a blog with fitness, nutrition, health and training information
The market in western cultures has valued lower cost food for some time now, my questions are: do we get far less nutrition value for our money? is cheaper food really saving us money in the long run? and is mass manufacured food really food at all? In this clip while promoting the new movie “Food Inc” Robert Kenner warns that cheaper food is costing you more by taking your health.
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| Robert Kenner | ||||
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As many of my clients know I am a big fan of watching fitness infomercials and this one I found today had me laughing quite a bit, apparently this guys company has a law suit against their last pointless fitness machine by the US equivilent of our department of fair trading and now they are back at it.
I am always supportive of anything that helps people get moving safely but we need to be aware of adds like these as they are not providing a public service in this case. The Americans do things to the extreme of course but the tactics used to promote this machine are often used in the adds you may see on the Australian morning shows. In this add they use what is probably the most used tactic when selling bad fitness products, exploiting the spot reduction myth.
As you may know already fat is not controlled by the muscle under it, although the myth that you can lose fat on an area by exercising the muscle closest to it is constantly used to get your money in return for less than effective exercise machines. In the add below they imply but don’t actually make any promises that this machine will burn fat from your hips, thighs and butt. The the guy who appears to be a fitness expert never actually says this product will burn fat from your hips, thighs or butt and in fact it probably wont. In the start of the clip they ask you “Do you want the perfect abs?” but they don’t actually tell you this machine works your abs they just imply it by showing their product and by getting the participant’s to say they can feel it in their core it certainly seems like it does, but the reality is that using this machine is not an effective abdominal training movement.
The best way to lose body fat and tone up is always going to be a good program using both large muscle group resistance training and aerobic/anaerobic training along with a solid diet and healthy lifestyle practices. Take a look at our website for more information on how we can help you create the ideal program to get the results you want. Click to go to the Complete Fitness Website
Over your day you will be under the influence of a number of types of stress, but when stress levels get higher, eating is often done quickly while working or neglected completely to overcome the stressful task at hand. Although eating appears less important when you’re trying to get a job done under pressure, the reality is that not taking time to eat a balanced meal is one of the greatest stressors you can put your body under.
Your body’s first priority is always to keep you alive, when your blood sugar gets low it is a signal of danger for your body. The majority of the sugar in your blood is used to power your brain so when sugar levels in your blood get to low for your brain to function properly your body must act quickly to keep your brain working. The ideal situation for your body is for you to keep energy levels steady throughout the day and if you forget to eat you will feel hungry prompting you to eat, although during periods of stress the body doesn’t always work this way.
When you are stressed by a situation your body switches into its survival mode when in this state your body will suppress all activities not needed for immediate survival, this includes digestion of food so while in a stressed state your appetite is usually suppressed. This survival mode is used to overcome the stress so you can get back to resting as soon as possible, so energy is diverted from other parts of the body to stimulate areas needed for survival like your brain, heart and lungs, this is done with the use of your stress hormones particularly cortisol.
Just as cortisol is released in response to work related stress or physical danger, it is also used during times of potential starvation, to keep up energy supply to your brain. When your body runs out of fuel it can’t just stop like your car would, your body keeps you going by using cortisol to stimulate the breakdown of healthy tissue in your muscles, bones and organs to keep you alive. It does this in the hope that soon the stressor would have passed and you can eat food that can be used to replace the energy borrowed in the process.
When we don’t give ourselves the opportunity to recover, jumping from one stress to another your body will just continue to breakdown. In an attempt to slow this chronic breakdown, your metabolism will be slowed giving you less available energy drastically reducing both your physical and mental performance. Taking time to relax and eat good regular meals is vital to performing better at work getting more done at a higher quality.
Typical responses when blood sugar gets low include:
All these symptoms, which can be easily avoided by eating regular meals, all contribute to poor performance. Often as a when blood sugar gets low in an attempt to keep up energy we reach for stimulants like coffee, soft drinks, high carbohydrate foods like bread, muffins, sweets, and cereals, but these foods elevate blood sugar too quickly and require the body to store it away through the use of the storage hormone insulin, which results in another blood sugar crash and more cravings for a stimulant or more tissue breakdown.
How to avoid it?
For more information about how the Complete Fitness Nutrition programs can help you click the link below.
Free range animals live and eat as they were designed to. Commercially raised animals are fed wheat and corn among other things to quickly make them fat, but their diets often make them sick and decrease the quality of the protein in their meat. If you want to be healthy you should eat right and exercise, the same thing should apply to the meat we eat, if you eat meat from animals that didn’t eat their natural diet and get enough exercise you cant expect the meat to be good for you.
Like meat, eggs are only as good as the animal they come from, and the environment the live in. Chickens that live a natural life produce an egg that provides a great and balanced source of proteins and good dietary fats, as the chickens are much healthier in comparison just like you when you are active.
In the 80’s eggs were said to be bad as they contained dangerously high levels of cholesterol. What they didn’t understand is cholesterol is a necessary building block for the cells of your body, and dangerous cholesterol is created by the body in response to stress.
Eggs from birds that have been cage raised contain an unfavourable ratio of omega 3 to 6 while free range eggs are much closer to the ideal ratio. A dietary imbalance between omega 3 and 6 fatty acids produces inflammation in the body, with alcohol, drugs, stress and food additives also causing inflammation in the gut, the body has a significantly higher need to produce bad fats in the body.
Action points for today
Our Nutrition and Lifestyle programs are designed to seek out areas that could be enhanced to give you better results from your exercise program, help you get more energy, control your weight, and increase the performance of your body.
For more information about how the Complete Fitness Nutrition programs can work for you click the link below.
Just a quick post to say we had over 10,000 visitors last month! Quite a milestone for us, keep the questions and comments coming in.
We all know that alcohol can be a major issue for your health and fitness: it’s hard to train well with alcohol in your system and the damage excessive drinking can do to your health is well documented. However, alcohol is also a HUGE factor in losing weight. The calories that are consumed can seriously affect your weight loss aims, so read our full article below to find out more:
Darryn
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