th, 2009

dietbooks2008

In under two months time, it’s going to be a brand New Year – 2010.

And a lot of you are going to make that most famous of New Years Resolutions.

I am going to lose weight.

And, most of you are going to fail…miserably.

Here’s why.

There are 3 Main Types of Weight Loss Plans

Eat Less Food
Eat Less of Specific Types of Food (most commonly Carbs or Fat)
Get More Exercise

And of course, most of the so-called “diet-experts” mix and match these three main plans to come up with their proprietary “miracle” weight loss program.

So, how come, year after year, millions of people:

Start a new diet
Quit that diet
Try another diet
Quit that diet
etc, etc, etc…

Don’t they have any will power?

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Of course, they have will power. Just as much as anybody else. Just as much as that skinny guy or gal that can’t quit smoking or gambling or watching too much reality tv.

Problem is, will power isn’t enough for most dieters.

Not when you consider the following list of factors that make dieting a can’t-win proposition for most people.

Health Habit’s List of Diet Killers

When dieters eat less food:

Their metabolism slows down
Specific brain chemicals increase appetite
Their “obesity” hormones join with those brain chemicals and appetite becomes an insatiable hunger
Neural pathways created by years of poor eating habits are abandoned (that’s good).
New (diet-friendly) neural pathways are created (once again – good)
Unfortunately, the old pathways are designed like super-highways while the new ones are more like bike trails. One bad meal and the old pathways come back online and the diet is broken.
Psychologically, the elimination of their standard diet results in feelings of loss & punishment.
Emotionally, dieters feel like they are being punished.
Socially, friends & family members often (unconsciously) try to sabotage the diet.

When dieters restrict food groups:

Metabolism may or may not slow down - metabolism is mainly affected by caloric intake and, to some extent, the amount of protein consumed.
The brain chemicals and hormones cry out for the restricted food.
Neural pathways are affected in the same way as above.
Psychologically, we see similar feelings of deprivation.
Same emotional response
Same social response amongst family members.
Amongst casual acquaintances, the social response can be even worse. In social situations (parties, restaurants) dieters who avoid carbs or fats can be perceived by others as being “difficult”
Low-fat dieters can suffer in a myriad number of ways. Impaired hormone production, damaged hair, skin & nails, alleriges, systemic inflammation, etc…
Low-carb dieters often suffer at first from the lack of readily available sugar as a fuel source. Over time, this problem resolves itself.
Unfortunately, the lack of fiber in the low-carb diet often doesn’t resolve itself. And we all know what a lack of fiber can do to a person’s bathroom habits.

When exercise is the sole weight loss method:

Exercise does all sorts of great things for your body – (improves mood, body image, strength, flexibility, general health, etc), but as the saying goes, you can’t out-train a bad diet. It is way too easy to eat 500 calories of delicious chocolate cake than it is to burn off 500 calories of body-fat.
And, to make things worse, studies have shown that exercise increases hunger.

And the problems get even worse for repeat dieters.

After numerous failed attempts at weight loss, these poor souls have created super-thick neural pathways dedicated exclusively to dietary failure.

They just don’t believe they can succeed.

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Seems pretty grim, doesn’t it?

So, what are we going to do?

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Here’s what I do for my clients.

Choose a diet/meal plan that keeps their metabolism humming along.
Choose a diet/meal plan that meshes well with their personality & their lifestyle
Create an exercise plan that boosts metabolism and makes them fitter, stronger & lighter.
Prepare them mentally and emotionally for the challenge that they face. Let them know that their hormones and neural pathways and brain chemicals want them to stay fat. But that with diet and various psychological tools, they can overcome their physiology.
Help them re-frame how they see their diet. Instead of eating for convenience, they’re eating for nutrition. Instead of missing out on ice cream, they’re upping their sex appeal. Instead of being normal, they’re becoming better – healthier, fitter, stronger, sexier.
Make them understand that this is a challenge that they can win. Others have faced the same challenge and have succeeded. I lend them my confidence. Every day I see people succeed & fail at weight loss. I have built some massive neural pathways when it comes to my belief in successful weight loss. I just need them to believe that I believe. Weird, but true.

So, come this January, what are you going to do?

Buy the latest bestselling diet book?

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I know that this post barely scratched the surface of a complex subject. And I am sure that I will be writing more about it in the coming months.

But, if you have any questions, feel free to comment or shoot me an email.

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