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Posts Tagged ‘health habits’
Protected: Health Habits Workout -Week 6/Day 1
February 9th, 2010The Health Habits Diet
February 4th, 2010Like most personal trainers, my business has been built on word of mouth.
When my clients lose weight and get fit, their friends notice and I pick up a new client.
And, considering that most of my clients are interested in melting off body-fat, diet & weight loss has become a bit of an obsession for me.
So, when it comes to dietary recommendations, I need to get it right.
That’s why, at it’s core, the Health Habits Diet is a modified Paleo-style diet.
Apple Glazed Turkey Breast
Because based upon the scientific research and my first hand experience, there is no better way of eating for general health and gradual weight loss than Paleo.
You’re eating foods that are high in nutrients and relatively low in calories
And while, it’s always a big transition for new clients, the ones who buy into the concept and trust me (even for a month or so) always see great results….always.
But, we’re not done yet.
As much as I love the Paleo Diet, it’s not perfect. As much as some Paleos want to believe that everything Paleo is good and everything modern is bad, they’re wrong.
- Certain foods enjoyed by some Paleo Dieters make weight loss difficult. For that reason, during a weight loss phase, they are eliminated.
- And as I said in this post, it’s not only what you eat, it’s when you eat it, and the Health Habits Diet makes use of precise peri-workout nutrition to allow my clients to:
- Perform better during their workouts
- Maintain muscle mass while dieting
- Gain muscle mass if desired
- Boost their metabolism and
- Speed up fat loss
But, we’re still not done yet.
Depending upon the goals of my clients, nighttime eating and meal size must also addressed.
- Clients interested primarily in fat loss eat nothing for the 4 hours before sleep (except for a tbsp of fish oil)
- Clients interested in gaining muscle mass while losing fat will eat a solid meal before bed.
- As well, there are never any seconds on the Health Habits. One serving per meal…and don’t try getting around that by buying gigantic bowls or plates.
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So, to recap, these are the basics of my Health Habits Diet
- A modified Paleo Diet makes up the majority of your meals
- Peri-workout nutrition for better workouts and a metabolism boost
- Nighttime eating geared to specific weight loss goals
- Portion control
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So, where do you go from here?
In my next few post, I will outline the specific menus I recommend for the following “types” of Health Habits dieters.
If you don’t find yourself in one of these archetypes, shoot me an email and we can whip up something specific to your needs.
Dieter Archetypes
- Rapid weight loss with no concern for muscle mass
- Just wants to get healthy
- Wants to gain muscle and/or get really strong without getting fat
- Wants to maintain / gain muscle while losing as much body-fat as possible
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Just a reminder, tomorrow is my birthday, so I won’t be posting.
In the meantime, look through these archives to get a better idea of what to expect with the next post.
- Diet Compliance Chart
- Caveman Diet
- Paleo Recipe Resource Page
- What Kind of Paleo are You?
- Is Paleo Eating the Cure for Diabetes?
- News Flash! Caveman Diet Good…Your Diet Bad
- Peri-Workout Nutrition
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The Making of the Health Habits Diet
February 2nd, 2010Tomorrow, 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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If you like what you see here, click here for updates or Share this Post with the rest of the world.
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Related Posts
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- Paleo Recipe Resource Page
- Diet Compliance Chart
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- Dr. Dan’s Paleo Diet Saves Christmas
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- Think Yourself Thin….The Complete Beck Diet for Life
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MEND: A Better Way to Reverse Childhood Obesity?
January 28th, 2010
I want you to imagine that you’re the parent of this chubby little guy chowing down at Mickey Dees.
- You know that your kid is obese.
- You know that being obese is not going to make his life easier in any respect – health, social stigma, etc
And yet, here you are at McDonalds…again
How does that make you feel?
- Like a failure as a parent?
- Worried about your kid’s health?
- Concerned that you don’t know how to fix the problem?
- Upset that you can’t afford to fix the problem?
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What if there was a program that:
- Has been proven to help reverse childhood obesity (study, study)
- Teaches kids (and their families) what & how they should be eating to be fit
- Takes the family shopping to show them how to shop for healthy food on a budget
- Shows the family how to prepare healthy meals
- Teaches the family psychological tips to help them improve their odds of winning the weight loss battle
- Re-introduces kids to physical activity – games, sports, etc..
- Was offered in your neighborhood
- Make us of already existing public facilities (community centers, parks, etc)
- And is FREE
If you live in the U.K., this program already exists
Unfortunately, in North America, it doesn’t.
Funny how we talk about what a huge problem childhood obesity is, but we don’t do anything about it.
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If you like what you see here, click here for updates
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Related Posts
- Childhood Obesity: A Cruel Kindness
- Can Video Games Reverse Childhood Obesity?
- A BAN on Fast Food TV Advertising Would Reverse Childhood Obesity …
- A Spark of Hope in the Fight against Childhood Obesity | Health Habits
- America’s Obesity Epidemic costs $147 billion
- Too fat to be surgeon general?
- Having trouble sticking to your diet?
- Future Trends in Global Obesity
- How the Free Market makes you FAT and why “Big Food” likes it that way
- Obesity Drugs v.s Health Habits
- Nutritional Information on Restaurant Menus – Does it make any difference?
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Exercise Builds Better Brains
January 21st, 2010
I knew it!!!
I knew there was a reason my Health Habits readers are so much smarter than the average person on the street.
It turns out that all of that exercise you do improves brain health and actually promotes the growth of new brain cells.
The Research
In a new study (published here), researchers found that voluntary running caused lab mice to grow new brain cells in the region of the brain (hippocampus) associated with memory and spatial navigation.
The 105-day study included two groups of mice. One group was allowed unlimited access to an exercise wheel and ran an average of more than 20 km (12 miles) a day. The other group of mice weren’t allowed to exercise.
Tests showed that the mice in the exercise group were better able to distinguish between memories of similar things. This is likely due to the additional brain cells generated by exercise, the researchers said.
“Keeping similar memories distinct is an important part of having a good memory,” said study senior author Timothy Bussey of Cambridge University. “It is this aspect of memory that is improved by exercise, our study shows.
The human equivalent might be remembering which car parking space you have used on two different days in the previous week. It becomes difficult to distinguish memories when events are similar.”
New brain cells…that has to be good.
But wait, it gets even better.
It’s not just the physical exercise that you do.
Another group of brain researchers believe that it’s a combination of increased blood flow (via exercise therapy) and increased neural activity (problem solving, learning new tasks, reading Health Habits, etc…) that results in both the creation and retention of new brain cells at any age.
So, when you go online to research how to get healthy & fit, you’re pushing your brain to grow & keep new brain cells.
But wait, it can get even better than that.
Supplementing your diet with Omega 3 fatty acids has been shown to improve the cellular function of your brain cells.
Conclusion
- Physical Exercise = New Brain Cells
- Mental Exercise = Retention of those New Brain Cells (the use it or lose it theory)
- Omega 3 fatty acids via fish oils = Better Functioning Brain Cells
So, the next time some non-exercising, non-thinking, non-fish oil slurping mouth breather tells you how smart you are, you can tell them that it’s all due to Health Habits.
You’re welcome
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If you like what you see here, click here for updates
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Related Posts
- Health Promotion v.s Disease Prevention
- Pregnant Mothers intake of Omega 3 key to Babies Big Brains …
- Pediasure Sucks | Health Habits
- Omega 6 Bad!…Omega 3 Good!!!
- Disease Prevention with an Exercise Prescription
- America’s Obesity Epidemic costs $147 billion
- Having trouble sticking to your diet?
- Why are Omega 3s Better than Statins? | Health Habits
- Omega 3s – Why you need them and How to get them | Health Habits
- The status-quo is broken…We need a new model for burning fat and getting fit
Reference
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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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If you like what you see here, click here for updates
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Related Posts
- The Secret to Health and Fitness is……
- The Ghrelin made me eat it
- Genetics & Obesity – Prader-Willi Syndrome
- Need Some Motivation?
- Successful Fitness Motivation or “how I finally whipped my lazy butt into shape”
- The Reason Why Diets Don’t Work
- Obesity: How to Motivate the Un-Motivated
- The Most Amazing Weight Loss Story
- Why Personal Trainers get Results
- Think Yourself Thin
Reference
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The Health Habits Facebook Group – Workout # 1
January 3rd, 2010It has begun.
The Health Habits – Facebook Workout Group (I need to get a shorter name for this) has their first workouts up and posted on the HH Facebook Fan Page.
So, if your new Year’s Resolution was to drop 20 lbs and get into the best shape of your life, sign up for the group, print out the workout and get to transforming that bod of yours.
- It’s free
- It’s better than any workout you are going to find in any fitness magazine or book (guaranteed)
- And it’s been melting fat off my clients like crazy
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2010: Get Fit, Lose Weight, Make More Friends and Revolutionize the Entire Health & Fitness Industry
January 1st, 2010Alright people, this is the year.
2010 is the year that you are finally going to get into shape.
And here’s how you’re going to do it.
- Join our Health Habits Facebook Group.
- If you know anyone who wants to get into shape…have them join our Health Habits Facebook Group.
As you may have noticed, I am just a wee bit excited about our Health Habits Facebook Group.
Here’s why:
For years & years, I have looked at the health/fitness/diet/weight loss industries with disgust. Billions of dollars are spent every year at health clubs and diet centers. And yet, we keep getting fatter and slower and weaker and sicker.
Why?
Because the fitness industry doesn’t want you to get into shape. If you did, you would have no need for them.
They want you to keep buying their books, supplements, programs and memberships…year after year after year.
People, we need to STOP THE INSANITY!!!
ooops, sorry…bad example.
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But seriously, here’s the plan.
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What we’re going to do is take the best elements of every quasi-successful health & fitness program and create our own fitness revolution.
- We’ll start by abandoning the old fashioned exercise programs that just don’t work.
- We’ll replace them with more effective programs that are based in both scientific research and real world experience.
- And then we’ll give those workouts away for free.
- Then we’ll do the same thing for our nutrition plans.
- Ditch the old junk and replace it with a plan that actually works
- And give it away for free.
Sounds great, right?
I thought so too, until I realized that our problem with obesity and physical fitness isn’t a lack of knowledge.
- We all know that we should exercise.
- We all know that broccoli is better for us than pizza
Our real problem with obesity and our lack of fitness is that we just don’t do the things that we know we should be doing.
And that is where our little Health Habits Facebook Group comes in.
Over the past few years, there has been one single fitness program that has had great success in creating ultra fit bodies. And that program is Crossfit.
The reason that Crossfit has been so successful in creating better bodies is due to their grassroots approach.
Crossfit isn’t about some expert(s) telling it’s members what to do and how to do it.
Crossfit is a group of people, spread out all around the world who challenge and push and support each other to get fitter and stronger and leaner and better day after day after day.
In fact, because Crossfit members are so passionate about Crossfit, many non-Crossfit fitness geeks have labelled Crossfit as a cult.
And maybe it is…a cult of extreme fitness enthusiasts.
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But, Crossfit isn’t perfect.
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In my humble opinion:
- Crossfit workouts are far too random for my taste. On a day to day level, this approach is a big part of the fun for Crossfitters…not knowing what tomorrow’s WOD is going to be.
- However, on a macro or long term level, this randomness is likely to slow down your progress towards your goal.
- Exercise selection tends to overload the shoulder girdle, lower back and the knees. OUCH
- Crossfit focuses heavily on anaerobic endurance training. And while I love this style of training, it is not the only aspect of physical fitness that should be developed.
- Crossfit training uses a lot of Olympic style weightlifting, and while these exercises are great for you, there is a significant learning curve. My concern is that for the average trainee, the time required to get good at these lifts is exactly the kind of speedbump that causes people to abandon their fitness programs.
- Crossfit is intense (or extreme if you prefer). And while that is exactly what Crossfitters want, it is this high level of intensity that is going to drive away Joe & Susie Six-Pack.
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So, what are we going to do?
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- We’re going to borrow the grassroots approach of Crossfit
- We’re going to challenge & support each other just like the Crossfitters
- And we’re going to give control of our little Health Habits Facebook Group to the members of the group.
- Initially, I will provide the training (52 x 1 week programs) and nutrition programs.
- If you need more guidance, I will be available for online personal training.
- But, the group will grow and change as the members want.
This open source approach is completely unlike the one on one personal training that I do with my clients in Toronto.
And to be honest, it’s freaks me out a little bit. but, if we’re going to revolutionize the health & fitness industry, we’re going to have to do things a little different.
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What happens now?
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- Join the group
- Get other people to join the group. The more people we have, the better this will work. Tell your friends about it. Tweet about it. Bloggers post about it.
- Every Sunday, I will post the workouts for the coming week. This will start this coming Sunday (I may even post it Saturday…I am a little excited.)
- I am going to open up admin control for the Facebook Group. Kinda like Wikipedia.
- Starting in February, I will integrate the nutritional program. This exercise program is going to be unlike anything you have ever done before. I don’t want people starting it at the same time they start a new diet. My advice is to get used to the workout first and then start the diet. But, seeing as I am letting go of control….
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That’s it for now.
On Sunday, you get the workout.
On Monday, you start transforming that bod.
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My Xmas Present to You
December 24th, 2009
Because I love all my Health Habits readers soooo much, I have decided to give each of you the gift of an online personal trainer…namely, moi.
Starting in January, everyone who signs up for the Facebook group will receive 52 weekly workout programs designed to burn fat, increase all aspects of functional strength and speed while reversing common muscle imbalances & eliminating any associated pain.
My goal is to turn all of you into the leanest, strongest and fittest yous that you can be.
There will also be a nutritional program that we are going to start on February first.
So, if you’re interested in the program (estimated value $2600), sign up for the Facebook group.
Happy Holidays
Doug
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p.s – tell all your friends & family. The more people we get in the group, the better this is going to be. There is way too much research showing how group activities improve adherence as well as improving overall weight loss results
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